Page 97 of Shatter

Nobody's dried my hair since I was a little girl.

My eyes sting.

I blink it back and lean my head against his shoulder and let him do it.

His right arm is draped across my stomach, holding the shirt.

The sleeve is right there in the sunlight, inches from my face.

Up close, it isn't only knots and hooks.

Figures hide inside the design, woven in, lines curving like letters if I squint.

I reach up and trace one with my fingertip.

"What does it mean?" I keep my voice soft. "The sleeve."

His hands stop in my hair.

Behind me, his chest goes still, not a breath.

For a long moment, the only sound is the water.

"Later." He says it low, so carefully, like the word might break if he drops it.

I feel it in the stillness of his body behind me.

In the way his arm has gone rigid across my stomach.

I take my finger off his skin.

I let it go.

After a moment, his hands start moving again, slow and gentle, drying my hair in the sun.

He checks his mirrors on the way home.

He didn't on the way out.

On the way out, he leaned into the curves and let me put my hands wherever I wanted.

Now his head turns every quarter mile, left mirror, right mirror.

At the stop sign where the dirt road meets the highway, he looks both ways for a long time after it's clear.

I feel it through his back.

The muscles under my cheek have gone hard as a wall.

I squeeze him once.

He turns his head.

"What's wrong?" I have to shout it over the idling engine.

He doesn't answer right away.

He sits there with his boots planted on the gravel and the engine rumbling under us, and I watch his jaw work in the side mirror.