Jessup is half asleep. The car is cool, the windows wet on the outside from the gentle mist, fogged up on the inside from the heat of their bodies. He knows they’ll have to get up, get dressed, turn on the motor in a few minutes so they can run the heater, but for now, all he wants to do is lie there. The smallness of the backseat just means they are closer together.
The sound of Deanne’s phone is jarring. A trill interrupting the quiet. But she doesn’t move.
After five or six rings, the phone goes silent. She nuzzles against him, whispers in his ear. “Say it again.”
“I love you.” He’s earnest, wants to kiss her, but she laughs so he pretends to pout. “You do realize that laughter is not the correct response to somebody telling you that they love you,” he says.
“Sorry,” she says. “I don’t know why I’m laughing. I love—”
Her phone rings again, and with a sigh, she sits up and reaches into the front seat, grabs it off the console. “Crap. Sorry. It’s my dad. I can ignore one call, but not two.”
She answers, holds the phone up to her ear with one hand, scratches gently at Jessup’s chest with the other.
“No,” she says. “I told you I was meeting Megan and Brooke at the State Street Diner. I just got here. I’m still in the car. I’m about—” Her hand stops moving on his chest. She sits up straight. “What do you—Dad!”
She tosses her phone into the front seat and starts scrambling for her clothes. Jessup realizes that Coach Diggins has been tracking Deanne’s phone at almost the exact moment that Deanne hisses, “He’s here. Get dressed!”
As the headlights sweep over them, Jessup sees the fear in Deanne’s eyes, assumes that he has the same look in his.