“It’s because you didn’t even try, you—”
“Give it to me.”
“Dildo!”
He pretended to weigh the insult. “Seven out of ten.” His eyes went to the undersides of her thighs. “You have really nice legs too.” Being alone with Christina in a hotel room as night fell on the city outside was making him blurt things out.
She pulled down the ragged hem of her shorts, covering an extra half inch of skin. “You could sell your car. Then you wouldn’t have to work at all, not for a long time. You could rent an apartment near the dorms. I’m supposed to live on campus freshman year, but after that I can live anywhere I want. We could—”
“Build a tunnel!” William said, this hypothetical future unfolding rapidly in his mind. “With all that cash, I could just build a tunnel right into your dorm, a big underground chamber we could hang out in. And we could re-create our neighborhood from Fremont Hills so we’re still living next door to each other, hire architects to make it look exactly like the CB Lounge, so it’ll be like nothing changed!”
“I want things to change, William!” She lowered her voice. “I want things to change. I just want you there with me when they do.”
“I’m not going to sell my car,” he said.
Her hand moved to the top of her head. The tenderness he felt toward her torn skin and the desire to run his tongue along her head like a cat came rushing back all at once. But she only held her hand there for a second before she found the strength to pull it away without scratching.
“I know that,” she said quietly. “It’s just that I really, really don’t want to say good-bye to you after this trip, okay? I don’t want to say good-bye to you at all. I don’t even know how to do it. I can’t picture the moment. I’ve tried imagining myself in Buffalo, walking to class, going to the dining hall, and I can sort of see that, like there’s a little outline of me moving through pictures of the campus or something.” She made her fingers walk across the bedspread. “And I’m excited to get out of my house, but there’s still something that doesn’t feel right about the whole thing. It’s just so arbitrary, fucking Buffalo; who cares, you know?”
She wove her fingers together in front of her shins and rested her head on her knees. William wished she would keep going. As long as she was talking, he wouldn’t be expected to say anything in return. Right now, sitting across from her on a queen-size bed eight floors above the streets of Nashville, he felt dangerously close to letting his words outpace his thoughts. Better to clam up. Silence was something you never had to take back.
“You’ll meet people,” he said at last. “You’ll make lots of new friends.”
“Don’t,” she snapped. Then she closed her eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
She rocked gently back and forth. “It’s my fault. I’m not saying what I want to say.”
His light-headedness returned, and he wished simultaneously to be far, far away—another galaxy would probably do it—and to slide across the bed, making himself small enough to wedge his body into her limbs’ knotted frame.
She lifted her head up.
“Don’t say anything else,” he pleaded. “Just let it be.”
She smiled sadly. “But we tell each other everything, William.” Her voice was lightly tinged with sarcasm. They both knew it wasn’t true.
He focused on Christina’s face and at the same time perceived the airplane above the stadium where the Tennessee Titans played, and the fly trapped between the window’s double-paned glass. The room’s reflection coexisted with the world outside. William and Christina were giants stamped upon the skyline.
“I thought,” she began, then started again. “I thought if we were more than just friends, then maybe we wouldn’t have to say good-bye. Maybe then you’d have a reason to come with me.” She held up a hand to stop him from talking. “If you tell me that I’ll meet a really great guy at college, I will seriously murder you with a corkscrew from the minibar. If you don’t want to be more than friends, just don’t say anything at all and we’ll never speak of this again.”
His mouth was dry. “I don’t want you to meet a guy at college.”
There was no going back now. He couldn’t figure out what was expected of him. All he knew was that the words more than friends coming from Christina Hernandez drowned out the part of him screaming Pump the brakes, pal. All that time spent staring at screens, driving around Fremont Hills blasting metal, drinking coffee in their corner booth at Hilda’s until closing—he could trace her nervous tics and facial expressions and the positions she contorted herself into that made his spine wrench in sympathy back to that day when she’d informed him that she did not in fact have a bike pump handy but could probably find one if he gave her a few minutes, and his heart had leapt at having this girl for a next-door neighbor….
More than friends.
Three words from which all the things they’d ever done exploded like popcorn.
“I suck at meeting people anyway,” she said quietly.
“I know,” he said, quieter still.
“Why are we whispering?”
“I have no idea.”
He thought he should talk to Dr. Diaz about sorting out the storm in his head. But the spirit that sent him up the ladder to the water tower took over, and he reached for Christina. She broke the tight hold upon herself and then they were kneeling in the center of the bed, Christina telling him in between insistent kisses that he tasted like Twizzlers.
Melissa was jubilant. Her video had been reposted by Natasha Lynn Chao with added filters. It had already reached 13,764 plays and was easily the social media moment of the #AutonomousRoadTrip so far. By any metric—reach, visibility, follower count—it had been a massive success, and a good
