She left it on for me this morning.
---
She kills the engine in the drive.
She does not get out.
She turns to me. She lifts the wool hat off my head and she puts it on the dash. She puts her hand in my hair where the hat was, and she fixes a piece that has gone flat, and she leans across the bench seat and she kisses me.
The kiss is not the slow kiss.
The kiss is the kiss of a woman who watched a woman come for her in the bed of a truck and who has spent the fourteen miles since thinking about putting her hands on her, and the kiss is hungry, and it is at the side of my neck before the front of my mouth, and her hand is at the front of my coat undoing the top button before I have my mouth open, and I make a small surprised sound and she swallows it.
"Max."
"Get out."
"Max."
"Out of the truck. Now."
I get out.
I get out and I am laughing a little, and I close my door and I come around to her side, and she is out of the cab and she catches me at the back fender of the truck and she pushes me up against the side of the bed, and her hands are in my coat and her mouth is at my throat, and her knee is between mine.
"In the cabin."
"No."
"Max."
"Here."
"I just."
"I know you just. I'm going to do it again."
"Oh."
She kisses me.
She kisses me with the side of the truck cold at my back through the coat, and her body warm at my front, and her thigh between mine, and her hand sliding down my stomach inside the coat and inside the henley, and I am laughing into her mouth a little and gasping into it a little and her hand goes lower, and lower, and she has the front of the sweats pushed down with two fingers and her hand is sliding into me and I am still wet from the truck bed and she makes a sound low in her chest at the wet, and I make a sound back, and her fingers are in me at the side of the truck under the porch light.
I do not see the headlights.
I do not see the headlights because my eyes are closed and my mouth is on her mouth and her hand is in me, and I do not hear the engine because the heater of the truck is still ticking down beside us, and I do not know there is another vehicle in the drive until the headlights wash across us and Max goes still against me and lifts her mouth and turns her head.
A car door closes.
A voice.
“Hale.”
Max does not move for a count.
I do not breathe.
Then she pulls her hand out of me slow. She fixes the front of my sweats. She buttons the top button of my coat with one hand at my collar. She does not turn around. She is between me and the headlights. She is wide enough that the woman behind us cannot see me. I hold very still against the side of the truck.
