This is a terrible idea. Actually a spectacularlybad idea. He went out there for solitude and I'm about to crash it with my entire personality which is a lot on a good day and definitely too much at one thirty in the morning, and he specifically drove into the desert to escape noise and people and probably me since I fill every silence, and now I'm going to drive twenty minutes to find him because I can't stop thinking about him and that's totally normal behavior, right? People definitely do that. Drive into the desert at one thirty AM because they're worried about someone. That's fine.
My feet are already moving, grabbing keys, yanking cut-offs over sleep shorts. Tank top, sneakers, no overthinking allowed.
Just go.
The drive is easy once I commit to the stupid—one road out of town, turn at the dead cottonwood pointing the way like a skeletal finger, follow tire tracks through dust that glows white in my headlights. Desert's all shadow and starlight, and my car sounds too loud, engine rattling in that way Holt keeps promising to fix.
I find his truck exactly where Finn said. Parked at the edge of nothing, canyon dropping into darkness so complete it looks solid.
Holt's on the hood. Back against windshield, one leg stretched, the other bent, arms crossed. He doesn't turn when I pull up but his shoulders shift—he knows it's me.
Engine off. Silence rushes in with cricket-song and something calling in the distance. Coyote maybe. Or just the desert talking to itself.
Gravel loud under my feet. Everything's loud out here—no walls to swallow sound, just rock and sky and empty space.
"Can't sleep?" I approach slow, which is ridiculous because Holt doesn't spook, but I'm doing it anyway.
"How'd you find me?" His voice is midnight-rough, and I hear the smile even though he's not looking.
"Finn mentioned you had a spot. Canyon overlook, twenty minutes out." I stop a few feet away. "Also your truck was gone and I figured you weren't out grocery shopping in the middle of the night."
Now he looks at me, ghost of a smile visible even in starlight. "So you drove into the desert to check on me?"
"I drove into the desert because I was having a conversation with the ceiling fan and needed to find an actual human before I lost it completely." Already rambling. Can't stop. "Also I was worried. Sue me."
He shifts, making room on the hood.
I climb up beside him, metal still warm under my palms, holding the day's heat. We're not quite touching but close enough that I feel him, close enough to count the inches between us.
The canyon stretches out—dark walls dropping into darker nothing, sky so thick with stars it doesn't look real. More stars than I knew existed, like someone spilled glitter and forgot to clean up.
"Oh," I breathe.
"Yeah."
I tip my head back, neck bent, trying to take it all in. "I've never seen this many stars. Like genuinely never. I knew lightpollution was a thing but I didn't know it was hiding this." I find what might be the Big Dipper. "This is beautiful."
"Different out here."
"That's the understatement of the century." I pull my knees up, wrap my arms around them. "You come here a lot?"
"When I need it."
"And I just ruined that. Sorry. I can go—"
"Stay." His arm brushes mine when he shifts. "It's fine."
Silence settles, comfortable instead of awkward.
"Today was good," I say eventually, because I've never met a silence I couldn't fill. "The swimming hole. You smiled. Multiple times. I counted."
"Did I?"
"Four times. Four and a half if you count that thing your mouth did when Finn cannonballed and nearly took out my eyeball. Not quite a smile but smile-adjacent." I press my forehead to my knees. "It looked good on you. The smiling. You should do it more."
Soft laugh, barely audible. "You keeping track?"
"Maybe. Is that weird? That feels weird. I'm making it weird." One hand waves vaguely. "It's just nice to see you relaxed, you know? You hold everything so close and I never know what you're thinking, which makes me talk more because I'm trying to fill the silence and figure out what's happening in your head, which probably makes everything worse, which makes me talk even more, and it's this whole cycle—"
