Page 74 of The Forbidden Summer
“Every last one,” I promise. “Van,” I start, watching him eat. “What if we hit the road for the winter?”
“Hit the road? Where to?”
“It gets cold here. Hella fuckin’ cold. I’m old, remember?” I wink, grinning at him playfully. “My bones creak in the cold. We could get an RV and travel somewhere warmer, and come back in the spring.”
Van’s eyes light up with something wild and wondering. “Like snowbirds?” he says around a mouthful of toast. “Just take off and chase the sun?”
“Exactly that.” I sip my coffee, watching him take it in. “You could carve along the way. Set up at little markets, sell your work. I’ll drive, cook, and keep you fed.”
He laughs, setting his fork down. “You’re serious.”
“As a heart attack.”
“An RV, huh…” He leans back in his chair, gazing out the window like he can already see the open road waiting for us. “I always thought those were for retired couples.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Are you saying we’re not a retired couple?”
He snorts, cheeks flushed. “Maybe a hot one.”
“Damn right,” I say, reaching across to brush crumbs from his lips. “We’d park by the ocean. Find places with live music. Make love with the windows open.”
His smile fades into something softer, more stunned. “You really want that? With me?”
“There’s no one else I’d want to wake up next to in the desert or fall asleep beside under the stars.”
Van gets up slowly, rounds the table, and drops into my lap like he was made to fit there. His arms loop around my neck, forehead pressed to mine. “Let’s do it.”
“We will,” I whisper, holding him tight. “Spring’s a long way off. But we’ve got time. And a map to fill.”
Van grins, eyes dancing with mischief. “I want to see the world’s biggest ball of yarn and the oldest tree in America.”
I laugh, wrapping my arms around his waist. “That’s your dream itinerary? Yarn and bark?”
He nods solemnly, though there’s a twitch at the corner of his mouth. “And every weird roadside attraction in between. I want to take pictures with giant fiberglass cows and sleep in a teepee-shaped motel. I want to eat pie in every state.”
“I’ll make us a checklist,” I say, already picturing the two of us standing in front of some kitschy tourist trap, sunburned and laughing.
“You better. And I want you to take a thousand photos of me pretending to hold up mountains and hug dinosaurs.”
I press a kiss to his cheek. “Done. But I’m making you take some of me, too. I want proof that I let you talk me into this.”
Van nestles into my shoulder. “It’s not just about the yarn or the trees. I want to see everything with you.”
I tighten my hold around him, his words landing like a quiet promise. “Then we will. Every winding road, every dumb statue, every sunrise. We’ll collect them all.”
“For us,” Van whispers against my skin, lips brushing just beneath my ear, “and for Harold and Elliot.”
The idea settles into me like an anchor and a buoy all at once—grounding me in the moment, lifting something in my chest I didn’t know I was holding.
I nod, throat tight. “Yeah,” I murmur, pressing a kiss to the curve of his shoulder. “We’ll go where they couldn’t. Carry them with us.”
Van pulls back just enough to look at me, eyes shining with something fierce and tender. “We get to write the ending they didn’t.”
“And the sequel,” I say, half smiling through the ache in my chest.
He lets out a soft laugh, wiping at the corner of his eye with the heel of his hand. “I like the sound of that.”
I kiss him, slow and sure, sealing the promise. This love won’t be a quiet secret tucked into a drawer or a stone added to a pile of regrets in a monument to forbidden and unfulfilled love. It’ll be a story worth telling. A road worth taking. A map full of maybes and every mile, ours.
