Page 78 of 72 Hours of You

“Do you need to maybe check that?” I ask.

“Nah,” he says, keeping his eyes straight ahead. “It’s probably not important. And I don’t text and drive.” He puts on his blinker and heads toward the highway on-ramp.

“How far outside of town are we going, exactly?”

“Oh,” Peter says, “just … a couple hours.”

Forty-Four

PETER FINALLY GETS OFF THE HIGHWAY. And then keeps driving for another twenty minutes. By the time he says, “We’re almost there,” I’m starving, I have a cramp in my leg, and half my ass is asleep.

He pulls into a rundown gas station lot and parks the car.

“This is lovely, Peter. Thank you for taking me here. You’re right, I do feel more alive. Is that urine I smell? Wait, no! I think it’s a raccoon carcass. Beautiful.”

“It’s a pee break. There aren’t toilets where we’re going.”

“Well. You certainly weren’t lying about making a mistake.” Peter laughs. “Just trust me. Or don’t. You’re kind of stuck at this point.” And then he winks and gets out of the car. “You coming?”

His phone buzzes again.

“You should probably answer that now, don’t you think?” I say, grabbing it from the cup holder and holding it out to him.

Peter stares at the phone for a second before taking it from me. “Yeah,” he says, “it’s probably just my mom. No worries.”

“Okay …” There’s something weird about his smile, but before I can say anything to him, he turns around and swipes up on his phone.

I get out and go to the bathroom, which is only marginally nicer than the one in the bar we were in Tuesday night. Apparently it’s Kylie and Fran who are the dirty whores around these stalls. I wish I had a Sharpie to scribble over their names. But I don’t.

When I get out, Peter is leaning against the car, his head tipped back, with his eyes closed, the sun on his face, and a crisp breeze blowing his hair just slightly. The windows are rolled down and the music is still playing. He’s not smiling, but he looks so relaxed and cool and peaceful. Like all he needs in this world is to be at this shitty gas station with the sun warming his cheeks. There’s this little space at the base of his neck, right above his collarbone, that is just … I kind of can’t believe that I kissed him. And that I could again.

Peter blinks his green eyes open when he hears me coming. “Look what I scored from the vending machine.” He holds out a pack of Reese’s Cups.

I take it from him. “If Kit Kats are the friendliest candy bars, what’s a Reese’s?”

“The most romantic. Because there’re two of them.” The tips of Peter’s ears turn pink. “Wow, yeah. Okay. I heard the words as they were leaving my mouth, but it was too late to get them back.”

I laugh. “God, I don’t even want to know what Skittles are.”

“The horniest. Okay, I think something might be wrong with me today. Can we just eat these, please?”

We each grab a cup and then sort of cheers them together and it’s awkward as hell but I’m also kind of enjoying seeing this slightly unhinged side of Peter.

And then he slides a pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket and hits them on his hand. I …

“What the fuck is that?”

“Cigarettes.” He says this casually, as if it makes any sense at all. As if he’s some grifter from the ’90s and not a morally pure book nerd who reads Tolstoy for fun. This cannot actually be what’s happening. He can’t be smoking.

“Oh. Wait. Is it like … a metaphor?”

Peter pauses his tapping. “Is a cigarette a metaphor?”

“Yeah, you know, like in The Fault in Our Stars.”

“I’ve never read it.”

“You’ve never read it? How is that possible? John Green? It’s like hugely famous.”