Entitled People·
THE BACKTRACK STAND
An ordinary group ride becomes a test of boundaries when two friends pressure a man to backtrack, turning a routine drive into a tense stand for safety.
Backtrack for her safety, or keep the route?
Be one of the first to vote.
Amy got out of the car, slammed the door, and left a 20-minute detour behind her.
It started as a normal group hangout. The narrator was close friends with Joe, had known Sandra through him for years, and the three of them spent time together often. Last week, Sandra brought along a friend named Amy. Amy had met Joe before, but this was the narrator's first time meeting her.
The group went to a movie, then bowling. When the night wrapped up, Sandra asked whether the narrator could drive Amy home. He said yes. He usually drove everyone home anyway, and at first he figured the route was simple enough.
Then the addresses mattered.
He lives far north of the others, "like an hour north of all of them," as he put it, so he planned the most direct order: Joe first, then Sandra, then Amy, then home. Nobody had talked through the route ahead of time. He dropped Joe off and headed toward Sandra's house.
That's when the mood shifted. The narrator could tell Amy and Sandra were texting and whispering to each other. Then Sandra pointed out that he had made a wrong turn. Amy's house, she said, was the other way.
He explained that it made more sense to drop Sandra off first, then Amy. That's when Amy said the real problem out loud: she didn't want to be alone in the car with him because he is a man she didn't know well. In her view, being alone in a car with a man she didn't really know was unsafe.
She wanted the route flipped. Drop her off next, then drive back to Sandra, then head home.
That would mean backtracking the same road twice. The narrator said it would add 20 extra minutes to an already 60-minute drive home. He refused.
"They were both really pressuring me," he said later, describing how Amy and Sandra kept pushing him to do it. He said the whole ride became miserable. "It was such an awkward car ride because they just didn't give up."
He kept saying no. Amy eventually got out at Sandra's house, and "she kind of slammed the door all aggressively." Then he drove the rest of the way home.
The next day, Joe called. He said he felt the narrator should have just done the longer route.
The narrator disagreed. "I'm not going to go way out of my out to do a favour for someone who just thinks I'm some messed up abuser or something," he said, arguing that the request was unreasonable.