"He chased me through the rain,
'Honey I'm going your way.'
You can chase me through the rain,
And scream my name, a childish game,
But I love to be young."

- Laura Marling, Old Stone

California, 1988

The oversized coach bus is crowded with too many screaming children, too many men who don't speak English, and to be honest it's all a little overwhelming. Juliet decides halfway into the trip that passing out seems smarter than letting her over-active mind think about what it is she's actually doing, drinks herself to sleep with the help of a cheap bottle of rum as they bump down the road towards Los Angeles and wakes when the driver harshly announces they've reached their destination.

He's there when she steps off just like I promised and in her half-drunk, half-asleep state his drawl is just as endearing as she remembers. And maybe it's insane but somehow, him standing in front of her real and material and here, really here, it makes her feel less scared. She takes his hand and lets him run the other over her hair, fingers stopping just below the base of her neck. The top of the convertible is already down when she goes to go get in.

The wind feels good against her skin.

At the diner, she orders coffee and he orders pie and aside from a few gas stations on the side of the highway, the sleepy establishment (an epitome of a road trip clichés) is one of the only things still open at four a.m. Sliding into the booth, she throws a dime in the juke box just because while he reaches over and tugs playfully at the bottom of her thick braid.

In Miami, he runs a con.

In Miami, she graduates college.

On the Island, they decide to stay.

Five days out, they fight about James' stubborn nature and he's so upset that he pulls the car over on the side of the highway. She stands by the door yelling about power trips while on the radio, Bob Marley shouts to the wind about redemption songs.

You don't gotta be a wiseass about it.

Three weeks out, their tire blows on the 405. She changes it with greasy hands in a manner that seems far too familiar and pushes the car back into traffic with James at the wheel, gunning the accelerator.

Come on, you son of a bitch.

They move around whenever they feel like it (he drives), they make playlist of songs from the radio (the ones from the seventies are her favorite), they smell like a mix of open road and cigarette smoke and dark, musty rooms. They spend their nights at cheap motels with cheap bottles of champagne and everything right now feels cheap but she likes being with him and that's all that matters they agree, bodies pressed against each other as the air conditioner rattles noisily in the corner, blowing cold air onto their naked skin.

She'll never really tell him that she thought kids would forever be out of the picture, between medical school and the fact that until this, until him, no one really bothered to look at her because they all looked at Rachel. Rachel who had ten boyfriends and countless prom dates, Rachel who was always getting in trouble for meeting some guy past curfew while Juliet always had to fight for attention. Which is why when she sneaks into a rest stop bathroom after throwing up for two weeks straight, she has no idea how to process the two pink lines that seem to bleed into her vision, the accompanying feeling of shock that shoots through her body. She crumples into a ball on the dirty tile floor and that's how he finds her when he walks in after twenty minutes of an idling car, his arms looping around hers in silent comfort until she lifts her head and tells him that it's fine, she's fine, they're fine, it's okay.

(She's not fine. She's not okay.)

Later that afternoon she watches from the window, lips pressed in a silent cry, a goodbye to joined lives and a hello to the return of separate ones, if only for a little while. Her mind memorizes the stature of his feet firmly planted against the pavement, hands shoved into the pockets of a worn leather jacket, aviators and long hair accompanied by a sad smile as the bus pulls into a stream of traffic. She doesn't look away until she knows they've left Los Angeles far behind.

He arrives in Miami two weeks later.

Miami, 1989

She figures she'll remember it for the rest of her life: the drive to the hospital (hand-in-hand), the mental and emotional turmoil, the nurses with their hands on her body. She'll remember how things happened too fast or not fast enough (no one told her it would be like this, no one told her it would hurt this badly), she'll remember having no idea what to do except scream and she'll remember James next to her telling her to breathe (and she wants to but she can't and everything hurts so much that she just wants to cry.)

"I got you."

She'll remember his voice, seemingly far away and she'll remember concentrating on his words, a mantra that becomes the only thing keeping her from slipping into some godforsaken black hole of unconsciousness.

"I got you. I got you."

She'll remember not being sure who cries more, herself or James or the small baby that the nurse tries to clean, wet and red and tearful. She'll remember everything feeling too difficult to even think about, much less concentrate on, and she'll remember the overwhelming waves of exhaustion and relief in the aftermath of her actual labor.

"Wake up. Come on, baby, wake up."

She'll remember something soft against the side of her face, his hand on her cheek, and then the rest of his smile swimming into in her peripheral vision while her eyes focus to struggle out of a pain-induced haze.

"James."

She'll remember the way she says his name, the intensity in which she reaches for his arms, as if she's seeing him for the first time.

"Kiss me."

She'll remember placement of his hand on her head, the body swaddled in pink blankets pressed against her chest, and the look that flashes ever so faintly across his face before he leans forward, his lips brushing hers.

"You got it, Blondie."

They decide on name faster than they've ever agreed on anything in their life, except maybe when it comes to the fact that cherry pie tastes better than blueberry pie and Fleetwood Mac songs are a must when driving long distances. When she asks for opinions he stiffens at first, almost as if the question makes him nervous, and then proceeds to rattle off a number of monikers she assumes he'd rather avoid (his parents, his uncle, himself, old girlfriends gone wrong.) She threads her fingers through his hair while his hand sweeps over the enlarged skin of her stomach, fingers drawing lazy circles over her navel in a repeated pattern. Their limbs tangle together awkwardly in the hospital bed technically built for one but for some reason it's a feeling that's familiar and comfortable as opposed to cramped and tight.

It was seven months ago, she realizes, that he had felt her kick for the very first time while they lay together in a position not unlike this one.

(Her muffins burned in the oven, but she didn't bother to care.)

It's simple enough to settle into a routine, check-ups and appointments and playground visits, babysitting and baby shopping and building cribs and mobiles. She takes advantage of Miami in a way her parents never did and brings Ava to the beach every morning, sits in the sand and watches the sunrise while her daughter digs chubby fingers into the sand. James reads books that are too long for her liking and tries to help build castles that come out looking more like lopsided boxes than actual buildings.

They sleep together just the three of them, and sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night for reasons she can't exactly explain (chalks it up to the fact that she's still getting used to motherhood but never actually believes it.) By mid-morning, she's usually shoved off whatever uneasy feeling has taken residence in her stomach, too busy changing diapers making breakfast and quieting cries to think about the reasons why she might not feel just right.

(And when things don't feel just right, that's when James crawls into bed and wraps his arms around her waist just as he did that day in the rest stop bathroom. Sometimes they hold Ava between them, James bouncing her on one knee while Juliet watches the way her daughter's small hands pattern along his chin, two thin lips parting in a silent display of mirth.)

He poses the idea of another road trip the day before her birthday and she's dubious at first, finally cracks that this one better not produce another life form (a lie, she'd love another baby but timing's gotta be right and right now the timing is definitely not right.) But he's determined and she could stand to get out of Miami, take a break from the general stress of life and everything that exists in this now, go back to those moments that existed in that then, those moments where they dropped dimes in jukeboxes and sat on top of a car roof in the middle of the New Mexico desert.

So they pack up the van and decide this time to go backwards, Miami through Alabama and then over through Mississippi, a few days more to get to Los Angeles but enough time to figure things out. That's when she turns, raises an eyebrow, one hand on the knob of the bedroom door.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?"

It's a loaded question because passing through Alabama doesn't just mean passing through Alabama. It means going home and even if he doesn't physically stand on the steps of his old trailer, James hasn't actually stepped foot in the state since the day of his parents' death. Standing across from her in the hallway, bare-chested and baggy-eyed with a copy of Goodnight Moon clutched underneath his right arm, he suddenly looks older than his 30-odd years. The visual makes her tired, as if she's feeling old herself, as if everything before Ava's birth was something out of a dream, an experience that happened simply to push them together so they could exist now, exist here, and have a kind of life she never even realized she wanted.

"Not yet." He pauses, fingers tightening around the spine of the hardcover and she thinks she sees the briefest shadow of doubt pass across his eyes before he turns away.

"But I'll figure somethin' out."

They stop at a rest area just outside of Jasper and when she sees his shoulders start to tense, she relinquishes the driver's seat and takes his hand while his eyes fixate on something that she guesses is more than just the road in front of him. He sleeps less after that, spending more time sitting up with Ava tucked beneath his arm, her head flopping into the space between his shoulder and his head, he goes through Mice and Men twice in the span of three days (she's still trying to find time to get through the first half of Carrie.)

The motel feels a bit like the old days, damp and dark with off colored walls (slightly yellowed) and a 13-inch television harboring less than three channels. James holds Ava with two arms while Juliet frantically tears apart the oversized cloth bag, trying to remember where she might've packed spare diapers. Later, they opt for pizza and he doesn't protest when she offers to drive three miles to the nearest restaurant.

There's only one light on when she returns, a single lamp that casts a dim halo across the bed where James is sprawled over the covers half asleep or fully asleep (she's never sure which and usually only finds out when she crawls in herself.) A rerun of Little House on the Prairie is looping on the television at a barely discernable volume and Ava is bunched up against his chest, tiny palms balled against bare skin where the sleeves of his red shirt have slipped off his shoulder. When she eases herself next to him he cracks open one eye, rolls over as much as he comfortably can.

Half asleep.

"Hey." She curls next his body, lets one hand brush over a wave of blonde as Ava stirs, tiny fingers pressing into his skin.

"Hey yourself." He takes a moment before glancing downwards, half a shrug dropping off his body.

"She fell asleep."

"I noticed."

Silence spreads between them, a stretch so long that she starts to wonder if maybe he's fallen asleep for real. She reaches for his hair, trailing fingers down his cheek and towards Ava's body, a rise and fall barely visible under the canopy of his larger hand.

"I was thinkin' –" He shifts, careful of the baby on his chest and she raises an eyebrow. "Well, I just thought. I mean." James lets out a breath, as if whatever he's trying to say is taking an extreme amount of effort.

"Maybe we could take her to Jasper tomorrow."

His smile is reflective of something that she hasn't seen in a long time, maybe not since the day Ava was born, maybe not since the day he picked her up from the Los Angeles Greyhound station looking seven years too young and eight years too old, a strange mix of past and present and future. It makes Juliet think of diners and radios, of cheap motels and musty rooms, of decisions that don't completely make sense and things that sometimes don't feel just right except for once there's nothing that doesn't feel just right about this, about them, about Juliet and James and Ava and a small room with one bed and pale yellow walls.

In Miami, he'll abandon his con.

In Miami, she'll meet him on a date.

On the Island, he'll order a ring.

She returns the smile, feeling his hands tighten around her waist.