Chapter 35
Thirty-Five
Wednesday.
I know it’s Wednesday because I counted back this morning in the shower.
Wednesday means three days.
Three days, and then the road ends and California keeps going without us, and we go back to being people with lives that exist in fixed locations, and I have…
things waiting. An apartment I haven’t been back to, a family I’ve been in contact with only in the careful, loving, not-quite-ready way, and a life I dismantled at an altar eleven days ago that is still in pieces on the floor.
Three days.
I’m not thinking about it.
What I am thinking about is that I urgently need to pee.
“Griffin.”
“Piper.”
“I really need to pee.”
He doesn’t look away from the road. “I told you not to drink so much.”
“I had two coffees.”
“I told you not to drink so much,” he repeats in the exact same tone.
“Yeah, well.” I shift in the seat, which helps nothing. “I didn’t listen. Sue me.”
“We’re almost there.”
“Almost where?” I look out the window. We’ve been on a smaller road for the last twenty minutes, winding inland from the coast. There are pine trees on both sides, and a wooden sign that I couldn’t read fast enough. “Griffin, almost where?”
He doesn’t answer.
I look at him, but he’s looking at the road with the expression of a man who is minding his own business.
He’s been planning something.
I knew he’d been planning something. The shopping, the comfortable but fun, the we have everything we need for the weekend, all of it arranged and waiting. He’s been sitting on it for days with that small, contained, almost-smile.
The trees thin and a sign comes into view.
I read it, then I read it again.
Sunvale.
My gaze snaps to him. “What are we doing here?”
He keeps his eyes on the road. “What do you think we’re doing here?”
My heart is doing something I don’t have a word for. “The festival is this weekend.”
“Is it?” he asks, acting innocent.
“You know it is.”
“Hmm. That’s a wild coincidence.”
“Griffin.” I turn in the seat to face him fully. “Griffin, look at me.”
“I’m driving, Pipes.”
He looks at me briefly. The almost-smile has become an actual smile. It’s smug, and I’ve decided it’s my favorite of all his faces.
“Are we going to the Sunvale Festival?”
A beat of silence follows.
“Griffin James Hayes.”
“Piper Margaret Callahan.”
“Answer me, Griff.”
The smile breaks properly. “We’re going.”
I think my heart actually stops for a second, then restarts. “We’re going?”
“We’re going.”
“To the—you got—how did you—Those tickets have been sold out for forever.”
“I knew a guy who knew a guy. We started turning around a couple of days ago,” he says. “I’ve been waiting for you to figure it out.”
I make a sound that’s not a word. Several sounds that are not words. My whole body has come online in a way that makes sitting impossible, and I’m bouncing in the seat. He’s just watching the road with the stupid, beautiful, smug face of his.
I grab the front of his sleeve. “Griffin.”
“Still driving, Pipes.”
“We’re going to Sunvale.”
“We are.”
“I’ve wanted to go since I was—” I go silent as the realization dawns on me. “It was on my list.”
He shrugs, takes my hand, and presses a kiss to my knuckles. “It was the one with the biggest line through it. Figured you deserved something for you.”
My heart constricts in my chest.
Something for me.
It’s been so long since I’ve even thought of doing something for myself that I forgot it’s possible for someone else to do it.
“Shit,” I half-sob.
“What?”
“I—I’m going to cry.”
He squeezes my hand. “Don’t cry. Just enjoy yourself. This is yours.”
I stare at him for another second before I remember the other pressing issue.
“Oh no,” I say. “I still need to pee.”
He laughs. “We’re thirty seconds out.”
“Thirty? Griffin!”
“Hold on.”
“I have been holding—”
The road widens. The trees pull back, and there it is—the entrance ahead, the signs, cars pulling into a field that’s been turned into a car park, and beyond the ridge a skyline of tents and lights and the faint, far-off sound of music carrying over the evening air.
The festival.
Sunvale.
I’m looking at it through the windshield.
I have been wanting this since I was fifteen years old, after I read an article in a magazine.
I showed it to Griffin at a dinner and said, “That’s the one.
That’s the thing I’m going to do one day.
” He nodded and apparently went and put it in whatever part of his brain keeps the things that matter.
He remembers everything.
He’s always remembered everything.
When he parks, I have the door open before the engine’s off, and I’m pointing at him over the roof of the car.
“Don’t move,” I say. “I’ll be back in two minutes.”
“I’ll be right here.”
I get back ten minutes later because there was a queue for the toilets.
Griffin is leaning against the car with his arms folded and his sunglasses on. The bags are at his feet as he watches me cross the car park.
I walk up to him and wrap my arms around his neck. Pressing my mouth to his cheek, I kiss him right at the corner of his mouth and feel him exhale.
“Best getaway driver ever,” I say.
His arms come around me. “Don’t thank me yet. You haven’t been in there.”
“I don’t care.” I pull back to look at him. “You remembered.”
“Of course I remembered.”
I look at his face, and I think about the keychain on his keys for five years. The Times review he saved, the shows he read every word about, and the grandmother who made him waltz and write letters and apologize without caveats, and the bridge that will look like two harps.
And… this.
I think about all of it.
“Griff?”
“Piper,” he says.
“Thank you,” I whisper, before he dips and kisses me.
I can feel the three days sitting at the edge of the good thing, waiting. It hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s going to be there tomorrow and the day after, and at the end of the road when we have to turn around and face it.
But not tonight.
Tonight, there’s music coming over the ridge, I’m going to wear a yellow dress, and he remembered.