Oops, I Made a Boo-Boo

The man petted the back of my head with the kind of caress you give a pet. But then his hand slid down and he pushed at the back of my neck. My muscles strained to press my head back against my headrest to resist him, and I reached up over my head to seize his wrist in both my fists. The stand-off remained tense like that even with the soft music on his car speakers, with the darkness long since fallen like a blanket over the city, and with the ocean out there looking like a band of ink poured out across the whole field of vision out the front window.