Amy & Roger's Epic Detour

“One last one?” I asked.

“Fine,” he said. “But I get a bonus question the next time it’s your turn.”

“Okay,” I said. I looked at him and tried to figure out how to phrase it. I just wasn’t sure that Roger had thought past our getting to Kentucky. I didn’t know if he’d thought about what it would actually be like once we arrived. Maybe it was the navigator’s job to think ahead, not the driver’s. But it still worried me. “What do you want to happen when we get there?”

Roger looked at me, then back at the road. “I’m not sure,” he said finally. “I don’t know.” That hung in the air between us for a moment, and then he turned up the music and we drove on.

When we were an hour outside Kentucky, Roger’s phone rang. We both stared down at it, ringing and vibrating around the console. HADLEY CALLING read the display. I handed it to Roger, who looked paler than he had a moment ago.

He took a deep breath and opened the phone. “Hello?” he asked, his voice suddenly a little deeper.

I looked out the window fixedly, so it wouldn’t appear that I was listening to his conversation, but it was impossible not to.

“Hey,” he said. “So I’m actually almost in Kentucky. I didn’t know if you were around….” Roger looked over at me, then back at the road, clearing his throat. “With a friend,” he said, and I felt myself deflate a little after he said that. I stared out the window and tried not to be ridiculous. I was a friend. I should be glad I’d accomplished that, not be inexplicably disappointed that he’d identified me correctly. “Okay,” he said, then must have gotten cut off, because he frowned, listening. “But are you around?” he asked. “If so, it’d be good to see you—” He stopped again and was silent, listening. “So I should just call you when we get to Louisville?” he asked, sounding a little frustrated this time. “Fine,” he said after another small pause. “Sounds good.” And then he hung up without saying good-bye, something that no longer surprised me. He looked at me. “Hadley,” he finally said. It sounded like he was pronouncing her name a little differently now, without the same kind of inflection he’d used a few days ago. It no longer seemed like her name was constructed solely from the alphabet’s finest letters.

“I assumed,” I said. I waited for Roger to fill me in on the conversation, but he was silent, staring at the road, frowning slightly. “Um, what did she say?”

Roger sighed. “She wasn’t very clear. That never was one of her strong points. She’s never really liked making plans. She said she might be around, she wasn’t sure, but I should call when we got to Louisville.”

“Is that where she lives?”

Roger shook his head. “A little ways outside it,” he said. “Hummingbird Valley.”

An hour later we crossed into Kentucky, THE BLUEGRASS STATE, according to the state sign. Roger pulled into a gas station—a Git ’n’ Go, which was one I’d never seen before—and took out his phone. I stretched my legs, headed to the bathroom, then picked us up sodas and a Kentucky road map, just in case. When I headed back to the car, Roger was still sitting there, just staring down at his phone.

I slammed the door, settling into my seat, and handed him his root beer. “Well?” I asked.

“Now she’s not answering,” he said. He sighed and looked out at the highway. “I’d hate to have come this far for nothing.” I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I just took a sip of cream soda. “I think we should go,” he said.

“Okay,” I said, a little surprised he was going to give up this easily. But I was willing to pick a new destination. I took out the atlas. “So where should we go?”

“No,” he said, looking at me, “I mean, I think I should go to her house.”

“Oh,” I said. I wasn’t sure that was such a great idea, but I didn’t know how to tell Roger that without making him feel like a stalker. But I could only imagine what I would have felt if Michael had shown up on my doorstep. “I don’t think that’s the best idea, Roger.”

Roger sighed, and his shoulders slumped a little. “I know that,” he said. “But are we just supposed to hang around the Git ’n’ Go? And wait for her to call?” He shook his head. “She was always doing things like this….” His voice trailed off, and he looked down at his phone again. “I think we just swing by. And then at least I’ll have given it my best shot. Because knowing her, she might not remember to call back for three days.”

I opened my mouth to try and talk him out of this plan, then stopped when I saw the expression on his face. It was determined, and I’d never seen him look so set on anything—not even Chick-fil-A. And he probably hadn’t wanted to go to Yosemite, either, but maybe I’d looked something like he looked now. “Okay,” I said, opening up the Kentucky map. “Let’s go.”

Roger looked at me, surprised, then gave me a quick smile. “Thank you,” he said.

“Sure,” I said, focusing down on the map. “Hummingbird Valley?”

“Yes,” he said, signaling and pulling back on the highway. He handed me his phone. “Hadley Armstrong. I have her address in my phone from when I sent her flowers over Christmas break.”

“That was nice of you,” I said, looking up at him.

“Well, I thought so,” Roger said with a small smile. “But apparently, girls don’t like red roses.”

I had nothing against them. “Really?” I asked. “Because I’m a girl. And I’ve never heard that before.”

“Seriously?” He raised his eyebrows. “The way she reacted, I thought I’d committed some crime against femalekind.”

I shrugged. “I just think it’s nice to get flowers,” I said. “It’s the thought.”

“Even if the thought is trite and cliché? That’s a quote, by the way.”

“She said that?” I asked, a little stunned.

“She did,” he said. “For Valentine’s Day, I got her chocolate. I didn’t even go near flowers. I don’t know if I’m ever going to be capable of buying them again, and—”