Amy & Roger's Epic Detour (42 page)

But as we sat there together, the pauses in our conversation stretched longer and longer, and I leaned my head into Roger’s chest for a moment. He rested his chin on top of my head, and I squeezed his hand once and stood up. I did so carefully, since there was much more fabric to this dress than I was used to, and I didn’t want to wreck the moment by falling down. He looked up at me, and I held out my hand to him. “Ready to go up?” I asked.

Roger took my hand in both of his, but stayed sitting. “Look,” he said, tracing a slow circle on the back of my hand. “I don’t want you to feel any pressure, like that we have to … I mean, I just want to make sure you know that I—”

“Roger,” I said. He stopped talking and looked up at me. “Ready to go up?” I asked again, smiling at him. My heart was pounding, and I was incredibly nervous. But in a good way. The kind of nervous you get before something really good happens.

He smiled and stood up, still holding on to my hand. “You sure?”

I nodded, and kissed him. He kissed me back, and we stayed like that for a moment. But then getting to the room, and quickly, seemed like a good idea to both of us. We stumbled into the elevator together, kissing until it reached our floor, then hurried out, laughing and trying to walk all at the same time. We got the room open after only three tries, and made it inside. He was trying to figure out my straps, and I had untucked his shirt from his pants and was already starting to undo his shirt buttons while we kissed—and I nearly tripped over my dress. And before going over to join him on the bed, I locked the door and drew the shades.

“Hey,” I murmured, several hours later. I stretched over and kissed him on his bare shoulder. “You up?”

“Nope,” he said, smiling without opening his eyes. He rolled onto his back and I rolled into him, resting my head on his chest. After I moment, I realized that I could feel his heartbeat. I closed my eyes, and he smoothed his hand over my hair. “Five Questions?” he asked. I shook my head against his chest. “One?” he amended.

“That counts, you know,” I said, propping myself up a little bit and turning to face him.

“You’re not playing fair,” he said.

“I learned from the best. Okay, fine,” I relented. “One.”

He traced the line of my chin, his expression growing serious. “Right now,” he said. “This minute. Are you happy?”

I stretched up to kiss him before nodding. “Yes,” I said. “Very much so.” I looked at him, at the serious expression still on his face. “Are you?”

He nodded and stretched out the arm I had been lying on. He rolled onto his side, and I did the same, facing him. We twined our feet together, as though we’d always been doing it. It happened just that easily. “I am,” he said. “A little too much, I think.”

I moved closer to him. I knew that at some point, we were going to have to talk about things. We were going to have to say good-bye. And even if Roger refused to call it that, that’s what it would be. But I didn’t want to think about that just yet. I closed my eyes and wrapped my hand around his.

You’ve Got a Friend in Pennsylvania.

—PA license plate slogan

“Are you sure?” Roger asked me, from the passenger seat.

I adjusted the rearview mirror and made sure I was close enough to the pedals. I let out a breath and caught my smile reflected in my side mirror. “Yes,” I said. When we’d headed out of the Towson Inn that morning, I’d walked around to the driver’s side. I wanted to give it a try, at least. I wanted to see if I could do it.

“Feeling okay?” he asked.

“I think so,” I said, and placed my hands on the wheel, at ten and two. Roger reached over and squeezed the hand at two.

“You’ll be great,” he said. “Just take it slow. And I’m right here.”

“Okay,” I said. “Okay.” I pressed my lips together, then started the car. That felt all right, so I put it in gear and slowly exited the hotel parking lot.

“You okay?” he asked as I carefully merged onto the main road.

“I think so,” I said. I braked at the stoplight, aware of how hard I was concentrating, but feeling like I had it under control. I thought that it might actually be easier once we got on the highway, when there would be less stopping and starting.

“Want me to be the DJ?” Roger asked, looking down at the iPod.

“Maybe in just a minute,” I said, realizing that I’d gone back to the way I used to need silence in the car when I was first learning. “I’m concentrating here.”

“No problem,” he said, leaning back in the passenger seat. “I actually like it over here. It’s very peaceful. You might be driving for the rest of the trip.”

The sentence hung in the air between us, and I felt the weight of it. There was no more rest of the trip. The trip was over.

I pulled onto the highway and merged into the middle lane, which had always been my preferred lane. I never wanted to go as fast as the drivers in the left lane, and in the right lane there were always too many people merging. Once I hit seventy, I was doing the same speed as the rest of the cars and was able to relax a little. It was okay. It wasn’t a joy like it had once been, but it was okay. I was driving. And I was fine.

Roger had offered to stop at one of the many roadside diners we’d seen advertised on the highway—it seemed that Pennsylvania was diner country. But when I’d seen the sign for the burger place, I’d known that’s where we had to stop for lunch.

We had gotten the burgers to go, then parked in the farthest space in the parking lot. We were eating in the way-back, containers of fries sitting between us, our legs dangling over the edge.

“This is great,” Roger said, and I saw that his burger was almost gone. “Maybe there’s something good about Pennsylvania after all.”

I smiled and took a bite of my own burger, which really was excellent, and adjusted my new sunglasses. And I realized that we’d sat in this same place and eaten burgers from the In-N-Out in California on the very first day of the trip. The day we’d decided to take a detour. Just a small one. I looked across at Roger, who was so familiar to me now.

“Last one?” Roger asked, angling the fries toward me.

I shook my head. “All yours.”

He finished the fries and stood up as I stuffed the trash into the Burgertown bag. Roger shut the back door, then turned to me and took my hand in his carefully, like he was still getting used to doing this. “Want me to take over driving, Hillary?” he asked.

With my other hand, I took the keys out of my pocket and shook my head, smiling at him. “I’ve got it, Edmund.”

After I’d been driving for another hour, I could handle having music on again. Roger made his last mix, and I recognized some of his repeat bands, some of my favorites – bands I hadn’t even heard of a few days ago. I sang along to the words that I knew, and Roger kept time, drumming on the dashboard.

As I drove, I tried to picture what the rest of the day would be like. I played out the scenarios of Roger coming back with me and facing my mother’s anger. Roger standing around while she yelled at me in some kitchen I couldn’t even picture, with a fridge free from magnets. I thought about someone else watching our goodbye, even if we didn’t use those exact words.

I glanced down at the gas gauge, which was hovering close to empty. Pulling off at the next exit, I headed for a Sunoco. “Here’s a thought,” I said as I carefully pulled forward to the pump and killed the engine. Roger turned to look at me. “What if I dropped you off in Philadelphia and drove myself to Connecticut?”

Roger shook his head. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

“I’ll be okay,” I promised. “Really. And it makes more sense this way.” Roger got out of the car and unscrewed the gas cap. I could tell he was thinking it over. I walked inside the mini-mart to prepay with cash, hoping it would be enough to get us to Philly. When I got back to the car, Roger was pumping gas.

“I’m okay with driving,” I assured him, as I squeegeed the dead-bug graveyard off our windshield. “Really. And it doesn’t make any sense for you to drive with me to Connecticut only to get back on a train to Philadelphia.”

“But you just started driving again,” Roger said, replacing the gas cap and shutting the fuel door. “I don’t know if you should drive alone yet.”

I replaced the squeegee and walked over to him. “I’m going to be fine,” I said. “And this way, I can spare you the wrath of my mother.”

Roger put his arms around me and I leaned my head into his chest. We stayed that way until a honk behind us let us know that people were waiting for the pump. I passed him the keys. He got behind the wheel and I got back into the passenger side, and we headed to the last leg of our journey.