I turn and look at you. You're staring straight ahead, refusing to meet my eyes. But, I see your shoulders, straight and tense, and the lines on your brow. I take a deep breath and look forward, too. Choosing to study what you're staring at so intently. We sit like that for a few moments. The air still thick with the argument that led us here. It's a tense silence, not the comfortable one we are so used to. Well, actually no, this silence has become more familiar over time. Over the past few weeks. We're falling out of the honeymoon phase we've been in for the past two years. I welcome it, this new development in our relationship. I love it, actually, in the moments after the silence. It means we're evolving, growing, and becoming something new and different. But, in the silence, in the silence I hate it. Your eyes and body language tell me everything.

We're lost. And we're late. But, mainly we're just lost. It's partly my fault, and partly your fault. Your silence screams that it's all me. But, after the dust has settled you'll chuckle and say you shouldn't have taken so long in the bathroom. And I'll chuckle back and tell you that it's ok because you're anxious and worried and always want to make a good first impression. Baby, you know that you always make a good first impression, even when you feel like you don't. Everyone sees how I look at you. But more importantly they see how you look at me, and that look, that look is all that matters.

I'm still staring straight ahead. There are trees, flowers, spotty sun through the leaves all beyond the dashboard, windshield, hood of the car. I hear you take a deep breath and sigh. It's audible and resigned and I know your icy exterior is melting. Soon it will be nothing but a puddle on the floor. I don't want to look at you yet. If I look at you too soon, we'll continue the cycle. It's hard in the car, when we can't walk away and give each other the space we both need. But, it's comforting too because it makes us work harder to get over it. I like it. I love it in the moments when the dust has settled. But when we're in it, baby, when we're in it it's hard.

So I stare straight ahead. I lower my gaze down to the dash showing you that I heard you. I take another steadying breath. Out of the corner of my eye I see your hand crawl to my knee. You gently place it there and give it a short squeeze before smoothing your thumb in small circles, your warmth seeping into me. I lift my eyes and I see your dark ones looking back. A small smirk graces your lips and you squeeze my knee again.

I give you a half smile, because that's all I can muster right now. But the way you're looking at me, the way your eyes stay clouded with the sorrys you won't say right now, the way that melts me, too. You'll say those words in time, but not yet. They don't really matter in the long run. They matter, but not as much as they matter to others. Your eyes and body language tell me everything I need to know. I can tell by the way you blink that you see the smile in my eyes. The gentle reassurance that we'll move on, like we always do because since the second I met you I knew I would walk with you, beside you, wherever we chose to go. The way you look at me, the way you relax and I can see you breathe clearly, the way your lips remain in a permanent upturn no matter what we're doing, those things tell me we share that belief.

Baby, the way you're looking at me now, it kills me.

You reach down and pick up the phone you tossed to the floor in anger, annoyance, nerves. I can see you tapping away and I know in a few moments you'll direct me where to go and I will let you. I will let you because I know it'll calm your nerves. I will let you because you'll have instructions from the gps in your phone. I will let you because I know when to compromise. I will let you because you look at me in that way that cuts straight to my core.

I sit and stare straight ahead again while you tap away. You start humming under your breath, finishing the song that was playing on the radio before we turned the car off. I smile to myself. I love it when you sing, hum, mumble. I sit and smile to myself even more thinking about the other sounds that you make. The sounds that drive me crazy, drive me wild, drive me insane. I feel my face heat up thinking about how I'll get you to make those sounds later, at home, in our bed when we let the dust of our argument settle. When we let this make us stronger, instead of chip away at the beautiful thing we've created, built, nourished.

Again your hand finds its way to my knee. The tingling on the back of my neck has not gone away. Your hand moves its way higher up my thigh, not losing its grip but tightening. I don't have to say anything. We've both just promised each other that later, later will be magic. Our magic.

I lift my hands and turn the keys in the ignition. I still haven't looked at you again but the hair on the back of my neck is still on end. If I look now, we'll never leave. We'll be later still. We'll never get away with it. I shift the car into drive.

You lean over and place a soft kiss on my cheek, and then another one just before my ear. We both melt. You haven't moved an inch. I hear you take a breath and I take a matching one waiting for you to tell us where we need to go.