The car is parked next to one of those large metal green cubes. Weeds surround it in silent worship. Kids lounge on it with half eaten snickers bars and runny noses. Bikes lying in heaps on the patchy grass. The windows are fogged and his arms are around Lyllian. Their breath comes in soft puffs of cold air and the sun sinks below the tree line. 

“So what about it?” Lyllian leans her head back against the seat and her fingers trace the cracked plastic of the old Subaru’s dash. “A trip?”

“A road trip.” he says a smile in his voice.

“Yea. Ok”, giddy. The open road. Rose stands, wine coolers by the lake under a thick blanket then snuggles by the fire. The quiet. No one asking or looking or pushing. Ready. She is a woman after all, twenty-one. And it’s real. It must be. Or it would have been faded like over washed jeans. Not hot and sharp like an oil opened and spilled or strong and forceful like the wash of rainwater gushing over your palms as you stand in the deluge letting it run down your cheeks and under your shirt uncaring and free.

“I want to,” she trails off. Starts again. “I love you and I am ready”. She remembers how it does not quite register at first. This admission of love. He kisses her lips and tucks a long dark curl behind her ear. Out into the night. Lyllian drives home with the radio pounding from all sides. 

Next Chapter: Lyllian, November 2016, Seattle