//top\\: Night Trips 1989

“Trade you,” she said.

“Then let’s fix that,” she said, and she ejected Disintegration from the tape deck. She dug into her duffel bag and pulled out a bootleg cassette with a handwritten label: “The Smiths – Louder Than Bombs (Side A only).” night trips 1989

She nodded like that made perfect sense. Then she leaned her head on his shoulder. He could feel her heartbeat through the denim. It was steady. Real. “Trade you,” she said

“As far as the gas lasts,” Leo said. Then she leaned her head on his shoulder

Leo thought about it. “A version of me that isn’t afraid.”

At dawn, Leo pulled into a truck stop outside Fayetteville. Sam said she had a cousin there. She’d be fine. She wrote a number on a napkin— “If you ever get to Chicago” —and pressed it into his palm.

She got in. Her name was Sam. She smelled like cigarettes and honeysuckle. She was running from a boyfriend in Richmond who thought jealousy was romantic. She was nineteen, two years older than Leo, and she laughed when he told her he’d never been past the state line.