All of Me

thirty-eight • work it out

"Thanks, Mom."

It's been hard to sleep recently. No surprise there. My mind won't shut off for long enough to relax and as soon as I do, I end up having great dreams. Dreams where none of this happened and I'm still with Liam, hanging out at his house with his family. Then I wake up and I remember, and it crushes me all over again,

"Only a few days to go." Mom smiles and nudges my foot. She refills her mug with black coffee, plumes of steam swirling up. I return her smile and pray that this week comes to an end fast.

• • •

We're halfway to college when Gray suddenly reaches out and turns down the playlist he chose, and he twists in his seat to face me.

"I was thinking," he says, pulling his ankle over his knee.

"Sounds good," I say when he pauses.

He rolls his eyes at me and I turn away when the traffic light we're waiting at goes green. "I was thinking," he says again, "about this summer.

"Oh yeah?"

"Well, I figure by then, Dad and Jen will probably be married and I imagine we'll have officially moved in with you guys. We'll be, like, brother and sister living together, so I won't be getting my own car."

"Well, no, considering you can't even drive."

He harrumphs and says, "I know, I know, exactly. I could learn in your car and go on the insurance, seeing as we're family, right?"

I glance at him. He's grinning, with his scheming look on his face. "Makes sense," I say as I merge onto the highway and pick up the speed a little.

"I'm gonna learn to drive before freshman year is over and – this is a promise – we're going to do that road trip we were talking about. Just you and me and the open road."

"Seriously?" I look him in the eye, and he certainly looks like he means it.

"Seriously. We could drive to Boston and join the I-90 and take it all the way to Oregon. Or we could make our own route and hit as many states as possible. We have, like, three months off."

"That sounds really cool," I say, hesitantly, "but that'll be expensive, Gray."

He shrugs and says, "We can use my beloved mother's pity money." He hasn't mentioned her in a while, not since things were going so great, and then so crap. "I moved everything from her to my savings account and it's plenty for a month of food, gas, rooms – the whole shebang. More, even."

"Wow." I take a deep breath and let the idea mull in my brain for a moment, waiting for some kind of anxiety to settle in, but none comes. There's no lingering droplet of paranoia or dread at the thought of taking to the road with Gray for four weeks. It's a strange feeling, for that not to stress me out. "Are you sure?"

"Absolutely. One hundred percent. Certainly. We have the time, we have the money, and I think it'd be pretty cool to have some best friend sibling bonding time."

I find myself grinning for the first time in over a week. "Ok. We'll do it." I point at him. "As long as you learn to drive. Don't get me all excited for this and then fail your test."

He grabs my finger and hooks it with his. "I pointy promise swear. I'm gonna be the best driver you've ever seen."

Something tells me Gray's going to be a terrible driver.

"It can be our wedding present to our parents," he says, sitting straight again. "A month of child-free bliss as newlyweds, if they're married by then." He winks. My nose wrinkles. "We'll explore the country; they'll explore each other."