It’s not too hot that we need air conditioning. It’s not too cold that we need heat. It’s the perfect day to race down the highway at sixty miles per hour with the windows down.

My hair flaps to the tune of the wind as I sit in the passenger seat with my feet kicked along the dashboard. “Where are we going?” I question without taking my eyes off the painted white lines separating the highway from a never-ending guardrail.

“Haven’t decided yet.”

“Are you kidding me?” I cock my head to face him. “What happened to, oh, where we’re going, nobody will know us there?”

“That’s still in play.” He nods his head, without taking his eyes off the road. He’s a safe driver, I’ll give him that. “I figure the further we drive East, the less chance there’ll be of us running into any of your desperate housewife friends.”

“I can’t be gone for too long.”

“I have school Monday.” He switches his steering hand from right to left and turns to me. “You also have school Monday. And I have football practice after school.”

“Shut up—“

“Yeah.” He laughs. “I joined the football team.”

I am so not getting involved with another Football Player. That’s one more strike against whatever the fuck this is between Kemper and I. It’s bad enough that I’m married. It’s even worse that he’s a student. Football player, too? This is my absolute worst nightmare.

“You know Coach is my husband, right?” I watch him aptly, because his eyes will tell the truth even if his lips are lying. And he’s a man, so there’s a ninety-four percent change those lips will be spitting lies.

“Do you want the truth, or do you want me to lie?”

“I want you to lie, don’t I?”

“Do you?”

“If you answer my question with another question, I’m going to fail you.”

“You wouldn’t do that,” he says with a playful grin, breaking the spell of twenty questions we’ve been enduring. “Would you?”

I land a playful punch against his arm, but when he flinches away with a verbal ow, I recoil with a grimace. “Sorry about that.”

“Jesus Christ, She-hulk,” he yelps and shakes the pain away from his arm.

“I’ve been throwing footballs for years.”

“Coach teach you?”

“You do know.” I point an accusing finger at him.

“It’d be hard not to.” He shrugs and turns the wheel slightly as we barrel around a long corner. “He’s like the idol of this town.” I glare at him, and even though he’s not watching me, I know he knows I want to strangle him. His eyes roll toward me. “Complete douchebag, that guy.” Still, no verbal response from me. “I mean, I would have figured out who he was if I didn’t already know, when I snuck into your house this morning.”

“Don’t do that again.” I turn back to the open window and rest my head against the seat. “It’s a violation.”

I wake up alone in the car alone, and my captor is nowhere to be seen. I shift in my seat and look out each window, but the scenery is all the same. We’re parked in a tiny gravel lot, and surrounded by the forest on all sides.

I reach my head out the window. “Kemper?”

“Don’t look.”

What do I do? I look. He stands in front of the back tire, urinating on the rubber. “I don’t know what I was expecting.” I drop my head against the window and wait for the stream of piss to come to an end. “Where are we?”

“I drove until I got lost.” In the passenger mirror, I see him approach, zipping up his jeans as he paces toward me. “And then I drove a few hundred miles more.”

“You don’t know where we’re at?” I throw the door open. It creaks as Kemper jumps out of the way.

“You’re going to kill me eventually.”

“I’ll settle for inflicting pain,” I scowl. “Where are we?”

“I seriously don’t know. I haven’t seen a gas station for an hour and I had to piss, so I pulled over here.”

I reach through the window and grab my phone. Another handful of missed alerts that go ignored as I scroll through my phone to find the GPS app. I type in my home address and wait for a route to pop up.

When it does, my eyes shift to Kemper. “Two hundred and twenty miles?”

“Really?” His brow arches and he shakes an accomplished pout away.

“How long was I sleeping?”

“Somewhere between one hundred and eighty and two hundred and twenty miles.”

“I thought you had a plan.” I throw my phone onto the seat and massage my forehead with my palm. “You don’t have a plan.”

“Life is so much better without plans.” He leans against the trunk. “Look on the bright side, nobody will know us here.”

“This is becoming more and more kidnappy by the minute.” I look to him to see his reaction, a half-assed shrug. Then, I get an idea. I run around to the driver’s side and jump in the front seat.

“Woah!” He rips open the passenger door. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m going to drive.”

His brow furrows. “Can you drive a stick?”

“It’s been a while.”

He huffs and climbs into the passenger seat. “You wreck it, you buy it.”

“On a Teachers salary?” I roll my eyes. “Besides, isn’t that what insurance is for?”

“On a students salary?”

“You don’t have insurance, do you?”

“It’s on the to do list.” He pulls the seatbelt over his shoulder and clicks it into place. He drums his hands against the dashboard. “Lets get on the road.”

“Where are we going?” I twist the key in the ignition, but the engine doesn’t turn over. I feel Kemper’s gaze on me, judging me with unblinking eyes.

“Nowhere if you don’t know how to drive.”

“Right,” I say, remembering there’s such a thing as a clutch. I push the leftmost pedal to the floor and turn the key again. The car roars to life, and I let out an embarrassing howl of excitement, but there’s fear in Kemper’s eyes. “What’s wrong, buddy? Never seen a girl drive?” I throw the car into first and we jerk in place. The engine dies. My cheeks flush red. I place my hand to his face. “Don’t say a word.”

Kemper exhales a sharp exhale as we approach a stop sign off the side of the main road. I tap on the brakes and aim to shift into neutral, but accidentally throw us into first. The gears grind and the car jerks, the engine dying once we come to a full stop ahead of the stop sign.

“If this car runs by the time we reach our next stop, it’ll be a damn miracle.” He chuckles to himself, but I can’t discern if he’s being funny or grumpy.

I don’t say a word to him. I check for incoming cars on the left and pull out onto the highway, shifting into second gear as we begin to accelerate ahead of approaching cars from behind. Kemper twists his head to watch the incoming cars, coming quick on our ass.

I attempt to shift into third. The gear grinds and we begin to redline.

“Hold the clutch down and shift into third,” he instruct me and places his hand over my hand. “Every time you shift, you must apply pressure to the clutch.” I do as commanded, hitting the middle pedal. Oops. “That’s the brakes.”

“I’m aware.” I press my left foot against the clutch, hold it down, and finally shift into gear just as the cars behind us maneuver into the passing lane to avoid ramming into us.

“Do you want your husband to find out you’re having an affair during a breaking news broadcast? Coaches wife killed in horrific, but avoidable car accident, if only she’d learn there are three Goddamn pedals, would be the headline.”

“If you don’t shut up,” I turn to him with a death glare, “I’m going to crash into a guardrail on your side of the car.”

“This is why I failed eighth grade,” he mumbles to himself. “A smart person wouldn’t let a suicidal woman drive his car.”

I pretend that I don’t hear him, but the words cut through me like razor sharp glass, the kind of glass that left the scars on my stomach. But he knows. He always knows. “I’m sorry,” he says softly and bows his head against the window. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“It’s okay.” I shrug it off. “It was just a bad joke.”

“It’s not something to joke about.”

“Right.” We pass an arbitrary line where the open-access freeway bleeds into a highway. I throw the shifter into fourth gear as we pass the sixty miles per hour sign, and we’re off into the sunset with no set destination, and somehow Kemp’s clutch is still in tact.

Kemp. I kind of like that.