“Coffee and snacks,” she corrects. “Your words were ‘I’ll get it.’ I heard ‘Hailey, go wild.’”
She tosses in a bag of sour gummy trees, a king-size peanut butter cup, Chex mix, and a container of those frosted Christmas cookies that taste like plastic and sugar. Then she beelines for the hot food case.
“Don’t you dare,” I warn.
She pauses, hand hovering over a foil-wrapped breakfast burrito. “What? I’m starving.”
“Those have been there since Labor Day. I guarantee it.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “You’re gonna get food poisoning in the middle of Nebraska and I’m gonna have to pull over every twenty minutes.”
She stares at me, then realizes I’m right and puts them back.
“Get your snacks and let’s get back on the road. I’ll buy you a real meal at a restaurant, Hailey. You’re not eating all that shit. You’ll be miserable.”
I talk her into putting half of it back, but the coffee, trail mix, and Christmas cookies were apparently necessary. When we finally get back to the truck and on the road again, the coffee kicks in and her eyes are no longer slits.
“So,” she says after a few minutes, pulling a cookie from the tray. “How many of these drives have you done?”
“Since I moved out here?” I think about it for a minute. “Probably six or eight times.”
“That’s it?”
I shrug. “It’s a long drive.”
She looks at me, studying my profile like she’s trying to read what mood I’m in. “You could fly, you know.”
“Yup, I could.” I can feel her staring at me like she’s waiting for more. “It was a bad breakup. I thought we were happy. She wasn’t. She ended it right before Christmas and fucked everything up.”
She goes quiet for a few miles after that. I think maybe she’s going to let it go, that we’ll just sit in this quiet space until the next gas stop. But, of course, she doesn’t.
“So now you just—what? Don’t celebrate Christmas at all?”
It’s not judgmental exactly. Just curious. But something about the question gets under my skin anyway.
“Something like that,” I mutter.
She angles toward me in the seat, brow pulling. “That’s kinda sad.”
“I’m not really in the mood for a therapy session, Hailey.”
Her lips part, and she stares at me for a beat before turning back to the window. “Fine. Whatever.”
The heat from the vents feels too high suddenly. The truck’s cab tightens around us until even the sound of her breathing annoys me. She crosses her legs, unwraps another cookie, and I swear the crinkle of plastic could drive a man insane.
I flex my hands on the wheel, jaw locked. “You’re getting crumbs everywhere.”
She shoots me a side-eye glare. “Jesus, you’re fun.”
“Not trying to be.”
“Mission accomplished.”
The rest of the drive sinks into silence again. The kind that sits heavy on your chest. Her shoulders are rigid, her reflection in the window is pissed.
Another hour rolls by. The sky darkens with low, thick clouds. Snow starts to picks up, the small flakes that were falling gently a little ago quickly turning into large wet flakes that swirl across the windshield. The wipers fight to keep up, smearing the flakes into streaks.
Then the truck lurches. A sharp hiss and thud echo under the floorboard. The steering wheel jerks in my hands. “Shit.”
“What—” she starts, sitting up.
