put things away tidily into his suitcase. I decided my mom would very much approve of his packing prowess.
“Sure, why not. Wait—you have that thing with Will’s family, and your friends, right?”
“Yeah, but it’s an informal thing anyway.” His hands paused and he turned to me. “Want to come along?”
“Come again?”
“I know, going to my best friend’s family’s house sounds, well, not exactly like a fun time. But if you’re not doing anything…”
“My schedule is wide open.” He was right, the thought of going to visit his dead best friend’s family sounded depressing at best. But considering that I had no plans and little desire to say goodbye to Liam, it made sense for me to tag along. “It won’t be weird if I go?”
“My buddies, Seth and Chad, have their fiancée and wife, respectively, coming into town, so it’s not like you’ll be the only significant other there.”
“Oh, I’m a significant other now?” I teased, raising an eyebrow.
“Well, we did get married last night.”
“Two days after I told you I was in love with you.”
“Right. You moved kind of fast.”
“That’s my M.O. But you liked it.”
Liam gave me an easy smile. “You’re right. I absolutely did.”
14
After grabbing Tori’s suitcase from her room, we’d tossed everything into the back of my car and hit the road toward Will’s parents.
All things considered, things were incredibly … effortless with Tori. There were no expectations, no deep desires to impress each other. It was like we were in a limbo that we were both navigating hour by hour. Normally, I wouldn’t enjoy something so unstructured—but like I said, Tori made things easy. It was like she could sense how much apprehension I had going into this visit and wanted to ease that somehow. She switched the radio station a half a dozen times, let her arms catch wind out the window and the sunroof, pointed out a dozen license plates from a dozen different places.
“You see little more than Idaho, Montana, and Utah plates back home. Sometimes Wyoming. I remember once seeing a Maine plate and it was like aliens had landed—I was so excited.”
I laughed. “Do you enjoy living in Idaho?”
“Sure.” She shrugged. “It’s beautiful, especially once you get off the interstate and the highways. It’s like it hides the most incredible places. My mom always says that Idaho was like a woman playing hard to get—you had to get to know her before you could really learn her.”
“I really like that,” I said after a moment.
“I think you and my mom would get along really well. I could tell when I watched you refold your tighty whities.”
“What?” I asked, glancing at her incredulously.
“Yeah, my mom is meticulous like that. I’m sure she’d appreciate your fold game.”
“I… uh, guess that’s good.” I turned off the highway onto the access road that led to Will’s parents’ property.
“Don’t you live near here?”
“I live thirty minutes the other direction from Vegas—near the Nevada/California border. Easy to travel out of there if need be. I got the hotel more for convenience than anything, so I wasn’t traveling a couple hours every single day.”
“Hm.” She nodded and leaned out the window. Her hair like turbulent streamers caught the wind and rode it as her eyes closed.
I’d never wanted a convertible before—too many dangers in a rollover—but watching the way the wind whipped through Tori’s hair and the small, serene smile that curved her lips as she soaked in the sun made me briefly wish I’d been a little more reckless when I’d purchased this car.
“They live far from the city, don’t they?”
“Yeah, they moved out here after we graduated high school. Bought a ton of land and just built as they went.” It’d been a year since I’d last seen the property, but there used to be a main house, a guest house, and a shop that Will’s dad practically lived in. He had an affinity for classic cars and often bought junkers at auctions and hauled them hundreds of miles back to his shop. He spent months, even years, breathing life back into those cars.
In the distance, I could make out the sheen of solar panels on the roof—a plan they’d made years ago and had seemingly gone through with since I had last stepped foot out here. Their house was nestled far from any main roads, shielded by the rising sun by a squat mountain range. There wasn’t much out here apart from a couple small gas stations and a cafe that only travelers stopped