There’s how the late-morning sun makes her skin golden,especially her smooth right leg, up on the seat and leaning against the door. The way she sticks her tongue out the side of her mouth as she creates complicated shapes out of the Twizzlers Pull ’n’ Peel, and then eats them with the biggest grin. How when we’re driving through LA and the Valley, she talks shit to all the cars under her breath—for going too fast, too slow, not signaling. One time she even holds her hands up in exasperation at a big bro truck that was tailgating us and just laughs when the driver flips her off. And then there’s her serious face as she’s choosing music, like she’s performing brain surgery or something.

Even as I’m living these moments, it’s like my mind recognizes that they’re special, fleeting, and I need to scoop them all up and tuck them somewhere safe, like a little kid whenever confetti falls from above.

We’re past a long stretch of beaches and are driving through rolling hills, bleached yellow from a dry summer. Delilah turns the dial on the radio, cutting through static and country ballads until she lands on a song that makes her jump up in her seat and sing along. “I have nothing, nothing, nothing if I don’t have yooooooou.”

The song is an old-school belter, but Delilah’s voice is quiet and restrained like it has been whenever she’s sung a few snatches of lyrics throughout the drive, almost like it’s sneaking out without her permission.

It’s over just as soon as it started. “Oh, I love that one,” she says, disappointed, as the synthesizer opening of another song starts. “Actually, that song reminds me of one of these drives. We—mymom, Georgia, and me. My dad would never make the drive. But yeah... when a really good song came on shuffle, one we all liked, we would roll the windows all the way down and sing at the top of our lungs. Whitney Houston was always one of Mom’s favorites, and I think Georgia had seen theBodyguardmusical at the Pantages that year. We replayed it at least four times before a bug flew in the window and went up Georgia’s nose. We were laughing so hard, Mom had to pull over.”

Her whole face is sunshine. Her lips, pulled into that wide, wild smile are my favorite sight.

“Well, why aren’t we doing that?” I reach up to turn the dial, but then pause. She’s looking at me with a skeptical eyebrow arched, but then nods her permission. I keep turning until I land on a folksy pop song that I vaguely recognize. “Oh, this is my jam!” I shout, turning up the volume until I can feel it in my chest.

“I’ve never heard this song before in my life.”

“You haven’t? It was my favorite back in the day!” I try to sing along but I don’t really know the lyrics except the “ho, hey” part that keeps repeating. I try to make up for that with enthusiasm, though. Her eyebrow goes up even higher.

“Favorite, huh?” she asks, with a smirk.

“Okay, maybe not my favorite. But I remember it. Well, the Kidz Bop version, at least. They used to play it all the time at the after-school program... You know how they change the words.”

She laughs. “Sure, that’s it.”

I keep singing, right hand on the wheel while I crank Bessie’s window down with my left. And the lyrics are pretty repetitive, soafter the chorus a couple of times, I’ve pretty much got it down and I’m confidently warbling along: “I belong with you, you belong with me, you’re my sweetheart!”

I shimmy my shoulders in her direction as I hit notes I definitely should not be trying to hit, and soon enough her window is down too and she’s belting the song out with me.

I sound terrible, like injured-animal terrible, but it doesn’t even matter. Because her curls are whipping around in the warm air, and I’m singing to her that she’s my sweetheart, and she’s singing it right back, beaming at me like she means it as much as I do.

Delilah

I’ve sung in front of Reggie before. He’s been to a whole bunch of shows at this point. But this... this feels different. Like when you’re singing alone in your room and you can be totally free because there’s no one there to judge you. I never feel like Reggie is judging me. If anything, he seems to see the best version of who I am.

We keep singing together with the windows down and the breeze sweeping our voices through the air. We sing along to Olivia Rodrigo and the O’Jays, Beyoncé and Blondie, turning the dial until we find something good, screaming the lyrics that we know and making up the ones that we don’t. We sing until my throat feels sore, but my chest—so tight and tense before—has released and I’m breathing easier. It’s like I just drank a big mug of chamomile tea, all cozied up in a blanket by the fire. That’s the Reggie effect.

After a particularly enthusiastic rendition of a Britney Spears classic, I turn down the commercial that follows it. “I am impressed.”

“Bet you didn’t know I knew all the moves to that song,” he says, doing another wobbly thing with his arm that Britney has definitely never endorsed. His car drifts a little bit on the winding road.

“I didn’t and now it will be seared in my brain for all of eternity. So thanks for that,” I say, giggling, and he laughs along with me. “We can totally listen to something else, too, if you need a break from these epic performances. My phone speakers are probably loud enough to play that podcast you like.Role With It? And, hey—”

“Nah, that would be so boring for you,” he cuts in quickly. “Okay, now what isthat? That can’t be real.” He points ahead of us to a giant billboard that reads: “Buellton: Home of the Split Pea Soup.”

“Are those dudes just chilling in a big bowl of soup? I don’t get it. And can a town really be famous for soup? They don’t got anything else going on? That soup must be real dope.”

The sign looks really familiar to me, and as we drive past it, something clicks. “Wait! I totally remember this place!”

“You’ve tried the soup then?” he asks. “Does it live up to the hype?”

I laugh. “Not the soup. I’ve never had split pea soup before, but I can say with absolute certainty that it’s gross.”

“Hey! What did split pea soup ever do to you?”

“That same exit, though! I remember stopping there on the way back from taking Georgia to camp. There’s an ostrich zoo?”

He blinks at me. “An ostrich zoo?”

“Or, I don’t know. Ostrich ranch? Ostrich farm? Ostrich... something. Whatever it’s called, there’s this place with, like, hundreds of ostriches. I would start crying immediately because I missed Georgia, and my mom would take me there to cheer me up. Or I guess to distract me, really.”