Since You've Been Gone

“Oh,” Frank said after a moment. He glanced over at me, and I thought I saw something in his expression soften. “I guess I didn’t think about that.”

We drove in silence, and I kicked off my flip-flops and curled my legs up under me. I noticed the silence didn’t feel quite so charged any longer. It wasn’t the easy quiet that had been between us before, but it no longer felt uncomfortable. “So do you want to tell me now?” I finally asked.

Frank shook his head, but then said, “Maybe later.” He reached forward and turned on the radio, starting to scan for a station, and I let it go for the moment, unrolling my window and letting the warm air whip my hair around my face.

I wasn’t sure if it was the heat, or the fact that we’d landed on a station that seemed to be mostly easy listening, all soft wailing saxophones, or the fact that I’d gotten almost no sleep the night before, but as we crossed into Virginia, I felt myself yawning, my eyes getting heavy. I rested my head against the window and felt my eyes close.

I half expected I would dream about Sloane, if I dreamed at all. But when I opened my eyes again, I realized that I’d been dreaming about Frank. We’d been back together in his tent, where it was warm and peaceful, and he wanted to tell me something, something important.

I sat up and looked around.  At first, all I could see was green. The truck was parked, I was alone in it, and all around me was green—brilliantly colored trees and grass. After a moment, I realized we were parked at a scenic overlook, and that Frank was standing a few feet away, taking pictures with his phone.

From the light, it looked like it was getting to be later in the afternoon, and when I pulled out my phone, I saw that it was almost six. It no longer felt quite so oppressively hot out, though it was hard to tell inside the truck. I stretched my legs in front of me, and rolled my shoulders back. Even though I could see the highway, you couldn’t hear it here, just the low drone of cicadas and the occasional birdcall.

I wasn’t sure how long Frank was going to be, so mostly to occupy myself, I reached for his iPod and started scrolling through it. He never titled his playlists—this had been one of our bones of contention as we exchanged music, since I always titled mine, titles that he’d liked to make fun of—so I just went to “Mix 14,” which I assumed was the newest one, and scrolled through the songs.

MIX #14

Entertainment

Phoenix

My Racing Thoughts

Jack’s Mannequin

I Need My Girl

The National

Let’s Not Let It

Randy Houser

Yesterday

The Beatles

Each Coming Night

Iron & Wine

Magnolia

The Hush Sound

I Always Knew

The Vaccines

Little Talks

Of Monsters and Men

You Came Around

Nico Stai

Everybody Talks

Neon Trees

Makes Me Lose Control

Eric Carmen

In My Life

The Beatles

Let’s Go Surfing

The Drums

Young Love

Mystery Jets

Emmylou

First Aid Kit

Moth’s Wings (stripped down version)

Passion Pit

It’s a Hit

Rilo Kiley

Lights & Music

Cut Copy

You and Me

Parachute

Eleanor Rigby

The Beatles

Man/Bag of Sand

Frightened Rabbit

Isn’t It a Lovely Night?

The December

Look at Us Now

Math & Physics Club

You Send Me

Sam Cooke

At first I was just looking through them, noticing with a bittersweet satisfaction that there was Eric Carmen on the list, which I’d introduced him to, and that Frank had even allowed some country on his precious iPod. But as I looked at it a little longer, I realized there was something else.

There was a code.

I wondered if he’d even known he was doing it. But there was my name in the song titles, over and over again. I felt myself smile as I looked down at the tiny, glowing screen, wondering when he’d done this. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but it felt like he’d just given me a present.

Frank lowered his phone and turned around, and I hurriedly dropped the iPod back in the console where I’d found it. I smiled when I saw him coming toward me. I wasn’t thinking about the fact that things were strange between us at the moment; it was just my automatic reaction to seeing him. He smiled back at me, though this faded a moment later, like maybe he’d also forgotten for just a second.

“Where are we?” I asked, as he settled himself back behind the wheel.

“North Carolina,” he said. “We’re getting close.”

I nodded, expecting to feel nervous or anxious about seeing Sloane, but I didn’t. I just felt a kind of calm certainty, like we were heading in the right direction.

We got back onto the highway, and I’d only just managed to find a decent radio station before we were crossing into South Carolina. I looked at the state sign as we passed it, decorated with the palm tree and crescent moon that I now knew well. Even though it looked like we wouldn’t get to the exit for River Port for an hour, I found myself sitting up straight, not just letting the scenery and exit signs pass me by, but paying attention to them, to each mile that was bringing me closer to Sloane.

We’d been driving for about an hour after the rest stop when Frank turned the radio off and looked over at me, like he was going to say something. Then he reached over and turned it back on again, but only for a moment before he snapped it off, the silence filling the car.

“So,” he said.

I waited for more, but when nothing came after a few moments, just Frank looking straight ahead, at the highway, I prompted, “So?”

“The thing I was going to tell you,” he said slowly, like he was finding the words as he was speaking them. “You said you wanted to know what it was.”

“Yes,” I made myself say, even though I was now more scared of the answer than I had been when I was pushing Frank to tell me outside the travel mart.

He looked over at me, long enough that my heart started to beat harder. “Lissa and I broke up,” he said, then turned the radio back on again.

I stared him. We were still on the highway. I was holding the directions and looking for 14A, the exit that would take us to River Port. But nothing else was the same. It was like the very air in the truck had changed.