Maya double-checked the cooler while Dev loaded the car, because she knew if she didn't, they'd arrive with three bags of ice and no sandwiches. It had happened before, on the drive to his cousin's wedding, and neither of them had let it go since.

They were leaving Friday after work, which meant leaving at 6:40 instead of 5:30, because Dev's last client always ran long. Maya had used the extra hour to water the plants, text her mother the address of the cabin, and change out of the blouse she'd worn all day. The cabin belonged to a coworker who rented it out cheap in the off-season. Two nights. A wood stove. No cell service, allegedly, though Maya suspected that was marketing.

"Did you grab the coffee?" Dev asked, folding himself into the driver's seat.

"Ground it this morning."

"You're kidding."

"I'm not a monster."

They'd talked about this trip for two months, in the loose way they talked about most things — over dishes, half-watching something, planning around a schedule that never fully cooperated. Then last week Maya had just booked it, and told him after, and he'd laughed and said good, because otherwise it would have stayed a conversation.

The highway thinned out past the second exit. Dev drove; Maya controlled the music and read road signs aloud in a bad accent. They stopped once for gas and split a bag of pretzels neither of them wanted, purely out of tradition.

By the time they turned onto the gravel road, it was fully dark, and the headlights caught nothing but pine trunks and reflective markers. Dev slowed to a crawl. Maya rolled down her window and let in air that smelled like cold and sap.

"Okay," she said. "This was a good idea."

"It was my idea."

"It was absolutely not."


Maritza got off shift at 3:40 on Friday, and by four she was in the parking lot of the Home Depot where Dee was loading returns into a cart. They had been talking about the cabin for three weeks, mostly in the fragments of conversation that fit between her nursing-home hours and his.

"Two nights," Dee said, sliding into the passenger seat. "I told Ray I'd be back Sunday afternoon to help with the truck."

"Then two nights." She had already printed the directions, because the reception went out past mile marker 19 and she did not trust either of their phones. The cabin belonged to Dee's cousin, who charged them sixty dollars and asked only that they leave the woodstove clean.

They stopped at the Aldi on Route 9. Maritza pushed the cart while Dee did the math out loud — eggs, bacon, a bag of coffee, two frozen pizzas, a case of Yuengling. Ninety-one dollars, which was eleven more than they'd said. Neither of them put anything back.

At home she packed while he checked the tire pressure in the driveway with the little gauge he kept in the glove box. She brought out the quilt from the back of the closet, the one her mother had made, and folded it into the trunk on top of the duffel. The dog, who was staying with the neighbor, watched from the window and understood everything.

They left at six-fifteen and hit the traffic at the bridge, which they had known they would. Dee drove. Maritza put her feet on the dashboard, which he pretended to mind, and read the exit numbers aloud as they came.

By the time they turned onto the gravel road, the light was gone. Dee carried the cooler; she found the key under the flowerpot, exactly where the cousin said. Inside it smelled like cold ash and cedar. He built the fire. She opened two beers and sat down on the floor to wait for the room to get warm.


The Weekend Away

Marisol had been circling the dates on the kitchen calendar for three weeks before Danny finally noticed.

"Two nights?" he asked, coffee mug halfway to his mouth. "Who's watching the dog?"

"Your sister already said yes." She slid the printout across the table—a cabin two hours north, forty dollars off because it was the shoulder season. "I checked her shifts."

Danny studied the photo. A wood-paneled room, a wood stove, a window looking out at nothing but trees. He'd been picking up overtime at the warehouse since February, and the exhaustion had settled into him like weather. "It's cheap," he said, which from him was enthusiasm.

They packed Friday after work, which meant they packed badly. Marisol brought three books she wouldn't open and forgot a hairbrush. Danny threw in a bag of charcoal without checking whether the cabin had a grill, then spent ten minutes hunting for the good flashlight before admitting he'd left it in his cousin's truck in August.

"We'll buy one," Marisol said. "It's fine."

The drive started badly—traffic on the beltway, a dropped phone in the footwell, an argument about whether they'd turned off the space heater that ended when Danny pulled over and Marisol called the neighbor, who confirmed nothing was on fire. After that something loosened. The city thinned into strip malls, then into fields, then into the long dark corridor of pines. Marisol found a radio station playing songs from before either of them was born and didn't change it.

They stopped at a gas station for the flashlight and came out with beef jerky, two coffees, and a stuffed moose that Danny bought her as a joke and she kept in her lap the whole rest of the way.

The cabin key was under a rock, exactly where the email said. Inside it smelled like cedar and dust.

"Okay," Danny said, setting down the bags. "Okay."


The Weekend

Marisol found the deal on a Tuesday night, scrolling on her phone while the dishwasher churned. Two nights at a lodge in the mountains, ninety minutes north, sixty percent off because it was the shoulder season and the leaves had already fallen.

"We could actually do this," she said.

Dev looked up from the couch, where he'd been half-watching a game and half-answering work emails. He was thirty-four, three years older than Marisol, and they had been living in the one-bedroom on Halstead for two years now, ever since her lease ended and it stopped making sense to pay rent twice.

"What about Friday? I'd have to leave by four."

"So leave by four."

He did the math out loud, the way he always did — gas, the lodge, food, whether they'd need to board the cat or just leave enough kibble out. Marisol let him. She had learned that his arithmetic was a kind of enthusiasm, that once the numbers worked he'd be more excited than she was.

By Thursday he'd printed a map, which she teased him about, and she'd packed a bag with more sweaters than two days required, which he teased her about. Friday afternoon he got out at 4:20 and she was already in the passenger seat with coffee for both of them, the good kind from the place on the corner.

Traffic thinned past the county line. The highway rose. Marisol put on the playlist she'd made — half his music, half hers, alternating, a small negotiated peace — and rolled her window down two inches even though it was forty-eight degrees, because she liked the cold air on her face.

Dev didn't complain. He reached over at a red light and squeezed her knee.

"Two whole days," he said.

"Two whole days," she agreed, and watched the hills come up dark against the last of the light.


Maritza Delgado had the cooler packed by six-thirty Friday morning, which meant Kevin Boyle had to admit she'd been right about leaving before traffic thickened on I-95. He'd argued for a later start, something about finishing a shift report, but she'd printed the campsite confirmation two weeks ago and taped it to the refrigerator where he couldn't pretend not to see it.

They rented the same two-bedroom in Bridgeport they'd shared for four years now, and the trip north to the Litchfield hills was the only thing on the calendar until his sister's birthday in October. Maritza drove the first hour. Kevin dozed with his hand on her knee, waking when she took the exit for coffee.

"You forgot the marshmallows," he said, checking the back seat.

"I forgot nothing. They're under the tent bag because you put the tent bag on top of the grocery bag."

At the campground they argued cheerfully about the tent site — she wanted shade, he wanted a view of the pond — and settled on a compromise neither of them fully liked, which was how most of their decisions went. Kevin hammered the stakes while Maritza untangled the string of solar lights she'd bought at a hardware store clearance in April, saving them for exactly this.

By late afternoon they'd swum, and Maritza had fallen asleep on a towel with a paperback tented over her face. Kevin walked to the camp store for ice and came back with a bundle of firewood he'd overpaid for, which he didn't mention.

That night, the fire going, she leaned against his shoulder and said they should do this more often, maybe once a month while the weather held. He said sure, knowing they probably wouldn't, and that saying it out loud was part of the ritual anyway. The pond made small sounds in the dark. Neither of them checked a phone until morning.


Marisol got off shift at the hospital at seven, and by the time she made it back to the apartment, Dwayne had already pulled the duffel bag down from the closet shelf. He was standing in the bedroom holding two pairs of jeans, trying to decide, which was ridiculous, because they were only going to Galena for two nights.

"Take both," she said, kicking off her shoes. "You always spill something."

"One time. One time I spilled chili on myself at your cousin's."

"Two times, but who's counting."

They had booked the room in October, back when the rate was still reasonable, and then almost canceled twice—once when his hours got cut at the plant, once when her mother needed a ride to the eye doctor three days in a row. But the money worked out, more or less, and Marisol had traded a shift with Alecia, and now it was Friday and the bag was open on the bed.

Dwayne packed the cooler while she showered: string cheese, the good pretzels, four beers, two bottles of water she knew he'd forget to drink. He checked the tire pressure with the little gauge he kept in the glove box, because the car had 140,000 miles on it and he didn't trust the dashboard light to tell him anything useful.

They left at nine, later than planned, headlights swinging out of the lot and onto the frontage road. Marisol put her feet on the dash, then took them down when he gave her the look. She found a station playing something from 2003 and left it there.

Somewhere past Rockford the traffic thinned out and the dark went wide and flat on either side of them.

"We should do this more," she said.

"We say that."

"We do say that."

He reached over and put his hand on her knee, and she let it stay.


Maritza got the text from Deshawn at 4:40 on Friday: *Leaving the site early. Bag's already in the truck.*

She was still in scrubs when he pulled up outside the duplex, the truck idling, radio low. She'd packed the night before — two changes of clothes, the good sandals, a bag of pretzels because the gas station ones cost four dollars now. She locked the door twice, the way she always did, and climbed in.

"You eat?" he asked.

"I had a granola bar at two."

He handed her a wrapped sandwich from the console, still warm from sitting in the sun. She unwrapped it and ate half before they hit the interstate.

They'd been talking about this trip since March — a cabin two hours north that belonged to Deshawn's cousin, who wasn't using it that weekend and wasn't going to charge them. Maritza had wanted the ocean, but the ocean meant a hotel, and a hotel meant a number neither of them said out loud. The cabin meant gas money and groceries. She'd made her peace with the cabin around the time she saw a picture of the porch.

Traffic thinned past the exit for the outlet mall. Deshawn turned the radio up. Maritza put her feet on the dash, which he pretended to mind.

"I told Ruthie we'd be back Sunday by five," she said.

"We will."

"I know. I'm just saying it out loud so it happens."

They stopped once, for gas and a bathroom and a bag of ice, and Deshawn bought a lottery ticket he showed her with a straight face, like it was a business plan. She laughed at him. He put it in the visor.

The light was going gold when they turned off the highway onto the county road, and the pines started, and neither of them said anything for a while, and it was fine.


Maya double-checked the cooler while Devin loaded the car, the Saturday sun still low behind the row houses. They'd been talking about this trip since February—two nights at a rented cabin about three hours north, nothing fancy, just a wood stove and a lake they could walk to.

"Did you grab the coffee?" Devin asked, wedging a duffel bag behind the driver's seat.

"Ground it last night." Maya held up the mason jar. "And the good mugs, because the last place had those tiny ones."

They'd made a list on Thursday, taped to the fridge next to a utility bill and a photo from her sister's wedding. Most of it got crossed off. The rest—an extra flashlight, the deck of cards—they decided they could live without.

Devin drove the first hour. Maya rode with her feet on the dash until he gave her a look, then put them down and fiddled with the radio instead, hunting for something that wasn't a commercial. They stopped at a gas station outside the city and split a bag of pretzels, standing in the parking lot because it felt good to stand.

The highway thinned out past the second exit. Farmland, then trees, then more trees. Maya read a chapter of her book out loud when the reception died, doing the voices badly on purpose, and Devin laughed in the wrong places just to annoy her.

They found the cabin at half past one. The key was under a flowerpot exactly where the owner said it would be. Inside smelled like cedar and old smoke. Devin dropped the bags and went straight to the window facing the water.

"Come look at this," he said.

Maya came. The lake was flat and gray-green, ringed with pines, nobody else in sight.

"Okay," she said, leaning against him. "Worth the drive."

They unpacked slowly. There was no hurry to anything.


Maritza wakes before the alarm, which is unusual. Devin is already up, standing in the kitchen of the duplex in his work socks, filling a thermos.

"You packed the cooler?" she asks.

"Half. I didn't know if you wanted the good cheese or just regular."

"Both. It's two days."

They are driving to a cabin three hours north, a place Devin's cousin rents out cheap in the off-season. It was Maritza's idea, floated in March, forgotten, then revived in October when the schedule at the hospital finally opened a Saturday. Devin had said yes immediately, then spent a week quietly worrying about the transmission.

They load the car in the gray early light. Maritza brings a canvas bag of books she won't read. Devin brings a speaker, jumper cables, and a bag of clementines. Their neighbor's dog barks at them from behind a chain-link fence, and Maritza barks back, and Devin laughs like he hasn't in a while.

The first hour is highway and silence, the comfortable kind. Somewhere past the outlet malls Maritza puts her feet on the dash, and Devin says what he always says about the airbag, and she puts them down and then puts them back up ten minutes later.

They stop for gas and terrible coffee. Devin insists on paying, though the money is mostly shared anyway, six years into whatever this is — a word neither of them has needed. Maritza buys a lottery scratcher and wins two dollars, which she declares a sign.

The trees get thicker. Cell service thins. Maritza reads the directions aloud from a screenshot, and they miss the turn twice, and the second time Devin pulls over and they just sit for a minute with the windows down, listening.

"We're not lost," she says.

"We're not anywhere yet," he says, and turns the car around.


The Weekend

Marisol found the cabin listing on a Tuesday, during her lunch break at the dental office. Two hours north, a wood stove, a lake close enough to walk to. She sent the link to Dev with three exclamation points.

He wrote back forty minutes later: *how much?*

They negotiated over dinner, which was leftover chicken and rice at the small table wedged between the kitchen and the couch. Dev had picked up extra shifts in August and they'd finally paid down the transmission repair. Marisol argued that they hadn't gone anywhere since her cousin's wedding, and that had involved sleeping on an air mattress in Bakersfield.

"Fine," Dev said. "But we bring our own food. No restaurants."

"Obviously."

She made a list on the back of an envelope: coffee, eggs, the good bread from the Vietnamese bakery, a bottle of wine, the fleece blanket from the closet, her book, his headphones, the charger they always forgot.

Friday afternoon they loaded the Corolla. Dev insisted on packing the trunk himself, because Marisol packed like someone throwing things into a river. She let him. She stood in the driveway drinking iced coffee and texting her sister about feeding the cat.

Traffic held them for fifty minutes outside the city. Dev drove; Marisol controlled the music and read road signs aloud in a newscaster voice until he laughed and told her to stop, then told her to keep going.

The light was going amber when they turned off the highway. Pine, then more pine. The cabin was smaller than the photos, and the key was in a lockbox that took Dev four tries.

Inside smelled like dust and cedar. Marisol opened a window. Dev found the light switch, then the wood stove, and crouched down to look at it with the specific concentration he brought to anything mechanical.

"Do you know how to work that?" she asked.

"I'll figure it out," he said.

She believed him.


The Weekend at Pigeon Forge

Marisol had been saving the coupon since March—two nights at a cabin outside Pigeon Forge, forty percent off if you booked before the end of September. She showed it to Dale on a Tuesday, holding her phone at an angle so the light from the kitchen window didn't wash out the screen.

"That's four hours," he said. He was still in his work boots, standing on the mat because she'd mopped.

"Three and a half if we leave Friday after your shift."

He looked at it a while longer than she expected, which meant yes. Dale had a way of considering things until the considering itself became the answer.

They packed Thursday night, mostly. Marisol laid out clothes on the bed, then moved half of them back to the closet, reasoning that they'd be inside most of the time anyway. Dale filled a cooler with sandwich fixings and a twelve-pack, because eating out twice a day added up and neither of them had said the word *budget* but both of them were thinking it. Rent had gone up in June.

Friday, he got out at four-fifteen. She was waiting in the parking lot with the car already running, a bag of gas station peanuts open in the cupholder.

"You drive first," she said. "You know I hate the interstate."

The mountains came up gradually, the way they do, blue and then green and then close enough to see the individual trees. Somewhere past Knoxville, Dale reached over and put his hand on her knee, and she put her hand on top of his, and neither of them said anything for about twenty miles.

The cabin had a hot tub that took an hour to heat and a view of somebody else's cabin. It was, they agreed, better than being home.


The Cooler in the Back Seat

Renée found the tent poles behind the water heater, right where Marcus swore he'd left them in October. She carried them up the basement stairs of their rented duplex in Grand Rapids and laid them across the kitchen table next to the grocery list.

"Two nights," Marcus said, counting off on his fingers. "So that's coffee, eggs, the good bacon, and marshmallows because you'll be mad if I forget marshmallows."

"I will be furious."

They'd been together six years and had talked about a proper vacation for at least four of them. What they could manage was this: Friday afternoon through Sunday, a state park an hour and a half north, forty-one dollars for the site. Renée had traded a shift at the clinic with Tonya. Marcus's route ended at two on Fridays anyway, which felt like a small gift from the universe.

He loaded the cooler while she packed the clothes — too many sweatshirts, she knew, but the lake got cold at night and she hated being cold. Her daughter's old sleeping bag, the purple one, went in for her; Marcus took the mummy bag his brother had left behind.

They pulled out at 3:15 and hit construction on 131 almost immediately, which Marcus took personally. Renée put her feet on the dash and scrolled the radio until she found a station playing something from high school.

"You know what I want," she said, "is to sit in a chair and not do anything. Just sit. In a chair."

"That's the whole plan. That's the entire itinerary."

The pines started around Big Rapids, and the air coming through the cracked window changed. Renée reached over and put her hand on the back of his neck. Marcus signaled, took the exit, and started looking for the sign for the campground store.


Maya was the one who noticed the long weekend on the calendar, three weeks out, circled in her own handwriting for a dentist appointment she'd already rescheduled twice.

"We should go somewhere," she said, holding her phone up so Devin could see the empty Saturday and Sunday. "Not far. Two hours, maybe."

Devin was on the floor with the dog, working a knot out of her collar. "Two hours in which direction?"

They settled on the coast after a week of low-grade negotiation conducted in the kitchen, in the car, in the last five minutes before sleep. Maya wanted a town with a bookstore. Devin wanted somewhere he could stand in cold water up to his knees and not talk to anyone. They found a rental above a garage that allowed dogs for an extra forty dollars, and Maya booked it on a Tuesday night while Devin read the reviews aloud, skeptical of anyone who described a place as "cozy."

Friday came slower than it should have. Devin got off at three and was home by three-twenty, which meant he'd left early, which he did not mention. Maya had already packed, badly — one bag for both of them, her sweaters folded, his shirts crammed in the corners like insulation. He didn't say anything about that either. He carried the bag down while she coaxed the dog into the back seat with a piece of cheese.

The traffic was worse than they'd planned for. Somewhere past the second exit Maya put her feet on the dash, and Devin said what he always said about her feet on the dash, and she left them there. She read him a paragraph from the rental listing, doing the voice of the owner. He laughed with his mouth closed.

By the time the road bent west, the light had gone gold and neither of them was in a hurry anymore.


# Two Days at the Lake

Marisol found the cabin listing on a Tuesday, during the slow hour after lunch when her phone was the only thing keeping her awake at the desk. Ninety-four dollars a night, two hours north, a dock that looked like it might collapse under a determined raccoon.

She sent it to Dev with no message, which was their whole language by now, four years in.

He wrote back: *the dock is a lawsuit.*

Then: *I can take Friday off.*

They packed Thursday night in the small apartment, which meant Dev laid everything on the bed in neat rows while Marisol moved through the rooms grabbing things she'd forgotten — the good coffee, a corkscrew, a book she'd been failing to read since March. He held up two nearly identical gray sweatshirts, waiting for her to choose. She chose neither and threw in a third.

"You're bringing the fan," he said.

"I sleep with the fan."

"There's a lake. The lake is the fan."

"The lake is not the fan, Dev."

The fan came.

Friday morning they left at six-thirty to beat the traffic and did not beat the traffic. Dev drove the first hour with his hand resting on her knee between gear shifts. Marisol read him the reviews out loud — *rustic*, *quaint*, *host was hard to reach* — and they built an elaborate theory about the host, whose name was Gerald, and who they decided was hiding something, possibly emus.

The highway thinned. Gas stations gave way to fields, then trees. Somewhere past the last town with a stoplight, Marisol rolled the window down and the air came in cool and green-smelling, and Dev said, "Okay. Okay, this was a good idea," and she didn't say anything, just turned her face into the wind and let him be right.


The morning of the trip, Dana was already outside scraping frost off the windshield while Marcus stood in the kitchen arguing with the coffee maker. They'd planned this for three weeks — two nights at a cabin two hours north, booked during a sale, the kind of place with a wood stove and no cell service.

"Did you pack the thing?" Marcus called through the screen door.

"Which thing?"

"The thing. For the stove. The lighter thing."

Dana held up a grill lighter without turning around.

They had made a list on the back of an envelope on Tuesday, then lost the envelope, then made a second list in Marcus's phone that neither of them consulted. What went into the car was a mix of the essential and the inexplicable: a cooler with eggs, bacon, two beers, and a container of leftover rice; a deck of cards; a portable speaker; four flannel shirts between them; and, for reasons Dana couldn't reconstruct later, a cast iron skillet, though the cabin listing had explicitly promised cookware.

Marcus drove the first leg because he always did, and Dana handled the radio because she always did, which meant forty minutes of a podcast neither of them was really following and then a long stretch of silence that wasn't uncomfortable. Outside, the strip malls thinned into fields, then into stands of bare trees.

At a gas station near the county line they split a bag of pretzels and argued cheerfully about whether they'd remembered to lock the back door. Neither of them could say for certain. Marcus offered to turn around; Dana said the cat could handle it.

By two o'clock they were on a gravel road with the heater rattling, and Marcus was reading the directions off a printout because the signal had already dropped. Dana leaned forward, watching for the mailbox with the red flag.


Maria pulls the suitcase down from the closet shelf while Dev checks the tire pressure on the Corolla, crouched in the parking lot of their apartment complex with a gauge he bought specifically for this trip. They have been together four years, living together for two, and this is the first weekend either of them has taken off work since March.

"Two nights," she calls from the balcony. "You don't need three shirts."

"I need options."

The plan is modest: a rented cabin two hours north, near a lake neither of them has seen. Maria found it online during a slow shift, forty dollars cheaper because the listing photos were badly lit. Dev negotiated with his supervisor for the Saturday off, trading a Sunday later in the month, and has been quietly pleased with himself about it ever since.

They pack Friday evening after work. Maria makes a list — coffee, the good pillow, her book, bug spray — and Dev ignores it, throwing things into a duffel bag by instinct. She reminds him about his allergy medication. He remembers the phone chargers she forgot.

They leave at six on Saturday morning, before traffic, with gas station coffee and a playlist Dev made three years ago and has never updated. The highway opens up past the outer suburbs. Maria drives the first hour with her seat pushed all the way back, one hand on the wheel, telling a long story about her sister's new boyfriend. Dev watches the fields go by and interrupts occasionally with questions.

At a rest stop, they split a bag of pretzels and stretch their legs. The air is cooler than it was at home. Maria takes a photograph of the parking lot for no particular reason.

By nine-thirty they find the turnoff, a gravel road under low branches. The cabin is smaller than the pictures suggested. Dev carries both bags inside. Maria opens all the windows.


Maya heard the trunk slam and knew Devon had, once again, packed the cooler before the clothes.

"Two nights," she called from the doorway. "You brought enough sandwiches for a week."

"You'll thank me at mile ninety when there's nothing but gas stations selling those rotating hot dogs."

She couldn't argue. Last October he'd been right about the hot dogs.

They'd planned this trip over three weeks of texts sent between her shifts at the clinic and his hours at the shop — a cabin two and a half hours north, borrowed from his cousin, who wanted nothing in return except that they water the tomato plants and leave the key under the ceramic frog. Maya had scrolled through photos of the place while eating lunch in her car: a screened porch, a woodstove, a lake that looked gray and unpromising in the pictures but which Devon insisted was better in person.

"Did you unplug the toaster?" she asked.

"Did you?"

They both went back inside. The toaster was unplugged. The thermostat got nudged down four degrees. Maya stood in the kitchen a moment longer, looking at the calendar on the fridge with its penciled-in shifts and the small square of Saturday she'd fought to keep empty.

The car smelled like coffee and the pine air freshener Devon refused to replace. She took the first driving shift because he'd been up since five. Ten minutes onto the highway he was already tipping sideways against the window, and she let him sleep, adjusting the radio down to almost nothing.

Somewhere past the second toll he woke up, blinked at the fields going by, and said, "Did we bring the checkers set?"

"It's under the cooler."

"Good," he said, and settled back, satisfied, watching the road unspool ahead of them.


On Thursday night, Dani spread a road atlas across the kitchen table, which was mostly a formality — she'd already mapped the route on her phone twice — but Marcus liked the paper version. He liked tracing the county roads with his finger and saying things like "we could cut through here" as if he'd ever once been willing to cut through anywhere.

"Two nights," he said. "We're back Sunday by five, because I'm not doing that thing where we roll in at midnight and I'm useless Monday."

"Nobody said midnight."

"You said midnight in Asheville."

"That was a different situation."

They packed Friday after work, which meant Dani packed and Marcus stood in the bedroom doorway with a beer, offering commentary. She threw in the good towels, two flannels, the little Bluetooth speaker with the cracked casing. He remembered the phone chargers and the dog's food, then remembered the dog wasn't coming — Rosalie next door was taking her — and put the food back with a sheepish look Dani caught in the mirror.

They left at 6:40 the next morning. The cooler sat between them on the bench seat of his truck, sweating onto a folded beach towel. Marcus drove the first hour and Dani navigated from a playlist she'd built two weeks earlier and refused to let him skip.

The land flattened, then wrinkled up again. They stopped at a gas station with a hand-painted sign advertising boiled peanuts, and Dani bought a bag she knew she wouldn't finish. Marcus ate most of them.

By ten they'd found the turnoff, a gravel road that dropped toward the lake, and Dani rolled her window all the way down. The air came in cool and green-smelling. Marcus reached over without looking and put his hand on her knee, and neither of them said anything for a mile and a half.


Maya heard the car door slam and knew Devon had finished loading the cooler. She stood at the kitchen window, thumbing through the printout of the cabin listing—two hours north, a woodstove, a lake close enough to walk to.

"You packed the good coffee?" he called through the screen.

"I packed the good coffee, the French press, and the thing you use to grind it, which weighs about nine pounds."

"Burr grinder. Worth it."

They'd talked about the trip for three weeks, mostly in fragments—between his shifts at the warehouse and her Tuesday and Thursday classes. Friday afternoon had finally arrived, the rent was paid, and the dog was staying with Devon's sister. Maya double-checked the stove knobs twice, which she always did, and Devon waited by the door without commenting on it, which he always did.

The car smelled like cut grass and the pine air freshener he'd bought as a joke in March. Maya took the passenger seat and put her feet on the dash until he gave her a look; she lowered them halfway as a compromise.

Traffic thinned past the second exit. She found a radio station that faded in and out and let it fade. Devon drove with one hand, the other resting on the console, and after a while she put her hand there too, not holding, just near.

"We should do this more," she said.

"We say that every time."

"We should say it less and do it more."

He laughed. Somewhere around the state line the light went orange, then blue, and the road narrowed and started to climb. Maya read the directions aloud from her phone before the signal dropped. They found the gravel turnoff on the second pass, headlights sliding over trees, and the cabin was smaller than the pictures and exactly right.


Maya heard the car before she saw it — the particular rattle of Dev's hatchback pulling into the lot behind their building at 6:40 on a Friday, twenty minutes earlier than he'd promised, which meant he'd skipped out on the last hour of inventory.

"Don't say anything," he said, coming through the door. "Rashid owes me about nine favors."

She'd already packed. Two duffels by the couch, the cooler filled the night before with sandwiches, cut cantaloupe, and the good iced tea, because the cabin they'd rented outside Hocking Hills didn't come with much besides a propane stove and a promise of no cell service. The listing photos showed a porch, a firepit ring, trees. Ninety-four dollars a night, which had felt like a lot in February and felt like nothing now.

"Did you print the directions?" she asked.

"I did better. I wrote them on an index card."

They argued pleasantly about the route for the first fifteen minutes on the highway and then stopped arguing, because the sun was doing something orange over the exit signs and Dev turned the radio down without being asked. Maya put her feet on the dash. He didn't tell her not to.

They stopped once, at a gas station outside Lancaster, and split a bag of pretzels standing beside the car in the warm dark. A moth kept hitting the light above the pump.

"Two whole days," she said.

"Two and a half. We don't have to be back till Sunday night."

The last stretch was gravel, and the headlights caught the eyes of something in the ditch — a deer, probably, or a raccoon. The cabin was smaller than the pictures. The key was in a lockbox that took Dev four tries.

Inside, it smelled like cedar and old smoke. Maya found the light switch. Dev set down the cooler and said, "Okay. This'll do."


The Saturday They Left Late

Dwayne had wanted to leave by seven. By the time they actually backed out of the driveway it was almost ten, because Renata couldn't find the phone charger and then decided the plants needed watering, all of them, including the one on the porch that had been dead since March.

"It's not dead," she said, buckling in. "It's dormant."

"It's been dormant for six months."

"So was I, before I met you."

They were driving to Galena, two and a half hours northwest, because a coworker of Renata's had mentioned the bed-and-breakfasts and Dwayne had a Groupon expiring Monday. They had talked about a trip for most of the spring — New Orleans, once, ambitiously — but the transmission on the Corolla had eaten that money, and Galena was what remained of the idea.

She had packed a cooler: turkey sandwiches, two peaches, a thermos of coffee that was already lukewarm. He had packed nothing, which she'd predicted, so she'd thrown his gray hoodie and a toothbrush into her duffel.

Somewhere past Rockford the corn opened up on both sides and they stopped talking for a while, which was fine. Renata put her bare feet on the dash. Dwayne moved them off. She put them back.

"Do you want to do the thing at the winery," she asked, "or just walk around?"

"Walk around. Then decide."

"That's not a plan."

"It's a weekend. It doesn't need a plan."

They found the B and B at half past twelve — a green Victorian with a porch swing and a woman named Judy who talked for eleven minutes about the historical district. Their room had a quilt and a window that stuck.

Renata sat on the bed and looked at him. "Two days," she said.

Dwayne set the duffel down. "Two days."


The Weekend

Denise found the cabin listing on a Tuesday, scrolling through her phone during her break at the clinic. Two hours north, ninety dollars a night, a woodstove and a lake you could see from the porch.

"October," she told Ray that evening, holding up the screen while he unlaced his boots by the door. "Before it gets too cold."

Ray squinted at the photos. He'd been on a roofing crew all week and his shoulders ached in a way that made him want to say no to everything. But he saw the way she was holding the phone, angled toward him, waiting.

"Book it," he said.

They'd been in the apartment on Sycamore going on four years now. Her daughter, Kayla, was fifteen and would stay with Denise's sister across town — a negotiation that took most of Thursday and ended with a promise about a concert in December.

Saturday morning, Ray loaded the truck while Denise packed a cooler with sandwiches, two thermoses of coffee, a bag of the pretzels he liked. She brought her book. He brought a portable radio, the same one he'd had since before they met, held together at one corner with electrical tape.

The drive took longer than expected. Construction outside Grayling, then a wrong turn onto a county road that dead-ended at somebody's soybean field. Ray backed the truck out slowly, one arm across the seat, and Denise didn't say anything about the map, which he appreciated.

They got to the cabin around two. It was smaller than the pictures, and the lake was more of a pond, ringed with cattails going brown at the edges.

Denise stood on the porch with her hands in her jacket pockets.

"It's good," she said.

Ray came up behind her with the cooler. "Yeah," he said. "It is."


Maritza had the cooler packed by six, which was her way of saying she'd been awake since five. Dev found her in the kitchen wedging a bag of ice around the sandwiches, her hair still wrapped, the coffee maker gurgling behind her.

"You know it's two hours," he said.

"Two hours with traffic is three. Three hours with your bladder is four."

He didn't argue, because she wasn't wrong, and because arguing before coffee was a rookie mistake after four years of sharing a lease. He carried the cooler out to the Corolla while she double-checked the stove, the windows, the back door, the stove again.

They'd booked the cabin in March, when winter had felt permanent and eighty-nine dollars a night had seemed like a bargain worth the drive. Now it was October and the reservation email had resurfaced in Dev's inbox like a small promise coming due. Two nights. A lake, allegedly. A wood stove that the listing photos suggested worked and the reviews suggested mostly worked.

Maritza drove the first leg because she always drove the first leg. Dev handled the music, which meant twenty minutes of her podcast, then a truce, then the playlist she pretended to tolerate. Outside Harrisburg the maples started turning and she made him look, tapping the window without taking her eyes off the road.

They stopped for gas and bad coffee. Dev bought a bag of gummy worms and did not offer her any, which was itself an offer; she took three.

The cabin's key was under a ceramic frog, exactly as promised. Inside smelled like cedar and old smoke. Maritza opened every window while Dev knelt at the stove with kindling and a lighter, swearing softly.

"You got it?"

"I've got it."

She came and stood behind him anyway, hand on his shoulder, watching the first curl of flame catch.


Maritza got off her shift at the hospital at seven, and by seven-thirty she had the cooler packed. Danny was still in the garage, arguing with the roof rack on the Corolla, sweat on his neck though it was October.

"It fits," he said. "It fit last year."

"Last year we didn't bring the chairs."

They'd been talking about the cabin since August, when Danny's cousin mentioned he wasn't using his place near the lake that weekend. Two nights, free, just clean up after yourselves. Maritza had circled it on the kitchen calendar in green marker, the way she circled everything—her mother's birthday, the rent, the day her car registration expired.

They left at nine, later than planned, because Danny remembered the propane tank was empty and the hardware store on Grand was open till eight-thirty. Maritza drove the first stretch while he slept with his head against the window, and she listened to a podcast about a murder in Ohio, keeping the volume low.

Somewhere past the second exit for the state park the trees changed, went red and yellow all at once like someone had thrown a switch, and she woke him up to see.

"Pull over," he said.

"There's no shoulder."

"There's plenty of shoulder."

She pulled over. They stood in the gravel with the hazards ticking and looked at a hillside neither of them would have been able to describe later, only that it had been worth stopping for. Danny took a picture with his phone and it came out flat and unimpressive, the way those pictures always do.

At the cabin the key was under the third stone, as promised. The place smelled like cedar and old smoke. Maritza opened windows while Danny hauled the cooler in, and by noon they had the chairs out on the dock, sitting close, not saying much.


Maya got off work at four on Friday, which meant she beat Devon home by an hour. She used the time to pull the duffel bag from the closet shelf, the one they'd bought two summers ago and used maybe four times.

When Devon came in, still in his work boots, she was standing over the bed with two flannels in her hands.

"It's going to be forty at night," he said, dropping his keys in the bowl by the door. "Bring both."

"That's what I figured. Did you check the tire?"

"Filled it at the Shell on Grand. Thirty-two all around." He sat on the edge of the bed to unlace his boots. "You call the place?"

"They said check-in's until ten. It's two and a half hours if we don't stop."

"We're going to stop. You always want coffee at Perryville."

She threw a sock at him. He caught it.

The cabin wasn't fancy—a friend of Maya's cousin rented it out on weekends when nobody was using it, sixty dollars a night, cash. There was a woodstove and a lake you could see through the trees if you stood in the right spot on the porch. They'd talked about going since March.

They loaded the car at six-thirty. Devon took the first shift driving. Maya put her feet on the dash and scrolled through a playlist she'd made at lunch, half of it his music, half hers.

Outside Perryville they stopped, and she got her coffee, and he got a bag of sunflower seeds and a Gatorade. Standing in the parking lot under the buzzing lights, he said, "This was a good idea."

"It was my idea."

"I know. I said it was good."

They got back in. The exits thinned out. By nine the road was dark and quiet and the trees came right up to the shoulder.


Rosa Delgado and Terrence Boyd had been talking about the drive to Galveston for three weeks before either of them looked at a calendar. The talking was the good part—Terrence describing the fried shrimp place his cousin swore by, Rosa insisting they leave early enough to catch the ferry without waiting an hour in line.

Friday afternoon, she came home from the dental office and found him already packing, which meant throwing two shirts and a phone charger into a duffel bag.

"That's it?" she said.

"What else is there?"

"Sunscreen. Towels. The cooler." She counted on her fingers. "Your allergy medicine, because you'll be miserable by Saturday afternoon otherwise."

He conceded the allergy medicine. Rosa packed the rest while he went down to the parking lot to check the tire pressure on the Corolla, which had 140,000 miles on it and a rattle in the dash that they'd both stopped hearing.

They left at six-fifteen, later than she wanted, and hit the tail end of rush hour on I-45. Terrence drove. Rosa put her feet on the dashboard and scrolled through motel listings, reading prices out loud until they agreed on one two blocks off the seawall, ninety-four dollars, free breakfast that would turn out to be a waffle machine and a box of granola bars.

Somewhere past League City the traffic loosened and the light went orange over the refineries. Terrence rolled his window down. Rosa complained about the noise, then rolled hers down too.

"We should do this more," he said.

"We say that every time."

"We should say it less and do it more."

They got in at nine, checked in, and walked to the beach in the dark just to hear it. The water was invisible. Rosa took her sandals off and stood in the wet sand, and Terrence stood beside her, not saying anything, which was the other good part.


The Tuesday before, Renée had printed the reservation confirmation and stuck it to the refrigerator with a magnet shaped like Ohio, though neither of them had ever been there. Two nights at a motel in Galveston, a room with a kitchenette because Marcus refused to pay eleven dollars for a hotel omelet.

They had been together six years, which felt both like a long time and like nothing at all. Her daughter Sasha, fourteen and unimpressed by everything, was staying with Renée's sister across town and had already negotiated for extra screen time as a condition of her cooperation.

Marcus packed Thursday night, which annoyed Renée, because it meant the duffel bag sat in the hallway for thirty-six hours and she kicked it twice in the dark. He packed like a man going to war: three shirts, a first aid kit, jumper cables he insisted on transferring to the trunk.

"It's two hours," she said.

"It's two hours until it isn't."

They left Saturday at seven, later than planned, because Renée couldn't find her sunglasses and then found them on her head. Marcus drove. The coffee from the gas station was terrible and they drank all of it. Somewhere past Texas City the refineries gave way to flat brown water and Renée rolled the window down to smell it.

At the motel the room smelled like bleach and the ice machine was broken, but the balcony faced the Gulf, and they stood out there with the plastic chairs still stacked, not sitting, just looking.

"We should do this more," she said.

Marcus made a noncommittal sound that meant he agreed but knew the math of it — the hours he'd lose, the shifts she'd have to trade.

Then he put his hand on the small of her back, and they went to find lunch, and the weekend, briefly, opened up in front of them like something they owned.


Marisol tapes the grocery list to the fridge on Thursday night, and by Friday morning Devon has crossed off half of it and added three things she didn't ask for: peanut butter pretzels, a bag of ice, sunscreen even though it's October.

"We're going to the mountains," she says, holding up the sunscreen.

"Sun exists there too."

They've been in the apartment four years now, long enough that the lease renewal arrives like a season rather than a decision. The trip was Devon's idea, floated over dishes two weeks ago — his cousin has a cabin outside Boone that's empty until Thanksgiving, and they could have it for two nights if they don't mind the pipes rattling.

Marisol packs the way she does everything, in lists: layers, the good coffee, the book she's been carrying around unread since August. Devon packs by walking into a room and grabbing whatever seems relevant. He forgets a toothbrush. He remembers the speaker, the cards, a flashlight with no batteries.

They leave at four to beat the traffic and hit it anyway, sitting on I-40 while the light goes orange over the outlet malls. Marisol drives. Devon controls the music and keeps skipping songs before they finish, which is the only thing about him she has never gotten used to.

Somewhere past Statesville the road opens up. She lets the car pick up speed. He puts his hand on her knee and leaves it there.

The cabin smells like cedar and old woodsmoke. The key is under a flowerpot, exactly where his cousin said. Inside, the heat takes twenty minutes to come on, so they keep their jackets zipped and stand in the kitchen eating pretzels out of the bag, laughing at how cold it is, at the deer skull mounted crookedly above the sink, at nothing.

"Two whole days," Devon says.

Marisol finds the light switch. "Two whole days."


The Sunday-to-Tuesday window was the only gap in their schedules, so Marisol claimed it. She wrote "CABIN?" on the whiteboard on the refrigerator, underlined it twice, and left for her shift.

Dev came home at eleven, saw the whiteboard, and wrote back "cabin is $340. beach is $190 and closer." He drew an arrow to a smaller note: "also your brother has the cooler."

They negotiated over the next two days in fragments — texts during her break, a conversation while he stood in the doorway of the bathroom watching her braid her hair. Marisol wanted trees. Dev wanted to not drive four hours. They compromised on a state park two hours east, a cheap motel outside its entrance with a pool that the reviews described as "usually clean."

Friday afternoon she packed for both of them, which was faster than explaining what he'd need. He retrieved the cooler from her brother, who kept him talking about a transmission problem for twenty-five minutes. By the time they merged onto the highway it was almost six and the sun was doing something orange and ridiculous over the outlet malls.

"We should've left at four," Dev said.

"We left at six. That's the trip we're on."

He laughed at that, and she took it as permission to put on the playlist he pretended not to like. They stopped once, for gas and for a bag of pretzels she opened before he'd finished paying.

The motel was exactly as promised. The key was a real key, on a diamond of green plastic. They carried in the cooler, the duffel, her pillow from home, and then stood in the small room together, momentarily unsure what to do with the fact that they had arrived.

"Pool," Marisol said.

"It's nine o'clock."

"It's lit up. Look."

He looked. It was lit up, glowing turquoise through the curtain gap, and nobody else was in it.


Marisol wiped the counter one last time while Dev loaded the cooler into the trunk of the Corolla. It was 6:40 on a Friday evening, and the plan — hatched three weeks ago over takeout, when he'd found a cabin two hours north for eighty-nine dollars a night — was finally happening.

"Did you grab the coffee?" she called through the screen door.

"Got the coffee. Got the French press. Forgot the mugs."

She laughed and doubled back for two chipped ones from the cabinet, the good ones staying home. They'd been living together in the duplex for four years now, splitting rent and the internet bill and the ongoing negotiation over whose turn it was to deal with the landlord. Dev's daughter from before, Nia, was spending the weekend with her mother, which made the timing work.

Traffic on the highway was slow at first, then opened up past the exit for the outlet mall. Marisol put her feet on the dash, which he pretended to mind. She read him reviews of the cabin off her phone — mostly good, one complaining about a raccoon — and he said a raccoon sounded fine, better than the neighbors' bass through the wall.

They stopped for gas and a bag of pretzels in a town with one blinking traffic light. Dev bought a scratch-off on impulse and won two dollars, which he declared a sign.

The last stretch was gravel, headlights catching the pale trunks of birches. The cabin was smaller than the photos, as cabins are, with a woodstove and a sagging plaid couch. Marisol found the light switch. Dev carried in the cooler, set it down, and stood a moment in the doorway, listening to how quiet it was.

"No Wi-Fi," she reported, holding up her phone.

"Good," he said, and meant it.


Maritza got the text at 4:47 on Friday afternoon: *cabin still available, they had a cancellation.* She forwarded it to Devon with three exclamation points and no other explanation, because after two years sharing an apartment above the laundromat, he'd know what it meant.

He called her on his break. "Two hours north?"

"Two and a half if we hit traffic. I already asked Renée to feed the cat."

They packed the way they always did, which is to say unevenly. Devon brought one duffel with three shirts and a paperback he wouldn't open. Maritza brought a tote bag of snacks, a second tote bag of "just in case" items, and a pillow from the couch because the hotel pillows anywhere were always wrong. He watched her wedge it into the back seat of the Corolla and said nothing, having learned.

They left at 7:15, later than planned, and stopped at the gas station on Ellsworth where Devon filled the tank and Maritza bought two coffees and a bag of the pretzels he liked. In the car she read the directions out loud even though the phone was talking, because she didn't trust the phone north of the county line.

The highway emptied out around the second exit. Devon put on the playlist he'd made in March and Maritza pretended to be annoyed by it. They talked about her sister's new job, about whether the landlord would actually fix the radiator before winter, about nothing. Somewhere past the reservoir the streetlights stopped and the dark came in close and companionable.

The cabin was small and smelled like woodsmoke and dust. There was a lockbox with a code that didn't work until Devon tried it upside down. Inside, Maritza found the thermostat and Devon found the light switches, and they stood a moment in the yellow kitchen, tired, pleased with themselves, forty-eight hours ahead of them.


The Saturday They Left Late

The plan had been to leave by seven. By nine-fifteen, Marisol was still standing in the kitchen with her phone pressed between ear and shoulder, telling her mother that no, they would not be stopping by on the way, and yes, she would send pictures.

Dev carried the cooler out to the Corolla and discovered the trunk already held a folding chair he'd been meaning to return to his brother since April. He shoved it aside, wedged the cooler in sideways, and stood for a moment in the apartment parking lot, appreciating how the morning had turned out warmer than the forecast promised.

"She wants us to bring back taffy," Marisol said, coming down the stairs with a duffel bag and the good pillow. "From that place with the horse on the sign."

"That place closed."

"I'm not telling her that."

They had two nights at a motel eleven miles from the shore, booked because the beachfront places wanted three hundred a night in August and they had rent due the following Friday. Dev had printed the confirmation at work. Marisol had made a playlist, then abandoned it forty minutes in and decided they'd just listen to whatever came on.

The first hour was highway and silence, the comfortable kind. Marisol put her feet on the dash and Dev told her to take them down, and she did, and then put them back up twenty minutes later, and he let it go.

They stopped at a gas station outside Fredericksburg. She bought sunflower seeds and a bag of ice. He filled the tank and squinted at the price and said nothing about it.

Back on the road, she cracked the window. The air smelled like cut grass and hot asphalt.

"We're really doing this," she said.

"We're really doing this," he agreed, and merged left.


Mara found the cabin listing on a Thursday night, scrolling while the dishwasher hummed. "Two hours north," she said. "There's a lake. It's forty dollars less if we leave Friday instead of Saturday."

Devon looked up from the couch, where he'd been half-watching a game he didn't care about. "Friday means I'd have to swap with Ramirez."

"Would he do it?"

"He owes me from Thanksgiving."

So it was decided the way most things were decided between them—not with a plan so much as a mutual failure to object. Devon texted Ramirez. Mara booked the cabin and immediately worried it looked worse in person than in the photographs, which had the burnished, honeyed quality of images taken twelve years ago.

They packed badly. Devon brought three shirts and no toothbrush. Mara brought a bag of groceries because she refused, on principle, to pay resort-town prices for eggs. At six-fifteen Friday they loaded the car, and Devon adjusted the driver's seat forward, then back, then forward again, and Mara said nothing, which was its own kind of comment.

The highway emptied out past the exurbs. Mara handled the music. Devon complained about her choices and then hummed along to them. Somewhere around the ninety-minute mark they stopped at a gas station with a hand-lettered sign advertising smoked fish, and Devon bought some, and Mara said it smelled like a crime scene, and ate half of it.

The cabin was smaller than the photographs but not worse. There was a porch. There was, in fact, a lake, gray and flat under a sky going lavender at the edges. Devon carried in the groceries. Mara found the light switch after some searching.

"Well," she said.

"Yeah," he said, and set the bag down, and neither of them moved to unpack for a while.


Maritza had the cooler packed by six on Friday morning, because she knew that if she waited for Dev to get moving, they'd hit traffic on the interstate and spend two hours crawling past the outlet malls.

"You put the ice in already?" Dev asked, coming into the kitchen barefoot, holding his phone against his shoulder while he tied the drawstring on his shorts. He was thirty-one, worked overnights at a distribution center, and had slept maybe four hours. "It'll be water by noon."

"There's a gas station in Waynesboro. We'll top it off."

They'd been together three years and had talked, on and off, about getting married, but every time the conversation arrived it seemed to cost more than they had. The lease renewal came due in April. His mother needed a new water heater. The trip to the lake house — really his cousin's place, a two-bedroom with a screened porch and a dock that sagged at one end — was the compromise: two nights, no hotel, gas split down the middle.

Dev carried out the bags while Maritza went through the apartment turning off power strips. She checked the stove twice. She always checked the stove twice.

In the car, she drove first. Dev fell asleep before they cleared the county line, his head against the window, the phone loose in his lap. She let him. Somewhere past the second exit for Charlottesville the land opened up, hayfields going gold at the edges, and she turned the radio down and just drove, feeling the particular lightness of an errand that wasn't an errand.

He woke up hungry outside Staunton. They got biscuits and bad coffee and ate in the parking lot with the doors open.

"We should do this more," he said, meaning it, and she said, "Okay," meaning it too, and neither of them believed it entirely, and that was fine.


Maya got the text from Devin at 2:14 on a Thursday: *road trip? two nights? I have Friday off.*

She typed back a single word — *where* — and then, before he could answer, added a photo of a cabin listing she'd been sitting on for three weeks. Two hours north, a wood stove, a lake that would still be too cold to swim in.

Devin called instead of texting. "That's ninety dollars more than I was thinking."

"It's ninety dollars split two ways."

"That's still forty-five dollars I was thinking about differently."

But he booked it that night from the couch while she folded laundry beside him, narrating the confirmation email out loud in a formal voice that made her laugh. They'd been in the apartment together fourteen months. The lease had both their names on it now, which had felt like a bigger conversation than it turned out to be.

Friday morning she was up first, making coffee in the travel mugs, packing the cooler with more food than two people could eat in two days — a habit from her mother, who had never once left the house without sandwiches. Devin came out in a flannel he'd owned since before they met and stood in the kitchen doorway watching her wedge a bag of oranges into the corner.

"We're going forty minutes past a grocery store," he said.

"And then we're going twenty minutes past that."

He took the cooler to the car without arguing. Outside it was gray and cold enough to see their breath, the parking lot slick in patches. He scraped the windshield while she cued up a playlist she'd been building all week and told him nothing about.

They got on the highway at 8:40. By the second exit she had her feet on the dash, and he reached over without looking and put his hand on her knee, and neither of them said anything for a while.


The Weekend

Dana finished loading the cooler while Marcus argued with the GPS about whether the lake road was still closed.

"It says forty minutes," he called from the driveway. "Last year it said forty minutes and it took two hours."

"Then we'll get there when we get there." She wedged the last bottle of iced tea between the sandwiches and shut the lid. They'd been talking about this trip since February, when the heating bill came and they'd both looked at each other and said, out loud, that they needed to get out of the apartment sometime before they turned into furniture.

The plan was modest. Two nights at a cabin Marcus's coworker owned, the kind with mismatched dishes and a screen door that never quite latched. They'd split the gas. Dana had traded a shift with Renata, which meant working a double the following Tuesday, but she'd decided it was worth it.

They left at four-thirty on Friday, later than intended. Marcus drove the first hour with his elbow out the window, and Dana read aloud from a paperback she'd found at a yard sale until the light got too dim. Somewhere past the second gas station the fields opened up and the sky turned that particular orange that made both of them stop talking.

The cabin was colder than expected. Marcus knelt at the woodstove, feeding in kindling with the intense concentration he brought to anything mechanical, while Dana walked the perimeter of the small main room, opening drawers, finding a deck of cards with the four of hearts missing and a jar of pennies.

"There's no cell service," she reported.

"I know." He didn't look up. "That's the point, isn't it?"

She sat down on the arm of the couch and watched the fire take. Outside, something moved in the dark trees, and neither of them got up to check.


The Cooler in the Backseat

Denise had the cooler packed by Thursday night, which Marcus found both endearing and slightly ridiculous, since they weren't leaving until Saturday morning.

"The ice will melt," he said, leaning against the kitchen doorway with a beer.

"I'll add more ice." She was folding paper towels into the gaps between sandwiches. "You know what a gas station sandwich costs now?"

They'd been talking about the trip for three weeks, ever since Denise's sister mentioned the cabins outside Hocking Hills went for eighty a night in the off-season. Marcus had picked up a Saturday shift at the warehouse the week before to cover it, and Denise had traded with a coworker to get Sunday off from the salon. Neither of them said out loud that they hadn't gone anywhere together since the previous summer.

Saturday morning came up gray and cold. Marcus loaded the car while Denise did a last walk-through — thermostat down, coffee maker unplugged, the plant her mother gave her watered. She locked the door twice, the way she always did.

The interstate was empty enough that Marcus let the truck drift up to seventy-five. Denise had made a playlist on her phone, mostly nineties R&B, and she skipped anything that came on that she'd already heard that month. Around Lancaster they stopped for gas, and Marcus bought a bag of sunflower seeds even though there was food in the cooler, and Denise rolled her eyes and then took a handful.

The cabin was smaller than the pictures, with a woodstove neither of them knew how to work and a view of trees that had already lost their leaves. Denise stood on the little porch with her jacket zipped to her chin.

"It's nice," she said.

Marcus came up behind her, put a hand on her shoulder. "It's quiet."

They stood there a while, not saying anything, just letting it be quiet.


Maritza came home from her shift at the clinic to find Danny already pulling the cooler out of the hall closet, which meant he'd been thinking about the lake all day instead of the invoices he'd promised to file.

"Two nights," he said. "Friday to Sunday. Your mother can keep the dog."

"My mother will feed him table scraps until he's sick."

"Then he'll be a happy sick dog."

They argued pleasantly about the route while she made rice and beans, Danny insisting on the county roads because he hated tolls, Maritza pointing out that county roads added forty minutes and he'd be complaining about his back by mile thirty. They compromised the way they usually did, which was that she won and he pretended it had been his idea.

Thursday night she packed while he checked the tires. She put in the good towels instead of the beach towels, two paperbacks she wouldn't read, sunscreen from last summer that had separated in the bottle. He came in with grease on his knuckles and asked if she'd remembered the coffee press, and she said obviously, and he kissed the back of her neck.

They left at six Friday morning, earlier than planned, because neither of them could sleep. The sky was still the color of dishwater. Danny drove the first hour with his window cracked, and Maritza dozed against the seatbelt, waking when he took the exit for the gas station with the good breakfast sandwiches.

"You want egg and cheese?"

"And a large coffee."

"You'll have to pee in twenty minutes."

"Then you'll pull over."

He came back with two sandwiches and one enormous coffee, and they ate in the parking lot with the engine running, watching a truck driver hose down his windshield. By eight the trees had thickened on both sides of the highway, and Maritza put her bare feet on the dash, and Danny didn't say anything about it.


Maritza had the cooler packed by six on Friday, though Dev insisted the ice would be soup before they hit the county line. He was right, mostly. By the time they reached the gas station off Route 9, the sandwiches were swimming and the sodas were only technically cold.

"You could have let me buy the good cooler," he said, wedging a bag of chips behind the seat.

"Eighty dollars for a box."

"An insulated box."

She gave him the look, the one that had ended this argument four or five times before, and he laughed and started the car.

They had two nights at a cabin outside Athens, booked in a burst of optimism back in February when the heating bill had made them both quiet for a whole evening. Maritza had printed the confirmation and stuck it on the fridge under a magnet shaped like a peach, and every time she opened the fridge for three months it had reminded her that something good was coming.

Dev drove the first hour. She read him the reviews out loud, skipping the one-star ones.

"'Charming and rustic,'" she said.

"That means the shower's bad."

"'Wonderfully secluded.'"

"That means we're going to die out there."

They stopped at a fruit stand because she wanted to, and he bought a bag of boiled peanuts and ate them out the window while she wandered the tomatoes. He watched her hold one up to the light like she was appraising a diamond, and thought, not for the first time, that he should probably say something about the ring his mother kept asking about.

Instead he said, "Get two."

She got four.

The cabin was at the end of a gravel road, and the shower was, in fact, bad. They didn't care. They sat on the porch with the windows open behind them, listening to insects, the cooler between their feet, and neither of them checked the time.


Maya finished loading the cooler while Devon argued with the GPS about whether the coast road was actually faster.

"It says three hours forty," he called from the driveway. "But that's assuming nobody's towing a boat."

"Everybody's towing a boat in June." She wedged a bag of ice around the sandwiches and let the lid fall shut. They'd been talking about this trip since March, when the heat pump died and ate the vacation fund. A weekend was what survived: two nights in a motel Maya's coworker swore was clean, a stretch of public beach, and Sunday dinner at a crab shack if the money held.

Devon had made a list on the back of an envelope. Sunscreen. Towels. The good speaker, not the one that cut out. Maya added *coffee filters* because the motel would have the tiny paper packets that tasted like envelope glue, and *Devon's inhaler*, which he had forgotten in Asheville and again in Wilmington.

They left at six-forty in the morning, later than planned, which was earlier than either of them expected. Maya drove the first leg with her seat too far forward, the way she liked it, and Devon read her the reviews of the motel out loud in the voice of a disappointed English butler. *The linens were adequate. One does not come to the shore for the linens.*

Somewhere past the second exit the fields opened up and the light went white and flat and enormous, and neither of them said anything for a while.

"We should do this more," Devon said.

"We should do a lot of things more."

"That's a yes, though."

She reached over and turned the radio down, then up again, then found the station that played the same forty songs and left it there. Two hours to the water. The cooler shifted in the back on every curve.


# Two Nights in Galena

Marisol found the cabin listing on a Tuesday, during the slow hour before her shift ended at the dental office. Two nights, ninety minutes north, a wood stove and a porch. She screenshotted it and sent it to Danny with three question marks.

He wrote back: *do they take dogs*

They did, but Bear would stay with Danny's sister anyway, because Bear ate a couch cushion the last time they left him somewhere new. Danny worked Thursday overtime to make the money feel less like a decision, and Marisol swapped her Saturday with Renee, who owed her from March.

Friday afternoon they packed badly. Marisol brought too many sweaters. Danny brought a cast-iron skillet, which she pointed out the cabin probably had, and he said probably wasn't the same as definitely. He also brought coffee, the good bag, ground too fine, and a speaker with a dying battery.

They left at 4:40 and hit the tail of rush hour anyway. Marisol drove the first stretch while Danny scrolled through a playlist he'd been building for a week and abandoned it twenty minutes in for the radio. At the gas station outside Rockford they bought jerky, a bag of ice they didn't need, and two coffees that tasted like the pot had been on since morning. Danny took over driving. Marisol put her feet on the dash and he told her not to and she didn't move them.

The last road in was gravel, unlit, and steeper than the pictures suggested. The key was in a lockbox and the code worked on the second try. Inside smelled like cedar and old smoke.

Danny found the skillet already hanging above the stove. He didn't say anything. Marisol did, at length, and he laughed and started hauling in the bags while she opened windows to let the cold in.


Maritza got off shift at the warehouse at four, and by five she had the cooler packed: sandwiches, two liters of grape soda, and the pasta salad she'd made the night before while Dwayne watched the game with the sound down low so she could think.

They were driving to Galveston. It was the cheapest thing they could do that still felt like leaving. Dwayne had checked the tires that morning in the apartment lot, crouching by the Corolla in his work boots, and found the rear passenger one softer than he liked. He filled it at the gas station on the corner for a dollar seventy-five in quarters.

"You bring the phone charger?" he asked.

"It's in the console. You bring the thing for the umbrella?"

He hadn't. He went back up the two flights, and she waited in the passenger seat with the window down, listening to a neighbor's TV through a screen door.

The drive took a little under an hour. They argued lightly about the radio, then settled on a station playing songs neither of them had chosen and both of them knew. Maritza put her feet on the dash and Dwayne told her not to, and she left them there anyway.

The motel was two blocks off the seawall, forty-nine dollars a night, and the woman at the desk gave them a room facing the parking lot instead of the water, which they'd expected. They dropped their bags. Dwayne pulled the curtain back and said you could see a sliver of gray between two buildings if you leaned.

They walked down to the beach before dark. Maritza took her shoes off and carried them. The sand was cool and packed hard near the water, and the Gulf came in brown and unhurried, and Dwayne stood with his hands in his pockets and said, "Well. We made it," and she said, "Barely," and leaned against his arm.


Maya got the text at 4:12 on Friday: *leaving work early, gassing up now.* She was still in scrubs, three charts behind, but she typed back a thumbs-up and started calculating. If she clocked out by five-thirty, they'd hit the interstate before the worst of it.

Devon had the car running when she came out. He'd thrown their duffel in the back along with a cooler he'd packed himself—turkey sandwiches, two apples, the good pickles, four beers buried in ice.

"You brought the pickles," she said.

"I'm a giver."

They'd been talking about the cabin for two months, ever since his cousin mentioned it sat empty most weekends. Ninety minutes northeast, a lake that was really more of a pond, a woodstove that Devon insisted he knew how to operate. Maya had reservations about that last part.

Traffic thinned past the outerbelt. She kicked off her shoes and put her feet on the dash, which he hated, and he said nothing about it, which meant he was in a good mood. The radio found a station playing songs from before either of them was born.

"Did you tell your mom we're going?" she asked.

"I told her we're going. I didn't tell her whose cabin."

"Coward."

"Strategist."

They stopped for gas at a place with a hand-lettered sign advertising night crawlers. Maya bought a bag of chips and a lottery ticket, scratching it off in the passenger seat while Devon washed the windshield.

"Anything?"

"A dollar."

"That's a beer."

"That's a quarter of a beer."

The light was going gold and long across the fields when they turned onto the county road. Devon rolled his window down and the car filled with the smell of cut hay and something sweeter underneath it. Maya put her hand on his knee and left it there.


Maya got off work at four on Friday, which was the whole point of the plan. She'd been the one to bring it up two weeks earlier, standing in the kitchen with a dish towel over her shoulder: two nights somewhere with trees. Devon had said sure, then spent the following Sunday comparing cabin listings until she took the laptop away from him and picked the third one down, the cheaper one, with a photo of a porch and a rusted metal chair.

They packed Thursday night, badly. Devon put in a hatchet he had no plan for. Maya packed too much coffee and not enough socks. Their apartment was small enough that the two duffel bags by the door made the hallway a problem, and they each kicked them at least once before morning.

The drive north took two hours and forty minutes, and they argued twice — once about whether to stop for gas before or after the highway split, once about a comment Devon had made about her sister. Both arguments ended the way most of theirs did, with one of them making a stupid joke and the other refusing to laugh for about a mile.

The cabin was smaller than the photo but the porch was real. Maya walked the perimeter of the yard while Devon carried things in, and when she came back he had already found the light switch that didn't work and was crouched under the sink with his phone flashlight, muttering.

"Leave it," she said.

They ate sandwiches they'd made at home, sitting on the steps with the plates on their knees. It got dark faster than either of them expected, the way it does under trees. Devon said something about hiking in the morning, early. Maya said maybe, in a tone that meant later, and he knew what she meant, and neither of them said anything else about it.


Maritza got the text at 4:40 on Friday: *leaving the shop now, tell me you packed the cooler.* She had. It sat by the door of the apartment, sweating a little, packed with sandwiches, two Gatorades, and the last of the peach kolaches from the bakery on Bissonnet.

Devon came up the stairs still smelling like brake dust, changed his shirt in ninety seconds, and they were in the truck by five. Traffic on 59 was a slow red river, and Maritza put her feet on the dash and read the cabin listing out loud again, the one they'd found for eighty-nine dollars a night near Bastrop because everything closer was booked.

"It says rustic," she said.

"Rustic means no cell service."

"Rustic means a raccoon."

They'd been together four years, no ring, no real hurry — her mother had opinions about that, which was part of why the weekend appealed. Two days of nobody's opinions.

They stopped in Columbus for gas and a bag of ice. Devon washed the windshield without being asked, the way he always did, methodical, and Maritza watched him from inside the store while she paid, thinking that this was the thing people never understood about him — he was quiet, but he never let anything go unattended.

The last twelve miles were caliche road, and the truck rattled hard enough that the cooler slid. The cabin was smaller than the pictures, one room and a porch, but there was a fire ring and a stack of split oak under a tarp, and the sky above the pines had gone that bruised orange that only lasts about eight minutes.

Devon got the fire going. Maritza brought out the sandwiches and sat on the step beside him, close, because it was already getting cold.

"Two days," she said.

"Two days," he said, and pushed a log deeper into the coals.


Maritza checked the oil in the Corolla while Devin loaded the cooler, wedging it behind the passenger seat because the trunk latch had stopped catching in March and neither of them had fixed it.

"Two nights," he said. "Cabin's got a woodstove but no cell signal."

"Good." She wiped her hands on a rag and shut the hood. "You said that like it's a warning."

They'd been talking about the trip since January, when Devin's cousin mentioned the place near the state forest, sixty dollars a night in the off-season. February came and went. In April, Maritza picked up extra shifts at the clinic. It was only now, the first weekend in October, that the calendar had finally cleared enough for both of them at once.

She had made a list. Devin had made fun of the list, then quietly added batteries and coffee filters to it.

They left Friday at four-thirty, hitting the tail of rush hour, which Maritza said she didn't mind because it meant they were actually going. Devin drove the first hour. She controlled the music, which was the arrangement they'd settled into over five years, and she played the same three albums she always played, and he said nothing about it.

Outside the city the maples had started turning. They stopped at a gas station with a hand-lettered sign advertising apple cider and bought two cups, and Devin burned his tongue and complained about it for six miles.

The cabin was smaller than the photos suggested, one room with a sagging couch and a woodstove that took Devin forty minutes to coax into cooperating. Maritza unpacked the cooler onto the counter, found the pan, and started cutting onions.

"There's a lake," Devin said from the floor, feeding kindling. "Half mile down the trail. We could go in the morning."

"We could," she said. "We're not doing anything else."


The forecast said rain by Sunday, so Denise moved the whole thing up a day.

She and Marcus had been talking about the cabin outside Hocking Hills since February, the way people talk about things they don't quite believe they'll do. But her sister's coupon was expiring, and Marcus had Friday off from the distribution center for the first time in six weeks, and suddenly it was real: two nights, forty minutes past Logan, a woodstove and a hot tub they'd probably never use.

Thursday night she packed while he made a playlist. She kept adding things — the good flashlight, an extra fleece, the little coffee press because the cabins always had those awful pod machines. Marcus watched her wedge a fourth sweatshirt into the duffel.

"It's two nights."

"It's Ohio in April. It could snow."

"It could snow," he agreed, and went back to arguing with himself about whether Steely Dan counted as road music.

They left at six-thirty Friday morning with gas station coffee and a bag of those cheese crackers Marcus liked. Denise drove the first leg because she always did, and Marcus fell asleep somewhere past Lancaster with his head tipped against the window, which she found irritating and also, in a way she wouldn't have admitted out loud, comforting. Eleven years of this. He always fell asleep in the car.

The roads narrowed. Farmland gave way to hills, then to trees that hadn't leafed out yet, gray and open. She woke him for the last turn because he was better at the gravel.

The cabin was smaller than the photos and colder inside than out. Marcus knelt at the woodstove with the long lighter while Denise carried in the cooler, and neither of them said anything about how quiet it was, how far from everything, how good.

She found the coffee press first thing.


Marisol got the text at 6:40 a.m., while the coffee was still dripping: her sister's cabin outside Hocking Hills was free that weekend, propane tank full, key under the ceramic frog.

"We could leave Friday after your shift," she said, holding the phone toward Dev, who was hunting for his other work sock under the bed.

"Saturday morning's cheaper on gas and my back," Dev said. "And I want to sleep in one day this decade."

They compromised, the way they had for six years — Friday night if he got off by seven, Saturday at dawn if he didn't. He got off at 7:20. So Saturday it was.

Marisol packed the cooler Friday evening: eggs, a block of cheddar, the good bread from the Lebanese bakery on Cleveland Avenue, four beers, and a jar of pickles Dev insisted on though nobody ever ate them. Dev checked the tire pressure with a gauge he'd owned since he was nineteen and topped off the washer fluid, because the roads down there threw grit.

They pulled out at 6:15 with the sky the color of dishwater. Marisol drove the first hour and played a podcast about a missing hiker; Dev fell asleep against the window within twenty minutes anyway, mouth slightly open, and she let him, turning the volume down.

Outside Lancaster they stopped for gas and he took over. She fell asleep. It seemed fair.

The cabin smelled like cedar and mouse poison. Dev carried the cooler; Marisol found the frog, the key, the light switch. There was a wood stove, a sagging plaid couch, and a window that framed nothing but trees going rust-colored.

"Two nights," Dev said, setting the cooler down. "We should hike before it rains tomorrow."

Marisol was already pulling off her boots. "Ten minutes," she said. "Then hiking."

He sat down next to her and didn't argue.


The Long Way to the Coast

Denise had the cooler packed by Thursday night, which Marcus said was ridiculous, since they weren't leaving until Saturday morning.

"Ice melts," he told her, standing in the kitchen doorway in his work shirt, the name patch still crooked from a twelve-hour shift.

"I'm not putting ice in yet. I'm putting in the things that go under the ice." She held up a package of hot dogs like evidence. "You'll thank me."

They had two nights booked at a motel three blocks from the beach, the kind with an ice machine that groaned and a pool nobody swam in. It cost less than they'd feared. Marcus had found it on his phone during his lunch break, scrolling with one thumb while eating a sandwich in his truck.

Saturday morning came gray. Denise woke first, at five-thirty out of habit, and stood at the window watching the parking lot fill with fog. She made coffee in the pot they'd bought at a yard sale their first month in the apartment, four years ago now, when the whole place had echoed because they owned almost nothing.

Marcus came out shirtless, scratching his jaw. "You didn't wake me."

"You were sleeping like a dead man."

"That's what dead men do."

They loaded the car in fifteen minutes. Denise drove the first leg because Marcus's back was still bothering him, and he fell asleep against the window before they hit the county line, mouth slightly open. She turned the radio down and let him.

He woke somewhere past the halfway point, blinking at the pines.

"You missed the exit for the good gas station," he said.

"There's another one."

"Not a good one."

She laughed. He put his hand on her knee and left it there, and outside the windows the land began, very slowly, to flatten toward water.


Marisol had the cooler packed by six, which was later than she'd wanted but earlier than Dev expected. He came out of the apartment carrying the folding chairs and a pillow he refused to travel without, and she made a face at the pillow, and he pretended not to see the face.

"Two nights," she said. "You brought three shirts."

"One's for hiking. One's for dinner. One's insurance."

They'd been talking about the cabin since February, back when the rent went up and they'd sat at the kitchen table with a calculator and decided that a weekend in the mountains was cheaper than therapy. Marisol had found the place on a listing site — a converted garage with a woodstove and a photo of a creek that might have been taken twenty years ago. Dev had said yes before she finished reading the description.

The drive out took three hours. She drove the first half because she liked the highway; he took over at the exit because he liked the switchbacks. They listened to a podcast about a shipwreck and then, when the signal cut out, to whatever was in the glovebox, which turned out to be a burned CD from someone's wedding in 2011.

The cabin was smaller than the pictures and the creek was real. Dev got the woodstove going on the second try and acted like it had been the first. Marisol unpacked the cooler onto a counter the size of a cutting board — eggs, coffee, the good cheese, a bottle of wine they'd been saving without ever saying what for.

Outside, the light went orange, then blue. They sat in the folding chairs with their coats on, not talking much, listening to the water move over the rocks.

"Good call," he said.

"I know," she said.


Maritza gets home from her shift at the clinic on Thursday and finds Dev already pulling the duffel bag down from the closet shelf.

"You're optimistic," she says, dropping her keys in the bowl. "I haven't even said yes."

"You said 'maybe Cape May' on Tuesday. In this house, that's a contract."

They've lived in the second-floor apartment for three years, long enough that the lease renewal arrives without either of them commenting on it. Dev works remote for an insurance company; Maritza does intake and scheduling. Between them they have one reliable car, a 2014 Corolla with a cracked taillight cover held on with red tape.

The planning takes forty minutes at the kitchen table. Dev finds a motel eleven blocks from the beach, ninety-four dollars a night, free parking, breakfast that is probably a waffle machine and a bowl of oranges. Maritza checks the weather three times, as though it might improve on the fourth. Fifty-eight degrees Saturday, wind off the water.

"We're not swimming anyway," Dev says.

"I wanted to look at the water and feel warm."

"You can look at the water and feel cold. It builds character."

They leave Friday at 4:40, later than planned, because Maritza remembered the cat needed the extra dish of food and Dev couldn't find his good sunglasses, which turned up in the glove compartment where they always are. Traffic on the parkway is bad for the first hour and then unaccountably clears. Maritza drives; Dev handles the music and reads exit signs aloud in a newscaster voice until she tells him to stop, then asks him to keep going.

They stop for gas and split a bag of pretzels. By the time they reach the motel the sky has gone violet and the office smells like carpet cleaner. The clerk asks if they need one key or two.

"One's fine," Maritza says. "We'll manage."


Maya got off work at four on Friday, which was the whole reason they'd picked that weekend. She found Dev in the kitchen of their one-bedroom apartment, already packing the cooler with the sandwiches he'd made at lunch — turkey for her, hummus and roasted pepper for him, because he'd gone mostly vegetarian in March and hadn't said much about it since.

"Did you check the tire?" she asked.

"Filled it Tuesday. It's holding."

They'd been talking about the cabin since January, when Dev's coworker mentioned his family had a place two hours north that sat empty most of the year. It cost them nothing but gas and a bottle of wine as a thank-you. Maya had negotiated the wine down from the forty-dollar bottle Dev wanted to a twenty-two-dollar one, and he'd conceded without much fight, which was how most of their negotiations went.

The car was a 2011 Corolla with 160,000 miles and a rattle in the dash that neither of them had gotten around to diagnosing. Dev drove the first hour. Maya put her feet on the dashboard, which he hated and never mentioned, and scrolled through the playlist she'd built the night before — mostly songs from the summer they met, three years ago now, at a friend's cookout where neither of them had planned to stay long.

Traffic thinned past the exit for the outlet mall. The light went gold and low across the fields.

"We should do this more," Maya said.

"We say that."

"I know. But we should."

He reached over without looking and put his hand on her knee, and she covered it with hers, and they drove another twenty minutes like that, not talking, the rattle in the dash keeping its own uneven time, the cooler shifting slightly in the back on every curve.


Marisol got off shift at the hospital at seven, and by seven-forty she was at the kitchen table with a legal pad, writing "GAS," "FOOD," "?????" in a column. Dev came in still wearing his warehouse vest and looked over her shoulder.

"The question marks are the hotel," she said.

"There's that place in Galena with the cash discount. Ninety-two a night."

"For two nights that's one eighty-four before we've eaten a single thing."

They had lived together four years in a two-bedroom above a laundromat, splitting rent down the middle and arguing pleasantly about whose turn it was to buy detergent. Neither of them had taken more than a Sunday off since March.

Dev opened the fridge, found nothing, and closed it. "One night, then. Leave Saturday early, come back Sunday after dinner."

"That's barely a trip."

"That's a whole day and a half more than we've had."

She wrote ONE NIGHT and underlined it twice, which was how she agreed to things.

Saturday morning he was up first, filling the thermos, checking the tire pressure because the little light had been on since Tuesday and he'd decided it was probably the cold. Marisol came down in her sister's borrowed fleece with a grocery bag of sandwiches, apples, and a bag of the pretzels he liked. She put it on the back seat where he could reach it.

The car smelled like coffee and old upholstery. Twenty minutes out of the city the buildings thinned and the fields opened up brown and stubbled under a sky the color of dishwater, and Dev said, "Look at all that nothing," in a tone of real appreciation.

Marisol put her feet on the dash, which he hated, and he let her.

"Wake me at the halfway point," she said, and was asleep in eleven minutes, and he drove on watching the road unspool, unhurried for the first time in weeks.


Maritza and Dwight had been putting off the drive to the coast for three years, ever since they moved in together above the tire shop on Fremont Street. The trip finally happened because Dwight's cousin offered them a beach house in exchange for feeding her cat.

They packed on Thursday night, which meant Maritza packed and Dwight watched a fishing show with the sound low. She stood in the doorway holding two jackets.

"It's October," she said. "It'll be cold at night."

"It'll be cold at night," he agreed, not looking away from the screen.

She threw the heavier jacket at his chest. He caught it without turning his head, which she found both irritating and, in some way she wouldn't admit out loud, impressive after eleven years.

They left at six the next morning, before the traffic on the interstate got mean. Maritza drove the first two hours because Dwight's back had been bothering him since the warehouse switched to the new pallet system. He fell asleep somewhere past the reservoir with his mouth open, and she let him, adjusting the radio down to almost nothing.

At the gas station outside Millerton he woke up and bought them both coffee and a bag of powdered donuts, which he knew she pretended not to want. He drove the rest of the way. She read him the directions off her phone even though he'd been there twice before, and he followed them even though he didn't need to.

The beach house smelled like mildew and old sunscreen. The cat, an orange thing named Pancake, hid under the couch for the first hour. They opened all the windows and Dwight went out to the porch to see whether the ocean was where he remembered it.

"Still there?" Maritza called.

"Still there," he said. She came out and stood next to him, and neither of them said anything else for a while.


Mark adjusted the flame beneath the cast-iron skillet, the scent of searing garlic and rosemary filling their modest kitchen. He wiped his hands on a faded apron, glancing toward the dining room where Elena was arranging mismatched ceramic plates with practiced care. The tablecloth had a faint wine stain near the center, a relic from last year’s anniversary they’d both decided to keep as part of its story.

“Did you remember to chill the white?” Elena called without turning, her fingers smoothing a linen napkin into a loose fold. She wasn’t asking about logistics; she was checking in, as she always did when the rhythm of hosting shifted between them.

“It’s been breathing for twenty minutes,” Mark replied, plating the roasted vegetables with tongs. He moved to her side, placing a hand briefly on her lower back before setting down a small bowl of flaky salt. They worked in a silence honed over twelve years of shared meals and unspoken adjustments—her preference for soft lighting, his habit of tasting everything twice, the way they both paused to listen when the old radiator clicked.

Elena lit the tapered candles, their glow catching the silverware they’d inherited from her grandmother. Mark poured water into glasses, the ice clinking softly. Outside, headlights swept across the front window; their friends were arriving exactly on time, as they always did.

They exchanged a look that held no words, only the quiet certainty of a partnership built not on grand gestures but on the accumulation of ordinary evenings like this one. Elena opened the door as Mark stepped back to let the warmth of the room meet the cool night air. The laughter that followed was familiar, easy—the sound of people who knew each other well enough to be comfortable in the spaces between conversation, just as Mark and Elena were comfortable in the space between tasks, moving together through the ritual of welcome.


Mark adjusted the flame beneath the cast-iron skillet, watching the garlic soften to a pale gold while Elena arranged roasted beets and goat cheese on the ceramic platter. The kitchen hummed with the quiet rhythm of their practiced coordination, a choreography refined over twelve years of shared meals and overlapping schedules. She reached past him for the balsamic glaze without asking; he shifted his weight to give her space without being told.

“Did you chill the white?” Elena asked, her eyes still on the arrangement.

“In the bucket by the back door,” Mark replied, tapping the wooden spoon against the pan’s edge before setting it down. He wiped his hands on the apron tied loosely at his waist and moved to the dining table, straightening the linen napkins she’d folded earlier. Each one bore the same imperfect crease, a testament to her preference for function over formality.

Elena carried the platter to the table, setting it down beside the sourdough she’d warmed in the oven. Mark uncorked the wine, the soft pop absorbed by the low murmur of jazz from the speaker above the fridge. They paused together, surveying the table: four place settings, mismatched glasses caught in the amber light, steam rising from the pasta bowl. No grand gestures, no performative elegance—just the accumulated comfort of knowing exactly how the other takes their coffee, folds their laundry, or anticipates a guest’s dietary restriction.

A car door closed outside. Elena smoothed her shirt; Mark tucked the corkscrew into the drawer. They exchanged a glance that held everything unsaid—the grocery list remembered, the dog walked, the conversation about work stress deferred until after dessert. Then the doorbell rang, and they moved toward it as one, hosts not by obligation but by the quiet, enduring grammar of a life built side by side.