Chapter 54
We’d been on the road for hours.
The sun was low and fat in the sky, making everything gold — the guardrails, the dust on the dash, the veins in his hand where it gripped the wheel. His sunglasses were crooked from where he’d pushed them up too many times. My hair was up in a claw clip. We were both too quiet.
He looked good like this. Calm. Familiar in a way he hadn’t been for a while. It wasn’t the set jaw or the furrow between his brows or even the vein that showed in his neck when he shifted gears. It was that he wasn’t performing. Not for a camera, not for an audience. Not even for me.
It was just… us.
“Hungry?” he asked finally.
I nodded, not looking at him. “A little.”
“There’s a diner in about twenty minutes. You’ll like it. They’ve got great pie.”
“I do like pie,” I said.
He glanced over. “Lemon, right?”
I turned to him, startled. “You remember that?”
“You told me when I was telling you about the scene with the birthday cake, with Theo’s mom,” he said casually. “Said you hated chocolate icing. Said it reminded you of awful parties.”
My throat tightened. “I didn’t think you were listening.”
“I was always listening.”
The car filled with silence again — but a different kind this time. Not empty. Not awkward.
Warm.
“Where are we going exactly?” I asked, voice softer now. “I mean, I know it’s Crane, Oregon. I know your mom lives there. But… what’s it like?”
“Quiet,” he said. “Too quiet, maybe. But there’s a lake. A porch swing. She’s got this cat that’s ancient and hates everyone.”
I smiled. “Including you?”
“Especially me.”
“Good.”
He huffed a laugh. “And there’s a guest room. Figured we’d start there.” My eyes flicked to him, but he didn’t meet them. He just kept his eyes on the road, knuckles a little whiter than they’d been a second ago.
“Oh,” I said.
“Not that — I mean, unless—” He shook his head, clearing his throat. “I just didn’t want to assume.”
“You didn’t,” I blurted. “I am the one who jumped your bones less than seventy-two hours ago.” My pulse was high in my throat.
He reached over then, adjusting the volume knob with a flick of his fingers — like he needed something to do with his hands. The music rose again, gentle, familiar, something old and croony. I didn’t know the words.
He did, though. I could hear him humming along under his breath, just barely, like he forgot I was there.
My chest ached.
“You’re being really brave,” I said suddenly, surprising both of us.
He looked over, brow raised. “For taking you on a road trip?”
“For taking me home.”
He swallowed. I watched mesmerized as the knot in his throat bobbed.
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” I added. “You don’t have to prove anything to me.”
“I’m not,” he said. “I just want you to know who I am.”
“I already do.”
“No,” he said, voice quiet. “You know who I’ve been with you. It’s different. It’s… we’re leaving our little bubble, even if you want to deny it. Unfortunately…there’s more to the world than the man you make me want to be.”
I looked down at my lap, picked at the hem of my sweatshirt. “Well… I like who you’ve been with me.” I still couldn’t look at him too closely. “Are you… different?”
He didn’t respond immediately. Just reached out and rested his hand — palm up — on the center console.
An invitation.
And I… I just stared at it for a second. Like touching him would burn. Like I’d get it all wrong again.
But I didn’t.
I slid my hand into his, fingers lacing tight. His thumb brushed once over my knuckles. “I think I’ve only ever truly been myself with you, Junebug.”
The remaining trip to the diner went by in a flash.
The bell above the door jingled as we walked in — a real bell, brass and a little rusted, clinking against the glass like it had been doing it since the '70s.
The place smelled of burnt coffee and fryer oil. A couple of old men sat hunched over pie at the counter, not even looking up when we passed. The waitress gave us a once-over, one hand already reaching for two menus before we’d even said a word.
“Booth okay?” she asked, popping her gum.
Ansel nodded. “Perfect.” He glanced down at me, at our entwined fingers. “Actually… can we…?”
He gestured toward the booth in the corner — one of the few that didn’t sit right against the front windows. More tucked-away. More us.
We slid in together, on the same side, the vinyl seat sighing beneath our weight. Our knees brushed. Then our thighs. He didn’t move away. Neither did I.
“Cute,” the waitress said with a little smirk, passing us our menus. “Y’all on a road trip?”
“Something like that,” Ansel murmured.
She squinted at him. “You look familiar.”
He didn’t miss a beat. “I’ve got one of those faces.”
“Yeah. The kind I’d see on a movie poster. Or an arrest record.”
I choked on my water.
He didn’t even blink. “Could be both.”
She laughed, tapped her pen against her pad. “All right, Hollywood. What’ll it be?”
He looked at me. Let me order first — grilled cheese, fries, and lemon meringue for later — before ordering the same thing.
I arched a brow. “Copycat.”
He shrugged. “Can’t go wrong with the classics.”
We sat close. Closer than was maybe necessary. His knee pressed against mine. I didn’t shift away. If anything… I drifted closer.
My head tilted just slightly toward his shoulder. I didn’t realize I was doing it until I caught the way he looked at me — the most ridiculous grin stretched across his lips.
I drummed my fingers lightly against the tabletop. “So.”
“So.”
“This is weird, right?”
He tilted his head. “You mean the part where we’re driving into the woods so I can introduce you to my mother like some kind of emotionally reckless meet-cute?” His hand slid across my thigh, squeezing gently.
I blinked, breath catching. “That. Exactly.”
He grinned. “Nah, I don’t think so. Feels like we’ve been doing this thing together for years.”
“I think I forgot how to do this,” I admitted. “The small stuff. Like letting someone see me eat. Letting someone drive me places. Letting someone… matter.”
His jaw clenched. “You think I don’t know that?”
My chest squeezed.
The food came, hot and greasy and enormous. We didn’t talk for a few minutes — too busy eating, too busy pretending we weren’t watching each other out of the corners of our eyes.
Eventually, I reached through his arm. Stole a fry from his plate, even though they were exactly the same as mine, a grin spreading wide across my face.
He let me.
Didn’t say a word. Just smirked a little and dipped one of his fries into my ketchup like it was nothing. Like it was natural. Like maybe this could be normal someday.
The lemon meringue came with two forks without us having to ask.
“Don’t go fightin’ over it,” Loretta, our waitress, warned, sliding the plate between us with a practiced thud. “And if either of you pretends not to want it, I’ll bring a second piece and charge you for three of them.”
Loretta winked, then poured a splash more coffee into Ansel’s mug before heading off toward the kitchen, muttering something about “goddamn kids and their shy love eyes.”
He looked at me over the slice of pie — the lemon pale and creamy, the meringue golden-toasted, the crust already starting to flake apart. “You heard her.”
“What, that I’m not allowed to pretend I’m not hungry?”
“That we’ve got ‘shy love eyes.’”
I tried to shoot him a glare, but I was pretty sure my cheeks were pink and my smile gave me away. “She says that to everyone.”
“She didn’t say it to the couple in the corner, who haven’t spoken since we walked in.”
“…They might just be tired.”
“They might just not be in love.”
His voice was soft again. All of him was. I didn’t know how he managed it — to be so gentle with me, even when he was hurt, even when the world was loud and cruel. I wondered if he’d always been like that, or if it was something he’d only recently learned to carry.
I thought I knew him. Thought that over the years, I had learned who Ansel Barlowe was through interviews, press junkets, tabloids and movies. But I didn’t know him at all. I knew the mask he put up for the world to see.
But this man?
My Ansel?
There was a tiny sliver of me that flushed with greed, knowing this was just for me. That no one else would get the chance to know him this way.
He slid the plate a little closer to me, then scooped up a bite and offered it on his fork. My hand brushed his as I leaned in. The lemon was tart and bright; the meringue soft as air. His eyes didn’t leave me while I chewed.
“What,” I asked through the bite, “are you staring at?”
“You,” he said.
And it was so easy. Just that. No performance. No tease.
I could feel my pulse in my mouth, in my throat, in the places his leg touched mine beneath the table.
I wanted to curl into the space between us and live there.
I wanted to tell him that this — this stupid diner booth with one slice of pie and Loretta eavesdropping from the counter — felt like more of a home than most places I’d lived in the last five years.
The diner door creaked behind us, Loretta’s voice trailing off in a final, “Y’all come back now,” before the screen slammed shut.
Outside, the wind had teeth — not cruel, just brisk enough to make me burrow deeper into Ansel’s coat. He didn’t say anything when I pulled it tighter around me. Just stepped close enough that our shoulders bumped as we walked.
The parking lot gravel crunched beneath our feet. The moon was low and full and gold. Everything smelled of fried food and someone’s cigarette a few blocks away. I should’ve been tired, but I just felt… quiet.
We didn’t talk. Not much. Just the soft rhythm of our steps, the wind weaving through telephone wires overhead, the click of his keys when he unlocked the car.
He opened the passenger door for me, and I slid in without thinking.
That had started to happen a lot — little things, automatic, like I already knew he’d be there on the other side.
When he dropped into the driver’s seat and shut the door behind him, the silence inside the car felt safe. Not heavy. Just… ours.
He didn’t start the engine right away.
Instead, he leaned back, fingers resting lightly on the steering wheel, eyes watching something out across the empty lot. I watched him in the dim glow of the dash lights. The curve of his mouth. The way his hair curled a little behind his ears.
“I liked that place,” I said.
He glanced over at me. “Yeah?”
“Felt…” I reached for the word. “Uncomplicated.”
His hand reached for mine without ceremony, without looking. Like it belonged there. And I let him. I wanted to let him. “Not everything’s gonna be complicated,” he said quietly.
“It’s just hard to believe that, sometimes.”
“I know.” He laced our fingers together. Not tightly. Just enough. Like he wanted to be sure I’d still be there when the night gave way to morning.
I looked out the window. The wind was tugging at the trees. The world felt like it was holding its breath. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt like this before,” I whispered.
He didn’t ask what this was. He just nodded. “Me neither.”