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We tried to plan the journey on the map that Garrett dug out from the boot of his car; a huge road atlas that covered practically the whole of the US, which was handy, I guess. We spread it out on the kitchen table, and for a second all either of us could do was just stare at the creased paper, the neatly divided space between our destination and us. The distance looked dauntingly long.

“Uhhm,” Garrett stepped back from pouring over the map and tugged a hand through his hair, looking overwhelmed. “I think we’re gonna have to get the Internet in involved here. Can you pull up a route planner or something?”

I huffed a sigh and went to fetch my laptop, sitting at the breakfast bar while Garrett pretended to still be figuring out the map. My quick google search led me to a useful site, so I entered my zip code and Coral Springs, and the route coupled with the estimated driving time popped cheerfully onto the screen. I sucked in a sharp breath and Garrett twisted to look at me over his shoulder.

“What?”

I started laughing. Manically. “This things says it’s gonna take 35 hours to get there.”

Garrett’s eyes widened. “Oh.”

“I mean, holy shit! When’s the wedding again?”

“Friday.”

I did some quick calculations in my head, allowing for at least one night in a motel, lunch breaks and fuel stops. We’d still need to drive flat out most of the time. “When did you wanna leave again?”

“Today.”

“Just as well. Shit Garrett. I didn’t know it would take that long.”

He shrugged apologetically, straightening up from leaning over the table. “It’s a long way. I guess I’m kind of used to long drives these days, you know? Touring so much kinda ingrains it into you.”

Right. Of course. Just me freaking out then.

I looked back at the screen and tried not to wince at the information it was showing me, but instead emailed the page to myself so I could be the navigator whilst driving. I clenched my teeth. I could do this. I totally could.
My phone pinged with the email and I opened it up to check it.

“You got money for fuel and stuff?” I asked Garrett.

“Yeah I got it covered, don’t worry. Hotels too.”

I nodded and handed Garrett my phone so he could have a look at the directions too whilst I swept the remains of my store cupboards into a bag to provide sustenance on the road. Once I was done I placed the bag down by both mine and Garrett’s cases stacked by the front door. I was procrastinating.

“What about music?” I asked worriedly. Road trips required good music selection. Everyone knows that. Garrett pulled his beat up iPod classic from his back pocket and waved it at me.

“Also covered. You ready?”

“I should call work…” I’d already called Tayla to inform her of where I’d be disappearing off. She was obviously torn between being delighted and highly doubtful as to how healthy the trip would be for me – and I kind of agreed. I was still however putting off calling my work. Garrett shrugged.

“Call ‘em when we stop first or something. You’re ready, come on. Stop stressing. This will be fun, promise.”

He smiled easily at me and eventually I gave up and helped him carry the bags to the trunk, and he stood and watched me as I locked up and slipped the keys under the mat for Tayla to collect later.

When I slipped into the passenger seat Garrett had the stereo blasting, his sunglasses on, and a smile on his face. I settled myself next to him and watched as we pulled out of my drive.

“To infinity and beyond!” Garrett quipped, smirking, and I rolled my eyes, slipping my converse clad feet onto the dashboard. Garrett raised an eyebrow but I shrugged, knocking my shoes together.

“You’ll get your turn, Nickelsen.”

“I better. Hey, how long till we get there?”

I glanced down at the phone on my lap. “Thirty-four hours, twenty minutes and counting,” I replied flatly.

Garrett leant over to crank up the stereo, and the thumping bass of ‘Sleepwalking’ filled the car. My face split into a smile as Garrett head banged along, his fingers tapping out the melody on the wheel. He turned to smile at me as well pulled out into the highway, and the breeze from the open window flicked his bangs away from his face – a genuine smile, contagious and full of promise. I pulled out my phone and snapped a photo just in time. A moment captured – and I wondered how many more we’d have.

Xxx

The streets zipped past my passenger seat window in a blur of perfectly kept lawns and stop signs, streetlamps and junctions, each minute and mile ticking down to our destination. On the straight roads Garrett draped one arm casually over the steering wheel to keep it on course, and played eye spy with me – or a version of. It went a little like this:

“I spy with my little eye something beginning with T.”

“Tarmac?”

“No.”

“Trees?”

“No.”

“Tyres?”

“Nope.”

“Are you sure it’s a T?”

“I know the alphabet, Brands, thanks.”

“Uhhm, toll station?”

“We passed the last one like a half hour back. No!”

“Okay, then I give up.”

Garrett looked at me exasperatedly. “What? Just like that?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Gare.”

“Nah, you just don’t like losing. You’re a bad loser.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, that’s it. Go on, just tell me.”

“Tequila!”

I stared at him. “Gare, nowhere can I see a bottle of tequila. Believe me this would be a lot more interesting if there was.”

“Well, duh, I’m imagining the tequila.”

My mouth opened and shut a couple of times before I was able to speak. “That’s not, uh, that’s not how the game works, Gare. I’m meant to be able to see it too – otherwise it’s just a game of ‘hey what’s Garrett fantasizing about now?”

“It makes it way more exciting!” he protested. “And my fantasies are a whole other game, thank you.” He winked at me, and I had to look out the window rather hurriedly so he wouldn’t see the blush that crept up my neck at that mental image.

“Well, you’re being stupid,” I muttered, but Garrett just laughed and kept on driving.

Xxx

Time in the car seemed to slip by sporadically. There were long periods where I’d have my feet propped on the dashboard, engrossed in my book due to my thankful ability to be able to read whilst travelling in any form, with nothing else happening. The soft sounds of me turning pages were the only thing to interrupt the music playing softly out of the stereo – now Springsteen’s Nebraska album. The Boss’s crooning voice lulled me into calmness. Periods like this stretched on and on down the miles of road we had to travel. I entertained myself with taking pictures out the passenger widow and when I got bored of that I turned the camera to Garrett and took pictures until the faces he pulled got so outrageous that I had to stop for fear my belly would burst from laughter.

We switched places every three hours or so, and mostly Garrett just napped next to me, his head lolling on his shoulders, hair sliding over his eyes. Regrettably, with both hands on the wheel, I couldn’t take pictures of this. He looked adorable, enough of a distraction that I didn’t find the monotonous highway so boring.

It was good.

Xxx

“Heyyyy, sleepyhead.”

Garrett’s voice washed over me. I felt a hand on my shoulder and when I pulled my eyelids open, Garrett was leaning over me, standing in the open passenger door, a slight smile on his face. Past him I could see a gas station and tiny shop, evening light making the sky deep purple in the corners.

‘Where are we?’ I meant to ask; it came out more as a garbled bunch of letters, but Garrett laughed and pointed to the faded flashing neon sign above the shop. I frowned – I didn’t recognise the name.

“Someplace in Texas,” he finished for me.

“Oh. Wha’ time s’it?”

“Nine. You wanna stop? I’m pretty sure I passed a motel just down the road, we could check it?”

I tried hard to stifle the yawn that overtook my body when Garrett mentioned stopping, but to no avail; it ripped through me and I stretched like a cat in the front seat, hissing with pain when it revealed a nasty crick in my neck I’d gained from sleeping funny. Garrett shoved a chocolate bar into my hand and shook his head, looking concerned.

“C’mon you’re beat. I’ll turn this thing around.”

I didn’t have much energy to protest, nor did I want to, and five minutes later, Garrett pulled into the lot of a dubious looking motel. Their vacancy sign was hanging half off the board, and the paint was faded and peeling. The building looked sparse and rickety, like all the lurid blue plastic it had decorating the windows and staircases was near splitting.

I stared out the passenger seat and heaved a sigh.

“Unless you wanna sleep in the car again…”

“No,” I replied quickly, re-arranging my features to a half-smile. “This is good.”

“I’ve stayed in worse,” Garrett said flatly, “believe me.”

I turned to face him, my nose wrinkled. “Yeah, you’re in a band, crappy sleeping places are like your job.”

“Part of my job.”

“You’d sleep on a bench if you had to.”

“Not true, I’ve developed quite a liking for Nick’s lap during flights at the moment. He has a surprisingly comfy crotch. Not sure if benches would cut it anymore.”

This made a laugh bubble up, and Garrett winked at me, happy to have lifted my mood. We climbed out the car and grabbed a few bags, traipsing into the motel lobby, where a teenage girl sat behind the desk, chewing gum and twirling a pen between her Barbie pink nails.

She looked up as we walked in, her bored expression slipping off her face as she took the both of us in. I felt rather than saw Garrett’s step falter beside me as we approached the desk and I knew we were both thinking the same thing – did she recognise Garrett?

“Hello, how can I help?” she asked brightly, he bright nails hovering over the practically prehistoric computer beside her. Her eyes immediately trained on Garrett, her eyes sweeping up and down his figure, to rest intently on his face.

Garrett coughed, tense, and his voice came out a few pitches lower. “Umm, we’d like a room, please.”

“Sure!” Her voice came out honey sweet, sickly. “And would you like economy, standard or deluxe, sir?”

“Uhhm,” Garrett looked at me, but I just shrugged. I wasn’t the one paying so I felt like the decision should have nothing to do with me. Garrett had insisted earlier.

“Regular,” he replied finally, but the girl’s expression fell, and she pouted, flicking her brown hair over her shoulder.

“I’m sorry, we only have deluxe rooms left, sir. It’s an extra $30 per person, but it comes with a complimentary mini fridge!” she squeaked.

I winced. “But your sign says you have vacancies,” I pointed out.

She looked uncomfortable for a second, but then plastered on a smile again, too full of teeth to be genuine. “We do – the deluxe rooms.”

“So why offer us regular rooms in the first place?” I demanded, annoyed.

“I’m sorry sir,” I bristled when she was addressed Garrett and not me. The nerve of this girl, blatantly checking Gare out, and messing us around…

“It’s company policy to—“

“Well, we don’t want to pay for the deluxe rooms!”

“I can’t do anything about it I’m afraid – there are some economy rooms available if you really wanted-“

“We wanted a regular room!”

“Brandy!” Garrett cut over me, raising a warning eyebrow. I shut my mouth and crossed my arms. Garrett turned back to the girl and tried to match her smile. She was practically leaning over her desk to get closer to him.

“Sorry, we’ve had a long journey,” he said, throwing his arm around my shoulder and drawing me into his side. “We’re both really tired.”

I turned into Garrett’s side, pressing my forehead into his shoulder, to hide my rolling eyes.

“We’ll take the deluxe room,” I head him say.

There was the sound of the girl’s nails tapping away on the keyboard, some humming under her breath. I pressed myself further into Garrett’s shirt – it smelt like petrol from earlier – and closed my eyes. I really was tired. This girl was tiring me out more. Could she make herself any more obvious?

“Queen double?” she chirped.

“Sure.”

My eyes flew open again.

Oh.

The girl slid a set of keys over the counter and motioned for Garrett to sign for them.

“Have a good evening Mr….” She frowned at the piece of paper for a second, trying to translate his handwriting, “Mr Nickelsen!”

Garrett paused in pocketing the keys. “Wait, so you don’t know who I am?”

The girl’s face remained blank. “No…. should I?” she asked, sounding utterly confused.

“Uhm, no, absolutely no reason. I just – never mind,” Garrett stuttered, before tugging on my arm and striding towards the elevator, pulling me with him.

“So basically she was just hitting on you,” I said, as we waited for the doors to open. I tried to pass it off as a joke, but really the girl had gotten under my skin. Sometimes I forgot that Garrett was attractive to everybody else too. It sounds weird, but to me he was just Garrett, funny, crazy Garrett, my Garrett, and it was odd to think of anyone else just being interested in his looks.

His strong jaw. His cute floppy hair. His blueblueblue eyes.

“Whatever,” he said, uncomfortable. “Sorry about the room stuff. I had to stop you biting her head off though. You didn’t have to do that to know you’d totally win in a cat fight you know?”

I giggled, letting the incident slide at his cool answer. “Yeah, I know.”

We rode the elevator to the top floor and Garrett opened the corresponding door to our ‘deluxe room.’

Deluxe, my ass.

The room was pretty standard. A rickety wardrobe and the aforementioned mini fridge balanced precariously on top of a set of drawers pushed against one of the walls. There was a tiny shower and toilet and a tv that looked straight out of the sixties on a desk opposite the bed.

The tiny double bed.

Excellent.

Garrett pulled a face, throwing his bag onto the bed, only for it to carry o sliding and fall off the other side, the mattress was that small. We both stared incredulously at it for a second.

“Yikes. What makes this a deluxe room again?”

“The mini fridge, apparently,” I answered dryly. I walked over to it and yanked the door open. It was empty save for two small cans of coke, the tiny ones that you take on picnics and such. I reached in and threw one to Garrett, who looked at it, unimpressed, before setting it down on the single bedside table.

“You normally take the left side of the bed yeah?” he asked me, completely offhandedly.

Oh right, the bed thing.

Not like we hadn’t shared a bed before, but it was different now. Garrett was single, and I was so close, all the time now, to just telling him everything.

Tonight would prove to be very interesting, apparently.

“I mean you can take the right side, if you want, but you normally take the left… I just thought…”

Garrett was rambling through my silence and it jarred me into speaking.

“The left’s fine, Gare.”

His face broke out into a smile and he picked up his bag, tugging out his PJs. Silly patterned trousers decorated with little alien faces. “I’m just gonna get ready for bed, you in?”

It’s safe to say I blushed.

Oh yes, tonight was going to be very interesting indeed.