2
Daniel
I like my roads quiet. A road respects you if you respect it. People work the same way. Jake, on the other hand, treated silence like a dare, filled it with music loud enough to be just shy of an argument.
Ava sat in the passenger seat, one bare knee pointed toward the dash, the other crossed over it, foot sketching lazy circles in the air. The A/C muttered. Pines marched past in military rows. Jake reached forward to change the song again; I said his name once, and he left it alone. He leaned back grinning the same grin he’d had as a slippery five-year-old in a bathtub, full of soap and schemes.
“Almost there?” he asked.
“Forty minutes.”
Ava’s eyes found me in the rearview. She didn’t hold the look long; smart, but long enough to knock something loose in my chest I didn’t w
