They drove through Osborne—past Greeley’s Foods and the Red Spot, past the bustling Sonic and the deserted shell of an old Sinclair gas station, past the gigantic Do it Best hardware store and the shed-size Dollar General—and out of town.
They didn’t talk much, but their silence was companionable.
They crossed the railroad tracks and went over the river. The countryside was flat. Stiff vegetation, muddy fields, round bales of hay. Modest farmhouses and monstrous tractors. The view was uniform in every direction, broken only by the long, dinosaurian contraptions that Makani had learned were center-pivot irrigation systems.
The grass and dying corn plants were the same shade of drab golden brown. The occasional trees, dressed for autumn, added pointillistic yellow dots to the landscape. Everything was yellow and gold, except for the sky. It was gray.
It didn’t seem like they were traveling anywhere specific, yet Makani felt a change, a tremulous sort of anticipation, as they approached their destination. Ollie turned off the highway and onto a nondescript dirt road surrounded by cornfields. It looked like any other nondescript dirt road surrounded by cornfields, but as they drove farther, Makani realized how secluded it actually was. There were no other people or houses in sight. Darby and Alex would be livid if they knew she was here.
Makani composed a text, apologizing for earlier, but the connection was too slow for the message to send. A pellet of discomfort lodged in her stomach as the car dead-ended in the middle of another field. Or maybe it was all one field.
“What’s this road even for?” she asked.
Ollie turned off the engine. “I have no idea. Literally.”
Makani laughed with tension-releasing surprise. “Ollie Larsson. Was that a joke?”
He raised his eyebrows and smiled. “Never.”
Her heart somersaulted. They weren’t parked in the same location where they’d had sex, though it looked similar. That particular memory was tinted with loneliness and desperation. Now she only felt the nervous thrum of excitement.
“Careful stepping out,” Ollie said, unlocking the car. “It’s always muddier than you think.”
Makani tucked away her phone, opened the door, and peered down. The ground was a thick marsh of wind-stiffened mud. She tested it with a sneaker toe. It seemed solid enough, so she climbed out—and tromped straight into it, three inches deep. “Shit!” But she laughed again. “I thought you said you were taking me to the beach.”
“The ocean,” he corrected.
The temperature had dropped. The brisk air smelled like decaying leaves, distant woodsmoke, and chilled terrain, a reminder that Halloween was around the bend. Makani pulled up the hood of her floral-printed hoodie and zipped it up. She should have worn a coat, but she still sucked at this cold weather thing. Most people here didn’t even consider it cold yet. Just nippy.
She plodded forward to join Ollie. He was leaning against the front of the car, its engine ticking lightly as it cooled. But the metal was still warm, almost hot, and it felt good against her jeans. The leggy corn encircled them, two feet overhead. She turned pointedly to Ollie. He was staring straight ahead into the vast golden nothingness.
“It’s not the Pacific,” he said, “but it’s the best I can do.”
Ollie must have registered her confusion in his peripheral vision, because he met her gaze with another smile. “The fields. I know you miss Hawaii.”
As her mind absorbed this thoughtful gesture, her eyes lingered on the curve of his lips. She wanted to kiss them again. She forced her head away and tried to focus on their surroundings—she really did try—but she felt him still watching her.
He slid back and up onto the hood of his car. “Here.”
She hopped up beside him, metal thumping, her left leg touching his right.
Ollie pulled up the hood of his own hoodie. It was tight against his head—hers puffed out a bit with her hair—but a shock of hot pink flashed out from underneath the black cotton fabric. It looked like the only bright thing in the universe.
“Okay,” he said. “Now look again.”
The wind rustled the brittle cornstalks. It sounded like a spitting, crackling fire. The dry tassels reached for the open sky while the dead silks pointed down to the muddy earth. Slowly, ever so slowly, the wind strengthened and changed course, and the fields swayed as a single element, rippling outward in a current of mesmerizing waves.
Something hidden inside Makani lifted its head and blossomed. The sensation was sublime. Makani often complained that she was drowning in corn, but she wasn’t gasping below the water. She was perched on the edge of the horizon.
She felt Ollie trying to gauge her reaction. She smiled, letting it linger on the fields before inclining her head toward his. “Thank you,” she said.
And then she kissed him.
Makani was surprised at the familiarity of his mouth, the taste of it, how natural Ollie’s lips felt when pressed against hers. She remembered how to work both around his piercing and with it. His breath caught, and she felt the thrill of having invoked the reaction. His hands slipped under her hood, on each side of her neck, and it was the first time that his fingers had touched her skin since the end of summer. She gasped. Her arms wrapped around him. Their hips slid against each other, digging into the metal of the car. It was painful, and Makani would have bruises, but it didn’t matter. She didn’t care.
They kissed—they made out like this—until the setting sun ripened the clouds into peaches and apricots. Until his phone interrupted them.
Ollie scooted back as he removed it from his pocket. “Shit. It’s probably Chris, wondering where I am, oh—” He hopped off the car to answer it. “Hello? Hello?”
The connection must have been weak. Makani thought it was odd when he went inside the cruiser for privacy, using it like an old-fashioned telephone booth. Wouldn’t the connection be stronger outside? She could hear the rumble of his voice but none of his words.
Her blood still pulsed with heat, but she shivered. After they’d had sex, he’d turned into a ghost. She wanted to believe that he wouldn’t disappear again.
Ollie hung up.
They stared at each other through the windshield. His eyes were heavy. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good news. With an ominous knot of dread, Makani slid down the hood, trudged the few feet through the mud, and rejoined him in the car.
She left the door open.
“Work,” Ollie said. His body was slumped into his seat. “One of our cashiers was just fired for stealing. I can’t believe it. It doesn’t sound like her at all. They want me to go in and run her register.”
Relief rushed over Makani. She’d assumed that something worse had happened. Haley’s school photo, plastered across the local media, flickered through her mind like a harbinger. Enthusiastic smile. Bright eyes. Neatly parted hair. She looked so wholesome, so undeserving. Not that anyone deserved her fate.