Page 54 of Autumn on My Mind

I nod slowly, and he clears his throat.

“Come on,” he says firmly. He grabs his phone from the median and waves it at me. “We’re here to ruin the mood.”

I grimace at this reminder. “I hate to admit it,” I say, turning to face Daryl’s car once more and forcing my face to stop burning, “but your dad has game. This place is totally romantic. Look at the sky—look at the trees!”

“Never say anything like that about my dad again, please,” Dom says, pulling his legs up and sitting on his knees. “Ever.”

I shrug and do the same, rising to my knees and facing my whole body toward the back of the truck. “I’m just saying⁠—”

“Well, don’t.”

I grumble under my breath but don’t push it. I nod to Dom’s phone instead. “What are we doing?”

“We’re playing very loud, very obnoxious music,” he says. He nods when I wince. “Yeah,” he goes on. “It will be bad. I brought ear plugs.”

“Two pairs?” I say, watching as he pulls two neon-orange ear plugs from his pocket.

“Nope.”

I gape at him.

“Fine,” he says with a long-suffering sigh. And although his voice doesn’t reveal a hint of humor, I could swear I see the tiniest smirk on his lips as he pulls a second pair of plugs from his pocket. He passes them to me, and I take them gratefully.

“What kind of music?”

“Well, I did some googling and found some very obnoxious metal.” He taps around on his phone for a second, and then the light strains of something chaotic, guitar-heavy, and scream-heavy fill the car. He turns the sound up until I jam my ear plugs in.

My eyes widen, listening to the song as Dom puts his ear plugs in too. “That’s terrible,” I half-shout, both horrified and intrigued. “It’s perfect!”

He nods and then points to the dashboard. “Roll down your window,” he mouths.

I take this to mean that he’s going to connect to the car’s speakers, so I roll my window down and then scurry over the median to the back seat of the truck, my gaze glued Alvina and Daryl’s car.

And look. I know there are people who love this kind of music. I am happy for them. But me?

This song makes me feel like my mind and soul are being attacked with particularly abrasive steel wool.

“I miss Enya,” I whimper as Dominic crawls into the back seat with me.

He doesn’t hear, of course. I very much doubt either of us will hear anything ever again.

I think the truck is vibrating.

And the two of us must look absurd, up on our knees as we stare out the window of the truck’s cab, heads up like gophers, neon foam sticking out of our ears. If anyone else saw us we would be branded perverts and voyeurs and weirdos.

But we’re none of those things. I mean, basically. We’re just two people who are not in love, two people whose parents also cannot fall in love. So we keep our vigil despite the admitted weirdness, our hands clenched over the tops of the back seats, our knees going numb, our bodies undergoing permanent nerve damage from the speaker-breaking music.

At least Dominic is kneeling on the fleece blanket he claims he didn’t bring for me. I contemplate stealing it from under him and then decide I’d rather direct my energy toward the task at hand.

Unfortunately…nothing happens.

Despite several minutes of waiting, we see neither hide nor hair of our parents. I know they can hear this music—my beloved father in his grave can hear this music—but the car stays put.

Why aren’t they leaving?

I look over at Dom, gesturing to their car, but his expression is as bewildered as mine. He gives a helpless shrug.

“Should we change music?” I shout at him.