“They are. Honestly, I’ve been all over the world, but I’ve never been somewhere quite so captivating as here. But maybe it’s the company.”
Skye barks out a surprised laugh. “Wooo, that’s quite a line.”
She pulls the car over. I check to make sure there are no other carsnearby, no one that could spot us and sell their story toYHF. But there’s nothing and no one as far as the eye can see. I hop out and take my phone out, snapping some pictures. Skye comes and stands next to me. I turn my phone on her and snap a few pics. Her red hair stands out against the green hills and the gray clouds. She flips me off, and I keep taking photos until she tries to grab my phone. I pull her to me instead, wrapping my arms around her.
I smile. “Have you traveled much?”
Skye shakes her head. “I went to New York.”
“I was born in Brooklyn. It still feels like home, even though I’ve lived in LA for a lot longer than I ever lived there.” I shake my head. That doesn’t even feel right to say. “What took you to New York?”
Skye keeps her eyes on the deer, her face nestled on my chest. “A boy. Finn. We’d known each other since we were kids, started dating when I was fifteen and he was sixteen. Everyone thought we were made for each other. People talked about us like we were already married. Finn was—well, for all I know, he still is a musician. He wanted to go to New York and start a proper band. We went once we were old enough to be on our own, but it was very clear to me that I needed to go home. Then my dad called. My mom was sick. I came home, we broke up, and Mom died. All in all, it took about three months for my life to be completely unrecognizable from what it was before.”
I stroke her hair. “Oh, Skye, that’s so fast.” I don’t want to intrude or poke at her pain, but I want to know everything I can about her, so I ask quietly, “How did she die?”
She presses her head a little harder into my chest as the wind picks up around us. “She had cancer. Lots of tiny tumors in her brain. By the time they found them, there was nothing they could do.” Skye pulls away but keeps talking. “And you know, I knew something was off. The whole year before she passed, she was not like herself. She was forgetful, and before that, my mother never forgot a thing. And she was sad. Her doctor said she was depressed and put her on antidepressants. My mom always had her small moments of sadness.” Ican feel her shake, her head, her hair tickling under my chin. “This was different. It was like a switch. She had no joy. Before, she was always singing when she did anything. Even when she fed those stupid chickens. But then she was just so silent.”
A tear falls down Skye’s face. I wipe it away. She puts her arms around my neck.
She sniffs back tears and smiles at me. “It’s been almost six years. You’d think I’d have a better handle on this.”
She looks so beautiful, her eyes glistening. It’s like rubber bands are wrapped around my heart to see her so sad, and knowing there is nothing I can do. I shake my head. “I don’t think it works like that.”
“That’s when I started writing. I’d always fiddled with it here and there before. Poems and the like. But I wrote my first novel the year after she passed. It gave me something to do with my hands, with my thoughts: a reason to get out of bed every day and a tangible goal. You know. My first novel was fifty-two thousand words of absolute rubbish written two hundred words at a time, but it saved me.”
A car backfires in the distance. We watch the deer bolt across the hill impossibly fast. I lean down and nuzzle her hair. She turns and brings her lips to mine, salty from her tears. I wish my kisses could take her pain away, but I know they can’t.
She walks me backward, still kissing me, until we are leaning against the car. Her hands move down my chest, and tiny electric pulses follow them. She moves to kissing my neck, but this feels like an awfully fast shift from sharing confidences.
She moves to kissing right where my jaw and neck meet. I tuck my hands into her coat, placing my hands on her hips. She moves her lips to my ear and whispers, “The back is quite spacious.”
I laugh. “Skye Ainslie, are you suggesting we make out on the side of the road?”
She smiles, and I feel it all the way down to my toes. “I’m suggesting we do quite a bit more than that.”
It’s sweet, but it also feels like a distraction tactic. A way to get us back on the physical side of things and less on the intimate sharing of our lives. I guess we are having a purely physical relationship, right?
But I shake my head. “It’s too risky. What if someone drove by? If you didn’t like the other picture of you all over the internet, this one would be much worse.”
Her eyes smolder, and my heart races in my chest. This is coming out all wrong. And I quickly clarify, “Not that your actual picture would look bad. It would look incredible.”
She smiles, and my heart slows. “Fair point. Let’s get to where we’re going, then.”
The stereo is playingone of Skye’s mixes. I turn it up, and we both sing along at top volume to Rolling Stone’s “Wild Horses.”
On the way to the Airbnb, I get a text from Jake. I try to hide my smirk as I look at the picture he sent, but I do a terrible job of it.
“What are you smiling at on your phone?”
I shake my head, trying to physically wipe the smile away. “Nothing.”
“Oh, come on.”
“No, really, it’s?—”
“I will turn this car around.”
I laugh. “Remember when you were asking me about fan mail?”
