Chapter 16: The Last Night on the Road

They stopped for the night in a small California town forty miles from the coast — a motel with a pool that was green in an appealing way and a restaurant next door that served food at ten p.m. because California. Jess sat on the edge of the pool with her feet in the water and Danny brought her a glass of wine from the restaurant and sat beside her, and the evening was warm and starry and smelled of eucalyptus and something she didn't have a name for but would always, after this, recognize as the smell of the last night before something changes. 'Tell me what happens,' she said. 'After. Practically.' 'You're in Chicago. I'm in Boston.' 'That's fourteen hours by car,' she said. 'Or two hours by plane.' 'I've made longer commutes for less important things.' She laughed — a real one, the kind that surprised her. 'That's the most you thing you've ever said.' 'I meant it practically,' he said. 'But also every other way.' She looked at the pool's reflection of the stars. At the way water made everything more complicated and more beautiful simultaneously. 'I need you to know something,' she said. 'I was afraid, five years ago, not of you. Of how much I would rearrange myself to be what you needed. I've done that in relationships before and lost pieces of myself I didn't get back.' 'I know,' he said. 'And I need you to know that I don't want you to rearrange yourself. I want you as you are, which is complicated and strategic and occasionally infuriating and also the person I would drive across the country for without being asked.' She turned to look at him. 'You were asked,' she said. 'By a travel app glitch.' 'The app glitch didn't make me want to be in that car,' he said. 'That was entirely me.' The pool reflected the stars and the stars held still and Jess Mercer, who had spent five years being strategic, made an entirely unstrategic decision. She kissed him. He kissed her back. And the last night on the road became the first night of something else, and the eucalyptus-scented California air held it gently, and it was, she thought, exactly right.