I charily paid attention to Edward as he drove us all towards Holly’s house. Emmett, Rose and I were sitting across the back seat of the Mercedes, counting down the milliseconds until the human would be delivered home and we thus would be set free from our obligation. I had sat right behind our driver and he kept throwing me glances in the mirror that made me suspicious and very suddenly want his ability to read minds. Sitting behind him was perhaps not a good idea.

Maybe I should’ve just “accidentally” told Emmett exactly what Holly was feeling as she stroked Edward’s thigh from the passenger’s seat, and then let the merciless ribbing be served to its own accord. That might have wiped the smug grin off his face. The thought made me want to chuckle. Only, I couldn’t execute the laugh because smiling was near impossible to do with the intense level of tension swirling in the car. I tried to rid of it, but it just kept getting stronger. There were many of reasons I could place the all the unease to:
One, someone the three of us seated across the back did not like was in the same car as us.
Two, we were driving at an acceptable, yet irritatingly slow, human pace, to keep up our façade.
Three, nobody was talking.
Four, I’d been enhancing it, without realising.
Five, there wasn’t any music playing.
Six, Emmett knew Edward was trying to prolong the time with a human so the ‘pounding’ he would be enduring would happen later.
Seven, there was a human in the car.

And the list goes on…

Emmett heaved a sigh, only beating me to the gesture. I swore the tree we passed could’ve overtaken us if it really wanted to. So I began making a checklist of the things we drove by to pass the time.

Tree. Tree. Shrub. Tree. Traffic light. Car. Tree. Car. Building. Car. Truck. Tree. Tree. Street lamp.

The river.

Finally I had some indication of how much longer she would be in the car; seeing as there was no way to judge time inside the car with such immense silent frustration.  

The reflections of the orange and yellow lights from buildings and street lamps glistened along the rippling water surface, amorphous, as we moved alongside the river. The colours broke into shards of silver and gold along the uneven black surface and made a whole new bright city of indecipherable lights, dancing and glistening to a timeless rhythm all of its own.