When she stomps her foot, I know she’s listening to reason and my relief is immediate. But, like the wise man I can sometimes be, I don’t say a word until she growls, “FINE.”
The moment she’s clambered into the passenger seat, my lungs fill fully for the first time in minutes.
Returning to the flow of traffic, heart only just decelerating, I rasp, “I’m so sorry, Denny?—”
“You said you wouldn’t talk.”
I grit my teeth rather than answer and watch as she fiddles with the playlist on the dock.
The sight eases something in my soul.
I know her too well—she won’t stay mad at me for long if she wants to fix the music.
It also means that she wants a soundtrack to our argument.
So, I brace myself for takeoff and keep quiet when Audioslave blasts through my speakers.
The streetlights and the console illuminate the interior of the cab, and if I flick a look beside me, I can see her rubbing the soft, fleshy pad of her palm with her opposite thumb once Prodigy yells at us about starting fires.
Because she only does that when she's riled up, I offer, "I can massage your hands for you later if they’re hurting again?"
"Why would I want you to touch me?"
Stung, I flinch.
She has a point.
When doesn't she?
Her parents really knew what they were doing when they namedher. Denver is quite capable of freezing you out and snapping the air from your lungs.
The atmosphere in the SUV has its own rhythm. It's in time to the angry version of Gayle’s “abcdefu” and the other myriad of songs she's chosen because we share a Spotify account and she has her own 'Fuck you, Zach' playlist.
I'm lucky that it's something I seldom hear… until she plays that on repeat.
Five minutes away from home, she berates, “How could you do that to me?”
Relieved she wants to get into it, I accept that I could take her anger, but it's her hurt that decimates me and it’s leaching into every word.
My hands curl around the steering wheel, and it creaks beneath my grip. My fingers tighten until my knuckles feel like they could shatter as a million replies come to me, but not a single goddamn one of them fits what I need to say to her.
Slowly, I hiss out air, desperate to alleviate the pressure.
Back when I was a kid, I had a stutter that my perfect parent couldn't permit so I practically lived with a speech therapist, as well as a regular therapist, until they trained it out of me.
At times like these, I could stutter.
And at times like these, she knows that and she always lets me collect myself.
There are a million small things that we know about one another.
But for all that, I want to know a million more.
I want to know what that freckle on the underside of her chin tastes like.
I want to know what her perfume does to the nook between her breasts.
I want to know how her fingers would feel in mine if we walked down the street hand in hand.
