Saltwater Lines

My name is Gwen Ramsey, I'm forty-four, and last week I drove to Sacramento mostly by myself, except I wasn't really by myself by the end of it. My youngest moved into a dorm in August. My house got very quiet. So I rented a silver sedan and pointed it west on I-80 because sitting in that quiet felt worse than driving through it.

The bus thing happened on a Tuesday. I stopped in Cheyenne for gas and there was a guy sitting on a curb with a duffel bag, watching the bus like it owed him money.

"You waiting on that thing?" I asked.

"It's dead," he said. "Three hours they've been telling me thirty minutes."

His name was Donny Sikes. He was thirty-nine, a friend of a friend of my friend Hanna, on his way to Sacramento for a job. He had a long-delayed road trip he'd never finished and a start date he couldn't miss. I had an empty passenger seat and, honestly, too much silence in my head. So I said get in.

We talked about nothing for a while. Radio stations, gas prices, how flat Wyoming is. He was easy to sit next to. Not charming in a practiced way, just easy.

The first note showed up at a rest stop outside Rawlins. I came back from the vending machine and there was a folded piece of paper under my wiper. I stood there a second before I opened it.

Gwen. Thanks for the ride. I know you didn't have to stop. I left a bag of peanut M&Ms on your passenger seat because I noticed you kept checking the candy rack at the gas station and then talking yourself out of it. Consider this me talking you into it. Donny.

I looked in the car. There they were, sitting on the seat like they'd always been there. I ate half the bag before we got back on the highway. He never said a word about it. He just looked over once and smiled at the road.

* * *

That night we stopped in Rock Springs and took rooms at a chain motel, two rooms, separate doors, the way you'd expect. I sat on the bed with the little notepad from the desk and a pen that said the motel's name on it, and I wrote him a letter. I don't know why I didn't just text him. We had each other's numbers by then. It felt like the letter was the point somehow. Handwriting goes somewhere a text doesn't.

Donny. I ate the M&Ms. You were right about them. I'm nervous tonight, which sounds dumb, but I haven't slept alone in a strange town in a long time and the room has that smell all motel rooms have and the bedspread is the ugliest thing I've ever seen. Here's a question I have no business asking. Have you ever had a fantasy about a woman swimming naked at night? Don't answer out loud. Write it down. Gwen.

I slid it under his door and went back to my room and lay there listening to the ice machine and feeling ridiculous. Then I felt something else, which was worse. I felt awake. I hadn't felt awake in a while.

* * *

His letter was under my wiper in the morning, before we even pulled out.

Gwen. Since you asked, yes. Here's how it goes. A motel pool like this one, but empty. A full moon over it, so the water looks lit from underneath. She swims the length of it slow, and I'm sitting on the edge with my feet in, and the only sound is her breathing and the water moving and her wet skin sliding on the tile when she pulls herself up the ladder. She doesn't hurry. She doesn't cover up. She looks at me the whole way over and says, well, are you getting in or not. That's it. That is the entire matter. It's not even about anything else happening after. It's about her being that unafraid. Donny.

I read it three times in the parking lot while he bought coffee. I put it in my bag with the M&Ms, which I had also, apparently, decided to keep.

We drove. Utah, mostly, that day. The salt flats went by and neither of us said much and it was a good kind of not saying much. At a gas station outside Elko, Nevada, he filled the tank and I sat in a booth in the little café section with more eggs and hash browns than I needed, and I wrote again.

Donny. Your letter is in my bag. I'm not going to tell you what I did when I read it, but I'll tell you this. I've been gripping the steering wheel harder than usual. Both hands. Like the car is the only thing holding me together. I got married at twenty-two and divorced at forty-one and I've been single three years and I told everyone, including myself, that I was fine with that, and I was, mostly. But I haven't let myself want anyone in years. Actually let myself. Not once. And now there's a full moon in a motel pool in my head and I put it there, so that's on me. Gwen.

* * *

His reply came at a rest stop in the late afternoon, on a picnic table under a sky that just kept going. He wrote it while I walked to the far end of the lot to stretch my legs, which was maybe not an accident, and left it on the table under a rock for me.

Gwen. Here's what I'd do if you pulled the car over right now. I'd come around to your side. You'd roll the window down because you always decide things fast once you've decided them, I've watched you do it twice already. I'd put my hand on your thigh, just resting, nothing else, and I'd wait. I'd feel your breath catch. That's the part I keep thinking about, the catch. Not what comes after. The catch. Then you'd say something smart, because you always do, and I'd say don't talk, and you'd stop talking, and we'd sit there on the shoulder of I-80 with trucks going by and your heart going under my hand. Then it would be up to you. Donny.

I read it standing at the picnic table. Then I sat down and read it again. Then I looked across the lot at him, at this guy I'd known two