Where the sun still shines
Lucas Hayes is making a terrible decision.
I know it. He knows it.
But that doesn’t stop him from tossing me the keys to his truck anyway.
“Absolutely not,” he says immediately after, like saying it out loud might undo the mistake he just made.
I catch the keys one-handed and grin. “Too late.”
The old pickup rattles when I start it, the engine coughing like it’s offended I’m the one behind the wheel. Dust kicks up behind us as I ease the truck onto the dirt road that cuts through the north pasture.
Lucas braces one hand against the dashboard.
“Lu—”
“Relax Hayes,” I say, shifting gears. “I know how to drive.”
“You know how to drive a lawn mower.”
“Details.”
Wind pours through the open windows, tugging strands of my hair loose from my ponytail. The late afternoon sun hangs low over the fields, turning everything gold.
My hand reaches for the radio.
Lucas slaps it away. “Don’t you dare.”
I give him my sweetest smile and turn the dial anyway.
Static crackles through the speakers before the opening notes of Yellow spill into the cab. I tap my fingers against the steering wheel, singing along badly just to irritate him.
“You’re going to wreck my truck, Lulu,” he says.
“Your truck was halfway wrecked before I got in it.”
“Still counts.”
I laugh, the sound swallowed by the wind rushing through the cab as the road stretches out ahead of us.
For a moment, everything feels simple.
Just the two of us. The truck. The music.
And I have the strange, certain feeling that as long as Lucas Hayes is sitting beside me, nothing in the world can really go wrong.
_____________________________________________________________________
We end up parked in the middle of a cattle field. The sun has been long set. We’re laying side by side in the bed of Lucas’ truck, blankets thrown in haphazardly beneath us. My head rests in the crook of his arm as we gaze up at a sky full of stars. A warm summer breeze drifts across the open field.
It’s become a Sunday night ritual for us. Church in the morning, a joy ride through the fields in the evening. Always ending with stargazing.
“Do you remember that time I tore my old blankie on a tree trunk?” I ask.
His chuckle moves my head as he answers.
“How could I forget? You were the only six year old to still bring a ’blankie’ with you everywhere.” He full on laughs then. The sound humming through me.
“Hey, it was a great blankie. What girl wouldn’t love pink and brown polka dots?” I defend myself.
“That’s beside the point though,” I carry on before he can say anything “I tore it when you tackled me playing tag, and thought my whole world was ending.”
“That I do remember. It was the first — and only — time I’d ever seen you cry.”
“And when my parents told me it was time to move on from having a blankie, I was devastated.”
He stays silent, and I know he’s wondering where I’m going with this.
“But a week later, your family came over for our Friday night BBQ, and when I went to bed that night, there was my blankie. Sitting on my bed, stitched up where it had ripped.”
I turn my head to look at him now, and find that he’s already looking at me.
“I knew it was you as soon as I saw it. You’ve always paid attention to me Lucas, known me better than anyone else.”
“Well maybe I just couldn’t stand the sight of you crying. You were an ugly crier you know.” He teases, but I see that my words touched him.
“I still have it. The blanket.” I whisper against his shoulder.
“Good. It took forever to stitch up.” He jokes, but he pulls me closer to him.
“I never thanked you for it.” I mumble into his shoulder. He simply kisses the top of my head, and I know without a doubt that Lucas feels how grateful I am. Not just for blankie, but for simply being him.
