“You don’t have to do this.” Shepherd folds his arms across his chest as I lurch the car to a stop. The bus station looks deserted, except for some teens scattered inside. “All I said was things shouldn’t get serious with us.”

“Look, you don’t want to be here. You made that pretty clear with all your complaining yesterday. And I don’t want to do the just friends thing—not after last night.” I let my hands slip from the wheel, into my lap. “Seeing where things go, keeping it casual, I can do. But I won’t pretend I don’t like you.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“Yes, you are. Because if you don’t even want to play it by ear and see what happens on its own, what am I supposed to do with those feelings? And if you really do like me, what are you supposed to do with yours?”

Shepherd starts to answer, but takes a breath and looks at the floor mats, instead.

“The only explanation I can think of,” I add, not daring to meet his eyes, afraid of what I’ll see there, “is that you’re lying, and don’t really like me, but you’re trying not to hurt my feelings.”

“That’s not true,” he says, his tone fierce. “I told you, I do like you. A lot.” When I look at him again, he has his head back against the seat, eyes closed. “More than I’ve liked anyone in a long time, actually.”

“Then tell me why you want to pretend last night didn’t happen,” I say, “or get on that bus.”

“You said I didn’t have to explain it if I didn’t want to.”

“I changed my mind. I guess you can understand that.”

He opens his eyes and twists in the seat, half-turned to me. “I don’t want to drag you down, the way I did to that girl. The one I told you about.”

I blink, trying to make sense of his statement. “That’s it?”

“Trust me, it’s a lot.”

“Wait, wait, wait.” I hold up my hand. “You’re basing all this off the assumption I can’t make my own decisions, or stand up for myself? If you turn out to be an asshole, you think I’d just get down in the gutter with you?”

“You said yourself, you’ve had shitty relationships. What about that Donnie guy? He’s obviously an asshole, but you stayed with him.”

“Yeah,” I snap, “and then I left.” I reel back from him, my back against the door. “That’s so insulting. Like I can’t learn from my mistakes? Besides, you said you weren’t like Donnie. So which is it?”

“Lila,” he says, sighing, so different from the way he said my name last night, “it isn’t that black-and-white.”

“It is to me.”

“I don’t think I was what you’d call an ‘asshole.’ But I had problems—which I don’t want to talk about right now, so don’t ask—and…and I’m not really in a place where I should get involved with someone.”

“And I’m not really in a place,” I retort, my voice more than a little derisive, “to take a road trip with a guy who just wanted to get in my pants.”

“It wasn’t like that.” Shepherd shifts his jaw.

He’s angry? This throws me. In my experience, guys who lie their way into bed don’t deny it so vehemently, if at all. Maybe I’m wrong.

“You could tell me.” My thumbnail is split; I peel the fragment back and let it fall into my lap. “How you dragged her down, I mean.”

“Why, so you can tell me all the ways I’m wrong, because you wouldn’t possibly let the same thing happen to you?”

I can’t even contest this. It’s exactly what I planned on doing.

The crack of his knuckles makes me cringe. “Crime, pills, take your pick, all right? I told you: I’m ashamed of who I used to be. Don’t make me dredge through every detail.” It sounds like his voice catches, but only for a second. “Look…the point of the trip was for me to help you find your mom and keep you company. Let’s just do that, okay? Keep things simple.”

My mind flips through last night. The way his fingertips and mouth danced across my nerve endings, how determined he was to please me first.

His hand running through my hair afterwards, while I listened to his heartbeat and felt that restlessness fade again, knowing—no matter where this trip took me, or how it ended—the road at least led to one perfect moment.

I shift into Drive. “Okay. Don’t say I didn’t give you an out.”

“Noted.”

We get back on the route, his voice quieter than usual as he reads me each direction. I scratch my nose and smell syrup, stuck on my sleeve from breakfast, and realize I didn’t thank him.

I almost do it now, but decide to be petty and let the thought slip away.

“Are we just not going to talk, like, the entire trip?” he asks, after an hour of unbroken silence.

I shrug. “So start a conversation.”

“Okay.” He glances around the road, empty, save for a minivan with a stick-figure family on the back window. “What was your childhood like?”

“Oh, God.”

“What?”

“That’s such a generic conversation starter.” I grope around the console for the drink I bought at the motel vending machine. He hands it to me. Once again, I purposely stop myself from thanking him. “Like anyone else’s childhood. Happy, well-rounded, all that.” When I go to set the drink down and miss the cupholder twice, he does it for me. “Except, like I said last night, my parents were way older than everyone else’s. But other than that, everything was average.”

“Nobody’s childhood is ‘average,’” he counters.

I think a minute. “Okay...my mom dying. I was thirteen.”

“I’m sorry.” He waits a beat before asking what I knew he would: “How did she...?”

“Colon cancer. It was really fast. I mean, compared to my dad dying. His kidneys were failing for over a year before he even told me.”

“Yeah, that’s not average. Which means my conversation starter was not generic.”

I roll my eyes. “How was yours? Aside from getting made fun of in Catholic school.”

“It wasn’t Catholic,” he corrects, then adds, “I guess mine really was average, but for a pastor’s kid. I spent a lot of time involved with church activities and stuff. And I was in the Scouts until I was fourteen.”

I burst out laughing. “Scouts? Really? All the way until you were a teenager?”

“Make fun all you want, but I could survive in these woods with nothing but my pocketknife. Bet you couldn’t.”

I don’t answer, still laughing.

“Tillie was impressed.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Hey, which one of us lived with her for three years?” he teases. When my laughter finally stops, we glance at each other.

“See?” he says. “The friends-only thing isn’t too bad. I make good conversation, apparently.”

“I’ve had better.”

Shepherd laughs now, the sound booming through the car. I look over just in time to catch the crinkle of his eyes.

He is a good guy, overall. And a good friend—something I definitely need in my life right now. As flawed as I find his reasoning for “keeping things simple,” I’m starting to think my reaction was too dramatic. One amazing night aside, we haven’t known each other long enough to warrant real feelings. Have we?

“I’m, uh…I’m glad you didn’t get out,” I tell him. He turns to me, but I don’t look back. “At the bus station.”

“Me, too.”

I can tell he’s smiling again. Mile by mile, I feel my anger disappear behind us.