Five Days to Go
The car door is heavier than I expect. Like a metaphor for the way my heart feels, how my
feet feel as I lift them with every step.
I sit down and the door closes with a loud thunk. At this point, all I can hear is the steady
beat of my heart in my ears. Pounding.
Zaid doesn’t look at me. He’s facing the window, his breath heavy, like he’s struggling with his own control. His eyes watch the houses, his lips moving like he’s chewing on
them.
I click my seatbelt into place, the sound loud in the quiet. My thoat feels thick, dry and I
wonder if I’m even going to be able to talk.
He still won’t look at me. His hands are on his lap, clenched and still.
So I decide to break the silence, my soul still sore from the barrage of feelings his words
caused. “How’d you know I wanted to go somewhere green?”
That gets him.
He turns, slowly, and when his eyes meet mine, those dark, beautiful eyes that I haven’t let myself stare into the past couple of days, I feel it like a hit to the chest. His frown pulls slightly deeper, confusion settling across his features.
I look down, swallowing the heat rising in my throat. “I overheard some of your
conversation with Jake.”
His eyes widen, nostrils flaring like he’s about to say something.
I shake my head quickly, giving him an out. “It wasn’t much. I just heard you say you were
going to find a place I liked. Somewhere green.”
His shoulders relax a little. I watch as he looks away and shrugs. “You always say it’s too
dry here. That you miss the green in Florida.”
I smile and nod as I glance down at my lap. “Yeah, green sounds nice.”
Without a word, he picks up his phone and hands it to me.
1/4
Five Days to Go
I glance at him, confused, but he jerks his chin toward the screen. I unlock it and gasp. He has a website pulled up, a dozen listings saved to his favorites. Beautiful homes. Trees everywhere. Water nearby. Space. Quiet. Nature.
And every single one of them is in Virginia.
The air leaves my lungs.
“Zaid,” I whisper, blinking hard as my throat tightens. I look at him, the tears already slipping past my lashes. “How did you know I wanted to go to Virginia?”
His eyes soften immediately. Something shifts in his face, like he’s in pain. Like he can’t breathe. Like he wants to run as much as I do. His hand twitches on his lap like he wants to reach for me, and I feel my whole body lean an inch in his direction, like instinct.
“Wasn’t your dad from there?” he says quietly.
I nod, the tears spilling now, fast and hot. I bite my bottom lip to keep it from trembling, but it’s no use.
He watches me like he’s drinking me, breathing me in. Then, barely above a whisper, he says, “I listen to you, even when you think no one’s listening.”
God.
I look away, trying to breathe around the knot in my chest. But it doesn’t ease. Because he’s here. And I’m here. And we’re driving across the country, together, toward something that could be new or old or broken or whole.
I don’t know what this road trip is going to change.
“How long will it take us to get there?” I ask, my voice fragile around the emotion I
haven’t fully swallowed down.
“Five days,” Zaid replies, eyes flicking to me, then back to the window,
Five days.
I shudder, almost imperceptibly, but it’s not from the cold. It’s from the weight of what
that means.
2/4
Five Days to Go
Five days. Alone with him. Trapped in a car, in hotel rooms, in roadside diners, in that stretch of quiet that only happens on long highways, the kind that lets all the thoughts I’ve tried to bury come clawing up from underneath.
Five days of aching for him while pretending I’m not. Five days of pretending I don’t want to reach across the center console and touch his hand. Five days of forcing my body not to lean toward his, even though it already is, silently, shamefully begging for his attention like it always does.
This is going to be torture.
He puts the car into gear and slowly backs out of the driveway.
The tires crunch softly over the gravel, and I feel something tighten in my chest. My hand goes to the window, fingers brushing the glass as I watch the house shrink in the
distance, the one I laughed in, cried in, kissed in, and made love in.
The place where it all got too messy, too fast.
A sob bubbles up without warning, and I press my lips together to muffle it, but I can’t hold it back completely. Tears drip down my face, silent and heavy. I don’t even bother
wiping them away.
I’m not crying for the house.
I’m crying because part of me is still clinging to everything inside it. To Jake, to Aiden, to all the versions of me that didn’t know better.
To the way Zaid looked at me once, before things shattered.
To the four of us together, lying naked in bed after a night of exploring.
To the feeling of not being alone.
Zaid doesn’t say anything. He just drives, silently. I don’t know if he hears me crying, or if he’s just letting me have this moment, but either way, I’m grateful.
Because this hurts more than I thought it would.
And we still have five days to go.
