Max had gone quiet, and Chloe glanced at her across the truck's bench seat. Sound asleep, head resting against the glass. Well, it was pretty late, with a couple of hours to go before they reached Arcadia Bay. She returned her eyes to the road, leaned back in her seat, one hand resting on the steering wheel.
Highway 101 was never really empty, but there weren't many other cars at this hour, just the occasional bright lights of a semi zipping past in the opposite direction. The road curved gently through tightly packed conifers. Here and there a sign, very rarely a turn off, every once in a while a small town, most not much different from Arcadia Bay. It looked like this, more or less, for eight hundred miles, from the tip of the Olympic Peninsula to deep into California, where the trees finally gave way to vineyards and oak savannah.
Chloe took a sip of coffee from the cardboard to-go cup, breathed in the pickup's distinct smell, intensified by the warmth of the heater. Oil, old vinyl, still a hint of cigarette smoke after all these years. The cab was festooned with stickers, augmented with a few pasted-up instant photos, more of which scattered loose amongst the debris on the floor. If she picked any of them up at random, she would find a selfie, some frozen moment of her life with her best friend, now sleeping contentedly across from her. Besides Max herself, the photos were the only evidence that she wasn't still seventeen, making that first trip to Seattle. Ten years. It didn't feel like it.
She had been driving for hours — or was it years? — the view through the windshield never changing. She felt unmoored in time, the outside world fading into irrelevance. She had been driving this road, in this truck, since she was a teenager, and she felt that she always would. The truck had always smelled of cigarettes, always would. Max had always been beside her, always would. Chloe knew that she would eventually get tired of driving and that she had a home and a life and bills to pay, never forget about the bills, but in the moment it seemed that she could drive forever. The highway need never end, the view need never change, the sun need never rise. She was where she wanted to be, in her truck, on the highway, with Max, her destination still far over the horizon.
She was home.
Max awoke, groggy, as the truck pulled into the driveway.
"Oh, we're here already?" she said, briefly confused. "Sorry, didn't mean to fall asleep."
Chloe grinned at her wearily. "No worries, you didn't miss much. I'm ready to crash though." She yawned, opened the door and stepped into the night air, throwing out her arms to stretch.
Max opened her own door and got out, trying to close it quietly behind her. The night was cold and clear and very still, quiet except for the chirping of distant frogs, and the occasional far-off car passing through town. A half moon sank toward the horizon, just above the ocean which Max couldn't see, but could smell, a hint of salt in the air.
She'd never hated Arcadia Bay the way Chloe did. She'd left before she had a chance to get sick of it, and it always felt like like home in a way Seattle didn't quite manage. Of course, her actual childhood house had been sold when she was thirteen. But this house, Chloe's house, was just as much home, she'd spent so much time there.
Chloe unlocked the door, led the way into the dark house. They stepped quietly, to avoid waking Joyce and David, and proceeded up to Chloe's room, shutting the door gently behind them.
It remained as it had always been. A surface layer of Chloe's teenage self, accreted over the deeper strata of their entwined childhoods. The height measurements on the wall, and the angry graffiti covering them. A crazy collage of magazine clippings, posters, stickers, postcards, some fading, some replaced with newer photos. The American flag, the string of Christmas lights, the ancient stereo. Even the old analog TV, despite the fact that it hadn't been turned on in years and Max was pretty sure there weren't any signals for it to pick up anymore.
And most importantly, the smell. The whole house had a particular scent, and Chloe's room most of all, even though she didn't live in it anymore. It suffused the aging mattress and the dust and the walls themselves.
Chloe crossed the hall to brush her teeth, while Max sat on the bed, taking in the familiar scene for the thousandth time. There was no pretense of adulthood here, no real evidence that they'd ever grown up, left home, started careers, fended for themselves. In this room, they were kids again, teenagers, young lovers, any age at all. The room was the same, felt the same.
Joyce had wanted to "clean it up", and had been taken aback by the ferocity of Max's response.
"No!" she'd insisted, "I lost my house and my home town and William and Bongo and this room is what's left of my childhood! Please don't mess with it!"
Chloe, wide eyed, had looked from Max to her mother. "What she said."
Chloe returned from the bathroom, and Max took her turn; they just had the one toothbrush. She returned to find her wife already asleep. Sliding into bed, Max reveled in the familiarity of it all, the soft breeze through the window, the old flag waving gently beside the bed.
She was home.