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I was seriously debating sleeping on the floor when she huffed out a breath.
“This is ridiculous,” she murmured, flopping onto her back and accidentally elbowing me in the side. “Sorry.”
“Why do they even make beds this size?” I grumbled, wiggling my feet. I was so far up on the bed that my hair brushed the headboard, but my heels still hung off the end. “Who could be comfortable like this?”
“I don’t think it’s meant for two people,” she said seriously.
“I don’t think it’s meant for adults,” I replied.
“Short ones, maybe,” she muttered.
We were quiet for a while, neither of us comfortable enough to actually fall asleep.
“Still happy that we’re moving to Oregon?” I asked, then cursed silently. “I mean, okay with it?”
“I’m happy,” she said unconvincingly. “I like your family.”
I lay there for a moment, then asked the question that had been rolling around in my head for days. “Do you wish that you’d gone back to New York with your aunt and uncle?”
Her answer didn’t come right away, and my heart raced while silence filled the dark room.
“No,” she said finally. “I’m not a child, and if I went back with them, they would have treated me like one.”
“I wasn’t sure,” I murmured. “If you wanted to go, I wouldn’t have argued.”
“Did you want me to go?” she asked quietly.
“No,” I replied quickly. “No, I want you with me.”
She didn’t reply, and even though it was the truth, I wasn’t sure if I’d said the right thing. Everything was so messed up with us. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say or do anymore. I’d always been the easygoing one, the person who put everyone at ease and made them laugh. But I wasn’t that person for Sarai. My jokes had no effect on her anymore, and my words always seemed to come out wrong.
We lay there in the silence for a long time. Then, without a word, Sarai reached out and grabbed my hand. She rolled onto her side and pulled me with her until I was pressed against her back, my knees notched behind hers. I was so overwhelmed that I had a hard time controlling my breathing. Finally, she was in my arms.
I wrapped my arm around her waist and inhaled the scent of her hair. I’d missed her so goddamn much.
* * *
We slept together like a couple of spoons, but when we got up the next morning, nothing had really changed.
I’d married her planning on forever, and that hadn’t changed for me. I didn’t for a second wonder if we would get divorced, because I didn’t consider it an option. We’d promised to stick it out through the good and the bad, and right now was really bad. We just had to get through it.
I wondered if Sarai felt the same way, though. She didn’t even seem to like me anymore, much less love me the way I loved her. The thought made nausea pool in my gut.
“We’re making good time,” I said as the light started to fade. We were almost to the hotel I’d planned on staying at. “Do you want to stop for the night, or should we keep driving?”
“Didn’t you make a hotel reservation?” she asked, turning her head to look at me. It was the first time she’d even acknowledged me in hours.
“That doesn’t mean we have to stay there,” I said, wiggling my eyebrows. “We can go where the wind takes us.”
“We should probably follow the schedule,” she said, looking out the windshield again.
“Schedule smedule,” I replied. “This is a road trip. We make the rules.”
“I say we stop where you made the reservation,” she said flatly.
“Oh, come on,” I teased. “It’s barely dark yet.”
“If you plan for something,” she snapped, losing her temper, “then you should follow the plan! That’s what plans are for. You follow them so you know what you’re doing. Why even make a plan if you aren’t going to follow it? That’s just stupid!”
My eyes widened in surprise.
“Sarai,” I said, completely confused. “It’s a crappy motel reservation. They don’t care if we stop or not.”
“I care,” she yelled, making me jerk. “I care that we follow the fucking plan.”
“What the hell?” I replied, glancing over at her in disbelief. “What’s your deal?”
“Some of us make plans for a reason, Alex,” she hissed. “Some of us make plans because we like knowing what’s next. We like knowing where we’re going to sleep that night. We like knowing when we’ll be to our destination.”
“We’ll stop,” I conceded, raising one hand in surrender, trying to calm her down. “I didn’t realize it was such a big deal.”
“Of course you didn’t,” she ground out. “Because you just do whatever you want and everyone just has to go along with you. You don’t care about how anyone else feels.”
