Chapter 31
Thirty-One
Hozier is playing on the radio. From Eden gives way to Work Song. Outside the window, the Pacific is just blue, vast, and stretching toward the horizon. I’m in no rush to be anywhere.
I keep looking at Griffin.
I’ve been doing it all morning. I’m no longer subtle about it. Honestly, I’ve stopped trying. There’s no point pretending I’m interested in the scenery when he’s sitting right next to me.
He drives with one hand on the wheel and his other arm resting on the window frame.
It’s that relaxed, effortless posture he always settles into after the first hour on the road.
His sleeves are pushed up—they always are.
I watch the geometric lines of the tattoo on his left forearm; it catches the light every time he adjusts the steering wheel.
His profile seems unfair. He has a straight nose and a jawline that looks sculpted. He watches the road with full focus, as if he’s already come to terms with wherever it’s leading us. He needs to shave. He’s got a couple of days' growth, and I’ve decided I don’t want him to shave it. I like it.
There’s something lingering in my mind today. A quiet, persistent voice reminding me that our two weeks are almost over. Real life is still waiting for me, and it doesn’t care how good the last eleven days have been.
I feel the weight of it for a second, then I shove it back. Not yet. I’m not going back to that reality yet. I’m happy right now. I’m free. I’m choosing this version of things.
I put my feet up on the dash.
Griffin glances over and then back at the road. “Piper.”
“Hmm?”
“I’m driving.”
“I know.”
“You want me to stay on the road,” he says, his voice dropping an octave. “Put your damn legs down.”
I tilt my head toward him. “Why?”
His jaw tightens as a muscle leaps in his cheek. “Because,” he says, eyes forward, voice very even, “I want to spread them and dive headfirst into your pussy, and I can’t do that while I’m driving.”
Everything in my body responds to that. “Then pull over.”
His jaw works again. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because we’re on a schedule.”
“Since when?”
“Since you got into my car in a white dress.”
I stare some more. He continues to look at the road.
Dammit.
I put my feet down, reach into my tote bag, and pull out my notebook.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Writing my thoughts down.” I flip to a fresh page.
“And what are those?”
I write the words, then read them back. “How the man driving this car won’t pull over and fuck me.”
He makes a sound that’s somewhere between a cough and a choke. He clears his throat, briefly tightening his grip on the wheel, then looks at me with an expression I haven’t seen before.
“You’re not usually—” he starts.
“Crass?” I offer.
“I was going to say blunt.”
“All these days of fresh air,” I say. “It does things to a person.”
He reaches over without looking, takes the notebook directly out of my hands, and throws it into the back seat.
“Hey.”
“You’re in my car.”
“That’s my property.”
“And I’m your confessional. Talk to me.”
I look at the back seat, where my notebook has landed face down on Gerald. Gerald appears unbothered.
I cross my arms over my chest. “It’s not the same. Writing it out first means I can choose what to say. This way, you get everything unfiltered.”
“That’s the point. Talk.”
I look out the window. The coastline is incredible. It’s the kind of view that makes the inside of my own head feel less overwhelming.
“Okay, fine. Some rules.”
He gives me a sidelong glance, but stays silent.
“For our confessionals, you tell me one, I tell you one. We go back and forth.” I pull my knee up to my chest. “Nothing heavy. We’ve had enough heavy.”
He considers this.
“No repeats. No lying. No skipping.”
“Define skipping.”
“If you say pass, I get to ask you something worse.”
He glances at me. “That seems like a system designed to punish me specifically.”
“You threw my notebook.”
He’s quiet for a second. “Fine. You go first.”
I look at the road ahead. “I had a crush on you when I was a teenager.”
The car doesn’t swerve this time. He’s getting better at receiving information.
“How old?” he asks.
“Sixteen. Maybe seventeen. You were twenty-two or twenty-three. You were doing all this grown-up stuff, going places, and you’d show up at the house and—” I shrug. “I don’t know. You were just very you. Even then.”
“I had no idea,” he says.
“I know you didn’t.” I smile at the glass. “You looked right through me for about two years.”
“I didn’t look through you.”
“You called me kid.”
“You were a kid.”
“I was seventeen.”
“Which is a kid,” he says. “Which is why I correctly did not notice.”
“You called me kid until I was twenty-one.”
He opens his mouth, then closes it. “That one I’ll give you.”
I laugh. He’s almost smiling. Almost.
“Your turn,” I say.
He thinks for a moment. “I cried watching a film in Montana,” he says. “Alone. In my apartment.”
“What film?”
“I’m not telling you.”
“That’s a skip.”
“I told you the rest of it.”
“The film is the whole point.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Griffin—”
“Moving on.”
“You need to give me another one.”
He’s quiet for a second. “I read every review after all your shows.”
I turn to look at him, but he keeps his eyes on the road.
“All of them. I even saved one.”
“Which one?”
“The Times one.” A pause. “Technically precise and emotionally unguarded.”
Oh, my poor heart. “I didn’t know that.”
“Now you do. Your turn.”
I face forward because my chest suddenly feels tight. “I once worked up the confidence to ask a guy out at a bar.”
His brow arches. “How did that go?”
“His husband showed up as he was letting me down gently.”
Griffin barks a laugh.
“They turned out to be really sweet. My friend group joined theirs, and we had a great night. Your turn.”
He drums his fingers on the wheel. “I talked to my grandmother every day for a year after she died.”
I go very still.
“Not—” He pauses. “I wasn’t hearing voices. I’d just be driving or working, and I’d have a thought, and I’d say it out loud like she was there. She had a lot of opinions about my work choices. Still does.”
“What does she think now?”
Something warm, yet painful, crosses his face. “She thinks it’s about time I build something and stay.”
A silence settles in the car between us, but it’s a comfortable one. The road curves around the headland, the ocean disappearing and then reappearing, bigger than before. The music fills the space.
I put my feet back on the dash.
“Piper,” he warns again.
“I know,” I say, smiling at the windshield. “I know.”
He doesn’t ask me to take my feet down again. He just leaves them there.