Sam has been keeping track. Every morning after he takes in the faded motel wallpaper and the rush of the traffic, he thinks three weeks. Or four days. Or, like on the first morning after it happened, when he hadn't slept at all: nine hours. Nine hours since Jess.
Today when he slides his phone off the nightstand and clicks the home button, he thinks May 2nd. Six months since Jess. The date sits unsettled in his brain, like it's the face of a high school acquaintance whose name he can't remember. Then he gets it: May 2nd. Oh.
The motel room door cracks open and there stands Dean, backlit by the mid-morning sun. He's armed with a drink tray and a bag heavy with food, and somehow manages to balance it all without dropping the newspaper that's tucked under his arm.
"Heeey, man of the hour," Dean says, dropping everything on the table and rustling around in the bag.
"Hey," says Sam. He pushes himself up to sitting and squints while his eyes readjust to the dim light.
"They ran out of that French vanilla crap you like, so I had to go caramel macchi-whatever." Dean hands him one of the Styrofoam cups. "And—" He tosses a slim green cardboard box into the concave space of comforter between Sam's knees. "Apple pie. Sorry there ain't candles to stick in it."
"Thanks, Dean." He's not hungry but Dean probably went through a lot of rush hour traffic for this, so Sam peels back the flap on the pie box and tips it out into his hand.
Dean raises his own cup as he sits down on the other bed. "Happy birthday, slugger."
"Thanks," Sam says again. In some alternate universe Jess is alive and getting birthday pancake batter all over their counters, and he doesn't know how to carry on a conversation right now.
Dean unfolds the wrapper of his breakfast sandwich. "So what're we doin' today?"
Sam scrubs the sleep out of one eye with the heel of his hand. Hunting. Right. "We can follow up on the girl's disappearance that was on the news yesterday. She was last seen at an abandoned house outside of town, so, I dunno. Could be our kind of deal."
"Reminds me." Dean goes back for the newspaper and shakes it out on his way back to the bed. The front page shows a teary-eyed girl embracing who Sam can only assume are her parents. "They found her."
"I guess let's check the obits, then." Sam leans across to Dean's bed to pull out the proper section.
'What, on your birthday?" Dean holds it out of Sam's reach and rustles through to a full-page ad, which he then holds up. "Eh?"
"Dean, the cutoff age for Plucky Pennywhistle's is like, thirteen. Also, clowns."
"So what's another ten years? You're young at heart, right?"
"No." Sam takes too big a sip of his coffee and burns his tongue. Here's an idea: lying back down and turning twenty-three with the grimy motel comforter pulled over his head all day. That sounds okay.
"Alright, then what? We can find some batting cages. Haven't done that in a while. Or—hey. There's probably a bookstore, or some friggin' planetarium or whatever around here. Bet your college ass would love that."
"You'd hate it, though," Sam says, taking a bite of the pie. It's room temperature by now, but no worse than any other drive-thru pie he's had.
"Not the point. It's your birthday, pal. Lemme ask Front Desk Camila where the nerds hang out. Get ready and I'll be back in ten."
Sam decides it's surreal, watching his leather-jacketed brother pass money under a ticket window for something that's not a Metallica show or a Friday the 13th reboot.
"Here ya go, Sasquatch," Dean says as he hands him the all-day pass to "so much art your head's gonna friggin' explode, dude."
They stick together at first but Dean soon wanders a few paintings away. Sam kind of loses himself in reading the labels for everything—placing the artwork in the context of what he learned at school. He can't remember the last time he read something for fun, with all the obituaries and the reading and rereading of lore and Dad's journal clouding his recent memory.
He takes selfish pleasure in the lamplight shining from above the paintings, the courteous whisper of one person to another, and the gold nameplates pinned to the docents' uniforms. Everything has a sensible kind of purpose.
But it's all too good to last, because he rounds a corner into the next room and sets sight on a landscape of a cabin on the edge of a forest at dusk. The last time he saw it he was a junior at Stanford, and he was on a field trip for his Museum Cultures class. Sam stood in front of this same painting, trying to decide if it made sense with the argument he was writing for his midterm, when he felt pressure on his right shoulder and heard her voice in his ear.
"Ooh. I kinda wanna live there," she murmured. She was just tall enough to rest her chin on his shoulder.
"Yeah?" said Sam. That side of his neck was starting to tingle.
"Mmhmm. Super idyllic, you know?" He had never smelled such a perfect ratio of vanilla to flowers before.
"Pretty much," he said.
He felt the pressure lessen and disappear as she stepped away, out in front of him. "So. You have fun at Becky's on Friday? Saw you there."
"Oh." Sam's dry throat made him cough. "Yeah, it was pretty cool."
"I recommend tea. Definitely with honey in it."
"Sorry?"
"For your throat." She tapped her own, one corner of her mouth tipping upward. "We got a midterm presentation coming up, you gotta be in fine form. So what do you think?" She spun on her toes to face the painting again, causing her flip flop to smack on the ground.
Sam's eyes went to the source of the sound at first, but then he looked the rest of the way up: at her long legs in flared jeans that were fraying on the marble; a strip of her tan lower back under her light blue t-shirt; her fingers laced together and bumping against her cute butt, while she rocked a little in place and looked at the painting.
He'd had his share of dumb thoughts before, but he was having another one because even though she was the kind of friendly who put her chin on everyone's shoulder, he was thinking about stepping towards her and easing her hands apart so he could hold one of them—hold this girl he didn't know but wanted to.
What do I think?
"Found all the stuff with topless chicks," says Dean. "Bloodhounds got nothin' on me."
"Oh. Yeah," Sam says, trying to rearrange his face into something that looks like casual interest.
"You okay?" Dean looks up at him, then back at the painting. "Cabin in the woods not your thing?"
Sam shakes his head to get the memory to go away. "Nah, it's just—it reminded me of this field trip from Stanford. That's it."
Dean tips his head away but keeps his eyes on Sam. "Alright, somethin' don't add up here. You pissed at me for makin' you miss out on this stuff?"
Sam takes a deep breath and feels the knotting in his chest start to squirm. "Yeah. No. I dunno."
Then Dean says it: "You thinkin' about Jessica?" Sam stares at the corner of the painting, where the top of a pine tree disappears into the ornate gilded frame. "Okay, we're gettin' outta here."
Sam drags his eyes away. "But we paid a crapton of money—"
"And we'll hustle more of it. C'mon." He gives one short tug on the sleeve of Sam's hoodie and heads for the exit. Sam takes one more second with the cabin's lit windows before sidling past a group of students and going after his brother.
Out on the steps of the museum in the weak sunlight, Dean stares out at the traffic.
"We don't gotta talk about it," says Dean. "But today's your day, so I guess if you want to…"
"I'm okay." Maybe not now, but he knows he'll have to be eventually.
"Alright. Now there's s'posed to be a place around here that only sells stuff wrapped in spinach. You're gonna go nuts."
"Dean, you really don't have to."
"Unbunch your panties. There's a barbecue place like a half block over. We do two stops, and that's final. Just 'cause it's your birthday don't make me Mother Teresa."