Driving to the End

Sierra watched the scrub roll past the window and thought about turning twenty-nine in three weeks.

Not a milestone, exactly. Not like thirty. But it sat on her chest all the same, heavy as a crate of unsold bread at closing time.

"Two more hours," Rick said, one hand on the wheel of the Corolla. "Maybe less if the roadworks are done."

"Good." She didn't say anything else. There wasn't much else to say that they hadn't already said, or worse, hadn't said at all, for going on a year now.

Six years together. He'd been twenty-five when they met at Deb's barbecue, cracking jokes by the grill while she burned her tongue on someone's potato salad. She'd been twenty-two, one of the few Black women there, and he was the only white guy who didn't make it weird. Now she was twenty-eight, almost twenty-nine, and he was thirty-one, and the space between them in this cramped car felt wider than the highway.

In the back seat sat a birdcage. Empty, gold-painted, wire bent at one corner. It belonged to a woman Sierra had never met, and it was riding shotgun on a funeral like it had a ticket.

"It's stupid," she said, before she could stop herself. "We're driving four hours and the thing takes up half the back seat."

"It doesn't take up half."

"It takes up half, Rick. Look at it."

He glanced in the mirror. "It's not heavy. Leave it alone."

"I'm not touching it. I just think, if you're not going to tell me why it matters, then maybe it shouldn't come to your grandmother's funeral taking up legroom."

His jaw did that thing it did. The tight, quiet, I'm-not-going-to-fight-about-this thing. Sierra had learned to hate that jaw.

"You don't have to understand it," he said. "It's mine."

"Right. It's yours. Everything is yours lately. Your silences are yours. Your weekends at the depot are yours."

"Here we go."

"No, here we go nothing. I'm just saying a birdcage with no bird in it is a strange thing for a grown man to fight about."

He didn't answer. The scrub kept rolling. Somewhere ahead the sun was going down over nothing.

Sierra turned back to the window and did the math again, like she always did. Six years with him. Six years total, which meant she had now spent more of her adult life coupled up than not, and what did she have to show for it? A bakery she loved and a boyfriend who felt like a roommate she used to fancy.

God, that was a mean thought. She loved him. She did. She just couldn't remember the last time she'd felt it in her body instead of her calendar.

"Rest stop in ten k's," he said finally. "You want anything?"

"I want to not be in this car."

He sighed. "Sierra."

"I know. I know. Coffee, then."

They pulled in under buzzing fluorescent lights, and while he filled the tank she wandered around the corner of the kiosk and saw it. Across the highway, glowing under floodlights like a small stadium in the middle of nowhere. A driving range. Rows of lit bays, green netting, a sign with a cartoon golf ball giving a thumbs up.

"Rick."

"What."

"Look. Over there."

He looked. "It's a driving range."

"I know it's a driving range. We've got two hours and you're tense as a new batch of dough. Let's go hit some balls."

"I haven't held a club since I was twenty-two."

"Even better. Come on." She grabbed his sleeve before he could argue. "Unless you're scared a woman will out-drive you."

"You will absolutely not out-drive me."

"Prove it, then."

The man at the range desk rented them two baskets of balls and a couple of loaner drivers, and they walked out under the lights into cool night air. Rick stretched his shoulders, set his feet, and took a practice swing that made Sierra stop talking mid-sentence.

It was a good swing. Smooth, easy, balanced.

"What?" he said, catching her look.

"Where did that come from?"

"I told you. I was twenty-two. My nan's place backed onto a course." He teed one up and swung, and the ball went out dead straight, high, landing maybe two hundred and twenty yards out under the far lights. "I worked there summers."

"You worked there summers? You never told me that."

"You never asked."

"Well, maybe that's the whole problem with us, isn't it. Neither of us asks."

He teed up another ball. This one went even further. Then another, and another, each one landing out there in the dark in nearly the same spot, tight little cluster of them, and Sierra stood with her own driver hanging loose in her hands and just watched him.

She'd forgotten this. Not the golf, she'd never known about the golf. This. The version of Rick that was good at something and knew it and didn't apologize for it. The version she'd met at Deb's barbecue. Somewhere along the way he'd folded up into a quiet man who came home smelling like diesel and said little and meant less.

"Your turn," he said.

She hit one. It dribbled off to the right about forty yards. He laughed, then adjusted her grip without asking, his hands warm over hers, and she hit the next one properly and felt genuinely, stupidly pleased about it.

"Okay," she said. "Okay, that felt good."

"Told you." He teed up another. Then he stopped, ball in hand, and looked at the netting. "The cage was nan's."

Sierra set her club down. "Yeah?"

"Never told you that either. She kept it empty her whole life. Never bought a bird, never would. I asked her why once, when I was a kid, and she said some things are meant to