He shrugs, takes my hand, and presses a kiss to my knuckles. “It was the one with the biggest line through it. Figured you deserved something for you.”
My heart constricts in my chest.
Something for me.
It’s been so long sinceI’veeven thought of doing something for myself that I forgot it’s possible for someone else to do it.
“Shit,” I half-sob.
“What?”
“I—I’m going to cry.”
He squeezes my hand. “Don’t cry. Just enjoy yourself. This is yours.”
I stare at him for another second before I remember the other pressing issue.
“Oh no,” I say. “I still need to pee.”
He laughs. “We’re thirty seconds out.”
“Thirty? Griffin!”
“Hold on.”
“I have been holding—”
The road widens. The trees pull back, and there it is—the entrance ahead, the signs, cars pulling into a field that’s been turned into a car park, and beyond the ridge a skyline of tents and lights and the faint, far-off sound of music carrying over the evening air.
The festival.
Sunvale.
I’m looking at it through the windshield. I have been wanting this since I was fifteen years old, after I read an article in a magazine. I showed it to Griffin at a dinner and said, “That’s the one. That’s the thing I’m going to do one day.”He nodded and apparently went and put it in whatever part of his brain keeps the things that matter.
He remembers everything.
He’s always remembered everything.
When he parks, I have the door open before the engine’s off, and I’m pointing at him over the roof of the car.
“Don’t move,” I say. “I’ll be back in two minutes.”
“I’ll be right here.”
I get back ten minutes later because there was a queue for the toilets.
Griffin is leaning against the car with his arms folded and his sunglasses on. The bags are at his feet as he watches me cross the car park.
I walk up to him and wrap my arms around his neck. Pressing my mouth to his cheek, I kiss him right at the corner of his mouth and feel him exhale.
“Best getaway driver ever,” I say.
His arms come around me. “Don’t thank me yet. You haven’t been in there.”
“I don’t care.” I pull back to look at him. “You remembered.”
“Of course I remembered.”
