Page 105 of Wreckage and Rain

"You okay?" He looks up from the cargo zip.

"I'm operating on caffeine and stubbornness."

"Two of my favorite things about you."

"Don't act like you didn't sleep either."

"I slept four hours. Banner night for me."

"Bragger."

He closes the trunk. Comes up the front steps and takes one of the coffees from me. Kisses the corner of my mouth. Light. Asking, not taking. I tilt into him for half a second because I can, and his free hand goes to my waist, careful, like he's still asking.

"You want to drive first or you want me to."

"You drive. I want to fall asleep against the window like a child and you can wake me up at the Indiana line."

"Done."

We get on the road. The city falls away in panes of gray light. I lean my forehead against the cool glass and watch the warehouses thin into highway and Colt drives one-handed, his elbow on the door, the other resting on my knee.

"Tell me when you want music."

"Mm."

I sleep, kind of. The half-sleep where the road is still moving under me. The sun comes up somewhere around the Ohio border. I sit up and rub my face. Colt hands me a granola bar without looking away from the road. He used to do this on long drives when we were nineteen, before everything, andI'm realizing only now how much I've missed it. The kind of attention that doesn't announce itself.

"Where are we?"

"Just past Indianapolis. Want me to stop?"

"Pee. Then I'll drive."

"Deal."

***

I take over at the gas station. We have driven a lot of miles together over the years and we have the choreography down. He sleeps with his cap pulled low and his arms crossed and his head tipped back. I drink the bad coffee and put on the Coastal Cowgirl playlist quiet enough to not wake him. The highway opens up across Kentucky and Tennessee, and I think about the last time I drove this road. Fourteen hours, alone, north. Crying at a rest stop because I hadn't yet figured out how to be a person who didn't have a husband.

It is a different highway today. Same road. Different woman driving it.

He wakes up somewhere in Knoxville. Stretches. Looks out the window at the hills he told everyone about Saturday night.

"They are turning."

"Mm."

"You okay."

"Yeah."

"You want to talk."

I think about it.

I haven't asked him the question yet. The big one. I haven't asked it because part of me has been afraid of the answer and part of me has been afraid that the answer would be too much, would close some door I'm not yet ready to walk through. But we are in a car together. The trees outside are turning the colors I forgot Tennessee has in October. Colt is careful and quiet beside me, and I think this is the only place I'm going to be able to ask it.

"When did you notice that you started pulling away from me?"