COINCIDENTAL COLLISON 5.2

We had been driving around the city for twenty minutes with the heat turned all the way up. My woollen coat still clung to some of its moisture, but I was burning up and starting to sweat underneath it. It would've been fine if I could've taken it off, but I was adamant about keeping my secret. I could sense that Cole had picked up on my discomfort, but he never said anything; he just turned the temperature down.

The silence that had been lingering between us was filled with quiet music - at some point, he had turned on the radio.

Cole drove, going nowhere, and the road disappeared under the bonnet for over an hour until we eventually stopped and pulled into a remote petrol station. I turned to watch him through the back window while he filled up from the pump. I felt guilty for wasting his fuel.

We had said almost nothing to each other since I had gotten into the car, but when he returned from paying at the kiosk and climbed back into the driver's seat and passed me a bottle of water. Unscrewing the cap off his own, I watched him tip back his head and glug down half its contents.

I had no idea where we were. It was dusk; I would have to ask him to take me home at some point or let him drop me off somewhere in my neighbourhood. I was about to when he broke the silence first.

"I guessed you'd be thirsty. Are you hungry?"

"Thank you for the water," I muttered, having taken a drink. "But no, I'm not hungry." I lied. I hadn't bothered with breakfast or lunch that day, my tummy had grumbled a few times, but the music that was playing had drowned it out. "You should probably take me home now,"

I looked over to find he had turned about in his seat to stare at me.

There was a long, tense silence.

"I know what you not calling me means, and I know you didn't ask for my number because you didn't want it. So, I just wanted to apologise for being overly forward. I'm sorry if it made you uncomfortable."

"It's taken me a while to be okay, with the reason I said yes to going back to your place with you, that's all," I admitted, turning to face him.

"Hey, we all have urges to satisfy." He shrugged.

"I regret-" I began, but he cut me off.

"Oh, I'd appreciate it if you didn't admit that out loud. Not to my face, at least, Ana." Cole turned back around in his seat and turned on the ignition. "It might hurt my pride."

"I wasn't going to say what you think..."

"Ha, really?"

"Yeah, I was going to say I regret not giving you a chance and calling you, but…" I took a deep breath and decided it was time, to be honest. "I overheard your conversation with your other guest the morning after we uh-... Anyway, I guess it confused me. I know that your personal life is none of my business, but I think I was mostly annoyed that you had lied to me - your name isn't actually Cole is it?" I glanced his way before I continued to excuse myself. "I know I don't have any right to be angry; you weren't obliged to tell me the truth, but if you didn't want to tell me your name, then why give me your number?"

"Wow, this got complicated fast." He stated as he pulled off, back onto the main road and in the city centre's direction.

"See, this is exactly the reason why I don't have one-night stands…" I mumbled as I rose the bottle to my lips to take another sip of my water. I stared out the window to my left to avoid looking at him; we were zooming down a dual carriageway at speed, but the blurred darkness was suddenly fascinating. "If I know anything about myself, it's that I'm not very good at separating my feelings from my actions, and one-night affairs are supposed to just be about sex."

"I agree with that, but I couldn't stop thinking about you after."

What a stunning statement that was - I had no idea what to make of it.

He only glanced over at me to not take his focus off the road, but the look he had on his face conveyed something unspoken.

"And don't act too shocked; it's obvious I find you attractive otherwise, I wouldn't have come on to you at all. The offer of further contact was down to the fact that you've stayed on my mind, which isn't usual."

"Alright, so what am I supposed to call you? I mean, if I do call you…"

"I wasn't lying about my name." He said plainly.

"But the woman you were talking with called you Nick." I pushed. I realised I was prying at this point, but I just had to know. Somewhere inside me, I didn't want him to be a liar, and I wanted to be able to trust him because maybe I liked him more than I was ready to admit.

"The woman was my ex-wife, Victoria. My name is Nickolas. Cole and Nick, they're both nicknames." His explanation was short and took me completely off guard.

"You're divorced?" Wide-eyed and dumbfounded, I turned my attention back to him.

I had taken it for granted that he was at least a little older than me, but he didn't seem old enough to have been married. Suddenly I recalled he had a son too! He seemed to have already lived a whole life.

"Yeah, is that so hard to believe?" Cole glanced at me with one of his brows rose curiously.

I felt guilty for my reaction. Maybe I'd offended him.

"No. I didn't mean to assume you aren't the marrying kind; I just… How old are you?"

"Oh boy, we really aren't on the same page." Cole combed his fingers back through the slightly wavy, white-blond locks and sighed. "I'm... thirty-four."

"What?!"

"In my defence, I didn't think you were as young as you looked. I mean, you're shocked because you're a student, right? So you're what, anywhere between nineteen and twenty-five?"

"How could I be anything other than a student?"

Despite his explanation, he made less and less sense, and now I was more confused than I had been when I got into his car again.

"I'm twenty-one."

"Like, you're actually just twenty-one?" He asked, and I found his repetition of the question odd.

"Yeah… twenty-one-years old…" I clarified.

"Fuck." He muttered under his breath. In resignation, he blew out a sigh that puffed out his cheeks as it left him.

"I know, right? You're thirteen years older than me."

That was the last thing I said for a while. I was trying to wrap my head around the new situation we found ourselves in, and it was more complicated than I'd thought. Not only was I still keeping a massive secret from him, but he was also almost a generation older than me.

My time with Cole was coming to an end, so I told him where to drop me off. Parked in front of my local corner shop, I climbed out of his car. Before he could pull away, I tapped on his driver's side window. When he obliged by putting the window down so that we could talk, I said, "Thank you for today. For wasting your time and petrol on me." I looked to my left and right, ensuring that the coast was clear before I leant closer and almost through the open window. "About the age gap thing... I don't think I actually mind."

"I don't know what to say…"

"You don't have to say anything."

"Alright. Get yourself inside now, Ana; you've had a rough day."

Inside, I shed my coat and black funeral dress. Once I was alone and wallowed in my grief, tears came easily. With my stereo turned up and an open bottle of wine in my hand, I sat on the side of the bathtub and cried while the water ran.

All cried out; I climbed in and let the water wash away all my aches and pains. I knew I would always have a wound due to my parents' loss, but I also knew I would be okay; it would just hurt for a while.

The bubbles were dissipating, but I didn't feel like getting out yet. I hadn't finished my bottle of wine, so I topped up the water and turned my mind to something else...

I mulled over my weird afternoon with the man I could now confidently call Cole. He had mentioned I shouldn't feel guilty for using him to satisfy an urge, but that wasn't what was bugging me.

I wish I had asked to go back to his place with him.

I didn't want to be alone. I had friends I could invite around, and they would've dropped everything to be there for me, but when I was around them, I had to be the Ana they knew and loved. Right now, I wasn't feeling like her. I wasn't even sure if she existed anymore; there had been so much change as of late. Around Cole, I could be whatever version of myself I wanted because he didn't know whether I was being true to myself or not. He was a stranger, so why would he care?