wedding favors

four

Reed gets out from the driver's seat to open my door for me when he pulls up, and I hop in like I have sat in the beat up van a million times over. He yawns widely, but muffles the sound with his arm. I'm still wearing his sweater, and it has been keeping me cozy, but I notice that he has started to blast the heat.

"Are you cold?" I ask, starting to pull the sweater over my head.

Reed stops me with his hand and grins. "I'm okay. You should keep that."

"I'm not cold, though."

Even in the dim lights of the dashboard, I think I see him blush as he smiles. "It looks better on you."

That settles it for us. Happily, I am keeping the sweater. He asks for my address, and I type it into his phone for him. It is twenty minutes away, and he muses that he's in the neighborhood over. It's a small world.

Reed starts to drive, and the stereo is off. He is an anomaly for this, I think, but it amuses me too much to think it's weird. 

"Did you have fun tonight?" I ask. I look at him, and his eyes seem exhausted, but bright. He nods. Tentatively, I add, "I'm glad you came."

"I'm glad you invited me," Reed replies. His hair is mussed, but it looks perfectly purposeful. He is handsome in his Giants t-shirt and brown pants and I am a little bit of a lot infatuated. "Can I hear about your mom?" he asks at the stoplight. He turns to me until I answer.

"Anything?" I respond. Truthfully, I remember my mom in moments. There is no long form memory of her, no phase of my life that I can remember as hers. Not in the way my dad remembers her. I only have her in bits and pieces, and I hold onto them like they are my lifeline. I have probably written all of them, chronologically, into a diary. I have a promise to myself, that I can't forget. "She loved carrot cake. She made their wedding cake's top tier into a carrot cake, and she kept the recipe posted on our fridge. She said it was how her mom had always made it."

"Is that why the dessert table had carrot cake cupcakes?" 

I nod and give Reed a smile. It'd been Charlotte's idea, actually. "Christmas, New Year's, birthdays. Even if you wanted another kind of cake, you had to have some sort of carrot cake there, too."

"Was she the kind of woman who got her way often?"

I hum, skip a beat. "Always, and never by force."

"Sounds like my mom."

"Must be why we get along so well." Among other things, I think, but don't say it out loud. When I see his face, I can tell he's thinking the same thing.

Reed is shyer than the boys I am used to dealing with. I half expect him to grab my hand and hold it as he drives, but he drives with his left hand and rests his right hand in a fist, on his knee. I wonder if I should reach for it, thinking to myself that we are seniors in high school and it wouldn't kill me to just be forward for once, but I tamp down the minor disappointment and tell myself to be satisfied that our elbows are touching.

The silence is comfortable, but when I see the car beside us dancing and singing, I can't help myself. I put a hand on his arm and turn my body towards him. "You really don't listen to music while you drive?" I ask, almost incredulously. 

He laughs, deep and clear. "I didn't turn any music on so that I could hear you better."

I am chastened. "Oh." Reed unlocks his phone and hands it to me, his Spotify pulled up. He tells me that I can play whatever I want, but I scroll through his playlists, instead. "There's a lot of variety here," I tell him. "Frank Ocean, Fleetwood Mac, A$AP, but most importantly, Idina Menzel."