Drive: and now, eventually

"There's a tone of voice reserved for affection, the kind that says even just the thought of you has given the other person a pleasant dose of brain chemicals. It comes with newest loves and oldest friends, and drops a soft veil around two people that makes all the rest of the world seem significantly less important."

This is the third installment in the "Drive" series. While these can be read in order, each installment is meant to also stand alone, more like an episode than a chapter.

"I have climbed highest mountain, I have run through the fields…"

When Dan finally pulled off the highway, the tank was hovering dangerously close to empty.

He slowed the car gradually as he eased onto the off ramp, instinctively trying to avoid disturbing Emily. His caution was unneeded, though. She was sleeping soundly, and was still completely out when he pulled the car to a stop under the fuel island a few minutes later.

"Hey," he almost whispered, reaching to nudge her, but pulling his hand back at the last second.

There was a sting to that moment, like something snapped when the part of him that wanted to touch her was yanked back by the conviction he shouldn't.

"Hey, Em," he tried again, a little louder, and her eyes slowly opened.

There's a disorientation to waking up in an unfamiliar place, as the brain tries to reconcile where it is against the expectations of a familiar room and bed. When she was younger, Emily loved that sensation – something about uncertainty and adventure, or maybe just the simple joy of being somewhere different.

As her eyes blinked open, she glanced around and the disoriented feeling was gently replaced by awareness, as her brain sorted out the cars and the fuel pumps and the fact she was on a trip with…

That last brought her eyes back around to Dan. She saw him smiling at her, and for a brief moment a familiar wave of warmth washed over her.

That smile was hers, and only hers. It was one Dan kept just for greeting Emily, whether on waking or on walking in the door, or – as only he would know – even just passing over memories of her in his idle thoughts.

Love is complicated, and maybe too much so for a human mind to really take in all the intricacies and caveats that go along with the variety of ways human beings can feel it. Still, whatever else, it's good to feel loved. It's good to be something to someone else.

Emily still loved the way Dan smiled at her, despite herself. Regardless everything that had – no, that's not how that works.

The particular form love took in connecting these two was as much because of all the intervening years and hurts and missed-skipped beats as ever it was regardless of them.

She loved that Dan looked at her as if she were his sunrise. It's difficult to not enjoy being loved like that.

"Summer skies and lullabies. Nights we couldn't say good-bye…"

Emily had been looking forward to this trip for months, ever since before Dan had even agreed to it, back when she first received the invitation to Jonah's wedding and the plan had started to form in her head.

She'd called Dan almost immediately, knowing he should have an invitation of his own either on the way or already in-hand.

"Hey," he'd answered, and the sound of his voice conveyed the smile that her name on his caller ID had produced.

"Hey, Dan. How's life?"

"Nothing worth complaining about," – a stock answer he liked to give.

"Good to hear."

"And you?"

"Pretty much the same. Usual work annoyances and that kind of thing, but nothing too awful."

"Oh yah? They still have you picking up everyone's slack?"

"Eh, I mean... yah. But you know me. I kind of live for that."

"True enough. So, what has you calling?"

"Well, you hear Jonah's getting married?"

"Actually. yes. Got an invitation. Guess you did as well?"

"Yep."

"I imagine that's a little bit awkward for you."

Dan couldn't see the face Emily made in response, but the chill in her tone conveyed it well enough.

"I mean, not really," there was a challenge in those words, as if she was daring Dan to make the kind of comment that would reopen old arguments neither of them would win.

"Fair enough," was his noticeably-curt reply.

Another silence followed, but longer this time, and Emily almost second-guessed her reason for calling. Dan had a real talent for never letting a thing go.

"Anyway," she finally spoke up, "You thinking about going?"

"I mean, I..." Dan let himself trail off for a moment as his mind tried to calculate all the possible outcomes his response might generate. "I wouldn't be opposed, necessarily. Still, that's a bit of a trip, even for Jonah. Honestly, I... kind of think the invitation was as much a courtesy as anything."

Dan silently kicked himself and grimaced as he finished the sentence.

He had almost added something about it being unlikely Jonah would actually expect either of them to show up, but he did manage to at least stop short of that. His mind had hit on a potential possibility behind Emily's call, and his heart intervened just in time to stop his mouth from throwing up any more road blocks between the two of them and that potentiality.

"Yah, I thought of that," Emily said. "Still though, would be kind of nice to see everyone. I mean, most of the crew still lives in Ohio. It'll basically be like a reunion or something."

"Well, yah, totally," Dan agreed. "God. I wonder what all of them have been up to..."

"So, you'd be up for going?"

Dan could feel himself get just a slight bit lightheaded as the potential reasons for Emily's call narrowed and his heart rate sped up.

"I… uh… I mean… yah, it would be kind of fun, I think."

"Well then, why don't you pick me up on your way."

Dan's laugh in response was silent, and full of plenty more emotions than just humor. Emily certainly was "on the way" for Dan, assuming he drove. Yet, only in the same way that half the country was "on the way" between him and Ohio. Still, the casual way she said it, as if they were just talking about a five-minute detour on a drive across town – the words he wanted to respond with were, "God damnit, I love you."

"That would be… awesome," he said, as if those words – and the eagerness in his voice – wouldn't convey the response he'd kept to himself just as well as if he'd said it out loud.

"Good."

And on the other end of the line, Emily was wearing her own special smile that she kept just for Dan.

It took only minutes for the two to hammer out the dates and plans. Emily lived a bit less than a day's drive from Dan, and he would make that portion of the trip in one shot, stay the night on her sofa, and then the two would head out on the much longer journey to reach their old stomping grounds.

For the following weeks, both enjoyed their growing anticipation, each in their own ways and lost in their own thoughts. It gave them excuses for more phone calls too, which hadn't been a regular thing between them in a handful of years.

Even the calls about simple details, such as whose cooler they would use and what audio books they might listen to, always seemed to wander off into the small intimacies of work and daily life, intimacies much more profound in the sharing than most of the physical kinds people tend to take as signs of romance.

And as they remade their acquaintance and were reminded of the things they enjoyed about one another, both found themselves reflecting on those nights and days back in college when they could lose hours in each other's company.

Yet, all of this was still a kind of suspended version of reality.

In the way a training montage in a movie is all about big moments without the grind and repetition of actual training, those months supplied Emily and Dan with much of what's rewarding about relationships, but without the accompanying sacrifices and work.

Between phone calls, Dan found himself digging out old mementos, such as the notebook he used to write poetry in while they sat together smoking shisha or waiting on their loads to finish at the laundromat. He even found the shisha pipe he hadn't touched in years, and set it aside to add to his luggage.

Emily found herself in a similar place, though she didn't have to search as hard as Dan did for the poems he had given her.

Her favorites were her favorites less for the messages conveyed than for the way he managed to make language flow. Even when most of her thoughts of Dan had been unpleasant reminders, she'd still enjoyed his words. And so, all of the poems he'd written for her, she had carefully kept and revisited over the years.

But now, with all the time apart and the sense of unknown due to distance and the small changes that come with growing older, those poems began to hint at a precious kind of hope.

Emily found herself re-reading them in her bed at night, and falling off to sleep holding softly to all the thoughts she hesitated to let fully form.

By the time the day finally arrived, the two of them had almost forgotten that Jonah was getting married at all. The wedding and seeing other old friends wasn't even on the first page of the list of things each was looking forward to.

Dan called Emily one final time before he left home, just a check-in to let her know his estimated arrival time, and a welcome excuse to hear her voice.

"Hey," she answered with a softness that had his head feeling light again. There's a tone of voice reserved for affection, the kind that says even just the thought of you has given the other person a pleasant dose of brain chemicals. It comes with newest loves and oldest friends, and drops a soft veil around two people that makes all the rest of the world seem significantly less important.

"Hey," he responded, "Just wanted to let you know I'm hitting the road. Should get there just before dinner time."

"Good. I'll have something waiting."

'Sweeeeet."

Dan was not a bad cook himself, but he couldn't hold a candle to Emily. Her meals thrown together on short notice would outdo what most people could bring together with a week of preparation and a full kitchen staff to help. Not that she would ever make a meal for a friend without at least a week of planning and preparation. Planning was one of her ways of showing people they were important to her.

Once again, the words that would have come most easily to Dan were not the ones he spoke.

"Well, I can't wait to see you. This is going to be amazing."

"I think so."

"OK, I, uh, should get going. I'll see you in a few hours."

Emily had a few words of her own that would have come too easy and conveyed too much.

"OK. Drive safe, Dan. I can't wait to see you."

"Yah, me too. I mean, to see you, not to see me. I get to see me all the time. Honestly, I get a bit tired of it."

Emily responded with a polite-yet-genuine chuckle, and Dan felt quite content and full just from the fact he'd been able to make her laugh.

The two left the conversation hanging in the air for a moment, as their hearts and minds carried on their own conversations and debates.

"Alright," Dan finally broke in. "I'll see you soon."

"Not soon enough," Emily replied.

"The autumn wind, and the winter winds they have come and gone…"

In the car, sitting at that truck stop with each of them collecting themselves and their thoughts, that phone call could have happened a lifetime ago, or simply between completely different people.

In the intervening time, the observations had been made, the waveform had collapsed, and various potentials had fallen away. Now, they were left with only the thoroughly unimaginative and unsatisfying reality of how little difference time and distance actually make of people and situations.

Still, we make the best of it as we can.

"I'm gonna get gas," Dan said. "Figured we could go ahead and switch, if you're OK to drive."

Still in the process of waking up, Emily took a moment to respond.

"Yah, sounds good. Could use a bathroom too."

"Definitely."

Dan smiled, but not Emily's smile. It was just a polite raising of the corners of his mouth that crossed his face as he opened his door and got out.

Emily pushed herself back into the seat for a moment and sighed, then opened her door and hoisted herself out of the car.

"You want me to grab you a coffee?" she asked over her shoulder as she started toward the service center.

"Sure," he hollered after her.

Once all they needed to do had been done, the two found themselves back in the car with positions transposed and the highway rolling out in front of them.

It was ridiculous, now that they had no other company than one another, that conversation wasn't forthcoming. After all those phone calls, reminding them of the old times and talking for hours without anything to actually say, it seemed they'd finally run out of words.

Dan yawned, a bit too demonstrably, and reclined his seat. When he finally spoke, his eyes were already closed and he was adjusting himself into the closest thing he could find to comfortable.

"Well, good... night… morningish... thing," he said with a tired, goofy smile.

Emily did not look over at first, only nodding and smiling, before thinking of Dan's closed eyes.

"Good night, Dan."

And now she glanced at him, feeling the freedom to feel all the things she'd avoided when his eyes were open, lest any of them show on her face.

There was a wave of sadness, followed by one of regret, and the shoreline of her thoughts resolved to a calm kind of nostalgic emptiness as both of those receded back into memory's sea.

I love you, she mouthed at his quiet form, in a moment caught between old habits and a test of whether those words still felt true.

Returning her attention to the road, Emily switched from the radio to an audio book she had meant to listen to with Dan in those hours of the drive they'd both be awake, but those intentions belonged to a different lifetime now.

It was one of her favorites, a book she'd read and heard untold times over, and one she'd often return to as a kind of mental comfort food.

Yet, Emily was barely through the intro before she found herself reaching for the volume knob and shutting the system off. In some moments, quiet is better.

And in that quiet, with the background noise of the highway and the few cars and plenty of semis out at this time of the morning, with Dan already deep in sleep beside her, Emily let her mind wander back to Jonah and Ohio and all the crooked steps taken along the way.

Thank you for reading

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Part one:

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