“Fine,” he says. “But I don’t have to accept it.”
I finally pull away, wiping my eyes, clearing my throat. Trying to act like I didn’t just cry my eyes out in a Mobil station in the middle of nowhere, and failing.
“We should go,” I say. “We’re not even to sixty-four yet, are we?”
“We’re close,” he says, and reaches out, takes my face in his hand.
He swipes away my tears with his thumb, and then, for a long moment, he just looks at me.
I think he’s going to kiss me.
I want him to kiss me.
I’ve wanted him to kiss me for two weeks. I’ve wanted him to kiss me every time I walk into calculus class.
But right now, I really, really want him to kiss me. I feel raw, like the inside of my skin has been scrubbed out, and I feel needy, and I want him to kiss me and fill the void and make me feel something good. I want to climb him like a tree and I want him to shove me against his car, trap me here, whisper more dirty things in my ear.
And then his hand leaves my face and he gives me a half-smile and nods toward the car.
“Come on,” he says, and he walks back around the front of the car, the moment shattered. “We’ve still got a ways.”
There’s no kiss.
Of course there’s no kiss.
There can’t be a kiss.Chapter SeventeenCalebWe leave the lights of the gas station and slink back into the darkness of the interstate, illuminated only by headlights, the occasional billboard.
It’s after eleven at night, and we’re sharing the road with tired families and long-haul truckers. I can still feel the warmth of her face on my hand, the wetness of her tears on my shirt, and I try to knock the feel of her body against mine from my mind.
She’s a student. An undergrad. I’m her professor.
Everything about this is inappropriate, yet here I am.
I drive north on I-81, get on I-64, drive east, out of the mountains. Thalia asks me to tell her about my perfect family — her words, slightly sarcastic, not mine — so I tell her about being the youngest of five brothers, about never being called the right name on the first try, about never wearing anything but hand-me-downs, about always being the worst at everything because I was the youngest.
But I also tell her about learning to drive at thirteen because my older brother Eli decided it was time, even after I ran the truck into a ditch. I tell her about the times that Daniel let me sneak out with him, and I thought I was the world’s coolest high school freshman.
I tell her that Levi’s the one who took me hiking and camping when I was a teenager. That his house in the woods is still my refuge, though since his fiancée moved in I make sure to call first before I go over.
I tell her that I talk to Seth, who’s a little less than two years older, almost every day, that he’s my best friend, that I’ve been worried about him lately.
And I tell her about my niece Rusty and how much I love being an uncle. I tell her about my nephew who’s supposed to show up in a few weeks and how excited I am for him.
I don’t tell her about my father. Not now. It’s not the time and it’s not the place.
We drive through Charlottesville, over the Rivanna river, through the woods. Twenty minutes later, trees flashing past, she laughs for the first time since we got into the car. Her face is still tear-stained. Her eyes are still bloodshot and puffy. I know she’ll probably be crying again before morning, because that’s how these things go, but she laughs that one time and I feel like I’ve won a gold medal.
We drive through Richmond and I see her looking out the window at the still-lit city, and I know she’s wondering if her brother is out there, beyond her reach. We stop for gas just outside the city, and she offers to pay. I don’t let her.
The closer we get to Norfolk, all the way on the eastern end of the state where the Chesapeake Bay meets the ocean, the quieter she gets. She checks her phone, again and again, fidgets, looks out the window at the low-slung suburbs outside the car windows, bathed in orange light.
“Anything?” I ask, nodding at her phone, and she sighs.
“Bastien’s just complaining about my dad,” she says, opening it, flicking through the screens, turning it back off. “Apparently he’s alternating between standing perfectly still, staring at the wall, and freaking everyone out, and driving the nurses crazy.”
“How’s Bastien?” I ask. I’ve never met her younger brother, obviously, but since she’s been reading me his texts all night I feel like we’ve become close friends.