Page 15 of Our Hearts Knew Better

My mouth hung open like I’d never been inside of a car before. I was ingrainedly shocked at seeing other teens with vehicles of their own, because I still didn’t even have my license. And I didn’t know if I would.WhenI would, I corrected the thought. Because I would. Just because I didn’t have my license when I should’ve didn’t mean I wouldn’t ever.

I was learning that for sure this summer.

This was the summer ofwills.

Adam’s car was cleaner than I would’ve guessed it would be. Just a few straw wrappers scattered around and some dirt on the floor mats. And he had a satellite radio, just like my dad’s. He didn’t skimp out on that, either.

“What music do you like?” he asked me once he got us moving, finger-punching through the stations.

Ten Decembers came into my head, the songs I’d listened to with Levi, so many lyrics almost all at once.

“Rock,” I told him, lifting my chin to feel the cool air from the vents on my neck. I kept my answer general, as I wanted to keep Levi’s and mine’s favorite band to us. From my little time being around both of them, I sensed they were also different with the music they listened to.

Adam’s response put a swelled feeling in my chest that Levi kept our favorite band to himself too.

“Rock’s pretty good. I didnotpeg you for a rock girl, though.” His brows were raised with his smile as he punched through the stations with more of a mission.

I smiled to myself, too, over not being so easilypegged, for being so easily pigeonholed. If my grandmother were to describe me, that’s the word she’d use.Pigeonholed.

“Pop rock is good too,” I teased with emphasis on the pop genre, going off my assumption of the music he assumed I jammed out to in my bedroom. “Punk rock. Soft rock. Alternative rock. Indie rock…” I trailed off with a peek at his profile to spy an amused crease around his mouth.

“Yeah, okay, I got it,” he said with his playful tone as he settled on a station, the music now crooning through the speakers cutting off the rest of my list. I had at least six more subgenres ready to fly.

“Not country rock, though,” I clarified. Which was true, but the tease was still in my voice.

He snickered. “Definitely not countryanything.”

My throat squeezed as I imagined my mom hearing Adam say that and defending her favorite genre, then I swallowed down the feeling.

I shifted on the seat, tugging some more at my shorts when my bare legs made a sound against the leather, and watched the trees and buildings and streetlights—that were passing a bit fast by the window.

We weren’t goingtoofast, but. . .

I took a breath and sighed it out, observing that Adam had control. He kept us between the lines, and there were no other cars on the road. I was just used to my dad’s cautious old man driving.

And this speed was kind ofthrilling. And it made sense for Adam.

“What’s the plan?” I asked him.

He gave me a side stare, his brow raised. “You trust me?”

My mouth shaped my response before I pushed it out through a laugh. “I don’t really know you.” I knewthingsabout him and he knewthingsabout me. And I knew he put an extra beat in my pulse when he grinned at me a certain way. But we still had depths to go.

“But you’re in my car,” he pointed out, and I released a hum toward the dark sky.

“I guess…I trust myself.” I trusted my instincts. I trusted I was making the right choices. And if not therightchoices, I was at least making my own.

Adam nodded like he liked my answer, then he gave me his. “We’re just driving.” He said it low, both his hands tense on the wheel, before sliding down to rest together at the bottom, and I deduced this is whatheneeded.

“You like driving?”

“I like my car,” he said with a laugh. “It helps me get away.” This was said in that same low volume, another confirmation, before he moved a hand back up the wheel and added through another laugh, “Spinning wheels on the road ease the spinning in my head.”

He was being open in a dismissive way. I wouldn’t have dismissed him, but I knew how difficult it could be to give voice to your pain.Ilet mine be heard, when and with who I could, but this was howwewere different. Adam didn’t live in the sun but he survived off its shine.

“It can be that way for you too,” he told me next, and I leaned my head against the headrest as I focused on the spinning wheels, on the music, on the hum from the car, all like a lull for every nerve.

Being in a car with my dad wasn’t like this at all. Besides some part of mealwaysbeing rigid around him, we never just drovearound. There was just Destination B, sometimes a Destination C, before coming right back to Destination A.

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