Better than Perfect. Melissa Kantor

on and plugged my phone in, glancing down at the screen and searching for something to listen to, then looking back up at the road, then back at my phone. I was skimming through a bunch of random titles when I flew past the sign for the Milltown Country Club. Keeping one hand on my phone, I made a hard left into the driveway.

      I didn’t see the driver of the van that had been coming from the opposite direction and that was also making a turn into the Milltown Country Club’s driveway. There was the sound of honking and of rubber screaming against pavement as he spun his van far over to the side of the driveway, narrowly missing one of the enormous oak trees that lined the drive. My stomach hit my throat as I slammed on my brakes and braced my arms against the steering wheel. But instead of the crunch of glass and metal, there was only the sound of a guy cursing his brains out.

      I leaped out of my car. “I’m so sorry,” I said. My voice and my hands were shaking. “That was all my fault. I’m really sorry.”

      “Jesus, woman!” said the driver. He had his head against the back of the seat, so I couldn’t see him until I got up to the side of the van and put my head near the window. He was a little older than I was—maybe in college. He was also odd looking; it was almost as if his face was made up of different people’s faces—nose from one person, lips from another. His eyes were very blue.

      “I’m really sorry,” I said again, squinting into the dark van. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

      “Clearly,” he said.

      “Are you okay?” asked a girl from the passenger seat in lightly accented British English. Like the driver, she had bright blue eyes and black hair, but where he was weird looking and bloated, she was beautiful, her blunt-cut bob accenting sharp cheekbones and a delicate chin.

      “I’m okay,” I said, because it wasn’t like I was going to tell a complete stranger that almost killing myself and two other people was hardly the worst thing that had happened to me all day. “Are you okay?” I asked her. “I’m really sorry.”

      “You’ve got to stop saying that,” said the driver. “It’s getting on my nerves.”

      “For Christ’s sake, Sean, she’s trying to be polite,” said a male voice from inside the van. It had an accent like the girl’s. Hearing another person in the van revealed the magnitude of the accident I’d almost just had. That was three people I’d come close to killing. My legs started to shake.

      “Are you sure you’re all right?” asked the girl. “You look a little done in.”

      The side door of the van opened, and a boy got out. He must have been in eighth or ninth grade, and he was holding an electric guitar.

      “Hi,” he said. “You okay?” He had the same eyes as the driver and the passenger, and the same black hair. I’d nearly taken out an entire family with my shitty driving.

      “I’m okay,” I said. “And again … I’m really sorry. And I’m sorry for saying sorry!” I added before the guy in the driver’s seat could object.

      I went back to my car. It was lucky no one had tried to enter the club driveway in the past five minutes, since I was stopped directly in the middle of it. There were black skid marks leading up to where I’d stopped and more leading to the van’s tires. Just looking at how close they came before veering apart made my stomach rise up.

      “Drive carefully, would you?” the driver called out to me, and even though it was a harsh thing to say and he said it harshly, there was something in his voice that might have been concern. He watched me get into my car before pulling back onto the driveway ahead of my car.

      Sitting in the driver’s seat, I could feel my whole body twitching. I would gladly have curled up in a little ball in the backseat and lain there, shaking uncontrollably, until Sofia got off work and drove me home. But I was parked in the middle of the road. And Sofia didn’t even know I was coming to see her. She didn’t know anything.

      At the thought of what I had to tell her, I started shaking harder.

      I wasn’t the kind of person who sat in her car shaking too hard to drive it, and the fact that that was exactly what I was doing started to make me angry. “Get ahold of yourself, Juliet.” I said it firmly, the way my mom had talked to me when I’d wanted to stay in bed all day. “Get. It. Together. Now.”

      A few yards up the driveway, the van stopped, and I had the terrible feeling they’d discovered that something was wrong with their car after all. I gripped my hands into fists and tried to get control of my shaking. “Stop it now, Juliet. This is no big deal. If there’s some kind of problem, all you need is your license and registration.” The sound of my own voice made me feel better. I leaned forward to get the registration out of the glove compartment just as I heard the door of the van slide open. When I sat up, I saw that a guy in a white T-shirt and cargo shorts was jogging toward me. I wondered how many more people were in the van. It was turning out to be some kind of fucking clown car.

      The guy bent down and put his head through the passenger-side window of my car. Sofia complained that because I had Jason, I never noticed how hot other guys were, but this guy was objectively hot. He had the same blue eyes as the other people in the van and the same black hair. His shoulders were broad under his T-shirt. If Sofia had been sitting next to me, she would have texted me He’s hawt.

      He gave me a slightly nervous smile. “My sister thought you might need a hand driving.” Like the girl and the younger boy, he had a British accent. “She said she’s always shaken up after a near miss like that. Which should tell you something about her driving. Do you want me to drive you up to the parking lot?”

      “No, I’m fine,” I said. My voice was clipped; I sounded like my mom when she talked to a pushy waiter.

      Neither of us said anything for a minute. All you could hear was the quiet, except for a sound almost like a moth hitting a screen. When I turned to face the front of the car, I saw that my hand, which was holding the car registration, was shaking so much that the card was flapping against the steering wheel. I could tell that the boy was seeing it also.

      “It’s no trouble for me to drive you,” he said finally.

      “Yeah,” I said after another long pause during which I studied the black skid marks on the asphalt. “Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad idea.”

      My legs were rubbery, so rubbery I wondered if I could stand up, so I slid over to the passenger seat. The guy waited until I was settled, then walked around the car, opened the door, and got in. He slid the seat back, closed the door, and started the car up the hill. Neither of us said a word.

      “I’m Declan, by the way.”

      “I’m Juliet,” I said. I looked out the window. As we crested the hill, the two rows of trees ended and a wide lawn opened up in front of us, topped by the enormous clubhouse. A green-and-white awning swayed gently over the wide porch. There was the tinkle of piano music that I knew was coming from the lounge just on the other side of the veranda. Politics aside, there was something comforting about being at the Milltown Country Club, and I wanted to wrap it around me like a cashmere sweater.

      In front of us, the van wound around to the side of the building, a route I’d never taken before. The guy driving my car—I’d forgotten his name already—followed it for a few yards, then suddenly slammed the brakes. I jerked forward. “Sorry,” he said. “We’re the band for tonight, so I was going to the service entrance. But there must be a members’ parking lot.”

      “No, I’m not a member,” I said. I purposely didn’t add but my boyfriend is. When Jason and I started going out, I referred to him as my boyfriend about every five seconds. But freshman year, another couple in our group of friends got together, and I had to listen to Bethany say my boyfriend ten thousand times a day. Ever since then, I tried never to say those words. “I’m going to see my friend,” I explained. “She works here. So, I mean, the service entrance is fine.”

      “Great,” he said,