"Why don't you let me drive first?" Adam asked as they made their way to her jeep just as dawn was approaching.
She looked at him as she closed the trunk one final time. "You sure?"
"Yeah. You drove me around the whole week during the wedding," he said. "It's only fair."
She smiled, tossing him the keys as she climbed into the passenger side.
"Top up or down?" he asked as he adjusted his seat.
"Top down!" They said together and then laughed.
Tanya breathed in the early morning air as Adam took off down the highway, raising her arms up in excitement at the thought of thirty hours and two-thousand miles alone with him.
"Man, this thing drives like a dream," he commented.
"Did you ever get your car yet?" Tanya asked, mentally running through their phone conversations over the past two weeks to recall if he'd mentioned anything about it.
"Yeah! I just picked it up yesterday. It's a truck. Chevy. That thing's a monster!" He said, grinning broadly.
She laughed as her hair blew over her face in the wind. "What color is it?"
"Black."
"Of course."
"Of course," he teased. "Just like you have your little yellow jeep. I know this isn't the same one you had in high school, but it sure could be."
"And what's wrong with that? I know what I like!"
He patted her knee. "We all know that."
She stuck her tongue out at him, reaching into the visor to pull out her sunglasses. "Do you want yours?" she asked.
He nodded, gesturing into the back seat. "They're in the front pocket of my bag."
She rummaged for a moment before handing him his sunglasses, smiling to herself when he put them on and thinking how cute he looked in them. "You're adorable," she said out loud.
He blushed. "What? No! You're adorable."
She smiled again, turning the knob on the radio to have something to do before leaning back in her seat.
He wrinkled his nose at the country station.
"What?" She asked with another laugh. "Are you tired of country already?"
He shrugged. "It's up to you."
She reached into her pocket for her ipod and put it on shuffle when the car's computer recognized and synced to the device.
She didn't realize that she'd been singing along to the familiar tune until he turned to her with that boyish smile of his. "Sorry," she muttered, looking out the window on her side.
"No, don't stop," he urged. "Keep singing."
"Alright, but this isn't a one woman show, you know. You have to sing too."
"I don't know the words."
"Well, we'll just find something ya do know," she said, pressing the arrow on her ipod.
She stopped on a Journey song. "You have to know this one."
He sang the opening words "Just a small town girl living in a loooonely woooorld" dramatically and she laughed, clapping her hands and dancing in her seat.
"She took a midnight train going anyyyyyywhereee," she crooned.
His smile grew wider as he got into the game and before long they were belting the chorus of "Don't Stop Believing" at the top of their lungs, laughing and giggling together.
"You know, you're not so bad yourself," she said sincerely when the song ended and their laughing fit subsided.
He shook his head. "I'm no star like you."
"Oh, stop," she said, waving away his words and straightening up in her seat as they crossed the Mississippi state line.
They drove in comfortable companionship, telling each other stories about their lives since they'd both moved on from Angel Grove, sometimes singing wildly to whatever was playing on the radio and sometimes riding in easy silence.
She leaned her head against the headrest, turning to face him and absent mindedly studying him as he drove. He put the top back up when it started to get a little chilly and she took the opportunity to lean closer to him. She decided that she liked him driving her car and smiled secretly to herself, pulling out a notebook and pen from her bag.
"Whatcha got there?" Adam wondered after a few minutes.
"Hmmm? Oh, nothing. Just writing things down, like the way the sky looks, the way the air smells. Who knows? Maybe it'll be a song later."
He smiled. "Do you always do that?"
She nodded, chewing on her pen cap. "Yeah. Whenever it feels right."
He thought for a moment as she flipped through pages and pages of the book, all scrawled with her bubbly handwriting. "Did you write about the wedding?"
"I mean, not the wedding specifically, but what it felt like for us all to be back together like that, yeah." She gazed out the window before penning something furiously in her book.
He waited until she was finished writing before he spoke again. "Did you write anything after we….?" His voice trailed off as he felt her stiffen beside him.
"You did," he said quietly.
She closed the book and replaced her pen cap silently, her eyes avoiding his.
"Can I see it?"
"What? No!" She shouted, holding the book close to her chest.
"Come on, if it's about me then I think I deserve to know," he said, reaching across the seat.
"Adam, no!" she shouted again, swatting his hand away. "It's personal."
He frowned. "More personal than what we did together?"
She shoved the book back in her bag, zipping it up loudly and quickly.
"Guess I'll just find out about it when you release your next single," he mumbled.
"So it does bother you," she said quietly.
"I didn't say that."
"Well, you kind of hinted at it."
"Tanya…."
She crossed her arms over her chest, looking out the window with her head turned away from him.
They drove on in annoyed silence for awhile until he veered off the highway, pulling over into a deserted parking lot.
"What are you doing?" She asked. "This isn't a stop we planned on our map."
He put the car in park and unbuckled his seat belt, getting out the driver's side and walking over to open the door on her side.
"What are you doing?" She said again as he took her hand and pulled her up.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, putting his arms around her. "I don't want to be a jerk."
She sighed. "You're not a jerk, Adam."
He hugged her tightly and she hugged him back. "I guess I can be a brat sometimes."
He shook his head. "You weren't being a brat. You're right. It's your personal stuff."
She bit her lip. "Can I be honest with you about something?"
"Of course," he murmured into her hair.
She took a deep breath, pulling away just enough to look at him face to face. "That was the first time I did anything like that. Ever."
His eyes widened. "You mean, you never….? Before we…..?"
She shook her head.
"Oh, Tanya." He hugged her harder. "Why didn't you say anything?"
"I don't know. I guess I didn't want you to think I was being a baby about it."
He smiled softly. "Wanna know something?"
She nodded.
"That was my first time too."
"Really?!" She squeaked in surprise.
"Really," he repeated.
"Oh," she said quietly, unable to keep a smile from spreading across her face.
He gently kissed her forehead. "Come on. Let's get back on the road for a bit and stop like we planned."
She followed him back to the car, reaching for his hand as he drove back to the highway. She kept her phone in her lap, checking to see where they marked the first stop. "If we keep going until we reach Arkansas we'll be right on track," she told him.
"We're not that far away," he said.
They drove in silence and she turned the radio on, letting someone else croon out the tunes for once as they searched for a place to stop for the night.
They came upon a motel and pulled into the small parking lot. Adam pulled their overnight bags out of the car while Tanya went into the lobby to check in and they found the place was so small that the rooms were right there on the ground floor.
"I hope the room looks better than the office did," Tanya commented as Adam opened the door with a scuffed up room key.
"Oh, this is gross," he said, flicking on the lightswitch in the dingy room.
"Pretty far from five star," she agreed with her hands on her hips. She scanned the room briefly, taking in the peeling wallpaper before noticing out loud, "There's only one bed."
"And it's pretty tiny," Adam added. "Guess we're going to have to get close."
"We better check it for bed bugs," She said with a shiver.
He nodded, moving in place to flip the mattress while she stripped it. "Better check the drawers too," he told her.
She pulled open every drawer, patted down the curtains and inspected the rug before deciding that they would be okay here.
"Hey, what's a road trip without a little adventure?" Adam joked.
She smiled weakly. "I'm going to go take a shower," she said, heading to the tiny closet sized bathroom.
She returned a moment later. "Ugh, no I'm not."
He raised an eyebrow. "That bad, huh?"
She didn't say anything, moving their bags from the floor to the table.
"Well, I guess we'd better turn in then," Adam said.
"You first," Tanya said, gesturing with her hand.
He kicked his shoes off and sat down gingerly on the bed, the mattress springs squeaking the moment he'd put any kind of weight on it. He laid down, resting his head against the pillow. "It's not that bad," he said, reaching out his arm.
She sat down carefully, ducking under the covers and snuggling into him as he wrapped his arm around her in the tiny bed. "Yeah," she said. "We can do this, right?"
He rubbed her back in small, soothing circles. "We can totally do this."
"Do you think the t.v. works?" she asked, grabbing the remote off the wobbly nightstand. She pressed the power button and a blue, staticky light came on the screen before flickering out.
"Guess not," Adam said and they both laughed.