"Now?"
I nodded.
"But the library is closed," she said, rubbing at her eyes with the back of her hands.
I couldn't help the grin that played at my lips.
"Well, I think you need a little more hands-on research than just what you can find in a book," I said. "Don't you?"
Zara's brows knitted together just the way Michael's did when he was faced with an equation he couldn't find the solution to right away.
"Hands-on?"
She looked to Michael, who in turn looked to me. I saw the excitement he was holding back. He was like a bird waiting at an open cage door to fly; there was no reason why he shouldn't. And yet he waited, body practically sparking with energy about to burst forth.
"Are we doing this?" he asked me, a grin already playing at his lips. "Are we really doing this?"
I wanted to see Michael fly, to soar high, to realise he was the only thing keeping himself from the freedom of the wide, bright blue sky.
"Fuck, yes!"
I immediately clasped a hand over my mouth at remembering that Zara was there.
"I mean, fudge yes," I said, trying to hold back a giddy giggle. "We’re doing this!"
Zara sat up grumpily and crossed her arms over her chest with a disapproving grunt.
"Doing what?" she complained. "You two aren't saying anything."
"You tell her," Michael said, eyes sparkling.
"No, you tell her."
My chest was swelling with that old happiness, the kind that came from an open road, a tattered map and a roaring engine. I felt like I was nineteen again. Michael and I went back and forth like this, like teenagers each insisting “no, you tell her” before Zara grew tired of it.
"Tell me what!"
Michael nodded at me and I held Zara's pouting cheeks in my hands.
"We're going on a road trip to Albuquerque and we're going to see as many national parks along the way as we can," I told her.
These words must have been unbelievable to her, because Zara stared at me like I told her we were going to the moon.
"Go pack!" I said, shooing her off the couch.
"We're really going?" she asked, standing in front of Michael and me.
She looked from me to him with the same kind of hesitancy I saw in Michael: she wanted to believe and yet she was the only thing keeping herself from doing so.
My only answer to her was, "We leave in fifteen minutes so you better hurry."
Zara's eyes widened and burst into light like the sun emerging from behind the clouds. She darted off to her room without another word.
"We better hurry ourselves," I said, grinning at Michael.
But when I went to stand, he grabbed my wrist and pulled me back on top of him. I fell against his chest. He guided my lips to his with his hand at the nape of my neck. He kissed me fiercely, his mouth as hot as the desert sun.
"What was that for?" I whispered when he pulled back to smile at me.
"A thank you," he said.
Our fifteen-minute packing spree was full of nothing but chaos and laughter and stolen kisses between Michael and me. I peeked in on Zara to find her duffel bag filled with library books and a compass.
"You're supposed to pack M&Ms and underwear," I told her, happily shaking my head.
In the kitchen Michael was emptying cabinets into a cooler. I ducked under his arm as he reached for a top shelf and rifled through what he'd packed.
"You have sugar, toasted sesame oil, and chia seeds," I told him.
He frowned down into the cooler and then knocked a jar of peanut butter in before grinning at me.
"There," he said, "that should make something, right?"
I laughed and stretched up onto my tiptoes to kiss him. He tasted like that first whiff of salty air on a long drive to the beach; you couldn't see the white crests or the glimmering horizon, but you could taste the excitement like taffy melting on your tongue.
"Whatever it makes will be perfect," I said, cupping the back of his neck.
We awoke half the apartment complex hurling half-packed duffel bags and deflated pool floaties and armfuls of bath towels and the top half of a large umbrella minus the pole and floppy hats and hiking boots and a cabinet worth of near-empty bottles of sunscreen into a pile. Michael helped Zara unpin the big map of the American southwest from above her bed and she slipped the rolled-up poster on top.
I brewed up a bitter pot of black coffee to hastily pour into to-go mugs while Michael and Zara sat on the bottom steps of the concrete staircase outside, passing back and forth a bag of Skittles and plotting our journey. We loaded everything up into my shitty beat-up car with the radio blasting and the windows rolled down, and we peeled out of the parking lot like Bonnie and Clyde and Zara the Kid.
Michael took the first shift driving. As we hit the highway he stuck his arm out the window and howled like a rabid wolf. I glanced back in the rearview mirror to watch with surprise as Zara did the same. I couldn't be the only one left out so I stuck my arm out the window and howled at the top of my lungs as Michael accelerated into the night like a pirate on a black sea. The wind rushed past my fingers like icy water and my hand rose and fell like it was flying. Zara giggled from the back seat, and I wasn't sure any of the natural wonders we were destined to see would compare with that sound: happy and carefree and loved.
After driving for several hours, I offered
