Those first days on the run are a strangely precise blend of exhilaration and unease. She never expected to equate solace with the smell of gasoline.
They kiss sweetly between rest stops, fuck desperately beneath questionably-clean motel sheets, hold hands to the sound of wiper-blade swishes.
Cry privately in the solitude of need-to-be-unlocked-by-an-attendant gas station restrooms.
Their situation is both an answer to a prayer and a death sentence. She fails to appreciate the irony.
The giddiness of "he's safe" and "we're together" at first outweighs everything else. She can't keep from touching him. Her fingers have been restless for months and remind themselves constantly of what they've been missing. Her eyes trace his outlines so many times they grow weary, yet when she closes them, they continue tracing him in her sleep.
Their lovemaking is frantic, then tender, then frantic again, their bodies still not reacquainted enough to read what the other wants. What the other needs. Only that they need each other—always. No matter how chaotically.
….
As the weeks draw out, their pace and frenzy slows. It thickens. The days are often marked by the lengths of the silences that fall between games of Twenty Questions. A comment about the landscape here, a question about the map there, miles of nothing in between. It's easier to stay silent than to talk about things that were or are or could be. Because none of that exists for them right now. What exists right now is the car, the hotels, and enough greasy diner food to last a lifetime. And beyond.
But still, she kisses his knuckles in the laundromat, he palms her thigh while she fiddles with radio dials, and on nights they aren't too tired, they reconnect on squeaky motel beds, while neon lights shine through cheap, sheer curtains across their undulating bodies.
….
Weeks become a month, then two. Three. The alphabet game and Twenty Questions were abandoned long ago. They argue about silly things—when to do laundry, whose wet towel is on the floor, how many miles before the next exit.
They don't argue about the important things.
She silently wonders what their future holds, whether everything they've given up has been worth it, just to be together. She doesn't have an answer. She knows it doesn't help to think "what if?", but still…what if? The "what ifs" of her life haunt her.
She loves him desperately.
So why is she still crying in gas station restrooms?
….
Their sex life before, though brief, was never a quiet one. It was full of sound—moans and cries and talk so delightfully dirty, she'd blush and she'd come, all in the same breath. But here… here on this endless, wandering path of highway, they've grown gradually, painfully quiet.
Now, each cookie-cutter hotel room wall strains to hear even the softest whimpers, the most occasional muffled grunts. She longs to cry out in passion just once, but is afraid of what it may do to them—what built-up walls it may shatter.
She's felt it, bubbling beneath the surface. They've built their relationship on sweeping things under the rug, but lately, she finds herself tripping over the growing lump. The things that remain unsaid linger in the air like unwanted guests.
….
It's been four months.
She's been on edge all day. There was a woman with a baby at Denny's this morning, and though she tried not to look, her traitorous eyes betrayed her.
He slides his hand along the curve of her hip in bed, beneath the T-shirt she's worn three days now. He hasn't done laundry. It's his turn. She's tired, but he's insistent, and she finds herself wondering why everything is on HIS terms, why nothing in her life is under her own control any more.
As he rises above her, she both loves him and hates him. Loves him for who he is, for what he has become to her, hates him for what has happened to their once-upon-a-time-normal lives. She wants to hurt him, she wants to love him, she wants to fuck him back to the way things used to be.
His cock feels divine as it slides in and out, and she tries to lose herself in it, pretend they're back in her apartment on clean cotton sheets with the possibility of a future still within reach. But she can't. She CAN'T. Because the room smells of mold and they're wearing dirty clothes and HE FUCKING LEFT HER ALONE when she needed him the most. And now the aftermath hangs around her neck like an albatross.
Her fingers sink angrily into the flesh of his shoulders as she pulls him down against her. Her legs lock around his hips hard enough that her thighs hurt. She doesn't care. He speeds up his pace, and it both arouses her and enrages her. She presses her mouth against his neck and bites off words she never thought she'd have the courage to say.
"You LEFT us." They hurt coming out, like vomit.
He pauses, but she claws at his back to continue. Don't you fucking stop now—I need this. He pounds into her even harder and she gasps. Harder, then harder, until she's coming with a moan so loud and gut-wrenching, the peeling wallpaper behind the bed vibrates like a cicada.
She curls herself into his arms afterwards and cries silently against his chest.
He strokes her hair while she falls asleep.
…
It's different after. Still difficult, still suffocating, but when he brings her a morning coffee, she smiles at him— it feels like forever since she's done that.
Words held inside have a weight to them. She's three words lighter this morning.
They're driving through Kansas when he threads his fingers through her hair to rub the base of her skull. He knows how it calms her. She told him once she can feel the tension as it slides through her body and flows its way from her feet.
She closes her eyes and whispers, "Thank you."