"I'm taking you myself, Simone."
She looks up at me from her coffee. I see the fight start to form and then I watch her let it go.
"Okay."
"Okay."
I drive her down the mountain.
The truck is quiet. The road is the same road I took three hundred times alone in the last three months and it looks different today because there's a woman in my passenger seat with her hand on my thigh.
She doesn't talk much. Neither do I. Every so often she squeezes.
At the bottom of the switchbacks she says, "Play something."
"What."
"Music. Something."
I hit the aux. An old Bonnie Raitt song comes on. She lets out a sound that is almost a laugh.
"Of course this is what you listen to."
"What."
"Nothing. It's perfect. Don't change it."
She rides with her hand on my thigh and her cheek against the window and Bonnie Raitt singing about something given,something taken away, and I watch the road and do not let myself look at her more than once a minute.
At Kelowna airport I pull into the short-term lot. Kill the engine. Don't move.
"Gray."
"Give me a second."
"Okay."
I sit with my hands on the wheel. I take a breath. I look at her.
"Come back to me."
"I'm coming back."
"I'm not putting a timeline on you. I'm not putting a pressure on you. I just need to hear it one more time from this seat."
"I'm coming back, Grayson."
"Okay."
I get out. Walk around. Open her door. Take her hand.
I carry her bags to the curb. I stand with her at the door of the terminal. She puts her face in my chest. I put my arms around her and I hold her like a man who will not let go until he has to.
"Text me when you land."
"Okay."
"Text me when you get to your apartment."
