My mouth opens to shoot her down, but she stares me down and keeps talking, making sure I’m hearing her every word.
“You pulled over and tried to help me when no one else ever has. Most people call the cops on me when they see my van. Then, when you couldn’t fix it yourself, you called in not one, but two favors to get me taken care of, and personally escorted me to somewhere safe to stay yourself.
“I’ve seen you several times since then too, Weston. And you might have this whole front on for others, but I notice the way you’re always keeping everyone around you laughing, whether it was making me feel comfortable on an abandoned highway, or your niece when she was crying for her dad, and I’d be willing to bet you even do it with the other locals you come across while you’re painting your way across town.
“You put everyone around you first, you make it yourjobto lighten their loads, and you brighten up every room you walk into. That’s what I know about you after just a few days, Boy Scout. And you can’t even say you did it all to get in my pants, because you admitted you’re not going to. So, yeah, your sourpuss brother should be fucking proud to have you around. I would be.”
I’d kiss her if I could. Lean right in and capture her mouth with mine, nibble on her lower lip before my tongue swooped in and made her melt, the way she just did for me. No one’s ever made me feelseenso simply, so wholly. I want to repay the favor the only way I know how.
Without thought, I lean forward, body gravitating toward hers like we’re opposing poles, drawn together in a way that isn’t a choice, it’s a need.
Her eyes widen the tiniest amount, brows raising, lips parting just enough to bring me back down to reality.
I use the momentum of the motion to stand, pretend that’s all I was doing anyway, like I’m not having to force myself away from her against every instinct, and I brush a hand through my loose hair with a chuckle that I hope she doesn’t hear the nervousness in.
“How about those beers?” I ask. “I know where there’s a stash.”
Tilt my head toward the garage with a smirk that should cover all the rest that’s raging inside me right now.
“Fuck me up, Grady,” she says with a dangerous look of her own.
One six-packin and we’ve laughed about everything from the resurgence of mullets and wondering if rat tails are next, to the ridiculousness of the societal expectations for humankind as a whole. The surface level, the dark, we’ve dipped down past the polite and into the layers of deep conversation normally reserved for only your closest counterparts, or fights with strangers on the internet.
Something I’m realizing that makes us kindred is that neither of us has anyone to call close. And that might be what makes tonight such an easy escape for both of us.
Or maybe that’s just the beer. Amazingly, she’s kept up with me on the alcohol intake, despite our substantial size difference.
The intense attraction between us—instantaneous and immediate, like the striking of a match that only burns hotter the longer it goes unchecked, the closer it gets to your fingers, the more intense the flame—it’s not just the physical draw that sucks me into her gravity.
The more she shares—whether it’s as silly as her views on Crocs being considered acceptable footwear (only post 2020, when the cultural landscape shifted toward embracing the comfortable, in her words), or on deeper topics, like her heartfelt (if tipsy) spiel on the bleak, hopeless state of the world if the division of humanity continues—the more I find myself glued to her, needing to hear whatever comes next.
I wait for the boredom, that itch under my skin to chase the next hit of intrigue, but it doesn’t come.
Not by nightfall, not by midnight, not by three a.m., when the rain is tapping on the roof above our heads. I’m not sure what spell she’s got me under, but I don’t want out of it.
I hope sunrise doesn’t break it.
Eventually, she’s given me the short version of her time on the road. How she’s been living the van life since she dropped out of college freshman year. The way she’s spent at least two weeks in forty-six different states so far, and her plans to finish out the contiguous US this year (just Rhode Island and Maine left). Her method of staying interested in life on the road, by making a Pinterest board called “Shit to Do” she adds places to go and things to see. Once she’s done them, they go to a board titled “Been There, Seen That.”
We scroll through both boards, sharing stories of our individual adventures, picture by picture. I find a number of my own bucket list items on her “Been There, Seen That” board, and I interrogate her relentlessly on the national parks of the west, like Glacier National Park, Mount Rainier, and Yellowstone, where I’ve yet to go.
On her “Shit to Do,” I share tidbits of my travels on several stops she has flagged for her future quests.
“It’s just not worth it. Overrated,” I tell her, pointing to images of fire poi from Mallory Square in Key West.
“You’re just saying that because you couldn’t get any of them to sleep with you.” She laughs into the soft, earth-toned comforter, face first on the bed, just like I am.
“Guilty,” I grin wickedly at her. “But only because all the fire dancers I saw that night were married, and that’s a line I won’t cross.”
“Eh, that’s fine,” she says with a dismissing wave of her hand. “I’ve seen enough of Florida anyway. Spent the last half a year traveling all over the state. I’m ready for some new scenery for a while. Something that isn’t flat and covered in swamp.”
I’m shocked to hear her favorite stop so far was a ski town out west. I’ll admit, the pictures of it on her Pinterest might have grabbed my eye. Amelia said she would’ve loved to have stayed, but it was too rich for her blood for anything more than a quick stop. “You heard of it?” she asks me.
“What’s it called?”
“Rocky Heights.”
“Like Smoky Heights, but in the Rockies?”
