It is July. Iowa in July is nothing but drama: wet heat, tornado warnings, thunderstorms so violent you have to pull the car over. Mosquitoes flock to you; your legs are swollen with their needs.
You plan your trip: Iowa to Boston, Boston to New York. In Boston she’ll show you her old stomping grounds; in New York you’ll both get to spend time with Val. Then New York to Allentown so she can meet your parents, Allentown to DC to meet your college friends, DC to northern Virginia for one of your oldest friend’s wedding, and then down to Florida so you can meet her parents. The idea of the open road lights you up. You have always adored driving great distances across your country: it is the only time you ever feel any kind of patriotism.
Her parents don’t want you to drive. They worry about accidents; they beg you both to fly. You come to a compromise: you will drive to DC and fly to Florida from there. They pay for your tickets.
Every step of the trip is sweet and sour. While you drive you slip your hand between her legs, jerk her off as you zip past cornfields and stopped traffic. (She is hot; you are stupid.) You fight near a rest stop in Illinois about, of all things, a Beyoncé song. (“If the lyrics were about how men ruled the world,” she says to you, “you’d hate this song.”) When she kisses you in a McDonald’s parking lot in Indiana, you both look up to see a group of men—a risk of men, a murder of men—standing there watching, laughing, pointing. One man does that tongue-waggle-through-the-fingers thing, which you have never seen anyone do in real life. You fly out of there as fast as you can; you don’t even buckle your seat belt until you’re back on the interstate.