fanfiction.lol^{fun, silly, low-stakes fandom}

Chapter Text

At three fourteen on Monday afternoon, Jacob learned that eight people could leave a lecture hall at the same time and all stop directly in the doorway.

He stopped behind them.

The student in front of him had a backpack hanging from one shoulder, a paper cup in one hand, and her phone held flat beneath her face. She took half a step into the corridor and turned toward somebody still inside. Two people behind Jacob attempted to pass on his left. Somebody else came through the opposite door and created a second obstruction with the first.

“We should make a group,” the student said.

“For the problem sets?”

“And notes. If anybody misses.”

“I never miss.”

“Everybody misses eventually.”

The group remained in the doorway while deciding how best to prepare for an absence none of them intended to have. Jacob shifted his bag higher and waited. He had spent the last seven hours waiting for rooms to empty, slides to load, names to be called, and one adviser to find the form confirming that a laboratory he had completed in Charleston counted as the laboratory UCLA had already agreed it counted as. Waiting another twelve seconds did not matter. The fact that he knew it had been twelve seconds probably did.

Somebody behind him said, “Excuse me,” with the tone of a person who meant move. Jacob turned sideways. The student squeezed past, clipped Jacob’s bag with his shoulder, and entered the human obstruction at the door.

“Sorry,” Jacob said automatically.

The student did not appear to hear him. The group finally moved. Jacob stepped into the corridor and let the current carry him toward the stairwell. His first day back in a university classroom had ended without anyone discovering he did not belong there. That was not how he would describe it if anybody asked.

The safer version was that the lecture moved fast. The professor had assigned two articles, four textbook sections, and a short response before Wednesday. The discussion leader had mispronounced three names and corrected herself on two. Jacob had answered one question about protein folding after the room stayed silent long enough to become uncomfortable. His transfer audit remained approved. His temporary student ID had opened the laboratory wing on the second attempt.

Facts. Manageable pieces. Nothing in that list required him to explain what it had felt like to sit at a narrow desk again with a notebook open beneath his hand.

He had expected more of the old routine to return automatically. Instead, he had checked every room number twice and kept the campus map open between buildings. He had forgotten where to put his hands when the first professor began taking attendance. By the afternoon lecture, he had stopped noticing the map and answered when his name was called without rehearsing it first. He had even found the shorter route back to the science building without checking.

The desk had been built for a person several inches narrower than Jacob. The attached surface ended halfway across his lap. He had spent the first lecture turned slightly toward the aisle, one thigh pressed against the metal support, while the student beside him arranged a laptop, tablet, water bottle, and four colored pens inside a space Jacob could barely fit one notebook. He had arrived early enough to choose an aisle seat. That had been deliberate. The rest had not.

A woman named Priya sat on his other side during discussion and asked whether he was a graduate student. Jacob said no. She asked whether he had taken the prerequisite somewhere else. He said Charleston. She said she had family there and asked whether he missed it. The answer should have been simple.

He missed walking beneath live oaks toward a class he had attended long enough to know where the floor dipped near the door. He missed the MLK pool before opening, when the deck remained wet from cleaning and nobody had begun calling his name. He missed friends he had stopped answering because every explanation became harder the longer he waited. He missed a city that held the first places where being gay had felt ordinary and the house where it had become dangerous.

“Sometimes,” he told Priya.

She nodded as if that made sense and offered him one of the four pens when his rolled beneath the desk. At lunch, Jacob found a patch of shade beneath a tree and ate with the course portal open on his phone. He made it through the sandwich and most of the fruit before somebody from discussion recognized him and stopped to ask whether he had understood the response assignment.

He had not. Neither had she. They compared the two sentences in the syllabus, agreed that the professor had somehow made five hundred words sound complicated, and parted without solving anything. The interruption left him seven minutes to cross campus. He finished the yogurt while he walked.

The stairwell smelled faintly of concrete, dust, and whatever somebody had reheated in the student lounge. Jacob followed two people down one flight and passed them when they stopped at the next landing to continue a conversation they had begun in class.

By the second floor, the strap of his bag had found the bruise near his shoulder from carrying lumber through Ethan’s loft the day before. By the first, his right knee had begun registering every trip across campus. His new shoes had stopped feeling new around lunchtime and started feeling like a mistake shortly after two. He pushed through the exterior door. Dry afternoon light struck hard enough that he stopped beneath the overhang to put on his sunglasses.

Students moved across the plaza in every direction. Bicycles cut between them. Somebody rolled past on a skateboard with a portfolio tucked beneath one arm. A campus tour gathered around a guide walking backward and speaking through a headset. Three prospective students wore UCLA shirts they had probably bought before the tour began. Jacob had owned a College of Charleston sweatshirt for four years before Randy made a comment about how much it had cost and how infrequently Jacob wore it.

He had left the sweatshirt in the house on Charlotte Street. He did not know whether it remained there. A student emerged behind him and reached for the door. Jacob moved aside before he could be asked. His phone showed three seventeen and eleven notifications.

Four belonged to the course portal. One was an automated reminder about the laboratory safety refresher. Three came from a class group chat somebody had added him to before he left the room. The last message was from Ethan.

Ethan: Outside.

Jacob read the final message again. It had arrived at two fifty-nine. He looked up.

Ethan stood beyond the tour group near a low concrete wall, one foot braced behind him. He wore jeans, a faded blue T-shirt, and the sunglasses he had spent ten minutes looking for that morning before discovering them on top of his own head. Two paper cups sat beside him. A folded brown bag occupied the space between them. His phone rested faceup on one thigh, but he was watching the building rather than the screen. He saw Jacob and lifted one cup.

Something in Jacob’s chest released before he could decide whether it needed to. He crossed the plaza, avoiding the backward-moving guide and a child who had separated from the tour to investigate a fountain.

“Hey,” Jacob said when he reached him.

Ethan held out one of the cups. “Hey.” The coffee was iced and contained exactly the amount of milk Jacob used. Jacob looked from it to the café logo and then across the plaza toward the building where it had come from.

“You went all the way over there?”

“I was already over there.”

“Why?”

Ethan glanced toward the fountain. “Coffee.” Jacob let that stand. He drank, shut his eyes for half a second, and sat beside the brown bag.

“Long day?” Ethan asked.

“Seven hours.”

“That long, then.”

“Yeah.”

Ethan opened the bag and took out a sandwich wrapped in paper. “Do you want this?” Jacob glanced at it. “Didn’t you buy it for yourself?”

“I thought I was hungry.”

“And now?”

“I’m not.”

Jacob held out his hand. Ethan passed it over. The bread had softened around the tomato but was still fine. Jacob unwrapped it while Ethan leaned back against the wall and watched the crowd.

For a minute, neither of them spoke. The tour guide led her group toward the fountain. Somebody nearby laughed hard enough to start coughing. The ordinary noise of the campus filled the space Ethan did not try to fill for him.

“How was it?” Ethan asked eventually.

Jacob swallowed. “Fast.”

“Bad fast?”

“I don’t know yet.”

Ethan nodded once. “Okay.”

Jacob chewed, then continued. Ethan had waited nineteen minutes in the sun without pushing for a better answer; Jacob could give him one now. The answer came easier.

“The professor spent twenty minutes explaining that an accelerated session requires accelerated work.”

“Useful.”

“Then he assigned forty-six pages before Wednesday.”

“Less useful.”

“One person asked whether the final was cumulative.”

“On the first day?”

“Before we finished the syllabus.”

“Was it?”

“Yes.”

“I’m glad somebody asked.”

Jacob nudged Ethan’s knee with his own. “You’re not helping.” Ethan’s knee remained where it was.

“Did the transfer hold?”

Jacob pulled a folded sheet from the outer pocket of his bag. He had printed it at seven that morning despite the same information appearing in the portal. The paper had accumulated one bent corner, a streak of blue ink, and a faint ring from the water bottle he had set on it during lunch. It still carried the registrar’s heading and the line he had read in four different locations throughout the day.

SUMMER COMPLETION PLAN APPROVED.

Ethan accepted the sheet without unfolding it.

“It held,” Jacob said. “They added a notation for the Charleston lab and confirmed the August completion plan. No extra course.”

“Good.”

The word landed without surprise, as if Ethan had expected the institution to arrive at the correct answer because Jacob had done everything required of him. Jacob ate another bite.

“I answered something wrong,” Jacob said.

Ethan turned toward him.

“Not completely wrong. I switched two terms, and I heard it as soon as I said it.”

“Did you fix it?”

“Right after.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. He let me finish.”

That was the problem. Nothing had happened. Nobody laughed. Professor Raman had nodded and moved on, while Jacob’s body reacted as if the room had opened beneath him. For the following ten minutes, he had copied every word from the slides despite already understanding them. His handwriting worsened until even he would need context to decipher it later. When the professor asked another question, Jacob knew that answer too and kept his hand down.

“I knew it,” he said.

“I know.”

“It was basic.”

Ethan picked at the edge of the paper bag. “You haven’t done this in a year.” Jacob looked across the plaza. One prospective student had fallen behind the tour to take photographs. His father waited at the edge of the group without telling him to hurry.

“Everybody else looked like they came straight from wherever they were supposed to be,” Jacob said.

He knew how little sense that made once he heard it aloud. Somebody in the lecture hall had changed majors. Somebody had failed something. Somebody had spent the weekend calculating rent or wondering whether their family would keep paying tuition. At least three people had looked as lost as Jacob felt when the discussion leader sent them toward the wrong building after lunch. None of that had mattered when Jacob took his seat.

The year behind him had entered the room too. Grocery-store doubles. His car. The borrowed couch in El Paso where he kept his bag packed. The email informing him that his enrollment would not continue after he stopped paying. Every week in which finishing the degree had become less like a plan and more like something he used to say about himself. Ethan did not tell him everybody felt that way. He did not promise one correction meant nothing. He stayed beside him, their knees touching because neither had moved.

“It got better,” Jacob said.

“After the answer?”

“Eventually.” He looked down at the remaining sandwich. “I liked being there.”

Ethan smiled. “Good.”

This time the word did not feel like an ending. Jacob looked back toward the lecture hall. The building had already absorbed the next class. New people moved through the doors carrying drinks, talking over one another, and checking room numbers without any awareness that he had spent the morning treating the same entrance like a test.

“Priya lent me a pen,” he said.

“Who’s Priya?”

“She sat beside me in discussion. Mine rolled under the desk.”

“Did you get it back?”

“The pen or mine?”

“Either.”

“Both.” Jacob drank again. “She asked if I was a grad student.”

Ethan glanced at him. “Why?”

“I don’t know. I look tired?”

“You look twenty-four.”

“Ancient.”

“On this campus, apparently.”

The exchange did not become a routine. Jacob told him that Priya had family in Charleston and that the attached desk had tried to cut him in half. Ethan listened, occasionally looking toward the building as if he could reconstruct the room from the details Jacob supplied. Jacob took another drink. Jacob drank more coffee. “Thanks for coming.”

“You had the car.”

“I know.”

Ethan turned the empty water bottle slowly between his hands. “I wanted to see how it went.” The admission was plain enough that Jacob did not know what to do with it except believe him. He pulled the folded transfer sheet from his bag and handed it over. Ethan opened it this time. His attention moved through the registrar’s notation, the accepted Charleston laboratory, and the completion plan without stopping to dramatize any of them.

“No extra course,” he said.

“No extra course.”

“That’s good.”

“It is.”

Ethan smoothed the bent corner before returning the page. Jacob put it away carefully, then less carefully when he realized Ethan had noticed. His phone buzzed with another course notification. He glanced at the preview and silenced it.

“Already?” Ethan asked.

“Somebody wants to know where to upload Wednesday’s response.”

“Do you know?”

“No.”

“That must be difficult for you.”

Jacob gave him a tired look. Ethan’s mouth shifted at one corner. The joke was small enough to leave there.

“What did you do all day?” Jacob asked.

“Training.”

“Hospital?”

Ethan nodded.

“How much?”

“Most of the privacy module.”

Jacob waited.

Ethan looked down at the bottle. “And some of the next one.”

“Dr. Patel told you to pace it.”

“I did.”

“Ethan.”

“I took breaks.”

Jacob laughed once, too tired to hide it. “To come buy coffee?”

“That was one.”

“How many are left?”

“Enough.”

Jacob shook his head, still smiling, and finished the sandwich. A breeze moved across the plaza and lifted the loose paper from his lap. Ethan caught it against his thigh before it escaped.

They had lived under the same roof for less than twenty-four hours. The fact returned without warning. Jacob had woken behind doors Ethan built, left a mug beside Ethan’s sink, and come out of class to find him waiting. It did not require a speech. It barely required conversation. Ethan folded the paper into the empty bag.

“May gets out at four,” he said.

Jacob checked the time. “Here?”

“Two buildings over.”

“Did she ask us to meet her?”

“No.” Ethan stood and gathered the cups. “She said the seminar would either be great or make her want to fight somebody.”

“And you want to see which?”

“I thought we could get food.”

Jacob settled the backpack over his shoulder. The movement pulled against the bruise near his collarbone, and he tried not to show it.

“I have reading.”

“So does she.”

Jacob looked toward the path leading across campus. He could go home, put his shoes beside the frosted doors, and spend the evening proving that he could get ahead before the course had a chance to overtake him. Or he could walk twenty minutes with Ethan and decide about the rest afterward.

“Okay,” he said. “But I’m not carrying her books.”

“I wasn’t going to ask.”

“You’re going to carry them.”

Ethan started across the plaza. “Probably.”

Jacob followed.

His legs were tired. His bag was too heavy. Forty-six pages waited before Wednesday, along with a diagnostic assignment and a laboratory refresher he had already completed once in another state. The day had begun at five forty-two because the new loft bedroom was quiet enough for him to hear Ethan turn over upstairs. It would end whenever Jacob stopped trying to get ahead of Wednesday. Ethan moved beside him, shortening his usual stride without appearing to.

Jacob noticed because Ethan normally crossed open ground as if distance had personally inconvenienced him. He took stairs two at a time, chose gaps before other people recognized them, and arrived at doors early enough to hold them without breaking pace. Beside Jacob, he let a group pass rather than accelerate around it.

Jacob did not thank him. Ethan would deny doing it, and then they would waste the walk arguing about leg length. He adjusted his backpack instead and stayed close enough that their shoulders touched when the path narrowed. The contact lasted three steps. For the first time all day, Jacob stopped measuring how long remained.

The next twenty minutes did not belong to the syllabus, the registrar, or the completion plan. They belonged only to a walk across campus with somebody who had come to find him.

Behind them, another class emptied into the plaza. The building kept releasing people into whatever waited after the first day: buses, apartments, jobs, families, rooms borrowed or owned. Jacob joined the flow without needing his destination to resemble anyone else’s.

Ethan had learned the route to May’s building on Friday while pretending he was only checking how far it stood from the medical center. It was not close to the medical center. It was also not twelve minutes from Jacob’s lecture hall when the campus filled every shaded path with people moving at six incompatible speeds.

Jacob walked beside him with the empty coffee cup in one hand and his bag hanging from the opposite shoulder. He had loosened after eating. The tension had not left completely; it had shifted from his jaw into the way he watched the buildings as they passed, reading names and directional signs as though UCLA might rearrange itself if he stopped paying attention.

“You know she might have left already,” Jacob said.

“It’s not four yet.”

“Maybe she escaped.”

“Then she’ll answer her phone.”

They waited while a cyclist crossed against the light. Jacob shifted the empty cup from one hand to the other and looked toward a directory sign without slowing.

“You know where you’re going?” he asked.

“Mostly.”

“That sounded confident.”

“It’s the next courtyard.”

“Mostly,” Jacob repeated.

Ethan let him have that one. They crossed with the next group. Jacob’s phone buzzed inside his pocket, but he left it there. The class portal had spent the last forty minutes discovering new reasons to contact him. Whatever this one wanted could wait until they stopped moving. They had left the loft separately that morning.

Jacob had come out of his room at six twelve already dressed, with his backpack packed and a travel mug on the island. Ethan had been awake on the mezzanine, listening to drawers open and close beneath him while deciding whether going downstairs would feel supportive or supervisory. He had waited until the coffee grinder started.

The grinder had sounded different with somebody below him. Not louder. Located. The noise had belonged to Jacob making coffee in a kitchen he had been given permission to use without asking. Ethan had gone downstairs wearing one sock. Jacob turned from the machine, surprise appearing before he replaced it with a glance toward Ethan’s feet.

“Did I wake you?”

“No.”

“You’re wearing one sock.”

Ethan had looked down. He was wearing one sock.

“The other one’s upstairs.”

“I assumed.”

Jacob had poured a second cup without asking whether Ethan wanted one. Ethan took it and sat at the island while Jacob checked the campus map one last time.

“There’s construction near Wilshire,” Ethan said.

“I saw.”

“The entrance backs up around eight.”

Jacob lowered the phone. “I drove there Friday.”

“And Saturday,” Ethan said.

“So I do know where I’m going.”

Ethan drank his coffee.

Jacob watched him over the rim of his travel mug. “You can just say good luck.”

“Good luck.”

“Thank you.”

It should have ended there. Ethan looked at the backpack, the keys Jacob had not yet chosen a place for, and the shirt he had ironed despite claiming he did not care what anybody thought.

“You’re ready,” he said.

Jacob went still for half a beat, then looked down at the map again.

“I hope so.”

At seven ten, he took the Land Rover because Ethan did not need it. Ethan stood inside the open lower-terrace doorway until the gate closed behind him. The loft felt different afterward.

Not empty. It had been empty before Jacob arrived. Ethan knew how the refrigerator sounded when nobody else moved through the room. He knew which floorboards answered his weight and how the city entered through the tall windows before sunrise. Monday morning sounded recently occupied.

Jacob’s mug waited beside the sink. One cabinet remained open three inches. A charging cable crossed the island toward the outlet because Jacob had forgotten to unplug it. Behind the frosted doors, the new bedroom held a made bed, two open boxes, and the evidence of a person intending to return. Ethan closed the cabinet and left the cable where it was.

He completed hospital training until the words on the screen stopped retaining meaning. Then he showered, ate, and took the next section downstairs so the delivery notification would not surprise him. At one thirty, the mattress arrived. Ethan met the team at the gate, showed them the room, and stayed out of the way while they maneuvered the box through the doors. When they left, the sealed mattress expanded slowly over the frame, taking on its shape one corner at a time. He sent Jacob a photograph.

Ethan: It exists.

Jacob reacted with a heart before changing it to a thumbs-up. Ethan saw both. At two twenty, he bought two coffees and a sandwich. By the time he left the café, he no longer wanted the food. He headed toward campus without deciding that he was picking Jacob up.

Before leaving, Ethan checked the mattress once more. It had risen unevenly, one corner still compressed from the packaging. The instruction sheet said to allow several hours before sleeping on it. He flattened the cardboard box, leaned it beside the terrace door for recycling, and opened the bedroom windows enough to let the manufactured smell out.

Jacob’s room was already beginning to resist the word new. A sweatshirt hung over the desk chair. One textbook lay open beside a notebook filled with cramped handwriting. The photograph from Charleston had moved from the desktop to the narrow shelf, where it stood beside the picture of Christopher. A pair of shoes waited beneath the bed frame instead of inside one of the boxes. Ethan did not move anything.

He left the frosted doors open so air could circulate and went upstairs for his keys. From the mezzanine, he could see part of the mattress through the black metal frame and the place beside the terrace doors where the old table might fit.

The loft had changed quickly over the weekend. Not invisibly. The new partition cut across the ground floor. The couch sat at a different angle. The common area had become narrower, and the path to the terrace now curved around furniture instead of running straight. Ethan had expected the reduced space to bother him. It did not. He locked the terrace, checked the gate from his phone, and left before he could turn that fact into anything larger.

“You stopped listening,” Jacob said.

Ethan looked at him. “You weren’t talking.”

“I asked if there was somewhere downstairs I could work.”

“The island.”

“When you’re using it?”

Ethan thought about the hardware still arranged in labeled bags beneath the cabinet. “There’s an old table in storage.” Jacob glanced over. “Old as in useful, or old as in you want an excuse to rebuild it?”

“Useful.”

“That pause was bad.”

“It needs one brace.”

“Ethan.”

“One.”

Jacob looked ahead again, but he was smiling into the empty cup. “I need somewhere to put a laptop. It doesn’t have to become furniture history.”

“I’m not trying to make it furniture history.”

“And not tonight.”

“Fine.”

“You’re going to look at it tonight.”

Ethan stepped around two students stopped in the center of the path. “I might take it out of storage.”

“That counts.”

“It doesn’t.”

Jacob laughed under his breath. Ethan did not correct him again. They reached a broad set of steps. A student sat halfway up with a laptop balanced on her knees. Another slept beneath a tree with his backpack under his head. Two people in scrubs crossed ahead of them toward the medical center. Ethan watched until the crowd blocked them.

“You keep doing that,” Jacob said.

“Doing what?”

“Watching anyone in scrubs.”

“We’re near a hospital.”

“That explains them. Not you.”

Ethan looked toward the steps. A poster beside the doors advertised a blood drive later in the month. Another announced a public lecture on surgical robotics. He had already photographed that one Friday.

“They look like they know where they’re going,” Ethan said.

Jacob shifted the bag higher. “Some of them probably do.”

“Helpful.”

“I’m serious.” Jacob looked toward the two people in scrubs disappearing into the crowd. “You’re seeing the uniform after they already got there. You didn’t see the part before it.”

Ethan almost answered with admissions rates, clearances, placements, and every other threshold that remained between intention and arrival. Jacob knew all of that. He was not promising a result. He was only refusing to treat uncertainty as proof Ethan did not belong on the path.

“Your placement starts next week,” Jacob said.

“If Employee Health clears me.”

“Did they say there was a problem?”

“No.”

“Then stop borrowing one.”

Ethan looked at him.

Jacob lifted his free hand. “For the next five minutes. You can have it back later.” That sounded enough like something Jacob had needed all day that Ethan let the subject close. They reached the next courtyard. Ethan checked the building number against the one May had sent Friday.

“This one,” he said.

“So you did know.”

“Mostly.”

Jacob bumped his shoulder once as they turned toward the doors. They had arrived early. Through the glass, the lobby still held more people waiting for evening classes than leaving afternoon ones. Ethan chose a place near the wall where they would not block the doors. Jacob set his backpack down between his shoes and flexed the hand that had carried it.

“You packed both books,” Ethan said.

“The syllabus listed both.”

“Did you use both?”

“No.”

Ethan looked at the bag.

“I didn’t know,” Jacob said. “Next time I’ll leave one.”

There was no defensiveness in it, only the irritation of somebody who had spent all day learning which preparations had been useful and which had merely made his shoulder hurt. He took out his phone and opened the campus map. A blue line connected the building to the parking structure. He pinched the screen smaller, then larger.

“There’s a bus,” Ethan said.

“It stops running before my lab ends Wednesday.”

“Then I can pick you up.”

Jacob kept looking at the map. “I can drive.”

“Okay.”

“You have your placement stuff.”

“Not Wednesday night.”

Jacob lowered the phone. “Maybe. If the traffic’s bad.” It was not a yes Ethan could build a plan around, but it was not the immediate refusal he would have received two weeks earlier. Ethan nodded before Jacob could revise it. They moved aside when a custodian brought a rolling bin through the lobby. Jacob lifted his bag without being asked and waited until the man passed.

“Did anybody else talk to you?” Ethan asked.

“Somebody from discussion stopped me at lunch to ask about the response assignment.”

“Did either of you figure it out?”

“No. We agreed the instructions were confusing and left it there.”

“Productive.”

“We had seven minutes before the next class.”

Jacob opened the class group chat. Forty-three messages had accumulated since the end of lecture. He scrolled past questions the syllabus answered, a photograph of the wrong textbook edition, and one person asking whether anybody wanted to split a digital study guide.

Three more messages appeared while he watched. Jacob muted the alerts but did not leave the chat. At Charleston, he had usually waited until the second week to join anything. Here, somebody had passed around a QR code before the professor arrived, and he had scanned it with everybody else without thinking twice.

“Do you want a study group?” Ethan asked.

“Not today.”

“I meant generally,” Ethan said.

Jacob did not smile at the correction or turn it into a joke. “Probably. Once I know who actually studies.” He put the phone away. The answer sounded like the student he had been before the missing year: social enough to build a group, cautious enough to choose it carefully, confident that he would be there long enough for the choice to matter. Ethan looked through the glass doors toward the classroom corridor.

“What?” Jacob asked.

“Nothing.”

Jacob waited.

“You went back,” Ethan said.

The words were quieter than he intended. Jacob’s expression changed without becoming fragile.

“Yeah,” he said. “I did.”

A door opened somewhere deeper in the building. Voices spread down the corridor, and the lobby rearranged itself to receive them. The first people out were still discussing class. A woman held her laptop against her chest while answering somebody beside her. Two men stopped immediately beyond the doors and forced everyone behind them to split around either side. Jacob moved back toward the wall before the crowd reached him.

“That happened after every class today,” he said.

“People stopping in the door?”

“Every single one.”

“Maybe it’s a UCLA tradition.”

“Then I already hate one tradition.”

He said it without heat. The complaint sounded almost comfortable—the kind a student made because he expected to return and be annoyed again. Ethan watched faces as they passed, looking for May’s pinned-back hair. Jacob watched too. Neither spoke for nearly a minute.

“Did you miss it?” Ethan asked.

“School?”

“Yeah.”

Jacob leaned one shoulder against the wall. “Not every part.”

“The attached desks.”

“Definitely not those.” His mouth shifted. “But yes. More than I thought I did.”

He looked toward the corridor again. “I missed having somewhere I was supposed to be because I chose it.” The answer sat between them without needing improvement. Jacob picked up his backpack when another group approached. The movement was slower than it had been that morning, but he still stepped clear before anybody asked. Ethan took the empty coffee cup from the side pocket where Jacob had tried to force it and dropped it into a bin.

“Thanks,” Jacob said.

“It was leaking.”

“Still counts.”

Jacob’s phone buzzed again. This time the preview showed Christopher’s name.

Christopher: How was it?

Jacob slowed by half a step. Ethan kept looking ahead. Jacob typed while they walked.

Jacob: Good. A lot. I’ll tell you later.

The answer came back as a thumbs-up. No demand for evidence. No claim that Christopher had known Jacob could do it. Jacob put the phone away.

“Home after this?” Jacob asked.

“If you want.”

“I should read.”

“You should probably take your shoes off first.”

Jacob looked down at them. “They were comfortable this morning.”

“That’s how they get you.”

“You say that like shoes have intent.”

“Those do.”

Jacob shifted his weight off his right heel. “Food first?”

“May will want food.”

“How do you know?”

“She always wants food after class.”

“That’s not evidence.”

“She texted me at one and said she forgot to bring anything.”

“That is.”

The lobby beyond the glass doors had begun filling with people waiting for evening classes. Jacob dropped his empty cup into the recycling opening and watched it land sideways on top of another cup.

“Close enough,” he said.

Ethan held the door open. “You look tired.”

“I am tired.”

The direct answer stopped Ethan from asking anything else. They reached the building and moved into the shade near the doors. Students had begun gathering inside the lobby. Four o’clock approached on Ethan’s phone. Jacob set his cup on the rim of a recycling bin and missed the opening. It bounced to the pavement. He stared at it.

“You’re tired,” Ethan said.

“It bounced.”

“You missed.”

“It hit the edge.”

“That’s where things go when you miss.”

Jacob retrieved the cup and pushed it through the opening.

“You could be supportive.”

“You survived.”

“Barely.”

The classroom doors opened. Voices filled the lobby before people appeared. A man in a button-down came out first, still speaking to the woman beside him. Three students followed while comparing notes. Somebody behind them complained about the reading. Somebody else said the professor always assigned too much during the first week and reduced it later. Her friend did not believe her. May emerged near the middle of the group.

She carried a canvas tote packed heavily enough to pull one shoulder down. A thick casebook rested against her chest beneath a folder and two legal pads. Her hair was pinned back. The expression on her face had settled into a calm so complete Ethan immediately understood that somebody had tested it. She saw them. Her pace slowed. She looked at Ethan, then Jacob, then the empty space where their coffee cups had been.

May saw them before they had decided whether to wait inside or outside. Her pace slowed, and some of the strain left her expression.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” Jacob answered.

She looked between them. “Did you plan this?”

“Not really,” Ethan said.

“He planned the coffee,” Jacob added.

May looked at the empty cup in his hand. “That tracks.”

“How was class?” Jacob asked.

“Good.” She adjusted the casebook against her chest. “I need to complain about one person for maybe five minutes, and then I’ll be normal.”

“You don’t have to be normal,” Ethan said.

“I do if you want the complaint to stay under five minutes.”

The bottom legal pad began slipping from beneath the book. Ethan caught it and took the casebook when May let him.

“I can carry it,” she said.

“I know.”

She handed him the folder too. Jacob looked toward the doors. “We were thinking food.”

“Good. I didn’t bring any.”

“Ethan told me.”

May gave Ethan a look that contained no real objection. “There’s a place in Westwood.”

“The one with the bad chairs?” Ethan asked.

“The fries are good.”

Jacob shook his head. “Fine. Show us.” May turned toward the exit. “How was your first day?”

“Good,” Jacob said. “A lot.”

“Same.”

They walked outside together. Jacob’s phone buzzed with another course notification. He silenced it without reading the screen. The doors closed behind them, cutting off the lobby noise. Outside, the heat had begun to loosen, though the pavement still held the day. Ethan noticed Jacob’s phone and said nothing.

The answer satisfied neither of them, which made it useful. They crossed the last stretch toward May together, carrying coffee, coursework, and the small domestic argument forward as if there would be time to finish it later. For once, both of them assumed there would be.

May had made it through the entire seminar without telling Brandon Kline that speaking first did not make his answer more correct. She considered this a personal achievement. Brandon had raised his hand before Professor Whitaker finished the first question. He raised it again after the professor asked somebody else to respond. By the third time, he had stopped raising it and begun leaning forward whenever another student spoke, as if intellectual urgency exempted him from ordinary turn-taking.

May had written let her finish in the margin of her notes. Then she underlined it hard enough to leave an impression on the next page. Professor Whitaker noticed. He did not call on May immediately. He finished listening to the student Brandon had interrupted, asked one follow-up question, and moved the discussion toward the line of reasoning May had marked twenty minutes earlier.

“Ms. Grant,” he said. “You look unconvinced.”

Twenty-four people turned toward her. May had spent years answering calls from strangers who screamed before supplying an address. She had directed people through locked doors, hidden weapons, active fires, and the first terrible minutes after somebody stopped breathing. A seminar room did not frighten her. Her body had not received that information.

Heat climbed her neck. Her fingers pressed flat against the casebook. She had written the answer in the margin but could no longer read her own handwriting from the angle of her hand.

“I don’t think the distinction holds,” she said.

Professor Whitaker leaned against the desk. “Which distinction?”

May explained.

The first sentence came out too quickly. She slowed the second. By the third, the words stopped sounding like something she had borrowed from the assigned reading and became an argument she understood well enough to defend. Brandon leaned forward. Professor Whitaker held up one finger without looking at him.

May finished.

“Good,” the professor said. “Now tell me why you might be wrong.”

She almost smiled. That had been the best part of the class. Not being right. Being expected to find the weakness herself before somebody else could use it. During the break, the woman Brandon had interrupted stopped beside May’s desk.

“Nice save,” she said.

“I wasn’t saving you.”

“I know. That’s why it was nice.”

Her name was Lena Morales. She worked for a tenant-rights nonprofit and had returned to school part-time after three years away. She asked whether May was pre-law. May said yes. Lena wrote her number at the top of May’s notes and said she was starting a reading group with two other students who understood that listening was part of discussion. May had not decided whether she would join. She saved the number.

During the final hour, Lena spoke twice and Brandon interrupted her only once. Professor Whitaker assigned the next reading, reminded them that accelerated did not mean optional, and dismissed the seminar three minutes late while half the room was already putting laptops away.

May stayed seated long enough to finish the sentence in her notes. Around her, chairs scraped and conversations started at full volume. Brandon found the professor before anybody else could reach him. Lena caught May’s eye over his shoulder and made a face. May smiled before she could stop herself.

“Thursday?” Lena asked, pointing at the number she had written.

“Maybe,” May said.

“That means no.”

“It means I need to see what the reading does to me first.”

“Fair.” Lena lifted her own book. “If I disappear, assume it won.”

The joke was ordinary and not especially good. May laughed anyway. She packed her laptop beneath the casebook and discovered that the water bottle had leaked just enough to dampen one corner of the folder. By the time she reached the lobby, she was irritated with Brandon, pleased by the class, hungry, and already rearranging Tuesday around the reading. Then she saw Ethan and Jacob waiting.

The sight did not solve any of those things. It made the afternoon feel less like something she needed to carry alone until she reached home. She told Ethan and Jacob about Brandon while they crossed campus.

“He interrupted her three times,” May said.

“The same person?” Jacob asked.

“The same person. Then he tried to explain her point back to her.”

“Did she let him?”

“No. She said, ‘I’m still speaking,’ and kept going.”

Jacob smiled. “I like her.”

“So do I.”

Ethan carried the casebook beneath one arm. “And the professor?”

“Good. He shut Brandon down without turning it into a whole thing.”

“That sounds promising.”

“It was.”

May walked several steps before realizing the complaint had ended on its own. Jacob’s backpack looked heavy enough to contain part of a laboratory. He was tired in a way that made him quieter rather than slower, his attention moving between the path and whoever was speaking.

“What about you?” May asked.

“My professor assigned forty-six pages.”

“Mine assigned sixty.”

Jacob looked over. “That feels hostile.”

“Thank you.”

“Did you like it?”

May adjusted the strap of her tote. The question was simple. It did not contain the carefulness she had begun hearing whenever anybody asked about school. Her mother asked whether she was sure. Friends asked whether she still wanted law school. People who knew about Bobby looked at every plan May made as if grief might have invalidated the version of herself who had made it. Jacob only waited.

“Yeah,” May said. “I did.”

“Even with Brandon?”

“He’s going to be annoying. The class is good.”

“What did you cover?”

May told him. Explaining the class was easier than explaining why enjoying it mattered. May could describe the professor, the reading, and Brandon without having to defend the larger plan those details belonged to. Jacob listened to the answer she gave instead of searching it for evidence that she had changed her mind.

At work, people had stopped asking what came next. They asked whether May needed another day. They asked whether Athena was sleeping. They asked how Harry was doing, then looked relieved when May supplied an answer with enough detail to end the conversation.

Her summer internship schedule made the questions easier to avoid. Tuesdays and Thursdays remained mostly open for the legal-aid office unless someone needed her or the office changed its hours. This Tuesday had been cleared before the seminar began. She could sleep late if the reading ran long tonight. She could also arrive early, ask for another case file, and spend the day demonstrating that grief had not made her unreliable. Both options felt like performances.

May had become good at performing competence before she was old enough to understand why adults found it comforting. Competence earned information. It kept people from lowering their voices outside rooms she could still hear into. It made her useful during emergencies and unobtrusive during aftermaths. Bobby had rarely rewarded it.

He noticed when she was capable. He also noticed when capability became camouflage and found quiet ways to interfere: food appearing beside her elbow, car keys disappearing until she slept, a question asked twice because he did not accept the first automatic answer. May had spent six weeks learning how many people could love him without knowing how to do that. Jacob simply waited.

“Yes,” she said. “I think so.”

“After one day?”

“The material’s good. The professor’s good. Half the room thinks volume is a form of analysis, but that’s probably useful preparation.”

“For law school?”

“For courtrooms. Family dinners. Possibly life.”

“What did you cover?”

May told him. She began with the course structure because it was easier to explain than why the first discussion had made her sit forward. Professor Whitaker wanted them to separate what a court decided from how a court justified deciding it. Not whether May agreed. Not whether the result felt fair. What the words did, what authority they claimed, and what assumptions remained hidden inside the reasoning.

Jacob listened without the strained interest people sometimes used when they had already decided law was either boring or impressive. He asked what happened when the reasoning was bad but the result was useful. May answered before she realized she had stopped complaining. They turned toward him as the path narrowed.

“That’s the problem,” she said. “If you defend bad reasoning because you like one result, somebody else gets to use it later for a result you hate.”

“So precedent is the mechanism, not just the outcome.”

“Basically. Except saying ‘just’ anywhere near precedent would get me assigned another sixty pages.”

“I won’t tell your professor.”

“Thank you.”

Ethan moved the casebook higher beneath his arm. “You sound like you had fun.”

May looked at him.

“Not all of it,” she said.

“Enough of it.”

“Maybe.”

He nodded and left the answer alone. May was grateful enough not to point it out. Jacob adjusted the backpack strap.

“My class was good too,” Jacob said. “After the first hour.”

“What happened in the first hour?”

“I remembered that sitting in a lecture hall is terrible.”

“That’s universal,” May said.

“The desk was attached to the chair.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

May looked at the backpack again. “Are you going home after we eat?”

“I should.”

“Same.”

Ethan glanced between them. “So dinner.”

“Dinner,” May agreed.

They named places as they walked. Jacob suggested somewhere close to the parking structure. May rejected it because the last time she went, a friend had cried for two hours in a chair designed by somebody hostile to the human spine.

“Was the food bad?” Jacob asked.

“The fries were good.”

“Then I can survive the chair.”

“You say that now.”

They passed a campus café already stacking part of its patio furniture. Someone inside turned a sign while a customer continued reading the menu taped to the glass. May’s phone buzzed inside her tote. She knew it was her mother before she looked.

Athena had left the house before May that morning. Her coffee mug remained beside the sink. Bobby’s mug remained in the cabinet where nobody had decided whether moving it would mean anything. May had eaten toast standing at the counter and read the first twelve pages of the assigned opinion while her mother’s footsteps moved overhead.

Athena came downstairs wearing the same black pants she had worn the day before and a different shirt. She checked the coffee maker, then the refrigerator, then the time on the microwave without appearing to need any of them.

“You leaving soon?” she asked.

“Twenty minutes.”

“Traffic will be bad.”

“We have time.”

“You have parking?”

“I paid Friday.”

“Good.”

Athena opened the cabinet for a travel mug. Bobby’s mug sat in front. Her hand stopped, then moved to the second shelf. May looked down at the casebook. They had not discussed the class before May left. That had been easier than discussing it. The message now waited beneath the time.

Mom: How was the first day?

May read it twice. She typed good, erased it, and wrote again.

May: Good. A lot. Getting food with Ethan and Jacob.

The answer arrived while they waited at the crosswalk.

Mom: Have fun. Call if you need anything.

No request for a return time. No reminder about reading. No warning that Monday nights could become Tuesdays if she let them. May put the phone away. She imagined Athena in the patrol car or behind her desk, reading May’s answer between other people’s emergencies. Getting food with Ethan and Jacob. A complete explanation offered before Athena asked. Names she knew. A location she could infer. Enough information to prevent worry without admitting May had supplied it for that purpose.

Friday, Athena had stood at the dining table while May and Christopher assembled the album. She corrected one date, found a photograph nobody else remembered taking, and left when the room became too full of Bobby’s face. May followed her into the kitchen.

“You don’t have to go,” May had said.

“I’m getting water.”

“Your glass is on the table.”

Athena opened the refrigerator anyway. May knew better than to trap her with comfort. She took out the pitcher, filled a new glass, and handed it over. Athena accepted it.

“You have class Monday.”

“That’s the plan.”

“You ready?”

May looked through the doorway at Christopher writing beneath a photograph. Ethan was cutting tape. Buck and Eddie were arguing quietly over whether one page had enough room for another picture.

“I did the reading,” she said.

Athena waited.

May looked back at her. “I don’t know.”

“All right.”

It had been the only answer May could tolerate. Now her mother had offered another: Have fun. Permission May had not requested and might still need.

“Everything okay?” Ethan asked.

“My mom.”

He nodded.

The light changed.

May put the phone away as they crossed. “She told me to have fun.”

“Are you?” Jacob asked.

May considered the afternoon. “More than I was an hour ago.”

“Good.”

“Don’t make it weird.”

“I said one word.”

“It was headed somewhere.”

Jacob laughed. Ethan shifted the casebook under his arm and looked toward the parking structure.

“Food,” May said. “Then I’ll decide whether I’m reading tonight.”

“I’m reading,” Jacob said.

“You can read. I may choose freedom.”

“For one night?”

“Let’s not get reckless.”

Ethan unlocked the Land Rover from across the row. The lights flashed. May slowed. “You drove this?”

“Ethan didn’t need it,” Jacob said.

“He lets you drive it?”

Ethan opened the passenger door. “He has a license.”

“That was not the surprising part.”

Jacob put his bag behind the driver’s seat. “Do you want dinner?”

“Very much.”

May set her tote on the rear floor and slid into the back seat. The car smelled faintly of sawdust from Sunday’s lumber. A folded blanket and two reusable grocery bags occupied the footwell beside her. She moved them over and buckled in. Jacob started the engine. The navigation screen opened to Home. He cleared it and waited for May to give him the address.

“You’re sure about the chairs?” he asked.

“No. But the fries are still good.”

He entered the restaurant. May connected her phone to the stereo while the route loaded.

“Driver picks the music,” Jacob said.

“Not in Los Angeles.”

“That is not a law.”

“It is now.”

Ethan settled into the passenger seat without taking either side.

“Coward,” Jacob told him.

“I want to hear what she picks.”

May chose the first song before Jacob could object again. It was an older song Athena played while cleaning, the kind May knew by repetition rather than choice. Jacob recognized it before the first verse and turned it up two clicks.

“You like this?” May asked.

“My aunt did.”

He said it simply. May knew enough about Shannon not to ask whether the memory was good. Jacob tapped two fingers against the steering wheel and sang one line under his breath before traffic required his attention. Ethan looked out the passenger window. He knew the song too; May could tell from the way his mouth formed the next line without sound. She let it play. At the next light, Jacob asked, “What were you listening to before class?”

May named an album. He knew one track but not the rest. Ethan had saved two songs from it months earlier and pretended not to remember until May found them in his library.

By the time traffic moved, the three of them had built a queue without agreeing on what counted as good. Nobody tried to win the argument. Songs simply stayed or disappeared according to whoever reached the screen first. He was smiling when he said it.

Traffic held them inside the parking structure for six minutes. Ethan lowered his window. Jacob adjusted the vents. May watched two students argue over a space that had not yet emptied. Nothing about the afternoon was remarkable. Three classes had ended. Three people were hungry. Nobody required rescue, direction, or a completed plan. May had forgotten how much relief could fit inside something that ordinary. At the gate, Jacob held out the parking ticket. May leaned between the seats with her card.

“I’ve got it.”

“It’s six dollars,” Jacob said.

“I can cover six dollars.”

“I wasn’t arguing.”

“Good.” She tapped the reader before he could reach for his wallet.

The gate lifted. Jacob eased the Land Rover into traffic. Traffic doubled the navigation’s first estimate. May handled the music from the back seat, changing it whenever a song failed to hold her attention. Ethan watched the streets through the passenger window while Jacob followed the slow line toward Westwood. The conversation thinned without becoming uncomfortable. They had already covered the day once. No one needed to find another version of it just to fill the drive.

At a long red light, May turned the music down to answer a text from Harry. When she finished, she left the volume low. The restaurant occupied the ground floor of a narrow building between a pharmacy and a shop selling UCLA clothing at twice the campus price. Jacob circled once before finding the entrance to the garage.

“This is why nobody wanted to drive,” he said as the ramp tightened around the Land Rover.

“You volunteered,” Ethan reminded him.

“I had the keys.”

May leaned forward between the seats to read the clearance sign. “You’re fine.”

“I know I’m fine.”

He ducked anyway when the ceiling lowered, which made May laugh before she could stop herself. Jacob looked at her in the mirror. “You did it too.”

“I’m in the back seat. I was checking on you.”

“Sure.”

The exchange ended when he found a space. They collected their bags and books, and for the first time all day May walked toward somewhere without checking how long she had until the next obligation.

Her phone stayed inside her tote. Athena knew where she was. The reading was downloaded. Nothing would become more urgent because May waited an hour to look at it. She held the stairwell door while Jacob maneuvered the backpack through and followed Ethan toward the street.

By five twelve, the table had disappeared beneath three water glasses, Jacob’s backpack, May’s casebook, a basket of fries, and the plates they had ordered while all talking at once. May moved her book to the empty chair. Jacob wedged his bag between his feet. Ethan shifted the fries toward the middle and gave up on preserving any clear boundary between what belonged to whom.

Outside the open windows, Westwood moved through the end of the workday. Cars edged past the curb looking for spaces. Students crossed in groups. A delivery rider stopped beneath the awning to check his phone. Heat from the kitchen entered whenever the swinging door opened, carrying oil, garlic, and the sharp smell of sanitizer. They had chosen the place because May said the food was fast. They had already been there forty minutes.

Jacob opened a small dish, examined what was inside, and passed it to Ethan without asking. Ethan took it. The motion happened beneath May’s account of Brandon Kline’s second interruption and did not become part of the conversation. May noticed anyway and continued talking.

“Then Professor Whitaker asks me why I might be wrong,” she said.

“In front of everyone?” Jacob asked.

“Yeah.”

“Were you?”

“A little. He wanted me to find the weak part before somebody else did.”

Jacob considered that while breaking a piece of bread. “I’d like him.”

“You would.”

“Was that an insult?”

“Not entirely.”

Ethan reached for a fry. “High praise.” May looked at him. “You’re still carrying my book.” He glanced at the casebook on the fourth chair. “Not currently.”

“You know what I mean.”

He did. He took another fry instead of answering.

“How was the rest of your class?” May asked Jacob.

He finished chewing. “The morning was mostly orientation. The afternoon professor said we were reviewing and then covered about three weeks of my old course in forty minutes.”

“Did you understand it?”

“Most of it.”

Ethan did not translate.

May rested her elbows on the table. “What were you talking about when we found you?”

Jacob glanced at Ethan.

“Protein folding,” Ethan said.

“That tells me nothing.”

Jacob pulled a paper napkin closer and borrowed Ethan’s pen. He drew a shape that resembled a collapsed umbrella. May rotated the napkin. “This also tells me nothing.”

“It looked better in my notes.”

“Your notes are worse,” Ethan said.

“You haven’t seen them.”

“I’ve seen your handwriting.”

Jacob took the napkin back. “The point is that I switched two terms while I was answering.”

“And?” May asked.

“I corrected it.”

“Did the professor care?”

“He let me finish.”

“Then it sounds like you handled it.”

Jacob capped the pen. May reached for another fry instead of looking at him while he decided how much to say.

“I haven’t been in a classroom since last March,” he said.

“I know.”

“For about thirty seconds, I thought everybody could tell.”

“Could they?”

“No.”

“That sounds awful anyway.”

Jacob’s shoulders loosened.

“It got better,” he said.

“Good.”

She slid the last fry on her side of the basket toward him. Jacob ate it without thanking her, which made the gesture feel ordinary enough to keep. The conversation returned to May’s seminar without repeating the version she had already given them outside. She explained that their first assignment required briefing both the majority and the dissent without choosing which one they preferred.

“Can you do that?” Jacob asked.

“I can write it.”

“That sounded different.”

“It is. I already know which argument I like better. The assignment is making me prove I understand the other one before I dismiss it.”

Jacob nodded. “That seems useful.”

“Annoyingly.”

She took another drink. The assignment remained difficult without becoming a referendum on whether she belonged in the seminar or still wanted law school. Ethan moved the casebook farther from a passing server. “The dissent made that argument.” May stopped with her glass halfway to her mouth. “You read it?”

“You sent the syllabus.”

“I didn’t send you the reading.”

“The link was in the syllabus.”

Jacob looked between them. “How much did you read?”

“Most of it.”

“Why?” May asked.

Ethan moved his fork through what remained on his plate. “I wanted to know what you were talking about.” The answer disarmed her more effectively than praise would have. May looked down at her glass.

“The dissent was better,” she said.

“I thought so too.”

Jacob leaned back. “I’m going to need both of you to have less homework.”

“You brought two textbooks to one class,” Ethan said.

“I didn’t know which one he’d use.”

“The syllabus knew.”

“I didn’t trust it.”

That answer was believable enough that neither challenged it. For several minutes, they ate without trying to sustain a subject. May read a notification from the legal-aid office and put her phone away. Jacob moved his bag when the server needed the fourth chair. Ethan separated a piece of roasted pepper from the rest of his plate and left it at the edge.

“You don’t like those?” Jacob asked.

“Not cooked like that.”

Jacob took it with his fork. May watched the exchange, then looked down at her own plate before either of them could accuse her of noticing.

“What’s your lab Wednesday?” she asked.

“Mostly safety and equipment assignments,” Jacob said. “Maybe basic technique if they finish early.”

“Are you nervous?”

He considered lying and apparently decided he was too tired. “A little.”

“Because you’ve been out?”

“Because I don’t know the room yet.” He turned his glass between both hands. “Labs have a rhythm. Where people put things. Who moves too fast. Which stool catches on the floor. I used to know all of that.”

May understood more than the words required. Dispatch had its own geography: the console that stuck, the supervisor who hovered, the drawer where somebody always returned the wrong headset. Competence included knowing a room well enough not to spend attention on it.

“You’ll know this one,” she said.

Jacob nodded. “Eventually.”

Ethan did not turn eventually into a promise or a date. He passed Jacob the bread instead. May looked between them.

“How was the first night at the loft?” May asked.

Jacob took a drink. “Quiet.”

“Compared to Eddie’s house?”

“I could hear myself think.”

Ethan looked over. “Is that good?”

“Usually.”

Jacob set down the glass. “The room’s good. The air mattress survived. The actual mattress showed up today.”

“Ethan sent me photographic evidence,” he added.

May looked at Ethan. “Of the mattress?”

“It was delivered.”

“I’m glad we established that.”

Jacob smiled into his water. “He also found me a desk.”

“A table,” Ethan corrected.

“A future table. It needs surgery.”

“One brace.”

“I told him not tonight.”

May pointed at Ethan. “Listen to your roommate.” Ethan reached for another piece of bread. “I am.” The server returned and asked whether they wanted anything else. They should have asked for the check. Jacob had reading. May had reading. Ethan had training material Dr. Patel had specifically told him not to memorize before his first day. May looked toward the dessert menu standing near the condiments.

“Do you still have the chocolate thing?” she asked.

The server said they did.

“One, please. Three forks.”

After she left, Jacob checked his phone. Four messages waited in the class group chat. He read the first preview and locked the screen again.

“Problem?” Ethan asked.

“Somebody wants to know if the word limit includes citations.”

“Does it?” May asked.

“The syllabus says yes.”

“Then don’t answer.”

Jacob put the phone facedown. “I wasn’t going to.” The dessert arrived in a shallow white bowl, dark at the center and already collapsing beneath a scoop of ice cream. May took the first fork. Ethan took the second. Jacob waited until they had both tried it before reaching in. It lasted less than two minutes. When the check came, all three reached for it. Their hands stopped in a small pile at the edge of the table.

“Split it,” Jacob said.

“I invited you,” Ethan said.

“You appeared outside my class,” May said. “That isn’t an invitation.”

“Fine. Then we split it.”

Nobody objected strongly enough to turn payment into another conversation. They handed over three cards and stayed at the table while the server ran them. Outside, the light had shifted but not begun to fade. Students replaced office workers on the sidewalks. The dinner crowd would arrive soon and make their occupied table useful to somebody else. Jacob put his wallet away.

“I should go home.”

“Probably,” Ethan said.

May folded the receipt into a square. She had spent the drive expecting dinner to make her want the apartment, a shower, and several hours without another person speaking to her. Instead, the noise around them had settled into the background. Jacob had stopped checking the time. Ethan looked more awake than he had when they arrived. May pressed one corner of the receipt flat with her thumbnail.

“We could get one drink,” she said.

Jacob looked at her.

“One,” May repeated. “Then we go home.”

“I have class at eight.”

“It’s six fifteen.”

“That is how nights start.”

May looked toward Ethan. He should have supported the responsible decision. Jacob had finished his first day. May had finished hers. They had eaten. Nothing about the afternoon needed to become larger in order to matter. He also did not want it to end.

Going home meant the loft, which he wanted. It meant Jacob’s new mattress waiting behind the doors and the first ordinary Monday night of a household they had not tested yet. It also meant separate work: Jacob downstairs, Ethan on the mezzanine, both of them pretending not to listen for the other moving around.

“I’m in,” Ethan said.

Jacob looked between them and exhaled through his nose. “I’m driving.”

“Okay,” May said.

“So I’m not drinking.”

“Also okay.”

He checked the time again, though nothing had changed. “One.”

“One,” Ethan agreed.

May stood before Jacob could reconsider. The choice changed the table without changing anything visible. Their plates remained empty. The receipts remained beside the water glasses. Jacob still had an eight o’clock class, and May’s reading would still be waiting when she got home. May felt lighter anyway.

Not reckless. She had not abandoned the semester or decided grief exempted her from every plan she made. She was getting a drink with two friends on a Monday evening. The smallness of it mattered.

Jacob slid the backpack straps over both shoulders and tested the weight. “If I complain tomorrow, neither of you gets to say anything.”

“About class?” Ethan asked.

“About being tired.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“You were going to look at me.”

Ethan considered that. “Probably.”

“No looking, then.”

“I can’t agree to that.”

Jacob shook his head, but the tension had left his shoulders. “One drink.” May picked up her tote. “We heard you.” Jacob checked the table once before they left: phone, wallet, keys, backpack, nothing beneath the chair. May waited without teasing him. Ethan had already picked up the casebook.

“Ready?” May asked.

Jacob looked toward the bright street beyond the windows. “Yeah.” The server thanked them as they passed. May thanked her back. Ethan paused to return the menu somebody had left on the edge of the next table, and Jacob held the door until both of them were outside. As Ethan reached for his wallet, the Connecticut license shifted far enough out of its slot for May to see the edge.

“Is that your ID?” she asked.

Ethan looked down. “One of them.” May held out her hand. He hesitated, then passed it over. She read the birth date and looked at him again. “You have a fake ID.”

“Yeah.”

Jacob leaned over just enough to see the photograph. “That’s the one from Yale?” May turned toward him. “You knew?”

“I’ve seen it.”

“And neither of you mentioned this?”

Ethan put his wallet back in his pocket. “When would it have come up?” May looked at the card again. The photograph showed shorter curls and the flat expression people wore when told not to smile. The Connecticut address belonged near Yale. Nothing about it looked cheap or improvised.

“Does it work?” she asked.

“Usually.”

“How often is usually?”

“Enough that I kept it.”

She passed it back. “I really did not expect that from you.”

“Most people don’t.”

There was no pride in the answer and no apology either. Ethan tucked the license behind his real one. Jacob pushed his chair back and lifted the backpack from the floor. “Can we leave before this becomes an interview?”

“I’m done,” May said.

“You’re not.”

“I can finish while we walk.”

Jacob looked at Ethan. “This was your idea.”

“It was her idea.”

“You agreed first.”

“And you agreed second.”

Jacob shook his head and headed toward the door. May lifted her tote. Ethan took the casebook before she could stack it on top.

“I know a place,” she said once they were outside.

“Of course you do,” Jacob answered.

She led them three blocks through the early dinner crowd. Jacob walked between her and the street without making a point of it. Ethan carried the casebook. May rejected one bar because music shook the windows and another because the line already reached the corner. The third had open windows, dark wood, and enough empty tables that they would not have to shout. May stopped beneath the awning. “Still one?” Jacob adjusted the backpack. “For you two.”

“Right.”

“And then home.”

She nodded. This time he believed her. The host checked identification after seven. It was six thirty-eight, but he asked anyway. May handed hers over first. Ethan followed with the false license. The host looked at the card, looked at Ethan, and gave it back.

“Three?”

“Yeah,” May said.

They were led toward a table near the open windows. May set her tote beneath her chair. Jacob wedged his backpack against the wall. Ethan opened the drink menu and read long enough for May to lean across the table.

“You can stop looking so careful now,” she said quietly.

“I’m reading.”

“Sure.”

Jacob picked up the club-soda list. “Leave him alone.” May sat back, smiling. The server approached. May ordered something with citrus. Ethan chose the drink with rosemary smoke because he wanted to know whether the smoke mattered. Jacob asked for club soda and lime.

When the server left, the three of them looked at one another across the small table. For the first time since morning, nobody had a bag open, a screen lit, or somewhere else they had already agreed to be.

May reached for Jacob’s backpack with the toe of her shoe and pushed it farther beneath the table. “You can stop guarding that.”

“I’m not guarding it.”

“You’ve checked it twice.”

Jacob glanced down, caught, and rested both hands on the table. “It has my laptop in it.”

“It’ll survive dinner.”

“This isn’t dinner.”

“You know what I mean.”

He did. The answer stayed in his face for a second before he let it go. Ethan watched the strain ease from his shoulders by degrees. It had been there since he came down the stairs that morning, buried beneath all the ordinary things Jacob had found to talk about instead.

The drinks arrived with a glass of club soda for Jacob. Rosemary smoke curled beneath a short lid over Ethan’s glass. The server lifted it, released the scent across the table, and walked away before any of them could decide whether the presentation had been worth it. Ethan took a cautious sip.

May waited. “Well?”

“It tastes like a drink.”

“Useful.”

“The rosemary doesn’t do much.”

Jacob took the lime from the rim of his glass and squeezed it into the soda. “You paid extra to learn that.”

“I paid extra because she said she was buying.”

“I said I’d get the first round,” May corrected.

“There isn’t supposed to be a second.”

She looked at Jacob. “I heard you.” The words could have sharpened. They did not. Jacob looked down while he stirred the ice with his straw, and May reached across the table to take a sip of Ethan’s drink without asking.

“That’s not bad,” she said.

“You have your own.”

“Mine’s better.”

Ethan tried hers when she offered it. It was colder, sharper, and much stronger than it tasted. He set it down carefully.

“Yeah. Yours is better.”

May smiled and settled back in her chair. Beyond the open windows, people crossed with shopping bags, dogs, and strollers. A cyclist waited through the light with one foot on the curb. The whole street carried on as though Monday evening had always been enough reason to sit outside and stay longer than planned.

“I’m glad I came,” May said.

Neither man made anything of it. Ethan nodded. Jacob lifted his glass toward her before drinking.

They talked about the parts of the day that had not made it into the earlier version: the woman in May’s seminar who had arrived twenty minutes late and still volunteered to lead the first group assignment; the instructor who had pronounced Jacob’s last name three different ways before asking him which one was right; the row of campus printers that all claimed to be out of paper while holding visible stacks behind their trays. None of it mattered. That was why it helped.

By the time Ethan reached the bottom of his glass, the light outside had changed from bright gold to the softer color that came before evening. May had finished half of hers. Jacob’s club soda was mostly melted ice.

A server cleared the empty food plates from the next table. Somebody near the bar laughed too loudly, then apologized to no one in particular. Traffic moved beyond the open windows. No one reached for a bag. Jacob ordered another club soda when the server passed. It was only Monday evening. For now, staying a little longer felt like enough.

By the time Jacob ordered a second club soda, May had stopped pretending she might leave after one drink. Her first glass sat empty beside the casebook. Ethan’s held only melting ice and a bruised sprig of rosemary. Outside the open windows, the last hard light had softened across the storefronts, and the dinner crowd had begun to replace the people leaving work. The server returned with water and asked whether they wanted food. May looked at Jacob. “You’re the one driving.”

“I ate an hour ago.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

He checked the menu anyway. Ethan turned it toward the center of the table.

“Fries?” Ethan asked.

Jacob considered the suggestion, then nodded. “Fine.” They ordered one basket. Nobody tried to make it evidence of anything. May rested both forearms on the table. The pleasant warmth from the first drink had reached her face without disturbing anything else. She could still feel the weight of the unread pages beneath her chair. She simply did not feel obligated to pick them up yet.

“What happens tomorrow?” she asked Jacob.

“Lab preparation at eight.”

“Actual lab?”

“Safety review first. Equipment assignments. Maybe technique if they get through everything.”

“Are you worried?”

Jacob turned his glass once against the table. “A little.” Ethan did not answer for him. May noticed.

“About the work?” she asked.

“About being slow because I don’t know where anything is.” Jacob looked toward the street. “That part usually goes away once you’ve been in the room a few times.”

“Then you’ll be annoyed by something else by Thursday.”

His mouth moved at one corner. “Probably.” The fries arrived. May took one before the plate settled. Jacob waited until the server left, then took two. Ethan watched the rosemary leaves move through the remaining ice in his glass.

“Do you want another?” May asked.

“Maybe.”

Jacob looked between them. “I’m still driving.”

“We know,” May said.

“I’m saying it once now so neither of you acts surprised later.”

“That’s fair.” Ethan picked up the menu. “One beer.”

May ordered a second drink, simpler than the first. Jacob asked for more water. The decision passed without negotiation. For several minutes, they talked about nothing that needed to survive the night: the bad chairs in May’s seminar, the student who had worn a full suit, and the professor who had managed to cover three weeks of Jacob’s old course in forty minutes.

“A full suit?” Ethan asked.

“Tie and pocket square,” May said.

Jacob reached for another fry. “Maybe he came from work.”

“He introduced himself as a sophomore.”

“Then maybe he takes summer seminar very seriously.”

May shook her head, smiling. “He looked like he was about to depose the syllabus.” Ethan laughed before taking a drink. The sound caught May off guard and made her laugh too. Nothing about the story was that funny. The day had simply loosened enough for it to be. Jacob’s phone lit beside his glass. He glanced at the course-portal icon, then turned the screen facedown.

May noticed. “Anything important?”

“Probably not.”

“Then leave it.”

“That was the plan.”

His hand remained near the phone for another second before he reached for his drink instead. The second round arrived. May tasted hers and approved. Ethan took one sip of the beer and settled farther into his chair.

“So,” May said, looking at him. “The fake ID.”

“You color-code hospital requirements and somehow have a fake ID.”

“I didn’t color-code them.”

“That’s not the important part.”

Ethan’s eyes narrowed slightly. “What about it?”

“I’m trying to picture you deciding to get one.”

“Freshman year. Somebody in my biology lecture knew a guy.”

“And that was enough?”

“It scanned.”

Jacob looked at the bottle. “How often did you use it?”

“Sometimes.”

“That means nothing,” May said.

“A few bars. A couple of concerts.”

“With people?”

Ethan looked at her. “Generally.” May let the dry answer sit for a moment. “You almost never talk about anyone from Yale.” He rolled the bottle between his palms. “There isn’t much to tell.”

“There has to be more than the person who found the fake-ID guy.”

Jacob leaned back, watching without turning the question into pressure. Ethan gave them three names: Colin from across the hall, Mara from his running group, and Naomi from medical ethics. At first, each arrived with a fact that sounded as though it belonged in a student directory. May asked what they were actually like. Colin sang badly and without embarrassment. Mara collected postcards from cities she had never visited. Naomi cried at animated movies and denied it while still crying.

“That’s better,” May said.

“Why?”

“Now I can picture them.”

Ethan looked down at the table. “Yeah.” The answer carried more distance than May intended to uncover. She took another drink and gave him room to leave it there. Ethan rested his forearms on the table. “They were real before.”

“To you.”

The answer struck somewhere May had not aimed.

“Do you still talk to them?” Jacob asked.

Ethan turned the bottle once between his hands. “Naomi sometimes. Colin sends me something on my birthday.”

“And Mara?”

“Not for a while.”

May waited, but he did not make the distance into a story with a clear ending.

“Did anything happen?” she asked.

“No.” Ethan looked toward the open window. “I left. She stayed. We kept saying we’d call when things settled down.”

“They didn’t,” Jacob said.

“Not at the same time.”

The distinction sounded familiar. May had people from high school whose lives still appeared on her phone even though the friendships themselves had become reactions, birthday messages, and plans nobody expected to keep.

“You could call her,” May said.

“I could.”

She heard the boundary and left it alone. Jacob looked down at his glass. “I stopped answering people in Charleston.” Ethan’s attention moved to him.

“At first because I didn’t know what to say,” Jacob continued. “Then because too much time had passed, and explaining the time became part of the answer.”

“Do they still try?” May asked.

“Some of them did.” He rubbed one thumb through the condensation on the glass. “I don’t know if they would now.”

“They might,” May said.

“I know.”

He did not sound convinced. He sounded as though he had accepted the possibility without deciding what to do with it. Ethan did not tell him to send a message. Instead, he said, “You don’t have to explain the whole year at once.” Jacob looked at him for a moment. “No. I guess not.”

May took another drink. The conversation had moved farther than any of them intended, but it had not become uncomfortable enough to abandon. The bar continued around them—glasses touching tables, somebody laughing near the door, a server calling an order toward the kitchen.

They remained one table among many. Nothing about the room asked them to resolve the people they had lost contact with before the next song ended. For once, naming the distance was enough. Nobody rushed to turn it into a lesson or a promise. The quiet that followed still felt shared rather than empty or unfinished.

People could exist completely inside one part of a life and remain names—or not even names—to everybody who came after. Bobby had friends in Minnesota May would never meet. Jacob had Charleston people whose messages had stopped arriving in Los Angeles. Ethan carried Yale in habits none of them knew enough to recognize. May lifted her glass. “To the people who existed before us.” Jacob touched his glass to hers. Ethan followed.

“That was dramatic,” Ethan said.

“I’ve had two drinks.”

“One each time,” Jacob said.

“Exactly.”

Jacob talked about Charleston after May asked what his campus had looked like. He described brick walkways, Spanish moss, tourists standing in the wrong places, and heat that settled against the skin before breakfast. He spoke about the pool where he had worked, a coffee shop that stayed open too late during exams, and one professor who could fill an entire board with reaction mechanisms while continuing a conversation without turning around. He did not begin with Randy.

May noticed because people often began descriptions of former homes with the reason they had left. Jacob described reasons he had stayed.

“Do you miss it?” she asked.

He looked toward the open window.

“Parts.”

“Which parts?”

Jacob thought before answering.

“Fireflies.”

“That’s the first thing?” Ethan asked.

“Los Angeles doesn’t have many of them.”

“Some parts of California do.”

“Not here.”

“You could visit.”

“To see bugs?”

“You brought them up.”

Jacob smiled. “The city at night. Walking home when it was still warm. Friends who knew which version of me they were getting without an explanation.” The final sentence rested between them. May understood enough not to ask which versions.

“You can build that here,” she said.

Jacob traced the condensation on his glass.

“Yeah.”

Not agreement. Not refusal. A place to leave the possibility. Ethan reached beneath the table and pressed his knee briefly against Jacob’s. May looked away before either man noticed she had seen.

Her second drink had become half a drink. Warmth sat beneath her face and along her arms. She was not drunk. She was no longer measuring every word before it left.

“New Haven,” Jacob said to Ethan.

“What about it?”

“May asked what I miss.”

“I heard her.”

“Your turn.”

Ethan looked toward the street.

“Running routes.”

“You run here,” May said.

“Not the same routes.”

“What else?” Jacob asked.

“Kit’s workshop.”

He said it without hesitation. May knew enough to understand the name and not enough to picture the room.

“What’s it like?”

Ethan described pegboard walls, old cabinets, labeled drawers nobody obeyed, and the workbench Kit had rebuilt twice because one leg continued warping. He described Rose opening the door to complain about sawdust while bringing coffee. Tyler borrowing tools and returning them to approximately the correct room. Hannah building something at eleven and waking the whole house when a dropped wrench hit concrete. His face changed while he spoke. Not happier exactly. Less guarded around the shape of happiness that already existed.

“You miss them,” May said.

“Yeah.”

One short truth. No defense of Los Angeles attached. May drank again.

“I miss before,” she said.

The words arrived without permission. Jacob’s attention settled on her, steady and quiet. Ethan did not move. May watched traffic through the window.

“Not a place,” she continued. “Just before everybody knew what happened. Before every room had an empty spot people were trying not to look at.”

Neither man told her that it would get easier. Jacob pushed the water toward her. She drank it.

“The class was good,” she said after a moment.

“I know,” Ethan replied.

“I’m glad I went.”

“Good.”

“I still hate Brandon.”

Jacob raised his club soda. “Also allowed.” May touched her glass to his. The moment did not disappear. It settled beneath the conversation instead of taking it over. The server passed again and Jacob asked for another bottle of water. May expected one of them to steer the conversation somewhere safer. Neither hurried to do it. Outside, a bus stopped at the corner. People stepped down beneath the yellow interior light and separated along the sidewalk. May watched until the bus pulled away.

“I don’t want every good thing to turn into proof that I’m doing okay,” she said.

Jacob kept his attention on the street. “Then it doesn’t have to.”

“People keep asking.”

“They don’t know what else to ask,” Ethan said.

May looked at him. “Do you?” He considered it instead of giving her the first answer available. “Sometimes.”

“And the rest of the time?”

“I wait.”

There was no promise inside it. No claim that waiting would eventually produce the correct question. May found that easier to believe. Jacob opened the new water and filled her empty glass before his own. The gesture was quiet enough not to become caretaking. May drank because she wanted it.

“My mom asked if I’m ready for today,” she said.

“What did you tell her?” Jacob asked.

“That I did the reading.”

Ethan’s mouth shifted. “Did that work?”

“No.”

“It usually doesn’t.”

“She let me leave anyway.”

May thought about Athena standing in the kitchen, accepting an answer both of them knew was incomplete. The memory did not feel like a test she had failed. It felt like space her mother had chosen to give her.

“I should text her,” May said.

She sent a short message saying dinner had become drinks and Jacob was driving. Athena reacted with a heart, then asked for a location before they went anywhere else. May shared it without complaint.

“Done,” she said.

Jacob nodded. Ethan returned to the condensation running down his bottle. The conversation found its way back without force. Jacob described the professor who could cover an entire board while talking over one shoulder. Ethan admitted that his favorite Yale professor had held office hours while walking because sitting still made him impatient. May told them Professor Whitaker had already assigned enough reading to make the casebook feel personal.

By the time the tension fully left the table, nobody could identify the moment it had gone. Eventually, the conversation reached music. May discovered that Jacob knew enough Taylor Swift to object when she called him a fan. Ethan claimed not to care and then identified the album playing over the speakers before either of them.

“You recognized it first,” May said.

“I still don’t actually like it.”

“It means you listened.”

“Those aren’t the same thing.”

Jacob looked at Ethan. “Don’t help her.” Ethan lifted his glass without answering.

“You were about to,” Jacob said.

Ethan took another drink instead. May opened the music app on her phone and moved through three playlists. “If we were driving somewhere right now, neither of you would get control.” Jacob glanced toward the windows. “Where are we driving?”

“Nowhere. I said if.”

“You skipped straight to controlling the music.”

“Because that’s the only part worth settling in advance.”

Ethan looked at the time on his phone. “It’s not even eight.” Jacob noticed the line of thought immediately. “Don’t.”

“I only said what time it is.”

“You said it like the night was waiting for an assignment.”

May smiled into her glass. “Maybe it is.” Jacob looked tired, but not unhappy. He checked his phone once more, saw nothing requiring an answer, and put it away.

“I have class at eight,” he said.

“Tomorrow,” May replied.

“That is usually how mornings work.”

She laughed, then drank water because the room had begun to feel a fraction warmer than it was. Nobody proposed a destination. The possibility remained loose enough that Jacob did not have to reject it. Jacob finally pulled his phone from beneath the casebook. “It’s seven forty-three.”

May looked toward the window. The light had begun softening along the buildings. The room had filled while they talked. Voices layered over the music. A second server carried glasses past their table, leaving citrus and something bitter in the air.

“One drink took a while,” she said.

“Two drinks,” Jacob corrected.

“One each time.”

He opened the course notification.

“Room change?” Ethan asked.

“Reminder about tomorrow’s safety form.”

“Did you submit it?”

“Friday.”

“Then leave it.”

Jacob locked the phone. The server brought their checks. May signed hers. Ethan checked the total twice. Jacob paid for the fries and left a tip large enough that May looked at him.

“Food service,” he said.

She understood.

They gathered their things. When May stood, the floor shifted half an inch later than the rest of the room. Not enough to make her stumble. Enough to make her put one hand on the table.

Jacob noticed.

“I’m fine.”

Jacob reached for the casebook. “I was going to hand you this.” Ethan had already picked it up. May looked from one man to the other.

“You’re both irritating.”

“Drink water,” Jacob said.

“That wasn’t less irritating.”

He gave her the unopened bottle from his backpack. May took it. They stepped outside into an evening that remained warmer than the bar. The street had changed while they were inside. Signs glowed where windows had reflected daylight. Dinner lines gathered near doors. Music came from passing cars in fragments. Before they left, May asked the server to take a photograph.

Jacob objected until Ethan pointed out that they had no picture from dinner. May stood between them near the open window. Jacob had to angle one shoulder behind her to fit the frame. Ethan’s curls had shifted from the walk and the bar’s humidity; May’s face still held the warmth of two drinks. The server took three photographs. In the first, Jacob was looking down because May stepped on his shoe. In the second, Ethan blinked. In the third, all three looked toward the camera. May preferred the first. She sent it to Christopher.

Christopher: Why are you standing like that?

May: Like what?

Christopher: Jacob is almost outside the picture.

May examined it again. Jacob had made himself narrower behind her. Ethan had turned inward from the other side. She occupied the center without either man behaving as if they had placed her there.

May: He’s enormous.

Jacob: I can see your phone.

Christopher added the photograph to the group chat anyway. Home waited in the parking structure. They reached the next corner without turning toward the parking structure. May chose west because the light was already green. Ethan followed. Jacob paused beneath the street sign, adjusted his backpack, and came with them. No one called it a plan.

The air outside had cleared some of the alcohol from May’s head without removing the ease it left behind. She could still feel the casebook against her hip and knew exactly how much work waited inside it. The knowledge remained ordinary rather than urgent. For now, they were only walking together, with nowhere urgent to be and enough night left to choose badly.

Jacob knew the responsible direction. The parking structure stood three blocks east. The Land Rover waited on the fourth level with enough fuel to reach the loft twice. His backpack contained forty-six pages, a laboratory manual, two assignments, and the laptop he had not opened since lunch. His alarm was set for six fifteen. His Tuesday class began at eight.

East.

May turned west. Ethan followed her. Jacob stood beneath the bar’s awning with the bottle of water in one hand and watched both of them make the wrong decision without discussion.

“The car is the other way,” he called.

May turned while continuing backward. “We’re walking.”

“Where?”

“Around.”

“That’s not a destination.”

“Exactly.”

She faced forward again. Ethan looked over his shoulder. He did not say anything. He only waited long enough for Jacob to decide whether he was joining them. Jacob adjusted the backpack and went west.

The first block contained restaurants, a pharmacy, and three people attempting to distribute flyers for an event none of the pedestrians wanted to acknowledge. May accepted one. Ethan accepted another because May had. Jacob walked past and received two anyway when the same person approached from the opposite direction. May read the heading.

“Experimental theater.”

“No,” Jacob said.

“I haven’t suggested anything.”

“You read it aloud.”

“That’s literacy.”

“It’s how this starts.”

Ethan took the flyer. “Thursday through Sunday.”

“You have placement Thursday,” May said.

“Next Thursday.”

“Then we’re free this Thursday.”

Jacob looked between them. “No.”

“Why?”

“Because the phrase experimental theater means they don’t know what happens either.”

May folded the flyer and put it in the front of his backpack.

“You’re keeping that.”

“I’m throwing it away when we pass a bin.”

“Then I’ll know where it is.”

Ethan laughed.

Jacob kept the flyer. They passed the pharmacy. May stopped at the window to examine a display of sunglasses discounted beyond credibility. She went inside before either man asked why. Jacob followed because she still had alcohol in her system and because Ethan had followed first.

The store’s fluorescent lights removed every flattering quality from the evening. A security gate beeped near the door. Shelves held sunscreen, phone cables, travel toiletries, and a rotating stand of sunglasses May began trying on without checking the price. She put on a white pair with oversized frames.

“No,” Jacob said.

“You haven’t seen them.”

“I’m looking at them.”

“Then your answer’s wrong.”

Ethan selected a narrow black pair and put them on.

“Also no,” Jacob said.

“These are normal.”

“They make you look like you sell questionable electronics.”

May turned toward him. “Your turn.”

“I own sunglasses.”

“Not relevant.”

She handed him a pair with translucent orange frames. Jacob held them between two fingers. “These won’t fit.”

“Try.”

“My head is visibly larger than yours.”

“That’s why we need evidence.”

The arms opened far enough. The lenses sat too high and the frames pinched near his temples. Ethan took one photograph. Jacob removed them immediately.

“Delete that.”

“No.”

“You took it without permission.”

“You were in public.”

“That’s not how permission works.”

Ethan looked at the image. “You’re smiling.”

“Because I was about to break them.”

May leaned over Ethan’s shoulder. “Send it to me.”

“Absolutely not.”

Both their phones buzzed. Jacob stared at Ethan.

“You’re in my house.”

“That isn’t leverage.”

“It becomes leverage at six fifteen tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll already be awake.”

“Why?”

“Apparently the refrigerator clicks.”

May had to hold the display to stay upright while laughing. A store employee looked toward them from behind the register. Jacob returned the sunglasses precisely to their hook.

“We’re leaving.”

May bought the white pair. Outside, she put them on despite the fading light. The world reflected across the lenses in two distorted rectangles.

“You look ridiculous,” Jacob told her.

“I look expensive.”

“They cost twelve dollars.”

“Nobody outside the transaction knows that.”

They continued west. The bar’s warmth followed them at first, then thinned beneath the movement and evening air. May finished half the water bottle. Ethan accepted it next without being asked. Jacob carried the empty when they finished.

Their route became a series of decisions made at corners. Left because the light was green. Right because a restaurant patio had live music and May wanted to hear one song from outside. Across the street because Ethan noticed a bookstore still open. Back again when the bookstore closed while they waited. They found a record store instead.

The door stood open beneath a hand-painted sign. Inside, narrow aisles ran between bins labeled by genre, decade, and several categories Jacob suspected the owner had invented. Music played from speakers mounted near the ceiling. A man behind the counter read a magazine and acknowledged them with one raised hand. May entered first.

“We’re not buying records,” Jacob said.

“Nobody asked you to.”

“We’re also not starting a collection.”

Ethan moved toward a bin marked EIGHTIES / BETTER THAN YOU REMEMBER.

Jacob followed despite himself. The cardboard sleeves smelled like paper, dust, and somebody else’s house. His parents had owned records they never played. Randy displayed them in the Charleston living room beneath equipment calibrated more often than it was used. Jacob learned most eighties music from Shannon’s car, where cassette cases slid beneath the passenger seat and she sang whatever parts she remembered. He flipped through the bin. Ethan pulled out an album and held it up.

“No.”

“You haven’t looked.”

“I can see the cover.”

“You like them.”

“I don’t need a record player.”

“The loft has one.”

Jacob stopped. “Where?”

“Storage cabinet beneath the stairs.”

“That cabinet opens?”

“Yes.”

“You put two boxes in front of it.”

“Your boxes.”

“You told me to put them there.”

“Temporarily.”

May appeared between them carrying three records. “You have a record player?”

“Apparently,” Jacob said.

“It works,” Ethan replied.

“How do you know?”

“I repaired it.”

Jacob took the album from him and examined the price sticker. “Of course you did.” May added one of her records to his hand. “Buy this too.”

“I’m not buying any.”

“Then hold it while I look.”

She disappeared into another aisle. Jacob looked down at the two records.

“You should get the first one,” Ethan said.

“Why?”

“You picked it up.”

“You handed it to me.”

“You haven’t put it back.”

Jacob found the correct place in the bin and slid it between two sleeves.

Ethan waited.

Jacob pulled it out again.

“Don’t say anything.”

“I didn’t.”

At the counter, May bought one record for Athena and refused to explain which memory had chosen it. Jacob bought the album Ethan had found. Ethan purchased nothing, then accepted responsibility for carrying both bags because May already had the casebook and Jacob had the backpack. Outside, Jacob looked at the thin paper bag in Ethan’s hand.

“I don’t collect records.”

“You own one.”

“That isn’t a collection.”

“It’s how collections start.”

Jacob glanced back toward the store. The purchase had cost less than dinner. It still registered in the part of his mind that converted every unnecessary expense into meals, gas, or one more night before a balance reached zero. Ethan did not tell him he could afford it. He carried the bag carefully enough that the corners would not bend. No one checked a map.

Jacob’s body remained aware of the parking structure’s location even as the streets turned unfamiliar. He tracked east automatically. He tracked the time too, though less frequently than before.

Eight twelve.

The reading could still happen.

Eight twenty-seven.

He could read half tonight and wake early for the rest.

Eight forty-one.

He had already read part of the first article in Charleston. By nine, he stopped negotiating with the work. May walked between them now. The white sunglasses had moved to the top of her head. Her stride remained straight, but the second drink had made her hands more expressive. Ethan matched the energy. He talked about a professor at Yale who had conducted office hours while walking laps around a courtyard because he hated sitting still.

“You liked him,” May said.

“He was useful.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“He gave good feedback.”

“Still not what I said.”

Jacob recognized the evasion because Ethan used it every time affection threatened to become visible.

“He liked him,” Jacob said.

Ethan looked across May. “Nobody asked you.”

“May did.”

“She asked me.”

“You answered something else.”

“He wrote comments on every paper,” Ethan said to May.

“That’s your proof?”

“Most professors don’t.”

“Did you like him?”

Ethan looked ahead.

“Yes.”

May lifted both hands. “There. Nobody died.”

“The night’s young,” Jacob said.

They found a small public plaza between buildings, mostly empty except for two people sharing takeout near a fountain. Strings of lights crossed overhead. Water moved over dark tile with enough noise to soften the traffic. May sat on the fountain edge. Ethan sat beside her. Jacob remained standing because sitting with the backpack would require either removing it or accepting that he might not put it on again.

“Take it off,” Ethan said.

“I’m fine.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

“There wasn’t a question.”

“Take it off.”

Jacob looked at the open pavement around them. Nothing prevented him from setting the bag beside the fountain. Nobody waited to take it. The laptop remained inside a padded sleeve. The casebook May had brought weighed nearly as much and sat against her ankle without supervision. He removed the backpack. The relief across his shoulders arrived strongly enough to make him angry that he had waited. Ethan moved slightly to make room.

Jacob sat.

For a while, they watched the fountain. The quiet did not ask them to decide what came next. May tipped her face toward the lights. “We should do something.”

“We are,” Jacob said.

“We’re sitting.”

“That’s something.”

“Something else.”

“Like go home?”

“No.”

“Read?”

“Absolutely not.”

Ethan rested his forearms on his knees. “What do you want to do?” May considered the plaza as if the answer might be hidden inside it.

“I don’t know.”

Jacob picked up the water bottle, remembered it was empty, and set it down.

“That’s not like you,” he said.

“Maybe I’m trying something new.”

“Not knowing?”

“Not planning.”

Ethan turned his head toward her.

May saw it. “Don’t.”

“I was going to ask whether you wanted dessert.”

“You were already turning it into a plan.”

“We had dessert.”

“That was before drinks.”

Jacob looked between them. “You’re the same person.” They answered him with identical expressions of offense.

He laughed.

The two people with takeout left. Their voices faded toward the street. The plaza became theirs by default. May took out her phone and opened the camera. She aimed it upward at the lights, adjusted the frame, and took a picture.

“That’s crooked,” Ethan said.

“It’s intentional.”

“The fountain line isn’t level.”

“Art doesn’t have to be level.”

“Water does.”

“It is. The photograph isn’t.”

“Then straighten it.”

May switched the camera and took a picture of him instead. Ethan blinked in the flash.

“Delete that.”

“No.”

Jacob held out his hand. “Let me see.” May showed him. Ethan had been caught mid-objection, one eyebrow raised and his mouth slightly open. Jacob began laughing again.

“You’re both impossible.”

“You started it,” Jacob said.

“With a photograph of you smiling.”

“I wasn’t smiling.”

“The evidence disagrees.”

May opened the photograph Ethan had sent. Jacob in orange sunglasses, visibly trying not to laugh while looking prepared to snap the frames in half. She added Ethan’s new picture beside it.

“We need one of you,” Ethan said.

“No, we don’t.”

Jacob picked up May’s phone. She reached for it. He held it above his head.

“That is an abuse of height.”

“Sit still.”

“Give it back.”

“One picture.”

“I already took one.”

“Of lights.”

“They were cooperative.”

Ethan moved to May’s other side, blocking her route around Jacob.

“Traitor.”

“Group responsibility.”

Jacob lowered the phone enough to frame her. May crossed her arms and looked directly into the camera with the most severe expression she could manage while tipsy beneath string lights. He took the photograph.

“You look like Athena,” Ethan said.

The sentence changed the air before he could retrieve it. May looked at the image. She did look like her mother. Not physically enough for strangers to identify it first. In the angle of her chin. The refusal to perform amusement simply because somebody pointed a camera at her.

“Good,” she said.

Jacob returned the phone. Ethan’s hand touched May’s shoulder once, brief enough that she did not need to respond. She saved the picture. They sat another minute.

Then May stood.

“We’re wasting the night.”

Jacob looked at the time. “The night is a Monday.”

“It doesn’t know that.”

“My class does.”

“Your class is tomorrow.”

“Midnight doesn’t reset consequences.”

Ethan stood and picked up the empty bottle. “We can get coffee.”

“That makes going home less likely,” Jacob said.

“Only if you drink it.”

“I’m driving.”

“Exactly.”

Jacob remained seated long enough for both of them to look at him.

“We said one drink.”

“We finished them,” May said.

“That isn’t compliance with the spirit of the agreement.”

“You should’ve written better terms.”

Jacob put on the backpack. The weight returned to his shoulders. It no longer felt as oppressive as it had before he removed it. They left the plaza by a different exit. At the next corner, May stopped beneath a street sign.

“What if we went to the beach?”

“At nine thirty?” Jacob asked.

“The beach will still be there.”

“Parking doesn’t.”

“Griffith?” Ethan suggested.

“Closed soon,” Jacob said.

“Some trails are.”

“No trails after two drinks.”

“I’m not drunk,” May said.

“You bought twelve-dollar sunglasses at night.”

“They’re an investment.”

They continued walking. Suggestions came and disappeared. Karaoke required another destination and more alcohol. A movie would force them to sit quietly. Bowling sounded acceptable until they checked closing times and distance. May suggested driving until something looked interesting. Jacob asked whether that was how people became missing-person reports.

“You’re with a dispatcher,” she said.

“Former dispatcher.”

“Still trained.”

“To report our last known location?”

“You’re very negative tonight.”

“I followed you west for ninety minutes.”

“And?”

Jacob looked around. The night was warm. His bag was heavy. Forty-six pages remained unread. Ethan and May walked beside him without needing him to solve anything more consequential than where to go next.

“And nothing,” he said.

They reached another corner. This time nobody chose a direction. A storefront beside them advertised walk-in tattoos until midnight.

May stopped.

Jacob stopped because she did. “No.”

“I only looked.”

“That’s legal.”

“So is saying no.”

Ethan examined the flash sheets taped near the glass. “They have dinosaurs.” Jacob moved between him and the window. “Absolutely not.” May began laughing. “You think we’d let each other get tattoos after two drinks?”

“Yes.”

“That’s insulting.”

“You bought night sunglasses.”

“They come off.”

“The distinction matters.”

Ethan took a photograph of the dinosaur design. “For later.”

Jacob stared at him.

“Not the tattoo,” Ethan said. “The dinosaur.”

“Why do you need a dinosaur later?”

Ethan did not answer immediately. Across the street, a bus moved through the intersection and uncovered a billboard showing a desert highway. Ethan looked from the tattoo photograph to the billboard, then opened a search screen. May saw the change first.

“What is it?”

“Maybe nothing. Wait.”

Jacob watched his thumbs move across the phone. “If this is another place still open, the answer is probably no.”

“It doesn’t close.”

“That is worse.”

Ethan stopped walking beneath the next streetlight. May took two more steps before realizing neither man remained beside her. She turned with the casebook held against her ribs.

“What?”

Ethan looked past them toward the billboard across the intersection. It showed a desert highway disappearing between low mountains, the sort of image designed to make distance look uncomplicated. Jacob followed his attention. “You thought of something.”

“Maybe.”

“Is it open?” May asked.

“I don’t know yet.”

“Is it nearby?”

Ethan took out his phone. “Depends what you mean by nearby.” Jacob closed his eyes briefly. “That’s not encouraging.” May moved to Ethan’s side before the search page loaded. Jacob stayed where he was, backpack hanging from both shoulders, but he did not start toward the parking structure. The traffic light changed. Cars crossed between them and the billboard, washing the sidewalk in alternating bands of light and shadow. Ethan typed several words, erased them, and tried again.

“You’re being very secretive,” May said.

“I’m looking.”

“For what?”

“I’ll tell you when I find it.”

Jacob checked the time. Nine thirty-eight. The responsible part of the night remained available if they walked east now. He could still be home before ten thirty, finish part of the reading, and sleep long enough to make the morning survivable. He looked at May, who had stopped pretending not to watch Ethan’s screen. Then he looked at Ethan, whose expression had changed from idle curiosity to recognition. Neither of them had moved east. Jacob shifted the backpack higher and waited.

“How far are you willing to go?” May asked him.

“I don’t know what he’s looking for.”

“Generally.”

Jacob looked toward the parking structure, then back at her. “Far enough that I’ll regret it in class. Not far enough that I miss class.” May considered the answer with more seriousness than he expected. “That seems fair.”

“You don’t have anything tomorrow.”

“No internship. I still have work.”

“Work you can do after sleeping.”

“Exactly.”

She stood beside him rather than crowding Ethan’s phone. The white sunglasses had slipped lower into her hair. Her second drink remained visible in the looseness of her posture, but her eyes were clear. Jacob took out his own phone and checked the first route home. Twenty-seven minutes. He closed it without beginning navigation.

“Whatever this is,” he said, “I’m not promising.”

May nodded. “Nobody asked you to.” That was not entirely true, but she said it gently enough that he let it pass. Ethan’s search results finally loaded completely.

Ethan remembered the dinosaurs because of a magnet.

It hung in Kit’s workshop beneath the metal cabinet where he kept drill bits, spare keys, and receipts he intended to organize before the paper faded. Two enormous concrete dinosaurs stood against a blue sky above the word CABAZON in red letters.

Kit had bought it during a cross-country drive before Ethan knew him. He had never removed it, even after the color bleached and one corner began curling away from the cabinet. At nine thirty-eight on a Monday night, standing beneath a street sign in Westwood while May rejected karaoke and Jacob rejected every activity requiring physical risk, Ethan searched large dinosaurs California. The first image appeared before he finished typing.

“We could go here,” he said.

May stepped closer to see the screen. Jacob did not.

“Where is that?” May asked.

“Cabazon.”

“Where is Cabazon?”

“East.”

Jacob finally looked. “How far east?” Ethan opened the route. The map calculated around traffic still thinning beyond downtown.

“An hour forty-six.”

Jacob stared at him.

May enlarged the photograph. “Are those real?”

“They’re concrete.”

“I mean, are they actually there?”

“They exist.”

“Can you go at night?”

Ethan searched again.

“The outdoor dinosaurs are visible.”

“The attraction will be closed,” Jacob said.

“We don’t need an attraction.”

“Then what do we need?”

May took the phone from Ethan. “The dinosaurs.” Jacob looked from the screen to her face.

“You’re serious.”

“Completely.”

“It’s almost ten.”

“That’s why they’ll be better.”

“How?”

“Nobody else will be there.”

“That isn’t automatically a benefit.”

Ethan took back the phone and checked the route again. Cabazon at night made no practical sense. They had no reason to go. The drive would consume more time than the destination. The temperature in the desert remained high. The shops and museum would be closed. Jacob had class in ten hours. May had sixty pages. Ethan had training he should not finish tonight and an Employee Health appointment later in the week.

They could return to the parking structure, drive May home, and reach the loft before eleven. Jacob could read for an hour. Ethan could replace the mattress packaging in the recycling area. May could sleep before deciding whether to go to the legal-aid office Tuesday. Ethan did not want any of that yet. He wanted the road east.

The desire arrived without usefulness attached. Nobody needed the dinosaurs. The trip would not help Jacob finish his degree, prepare May for law school, or move Ethan closer to medicine. It would cost fuel and sleep and create photographs of a place they could have visited during reasonable hours. That was the entire appeal.

“We could be there before midnight,” he said.

May returned the phone. “Let’s go.” She did not hesitate long enough to make the answer conditional. Both of them turned toward Jacob. He stood beneath the streetlight with the backpack hanging from both shoulders and the experimental-theater flyer still visible in the outer pocket.

“No.”

May folded her arms. “You didn’t consider it.”

“I considered the words hour forty-six.”

“That’s with traffic.”

“Traffic gets lighter,” Ethan said.

Jacob looked at him. “You’re making her argument.”

“It was factual.”

“You have class at eight,” May said.

“Why are you supporting my side?”

“I’m establishing the obstacle.”

“The obstacle is sleep.”

“You can sleep later.”

“After class.”

“Exactly.”

Jacob rubbed both hands down his face.

“You have an internship,” he told her.

“Not tomorrow.”

“You have reading.”

“Wednesday.”

“That is the day after tomorrow.”

“I know.”

“I’m going home.”

He started east. May followed at his left shoulder.

“We need you.”

“For the keys.”

“For your company.”

“You looked at me after deciding to drive two hours.”

“Because we want you there.”

“You rejected it immediately.”

Ethan walked on Jacob’s other side.

“We can go another time,” he said.

May looked at him. Jacob did too. Ethan put the phone into his pocket.

“If you don’t want to go.”

The answer mattered. Jacob could drive because he had not been drinking. He had the keys and enough energy to make the trip safely. None of that obligated him to surrender the rest of his night because Ethan and May had become bored with responsible options. They continued toward the parking structure. May stopped campaigning. She walked beside Jacob in silence for half a block, then adjusted the white sunglasses on her head.

“They would’ve looked good with the dinosaurs,” she said.

Jacob exhaled through his nose.

“That was campaigning.”

“I liked the picture,” May said.

“May.”

“I’m done.”

She was not done. She became visibly done, which was different. Ethan let them walk. The parking structure appeared at the end of the block. Cars moved through the entrance. A couple crossed in front of them carrying takeout containers and arguing over whether they had paid for parking.

Jacob slowed.

“What’s there besides dinosaurs?”

May answered before Ethan could open his phone. “Palm Springs.”

Jacob closed his eyes.

“I meant Cabazon.”

“It’s close.”

“How close?”

Ethan checked. “Twenty minutes beyond Cabazon.”

“Do not help.”

“You asked.”

“I asked what was in Cabazon.”

“A casino,” Ethan said. “Outlets. The dinosaurs. A lot of wind.”

“Everything except the dinosaurs will be closed or irrelevant.”

“The casino won’t be closed,” May said.

“We’re not going to a casino.”

“I didn’t say we were.”

“You said it in the voice.”

“What voice?”

“No.”

They entered the parking structure. The concrete held the day’s heat. Their footsteps echoed toward the elevators. Jacob pressed the call button.

“What time would we get back?” he asked.

Ethan calculated.

“If we leave by ten fifteen, arrive around midnight, stay thirty minutes, and come straight back—three.”

May looked at him. “We’re not going straight back.” Jacob pointed at her. “This is why I said no.”

“We’d already be near Palm Springs.”

“That isn’t a reason to continue moving away from home.”

“It’s a very good reason.”

The elevator opened. They entered with another group. Conversation stopped while they rode to the fourth level. May faced the doors. Ethan watched Jacob’s reflection in the metal panel. He was tired. The first day remained visible around his eyes. The backpack pulled his shirt tight across his shoulders. He stood with one hand around the opposite wrist, thinking in the still way he used before decisions he did not want anybody to influence. The other group left on level three. The doors closed. Jacob looked at Ethan’s reflection.

The last truly spontaneous drive he remembered had begun in Charleston during sophomore year. Four people left the library after midnight, discovered the coffee shop had closed early, and drove toward Folly Beach because nobody wanted to return to campus yet.

They bought food from a gas station and sat near the water until wind drove them back to the car. Jacob arrived home at four, slept for two hours, and failed a quiz worth less than one percent of his grade. Randy saw the score before Jacob did. It appeared in the parent-access system Randy continued using after Jacob turned eighteen because he paid tuition and therefore considered every institutional boundary negotiable.

“You stayed out all night for what?” Randy asked.

Jacob said the beach. Randy asked what happened there. Nothing had happened. That was the problem. No event justified the drive. No person needed him. No opportunity emerged. They had eaten terrible food, listened to music, and returned tired. Randy converted the night into the failed quiz, the fuel, and the hours Jacob should have used more intelligently. Jacob never made that drive again.

Later decisions became easier to defend. Lifeguard shifts produced money. Extra courses shortened the degree. Parties built friendships, and friendships could become study groups or references or somewhere to sleep when being home grew unbearable. Even drinking had acquired an argument: social life, college experience, briefly switching off thoughts that refused to stop.

The year after Charleston eliminated whatever remained. Every drive required fuel. Every missed shift removed money. Sleep became something he spent only when the cost of remaining awake grew higher. Now the Land Rover waited four floors above them with a full tank Ethan had paid to fill two days earlier. Jacob had a room, two keys, and a degree plan displaying the word approved. He still felt the old arithmetic begin.

Four hours of driving. Fuel. Food. Tuesday fatigue. Lost reading time. The possibility that an ordinary problem—a flat tire, a closed road, a mistake—would become evidence that the choice had been irresponsible from the start.

Across the elevator, May watched the changing floor numbers and made herself remain silent. Ethan stood beside her with both hands empty. Neither tried to take the decision away from Jacob by promising it would be fine. It might not be fine.

He might hate the drive home. He might sit through lab preparation with his eyes burning and retain none of it. The dinosaurs might look smaller than the photograph. Cabazon might be nothing but concrete, dark storefronts, and the knowledge that home was two hours west. Wanting to go did not make the choice sensible. It only made the choice his.

“Why do you want to go?”

Ethan could have said the magnet. He could have said Kit or New Haven or that the dinosaurs belonged to a place he had seen every week without ever seeing the place itself. Those were explanations. None was the reason.

“Because we can,” he said.

Jacob’s mouth moved slightly. The doors opened onto level four. They walked toward the Land Rover. May did not speak. She had recognized that the decision had moved beyond persuasion. Jacob stopped behind the vehicle. The garage light flattened the color from his face. He set the backpack on the ground and rolled one shoulder, then the other. May leaned against the rear quarter panel without touching him.

“For the record,” she said, “if we go home, I’m still counting tonight as good.”

Jacob looked at her.

“That sounds like emotional manipulation.”

“I’m trying not to emotionally manipulate you.”

“By announcing it?”

“I’m tipsy. My methods are limited.”

Ethan moved around the passenger side and rested one hand on the roof.

“The dinosaurs will still exist later,” he said.

“Probably,” May added. “Unless there’s an earthquake.”

Both men looked at her.

“Too soon?”

“Yes,” they said.

May lowered her head. “Fair.” The seriousness broke without disappearing. Jacob laughed once, tired and unwilling.

“You two are going to be a problem.”

“Going to be?” May asked.

“More of one.”

Ethan’s hand remained on the roof. “We can set a return time.”

“She already rejected coming straight back.”

“We can ignore her.”

“I’m standing here,” May said.

“You said Palm Springs before we reached the car.”

“Because it’s twenty minutes away.”

“From a place ninety minutes away.”

“I’m only saying it’s close.”

Jacob looked up at the concrete ceiling and laughed again.

“I spent fourteen months making every decision based on what cost less,” he said.

Ethan waited.

“Gas. Food. Time. Sleep. Whether I could get to work if the car made another noise.”

May lowered her hands.

“Today I went back to school,” Jacob continued. “I have class in the morning. I should go home, read, and sleep.”

“We can,” Ethan said.

Jacob looked at the Land Rover, then toward the concrete opening overlooking the street.

“I don’t want every good decision to feel like another thing I can’t afford not to make.”

He reached into his pocket and held out his hand. Ethan took out the keys. For one second, he expected Jacob to unlock the car and drive them home. May watched both of them. Jacob looked at Ethan. “What the hell. Why not?”

The grin came across Ethan’s face too quickly to contain. Jacob saw it and felt the last of his resistance give way. He tossed the keys. Jacob caught them with one hand. May made a sound loud enough to echo through the garage and threw both arms around Jacob’s shoulders. He staggered half a step before catching his balance.

“You’re going to regret agreeing.”

“Probably.”

“But not yet.”

“No.”

Ethan opened the passenger door. Jacob pointed the keys at him. “We need rules.”

“We’re driving to concrete dinosaurs at midnight.”

“That is why we need rules.”

May climbed into the back. “Rule one: I control the music.”

“Denied,” Jacob said.

“You haven’t heard the proposal.”

“I heard enough.”

Ethan put Jacob’s backpack behind the driver’s seat.

“We need water,” Jacob continued. “Food that isn’t fries. Fuel. Caffeine. Phone chargers.”

“I have a charger,” Ethan said.

“One?”

“Two.”

“Of course you do,” May said.

Jacob started the engine. The navigation screen lit with the route home. Ethan cleared it. He entered Cabazon. The blue line extended east across the city and into darkness beyond it.

Estimated arrival: 11:57 p.m.

Jacob looked at the route.

“Last chance,” he said.

May buckled herself in. “Drive.” Ethan turned up the first song. Jacob shifted into reverse. They reached the downward ramp before Jacob braked.

“Phones,” he said.

May held hers up.

“Charged?”

“Sixty-eight percent.”

“Location sharing?”

“My mother already has it.”

“Does she know where we’re going?”

May lowered the phone. “She knows I’m with you.”

Jacob looked at Ethan.

“Maddie knows I’m out.”

“Out where?”

“Westwood.”

“We won’t be in Westwood.”

“Then we update them at the gas station.”

“Before the freeway,” Jacob said.

“Fine.”

He continued down one level.

“Seat belts.”

Two clicks answered.

“No alcohol in the car.”

“We don’t have any,” May said.

“Still a rule.”

“And nothing stupid inside the car,” Ethan added.

Jacob looked at him. “That covers enough.” Ethan turned toward him. “Your car?” Jacob’s hands tightened on the wheel.

“For the next several hours.”

Ethan let him have it. May leaned between the seats. “Can I add a rule?”

“Depends.”

“Nobody gets to turn this into a mistake tomorrow.”

Jacob looked at her in the mirror.

“Meaning?”

“We can be tired. We can complain. We can admit it was objectively stupid. Nobody says we shouldn’t have gone just because morning hurts.”

Ethan considered it. “Unless something actually goes wrong.”

“Reasonable exception.”

Jacob looked toward the garage exit below.

“Fine.”

“That didn’t sound binding.”

“I agree.”

May sat back. “Then drive.” As they descended through the garage, Ethan found the magnet online. The current gift shop sold a brighter version, but the shape remained the same: two dinosaurs against an impossible sky. He showed Jacob at the next stop sign.

“Kit has this.”

Jacob glanced at the screen. “From Cabazon?”

“He drove through before I lived with them.”

“Did he go inside?”

“I don’t know.”

“You never asked?”

Ethan had asked about hundreds of objects in the workshop. Which tools belonged to Kit’s father. Why one drawer contained nothing but bent nails. How the workbench acquired the burn mark Rose still blamed on a toaster Kit claimed had never existed. He had never asked about the magnet.

“No.”

“You can send him a picture,” May said.

The idea landed differently than the trip itself. Ethan pictured Kit waking in New Haven to a photograph of three people beneath the dinosaurs, the old magnet suddenly connected to a night Kit had not seen coming.

“Maybe,” he said.

Jacob turned onto the final ramp. “That’s a yes.”

“I said maybe.”

“You read May’s dissent because the link was attached.”

“Those things aren’t related.”

“You’ll send the picture.”

Ethan put the phone away without answering. May looked through the windshield at the garage exit. “We’re going to need a better picture than the sunglasses.”

“The sunglasses picture is excellent,” Ethan said.

Jacob tightened his hands on the wheel. “Delete it.”

Neither promised.

The Land Rover left the parking space pointed away from home. Jacob guided it toward the downward ramp. Concrete columns passed the windows in an even rhythm while the navigation recalculated from the garage’s interior roads. May began building a playlist from the back seat. She asked what qualified as dinosaur music, received no useful answer, and added the first song anyway.

“We need gas,” Jacob said.

“There’s a station before the freeway,” Ethan replied.

“And water.”

“We’ll stop.”

Jacob glanced at him. “You’re very agreeable now.”

“You said yes.”

“I can still change my mind.”

“I know.”

Ethan meant it. No challenge, no attempt to secure the decision before Jacob could reconsider. That made continuing easier. The next ramp opened briefly toward the city. Apartment windows and brake lights extended beyond the concrete barrier. Home lay somewhere to the west, close enough that Jacob could still picture the route without navigation.

At the next level, he pulled into an empty space long enough to adjust the seat and mirrors. Ethan confirmed the gas station. May buckled herself in, set the casebook on the floor, and moved the shopping bag from the record store where it would not bend.

“Everybody charged?” Jacob asked.

Ethan checked both phones connected at the console. “Enough to reach the station.”

“Mine’s at seventy,” May said.

“Location sharing?”

“Already on.”

Jacob nodded and pulled out again. The practical questions did not diminish the decision. They gave it edges he could trust. He thought of the two keys on his ring and the mattress waiting in the room he had barely begun to occupy. Leaving for one ridiculous night did not threaten any of it. The loft would remain where they left it. That certainty was new enough to feel reckless. May leaned forward between the seats. “I found eleven songs.”

“Already?”

“I work well under pressure.”

Jacob shook his head, but he was smiling when the ramp curved downward again. The garage exit appeared two levels below. Beyond it, the route turned east. The navigation found the route again as they descended. Cabazon remained almost two hours away, an unreasonable distance that looked less abstract each time the estimated arrival time held steady. Nobody suggested changing the destination. By then, the question was no longer whether they would go, only how they would get there safely.

The first rule lasted until the parking-structure exit. May had declared control of the music. Jacob denied the request. Ethan connected his phone while they argued and selected a song neither had proposed.

“I thought I had the music,” May said from the back seat.

“You announced that yourself,” Jacob said.

Ethan connected his phone. “We can take turns.” Jacob stopped at the gate and inserted the parking ticket. The machine rejected it. He turned the ticket around. The machine rejected it again. May leaned between the seats. “Do you need help?”

“No.”

“It says barcode up.”

“The barcode is up.”

“That’s down from where I am.”

“You’re upside down relative to the machine.”

“I am sitting normally.”

Ethan took the ticket, flattened the bent edge against the dashboard, and tried again. The machine accepted it.

“Thank you,” Jacob said through his teeth.

“You bent it.”

“It was in my pocket.”

“That’s where bending happens.”

The gate lifted. They entered traffic at nine fifty-two. The route directed them toward I-10. Before they reached the freeway, Jacob turned into a gas station bright enough to erase the night around it.

“Supplies,” he said.

May looked toward the convenience store. “I thought we had snacks.”

“We have one packet of almonds and whatever you put in your tote.”

“A casebook.”

“Not food.”

“Depends how committed you are.”

Jacob parked near the pumps. “Water. Caffeine. Food. Bathroom. Ten minutes.”

“Who made you captain?”

“The two drinks you had.”

May opened the door. “Tyranny.”

“Ten minutes.”

She went inside. Ethan stayed while Jacob began fueling. The air smelled of gasoline and warm pavement. Moths battered themselves against the lights above the pumps.

“You sure?” Ethan asked.

Jacob watched the numbers climb.

“About the dinosaurs?”

“Driving.”

“I had club soda.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

Jacob glanced toward him.

“You and May have been doing that all night.”

“Doing what?”

“Asking a second question after I answer the first.”

“The first answer wasn’t complete.”

“I’m tired. I’m not falling asleep. If that changes, I stop.”

“Okay.”

“You’ll be sober before we come back.”

“Yes.”

“You can drive then.”

“Yes.”

“May has her license?”

“Probably.”

Jacob replaced the nozzle. “That isn’t reassuring.”

“She drove to school.”

“She also bought sunglasses because they looked expensive.”

“They looked twelve dollars.”

“Exactly.”

The receipt failed to print. Jacob pressed the button twice before the screen instructed him to see the cashier. He stared at it.

“We don’t need it,” Ethan said.

“I track fuel.”

“You can use the bank charge.”

Jacob looked toward the store.

“Ten minutes,” Ethan reminded him.

Jacob abandoned the receipt. Inside, May had acquired a basket. She had also acquired a paper tourist map from the rack near the door, despite all three phones having navigation.

“Just in case,” she said when Jacob looked at it.

“Can you read a road map?”

“Of course.”

“Show me Cabazon.”

May unfolded the map across the hood of a chest freezer. The page opened to Northern California.

“Wrong side,” Ethan said.

“I know.”

She turned it over. Southern California appeared beneath an advertisement for roadside assistance. May found Los Angeles. Her finger moved east along a line that might have been I-10, crossed two county boundaries, and stopped near a crease.

“There.”

Jacob leaned closer. “That’s Beaumont.”

“Close.”

“We’ll use the phones,” Ethan said.

May folded the map badly and put it in the basket anyway. She stood in the snack aisle comparing two enormous bags of candy while the white sunglasses remained on top of her head.

“No,” Jacob said.

“You don’t know what I’m deciding.”

“Neither.”

“We need road-trip food.”

“We need water.”

“I have water.”

Her basket contained one bottle beneath chips, sour candy, chocolate, gum, and a disposable camera. Ethan picked up the camera. “Why?”

“Because phones make us review everything immediately.”

“That’s useful.”

“Not tonight.”

She took it back. Jacob added three bottles of water to the basket.

“Get something with protein.”

“We had dinner.”

“Two hours ago.”

“And fries after.”

“Those aren’t protein.”

Ethan found a refrigerated case and began reading labels.

“You’re both impossible,” May said.

She added jerky to the basket. Then she found a rotating rack of key chains.

“No,” Jacob said again.

“You’re overusing that word.”

May held up a plastic California license plate bearing MAY.

“They have my name.”

“They have every common name.”

She searched the rack. Ethan found his own before she did. Jacob’s was absent.

“Discrimination,” May said.

“I’m surviving.”

Ethan turned the rack slowly. Behind JASON, he found JAKE.

“Close enough.”

Jacob took it from him and returned it to the hook. “Not my name.”

“Neither is the birthday on Ethan’s license,” May said.

“That’s different,” Ethan replied.

“Identity is complicated.”

Jacob pushed the basket forward before May could build a legal argument around souvenir key chains.

“Ethan doesn’t eat that,” Jacob said.

“It’s for us.”

“Then get him something.”

May looked toward Ethan, who was examining a container of hummus as if it had failed inspection.

“He’s doing that.”

“Still.”

She added nuts. Ethan returned with hummus, vegetables, two sandwiches, and enough bottled coffee to concern May.

“We’re gone one night.”

“Jacob has class.”

“At eight,” Jacob said.

“We know,” May replied.

They moved toward the register. On the way, May stopped beside a rotating display of postcards. Los Angeles landmarks occupied one side. Desert scenes and generic California sunsets occupied the other. She selected one showing the Cabazon dinosaurs.

“They already sell the proof here,” she said.

“We haven’t gone yet,” Jacob replied.

“That’s why it’s aspirational.”

She added it to the basket. Before the counter, Jacob made them inventory the basket. Six bottles of water. Three bottled coffees. Chips. Candy. Jerky. Nuts. Hummus. Vegetables. Two sandwiches. Gum. The disposable camera. A postcard. Sunscreen May claimed was necessary for a trip ending before morning. The paper map. Two cheap pens because the one in May’s tote had leaked.

“We’re going two hours,” Jacob said.

“Four round trip,” May replied.

“That still doesn’t require a map.”

“Backup.”

“Or sunscreen.”

“The sun exists in the morning.”

“We’ll be home.”

May and Ethan exchanged a glance. Jacob saw it. “We’ll be home.”

“Eventually,” May said.

He removed one bag of candy and the key chain May had smuggled beneath it.

“That’s mine.”

“It says Jake.”

“That’s why it’s funny.”

“It isn’t.”

Ethan returned it to the rack and found a small magnet shaped like California. They bought the magnet. At the counter, Jacob attempted to pay for the fuel and practical supplies. May placed the candy and camera in a separate pile. Ethan divided the remaining items based on a system neither could follow.

“Stop,” Jacob said.

“What?”

“We’re not doing three transactions.”

“The camera’s mine,” May said.

“I don’t care.”

“You’ll care when the receipt makes no sense.”

“The receipt already makes no sense.”

The cashier watched them with the patient absence of interest available only to people working late shifts. Ethan put his card on the counter.

“I’ve got it.”

Jacob removed the card. “It’s my trip too.”

“You paid for gas.”

“I failed to get the receipt.”

“That doesn’t make the gas free.”

May placed cash on top of both cards.

“Celebration fund.”

“You paid for parking,” Jacob said.

“Six dollars.”

“And drinks.”

“My drinks.”

The cashier looked at Ethan. “Together or separate?”

“Together,” all three said.

Ethan paid before the argument restarted. Outside, Jacob loaded the practical supplies into the center console and rear footwell. May opened the disposable camera packaging.

“Not yet,” Ethan said.

“Why?”

“There are limited exposures.”

“Twenty-seven.”

“Exactly.”

“We’re documenting departure.”

Jacob closed the rear hatch. “That’s one of twenty-seven?”

“History requires context.”

She set the camera on the Land Rover’s hood and activated the timer on her phone instead.

“Get over here.”

Ethan stood beside her. Jacob remained near the driver’s door.

“Jacob.”

“We have nine seconds.”

“Then move.”

He joined them with four seconds left. May leaned into his side. Ethan stood on the other. The photograph caught Jacob looking down at May, May laughing, and Ethan reaching toward the phone as if he could correct the timer after it ended. May checked it.

“Perfect.”

“Nobody looked at the camera,” Ethan said.

“That’s why.”

She saved it, then opened the group chat. Before sending anything, May opened a separate message to Athena.

May: Still with Ethan and Jacob. Jacob is sober and driving. We may be out late.

Athena answered almost immediately.

Mom: Define late. Where are you going?

May looked at the dinosaurs on the postcard.

May: East.

The phone rang. May let it ring once before answering.

“Hi.”

“East where?”

“Cabazon.”

Silence.

“Why?”

“Dinosaurs.”

The silence lengthened.

May covered the phone and looked at Ethan. “She’s processing.” Athena returned. “Jacob hasn’t been drinking?”

“Club soda.”

“Ethan?”

“Two.”

“You?”

“Also two.”

“Send me your location. Keep it on. If Jacob gets tired, you stop. Ethan doesn’t drive until he is completely sober.”

“We know.”

“I know you know. I’m still saying it.”

May looked toward the Land Rover. Jacob was checking tire pressure through the dashboard. Ethan had begun dividing snacks into reachable and later categories.

“Okay.”

Athena’s voice changed slightly. “Have fun.”

May swallowed. “We will.”

She ended the call, shared her location, and returned to the others. Jacob saw the group name and stopped her hand.

“What are you telling them?”

“That we’re going for a drive.”

“To where?”

“Do they need the complete itinerary?”

“Eddie knows I have class.”

“Athena knows I’m with you.”

“Maddie knows I’m alive,” Ethan said.

May typed.

May: Continuing the first-day celebration. Everyone is safe. Jacob is driving.

Christopher responded first.

Christopher: Where are you going?

May looked at Jacob, then typed the answer.

May: Cabazon. We’re going to see the dinosaurs.

Christopher: Seriously?

May: Apparently.

Christopher: Send pictures.

Eddie: Have Jacob call me when you’re in the car.

May showed Jacob the screen.

“I’ll call him,” he said.

May put the phone away. The exchange had been easier than the version she had prepared for: no interrogation, no accusation that they could not handle themselves, only the reasonable expectation that somebody say where they were going.

She looked across the gas-station lot. Jacob was arranging the water where he could reach it. Ethan had already connected the chargers and set the unopened food behind the center console. Their excitement had not made either of them careless. The practical work happened without becoming the point of the night.

For the first time since they chose Cabazon, the trip felt less like something they were getting away with and more like somewhere they had actually decided to go. May climbed into the back seat with the snacks.

“We’re adults.”

“One of us has a fake ID,” Jacob said.

“Legally adult.”

Ethan sat in front and distributed chargers. Jacob started the engine again.

“New rules,” he said.

May opened the chips.

“No crumbs,” Jacob said immediately.

“That cannot be a road-trip rule.”

“It’s Ethan’s car.”

“Ethan?”

Ethan looked at the bag. “Use the napkins.” May placed one across her lap with exaggerated care.

“Other rules?”

“Nobody changes the navigation without telling me. Nobody opens a window while we’re on the freeway unless we agree. If I say I need quiet, I get quiet. If I’m tired, we stop.”

“Reasonable,” Ethan said.

“Music?” May asked.

“Rotating control.”

“How long?”

“Three songs.”

“Five.”

“Four,” Ethan said.

Jacob considered. “Four.”

May held out her hand between the seats. Ethan shook it. Jacob refused because he was reversing. They left the gas station at ten seventeen. May chose the first song. The opening notes filled the vehicle before they reached the ramp. Ethan recognized it and increased the volume. Jacob objected to the level but not the song. The city moved around them in bright fragments. Storefronts. Brake lights. Apartment windows. The freeway sign appeared ahead with the eastbound arrow. May opened the postcard and wrote against the back using the casebook as a surface.

We haven’t arrived yet.

She added the date.

June 2, 2025.

Then, beneath it:

Jacob said yes anyway.

She did not show either of them. Jacob merged onto I-10. The route stretched east. Before the freeway swallowed the last familiar blocks, Jacob made Ethan check the route for construction, closures, and fuel stops near Cabazon. Ethan found nothing significant. May unfolded the paper map across the back seat and announced that it independently confirmed California continued east.

“Useful,” Jacob said.

“Paper confirmation.”

She folded it along a new and incompatible set of lines. The group chat continued buzzing.

Christopher: A gas station is not a location.

Eddie: Call me.

Jacob sighed and pressed the steering-wheel control.

“Call Eddie.”

The dashboard dialed. Eddie answered before the second ring.

“Where are you?”

“On I-10.”

“Going where?”

“Cabazon.”

Silence filled the Land Rover.

“Why?”

May leaned forward. “Dinosaurs.”

“Is that May?”

“Hi, Eddie.”

“You’re really driving to Cabazon tonight?”

“Yeah,” Jacob said.

“I’m sober,” Jacob said. “The car’s full. We have water, food, chargers, and the route. If I get tired, we stop or Ethan takes over after he’s sober.”

Eddie exhaled near the microphone.

“You have class.”

“I know.”

“At eight.”

“I know.”

“And you’re driving to Cabazon.”

“Yes.”

Another silence.

“Send your location. Call if anything changes.”

That ended the argument.

Christopher’s voice appeared farther from the phone. “Tell them to send pictures.”

“We will,” Jacob said.

He ended the call and shared his location. Ethan changed the song before she could continue. May’s four-song block began with a song Jacob knew, followed by one he pretended not to. By the third, she had turned the back seat into a control station: snacks arranged beside her, map open across one knee, disposable camera on the other, phone connected to the speakers. May checked the traffic. “It clears after Pomona.” Ethan checked his screen. “She’s right.” Jacob nodded. “Let me know if that changes.”

May opened the chips. Jacob looked at her in the mirror. She placed three napkins across her lap before taking one.

“Compliance,” she said.

Ethan accepted the bag next and folded the opening inward to prevent crumbs. May watched with open disappointment.

“You make everything clinical.”

“I’m protecting the upholstery.”

“It’s a Land Rover.”

“Exactly.”

Jacob drove with both hands on the wheel until the traffic loosened. The city passed in familiar pieces, then less familiar ones. Office buildings gave way to warehouses. Light gathered in commercial strips and thinned between exits. Ethan opened the hummus.

“You bought that for later,” May said.

“Later happened.”

“It’s been twenty minutes.”

“Time passed.”

Jacob held out one hand without looking. Ethan placed a carrot in it. May watched the exchange.

“You’re feeding the driver vegetables.”

“He requested one.”

“I held out my hand.”

“For what?”

“Food.”

“Then he interpreted you.”

Jacob ate the carrot. “Correctly.” May held her own hand between the seats. Ethan placed a carrot in it.

“I wanted candy.”

“Use words.”

She ate the carrot. Her fourth song ended near the downtown interchange. Ethan took control and chose something quieter without announcing why. Jacob’s shoulders lowered. May noticed and did not object. For several miles, they listened.

The adventure had begun loudly enough that silence could have felt like failure. It did not. The road moved beneath them. The skyline passed at an angle through the windows. Three phones charged. Their families knew where they were. Nothing demanded conversation to prove they were still having fun. May used the disposable camera for the first time. The flash reflected from the windshield. Jacob flinched. “Rule. No flash while I’m driving.”

“Sorry.”

She meant it immediately.

“Take pictures at stops.”

“Okay.”

She set the camera down. The correction passed without defensiveness or shame. Jacob kept driving. Ethan changed nothing. May looked at the city one more time before it fell behind them. Home disappeared behind them.

East of downtown, the traffic finally opened. Jacob set the cruise control below the speed Ethan expected and above the speed May accused him of driving. The argument lasted through one exit and dissolved when a plane descended across the dark ahead of them. May followed its lights until they vanished.

“Do you think the dinosaurs are lit?”

“The photos show lights,” Ethan said.

“Current photos?” Jacob asked.

“Recent enough.”

“So, no.”

“The structures will exist either way.”

May settled deeper into the seat. “Dark dinosaurs might be better.” Jacob looked toward the route showing more than an hour remaining. “That sentence is not reassuring.” They passed the next green sign. The distance to San Bernardino shortened. Cabazon still waited beyond the edge of the dashboard map. May opened the postcard again and added the time beneath the date.

10:43 p.m.—still going.

Her handwriting leaned more than usual. She capped the pen before the movement of the vehicle could turn the message illegible. Ethan looked back. “Who’s that for?”

“Future evidence.”

“Of what?”

“That we made the decision while capable of writing.”

Jacob laughed. “That isn’t the defense you think it is.” May placed the postcard inside the casebook to keep it flat. The book had spent the evening as table, photo prop, map surface, and now storage. She had not read a page since class. For once, the unread work did not feel like failure gathering interest. It felt like Wednesday’s problem waiting its turn.

She opened the candy and passed it forward one piece at a time. Jacob refused the first and accepted the second. Ethan took two, then denied it when May counted. The freeway carried them farther from every responsible version of the night. The navigation announced sixty-seven miles remaining. Nobody suggested turning back. Jacob increased the volume one step, and May smiled into the dark window.

The road opened another mile ahead. May photographed the blurred lights without flash, obeying the new rule. The image would be imperfect and unrecoverable until the film was developed. She liked that. Cabazon waited somewhere beyond the last visible lights. None of them had seen it yet. That made the destination feel less real and more necessary with every mile.

At eleven twelve, Jacob stopped recognizing the exits. The change happened gradually. Familiar names disappeared first. Buildings lowered. The freeway widened and the darkness between commercial strips lasted longer. Warehouses gave way to subdivisions, subdivisions to stretches of road edged by signs Jacob read too late to remember. Los Angeles did not end so much as loosen.

May sat behind him with the paper map folded into a shape no cartographer intended. Ethan occupied the passenger seat, one knee angled toward the dashboard, phone connected to the stereo. The navigation reduced the distance to Cabazon one mile at a time.

Fifty-two miles.

Then fifty-one.

Jacob adjusted his hands on the wheel.

“You’re doing eighty,” May said.

“I’m doing seventy-three.”

“It feels faster back here.”

“That’s not how speed works.”

“It’s how perception works.”

Ethan checked the speedometer. “Seventy-two.”

“Thank you.”

“It changed.”

Jacob looked at him.

“Watch the road,” Ethan said.

“I am watching the road.”

“Then stop looking at me.”

May began laughing from the back seat.

“What?” both men asked.

“Nothing.”

“That’s clearly something,” Ethan said.

“You sound married.”

The vehicle went quiet. Jacob kept his attention on the lane markers. Ethan reached for the bottled coffee and examined the label as if it had required his full concentration. May leaned forward between the seats. “Not to each other. To the car.”

“That didn’t help,” Jacob said.

“I know.”

She sat back. The next song began before any of them attempted to rescue the conversation. Jacob recognized it from Shannon’s car. He had been ten the first time she played it with the windows open, Christopher asleep in the back despite the volume, Eddie somewhere overseas, and Texas heat moving through the vehicle without cooling anything. Shannon sang the chorus wrong. Jacob corrected her. She sang it more incorrectly on purpose.

Now the same opening notes filled Ethan’s Land Rover on an eastbound California freeway. Jacob turned the volume up. Ethan looked toward him but did not ask. May did not know the song. She learned the chorus by the second repetition and sang with confidence unsupported by accuracy. Jacob corrected one word. She changed three others.

“That isn’t even close.”

“I’m improving it.”

“You’re doing what Shannon did.”

May stopped.

“Good or bad?”

Jacob considered the road.

“Good.”

She resumed, worse than before. The song ended. Jacob lowered the volume one step.

“Was she fun?” May asked.

“Sometimes.”

“That sounded complicated.”

“She was complicated.”

Ethan opened the hummus again and held out a carrot without looking. Jacob took it.

“She was the first adult who acted like me noticing things could be useful,” he said.

May waited.

Jacob told them about the bookcase. It had leaned away from the wall in the Kelley house, top-heavy and unsecured. Jacob noticed the gap when he was eleven. Randy told him the floor was uneven and to stop worrying. Shannon arrived with Christopher later that week, saw Jacob checking it again, and asked what was wrong.

He explained.

She moved Christopher out of the room, made Randy help empty the shelves, and secured the case before putting anything back.

“She didn’t tell me I was anxious,” Jacob said. “She said she needed me to keep noticing things like that.”

“She was right,” Ethan replied.

Jacob ate the carrot.

“Randy hated that she agreed with me.”

“Also useful,” May said.

He smiled.

The navigation announced thirty-eight miles. May’s phone rang. Christopher’s name appeared on the dashboard because her phone remained connected for music. Jacob looked at the time. “Why is he calling?”

“Because we told him to sleep,” May said.

She answered on speaker.

“You should be asleep.”

“You should be in Los Angeles.”

His voice came through slightly distorted but fully awake.

“We’re near Los Angeles.”

“You’re in San Bernardino County.”

Jacob glanced at the location marker. “How do you know that?”

“Dad has your location.”

“He actually showed you?”

“I asked.”

May lowered the music. “Why are you awake?”

“Because you went to see dinosaurs without me.”

“We haven’t seen them yet.”

“That doesn’t help.”

Jacob kept his eyes on the road. “We’ll send pictures. Go to bed.”

“You’re going to class tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“You’re going to be awful.”

“Thank you.”

“I mean tired.”

“I know.”

A door opened near Christopher. Eddie’s voice appeared farther from the phone.

“Why are you still awake?”

“They went to the dinosaurs.”

“Put me on speaker.”

The call shifted as Christopher enabled it.

“Jacob?” Eddie asked.

“Still sober.”

“Tired?”

“Four.”

Ethan looked at him, approving the use of the scale without saying so.

“Four what?” Eddie asked.

“Out of ten.”

“When it becomes six, you stop.”

“Five,” Ethan said.

Jacob looked at him. “Six.”

“Five.”

“I’m driving.”

“Which is why five matters.”

Eddie waited through the exchange.

“Five. Ethan’s right.”

“Nobody asked either of you.”

May leaned between the seats. “I agree with five.”

“You’re tipsy.”

“I can count.”

“Five,” Eddie repeated. “Send a picture when you arrive. Then Christopher goes to sleep.”

“I’m still here,” Christopher said.

“We know,” three voices answered.

The call ended. Christopher’s name disappeared from the dashboard, leaving the navigation in its place. May restored the music.

“Five,” Ethan said.

Jacob adjusted the mirror. “You’re enjoying this too much.”

“I enjoy accurate thresholds.”

“You enjoy being right.”

“Those overlap.”

May laughed from the back. A few minutes later, the freeway climbed. City light thinned behind them while the dark ahead grew deeper. Jacob felt the grade in the engine and eased his foot, letting the Land Rover hold its pace without forcing it. Ethan watched the dashboard. “You drive differently than Eddie.”

“How?”

“Faster.”

“I’m within the limit.”

“Eddie drives like every other car is about to make a personal attack.”

“That’s because every other car in Los Angeles is.”

“You leave more space.”

Jacob glanced at the headlights ahead. “I used to drive deliveries for the store sometimes. Manager hated hard braking. Damaged groceries.”

“You never said that.”

“It wasn’t interesting.”

“It is to me.”

The sentence was simple enough to be dangerous. Jacob changed lanes around a slower truck.

“It was mostly transfers between locations,” he said. “Or large orders. Somebody once bought every bottle of blue sports drink we had because their kid’s team colors were blue.”

“How many?” May asked.

“A hundred and forty-four.”

“Why do you remember?”

“Because one leaked.”

“There it is,” Ethan said.

“What?”

“The Jacob reason.”

Jacob did not ask what that meant. He suspected the answer would make the inside of the vehicle smaller. The road leveled. Ahead, red lights stretched across the freeway. Jacob eased off the accelerator. Traffic compressed around roadwork signs and a lane closure the route had not flagged. Brake lights reflected across the windshield.

“Still worth it?” he asked.

May looked out at the unmoving line. “Ask me in Cabazon.”

“We might reach it tomorrow.”

“We were already reaching it tomorrow.”

“Technically,” Ethan said, “midnight is twelve.”

Jacob looked at him.

“I know how midnight works.”

“You said tomorrow.”

“It was a joke.”

“You sounded concerned.”

May leaned forward. “Please continue. This is better than music.”

Traffic stopped.

Jacob put the vehicle in park when the line remained motionless for more than a minute. He rolled his shoulders and flexed his hands.

Ethan noticed.

“Tired?”

“Stiff.”

“Different?”

“Yes.”

“Scale of one to ten?”

“Don’t triage me.”

“You’re responsible for three people.”

“So are you.”

Ethan accepted that. May opened a bottled coffee and passed it forward. Jacob drank half. On the shoulder, a road crew moved equipment around the closed lane. No crash. No flashing ambulance lights. Ordinary work at an hour chosen because fewer people should have been driving east. Jacob looked at the cars around them.

“Do you think any of these people are also going to the dinosaurs?”

“Statistically?” Ethan asked.

“No.”

May pointed toward a minivan in the next lane. “Them.”

“Why?”

“Roof box. Children’s stickers. The driver looks tired enough to make a strange decision.”

The minivan driver stared ahead with both hands at ten and two.

“Or they’re going home,” Jacob said.

“Less interesting.”

“Most answers are.”

The line moved. Jacob shifted into drive. They passed the roadwork at eleven thirty-four. The arrival time changed from 11:57 to 12:18. May changed the postcard.

“What are you writing?” Ethan asked.

“Evidence.”

“Of?”

“The delay.”

“Why?”

“History deserves accuracy.”

Jacob looked at her in the mirror. “You wrote that we were delayed by construction?”

“And that you complained.”

“I didn’t complain.”

“You asked whether it was worth it.”

“That’s a question.”

“The postcard will reflect competing interpretations.”

“Give me that.”

May held it away.

“Watch the road,” Ethan said.

Jacob laughed despite himself. The traffic spread. The freeway darkened again. He had driven at night during the unstable year because it was easier than deciding where to stop. Sometimes he followed roads around El Paso until the fuel gauge forced an answer. The car felt safer while moving. Motion delayed the moment he had to choose a parking lot, lower the seat, lock the doors, and pretend his body could sleep inside a shape built for transportation. Those drives had no destination.

This one had two concrete dinosaurs. The difference should not have been enough to transform the road. It was. He had food within reach. A full tank. People awake beside him. A room in Los Angeles waiting with a mattress delivered that afternoon. The keys on the ring near his knee included both the Diaz house and Ethan’s loft. Neither key replaced the other. Leaving did not mean losing either one.

“You went quiet,” May said.

“Driving.”

“You were driving before.”

Jacob glanced at her reflection. The white sunglasses had returned to her face despite the darkness.

“Thinking.”

“Dangerous.”

“Very.”

She let him keep the thought. The next music block belonged to Jacob. He selected four songs without explaining any of them. May recognized two. Ethan knew all four and only admitted it when he sang one line under his breath. May leaned forward. “You know this.”

“Most people know this.”

“Sing louder.”

“No.”

“You were already singing.”

“I wasn’t.”

Jacob turned up the volume. Ethan looked at him with betrayal.

“Driver controls volume,” Jacob said.

“That wasn’t a rule.”

“It is now.”

May sang until Ethan joined from self-defense. The result was bad enough that Jacob missed one navigation instruction and took the next exit instead. The route recalculated without consequence.

“You distracted the driver,” Ethan told May.

“You were singing too.”

“Because you were wrong.”

“So you admit it.”

“I was correcting you.”

“With pitch?”

“Attempted pitch,” Jacob said.

Ethan turned toward him. “You missed the exit.”

“Navigation recovered.”

“That’s how—”

He stopped.

Jacob waited.

“No,” Ethan said.

May looked between them. “What?”

“Nothing.”

Jacob smiled. “He saved himself.” The freeway returned beneath them. At eleven fifty-eight, the clock changed while Cabazon remained fourteen miles away. May noticed first.

“Happy Tuesday.”

Jacob groaned.

“Your class is today now,” Ethan said.

“I know.”

“Eight hours.”

“I know.”

“Less, with the drive back.”

“Ethan.”

“Stopping.”

May raised the postcard. “June third.” She added the date beneath the first. Jacob looked toward the dark road. Tuesday had arrived before the dinosaurs. He did not regret anything yet. A few miles later, the wind began moving the Land Rover.

Not enough to shift the lane. Enough for Jacob to feel pressure against the side and correct lightly. Dark turbines appeared beyond the freeway, their blades turning through patches of industrial light. May lowered her window two inches before remembering the rule.

“Can I?”

Jacob checked the speed and traffic. “Two inches.” Air entered with a low roar and dry heat unlike the city’s.

“It’s midnight,” May said. “Why is it warm?”

“Desert,” Ethan replied.

“I know where deserts are.”

“You asked.”

The turbines multiplied. Their red lights blinked together above the dark. May took a picture without flash. The disposable camera clicked.

“That one won’t come out,” Ethan said.

“Maybe.”

“It’s too dark.”

“Then we’ll have a picture of darkness.”

Jacob watched the exit numbers descend. Cabazon appeared on a green sign ahead. May saw it and slapped one hand against the back of Ethan’s seat.

“There.”

“I see it,” Jacob said.

“That’s our exit.”

“I see it.”

“Don’t miss it.”

“May.”

She sat back, laughing. Jacob signaled and moved right. The exit ramp curved away from the freeway. Commercial lights appeared below. Beyond them, for one second, a long dark shape rose above the roadside. Ethan leaned toward the windshield.

“Is that—”

The shape disappeared behind a building. Jacob followed the route through the turn. May pressed both hands against the window. The tyrannosaurus appeared first, enormous and green beneath the parking-lot lights.

“Oh my God,” she said.

Jacob began laughing before he could see the whole thing. They had driven two hours for this. Before the Cabazon exit, Jacob pulled into a lit rest area.

“Five minutes,” he said.

May checked the clock. “We’re ten minutes away.”

“I need to move.”

No one argued.

They got out beneath harsh lights and warm wind. Trucks occupied the far side of the lot. Vending machines hummed beside a low building. Jacob stretched his back and walked the length of the pavement while Ethan refilled water bottles at a fountain. May stood near the Land Rover and watched him.

“Five?” she asked when he returned.

“Four.”

“You stopped before five.”

“That’s the rule.”

“Good.”

Jacob looked at her white sunglasses. “You don’t have to supervise me.”

“I’m not.”

“You watched me walk the entire lot.”

“Because you’re our ride.”

“May.”

She removed the glasses. “Because I care whether you’re okay.” The direct answer left them both briefly uncomfortable. Jacob looked toward Ethan at the fountain. “We’ve known each other six weeks.”

“Time isn’t the only measurement.”

“That sounded rehearsed.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Still sounded like a poster.”

May smiled. “Ethan would like it.”

“He’d correct the wording.”

“Also true.”

Ethan returned with the bottles.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” they answered.

Jacob used the bathroom, washed his face, and bought a coffee he did not open. The stop lasted seven minutes. Back in the vehicle, the seat felt different after moving. His legs settled. His shoulders loosened. The scale remained four. May changed the music to something quieter without announcing the decision. Ethan checked the route. “Nine miles.”

Jacob entered the freeway again. May took the next music block and chose one of Bobby’s songs. She did not announce it. The opening guitar entered quietly after the previous track, familiar enough that her body recognized it before the title appeared on the dashboard. Her hand stopped above the candy bag. Jacob saw the change in the mirror. “Skip?”

May considered it.

“No.”

The song continued. Bobby had played it while cooking, usually from his phone propped against something unsafe near the stove. He sang only when he believed nobody was listening and stopped if May entered the room. She had not heard it since the funeral. The first chorus hurt. The second became music again. Ethan did not ask whose song it was. Jacob did not lower the volume without permission. They let it occupy the vehicle without turning toward her.

At the final verse, May sang one line. Her voice cracked from exhaustion rather than grief. Maybe both. She kept going. When the song ended, Jacob waited before allowing the next to begin.

“My stepdad liked that,” May said.

“Bobby?” Ethan asked.

“Yeah.”

“Good song,” Jacob replied.

That was all. May looked out at the lights spread beyond the freeway and felt the memory remain hers instead of becoming the entire car’s responsibility. It was perfect. The final miles passed through darkness broken by service-station signs and hotel lights. May began reading every roadside billboard aloud, including phone numbers and legal disclaimers too small for accuracy.

“You missed a word,” Ethan said.

“You couldn’t read it either.”

“I read enough.”

“That isn’t reading.”

Jacob listened to them argue and felt the road remain easy beneath his hands. Four out of ten. Full attention. No drifting, no missed exits, no need to prove capability by ignoring the next change. The Cabazon sign appeared. He checked the mirrors, signaled, and moved right before May could remind him.

“I saw it,” he said.

“You were about to.”

“I inhaled.”

“That’s generally—”

May stopped herself. Ethan turned around, delighted.

“Nobody says it,” Jacob warned.

They took the exit in silence that lasted three seconds before all of them laughed. As the ramp curved down, May gathered the map, camera, and postcard into one pile. Ethan capped the hummus and returned it to the cooler bag. Jacob lowered the music. Without discussion, the vehicle reorganized itself for arrival.

The dinosaurs appeared between buildings in pieces: first the neck, then the green back, then the impossible teeth. Every practical objection Jacob had made remained accurate. None survived the sight intact. He parked more carefully than the empty lot required.

When the engine stopped, the remaining distance on the navigation vanished. Jacob looked at the zero as if it confirmed more than arrival. He had chosen the road, carried them across it, and reached the thing they had no reason to need.

May opened her door before he finished putting the vehicle in park. Ethan laughed and followed. Jacob took one final breath inside the quiet car, then went after them.

The parking lot air carried dust, fuel, and heat stored from the day. May stood beneath the open door looking upward. Ethan remained several steps ahead, already measuring the dinosaur against the old magnet in memory. Jacob locked the vehicle, tested the handle, and finally allowed the destination to become more important than protecting the route back. Behind them, the freeway continued carrying people toward destinations far more reasonable. None entered the lot.

May reached the dinosaur first. Ethan followed. Jacob smiled and stepped into the wind after them. The trip had become completely real. They had arrived together, exactly as planned only after planning nothing.

The dinosaurs were larger than May expected and less dignified. Up close, the paint showed its age. Wind had carried dust into the seams around the tyrannosaurus’s feet, and the light beneath its jaw made the teeth look brighter than the rest of it. The imperfections improved the whole thing. Nobody had driven nearly two hours for dignity. They had come because the thing was strange enough to justify seeing once.

The tyrannosaurus stood above the parking lot with its mouth open, small arms lifted, and painted teeth bright beneath artificial light. Beyond it, the apatosaurus extended its neck toward the dark sky as if the freeway had interrupted something.

Warm wind struck hard enough to push her hair across her face. The white sunglasses nearly left the top of her head. She caught them, put them on properly despite the darkness, and walked backward until the entire tyrannosaurus fit inside her view.

“This was worth it.”

Jacob shut the driver’s door. “You’ve been here twelve seconds.”

“I decided at five.”

Ethan stood beside the Land Rover looking toward the apatosaurus. His expression had gone still. May moved beside him. “The magnet?”

He nodded.

“Same?”

“The magnet’s older.”

“The dinosaur’s older.”

“The paint changed.”

May waited.

Ethan took out his phone and framed the two dinosaurs together.

“Kit’s never going to believe this.”

“Send him proof.”

“It’s after three there.”

“He’ll see it in the morning.”

Jacob joined them carrying the disposable camera and three water bottles.

“Nobody leaves the lit area without saying something.”

May accepted the camera. “Yes, Dad.”

Jacob looked at her.

“Sorry.”

The word had come too easily. She had spent the evening watching him manage practical details, but the joke touched something she did not know enough to handle casually. Jacob gave her the water. “Just tell me where you’re going.”

“I will.”

The correction passed. They walked toward the tyrannosaurus. The lot was not empty. A couple stood near the fence, one person directing the other through poses. A family with two sleeping children took turns leaving the minivan. Someone in a truck remained parked with the engine running. May pointed toward the minivan. “I told you.” Jacob followed her gesture. “That isn’t the same one.”

“You don’t know.”

“The other had a roof box.”

“They could’ve removed it.”

“While driving?”

“Commitment.”

Ethan moved ahead of them, angling for another photograph. May lifted the disposable camera.

“Ethan.”

He turned.

The flash caught him beneath the dinosaur, one hand around his phone and the other lifted against the wind. The tyrannosaurus rose behind him with its teeth bared.

“You used flash,” he said.

“We’re stopped.”

“I wasn’t ready.”

“That’s the point.”

Jacob looked over her shoulder at the camera. “You can’t see it yet.”

“Also the point.”

May handed him the camera.

“Your turn.”

“I’m not wasting film.”

“You bought bottled coffee for a two-hour drive.”

“Different resource.”

She pushed the camera into his hand and walked toward the dinosaur. May stood beneath one lifted foot and crossed her arms. The sunglasses reflected the parking-lot lights.

“Take it.”

Jacob lifted the camera.

“You look like you’re being arraigned by a dinosaur.”

“Perfect.”

The flash went off. Ethan joined her for the next. Jacob directed them closer together because the disposable camera’s frame was wider than expected. May put one arm around Ethan’s shoulders. He leaned into her without looking toward the camera in time.

“Again,” Jacob said.

“Limited exposures,” Ethan reminded him.

“You blinked.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I saw you.”

“The flash happened first.”

“Stand still.”

The second picture caught them laughing. May knew without seeing it. They traded the camera for phones. Ethan attempted forced-perspective photographs in which May appeared to hold the dinosaur’s mouth open. Jacob crouched lower to fix the angle and nearly lost his balance when May changed position.

“You moved.”

“You said left.”

“My left.”

“You were facing me.”

“Then account for that.”

“That’s unreasonable.”

Ethan took the phone from Jacob. “You stand there.”

“I don’t need one.”

“Stand there.”

Jacob stood beneath the dinosaur. Ethan moved May three feet right, then made Jacob extend one hand. On the screen, the tyrannosaurus appeared small enough to rest on Jacob’s palm. May leaned over Ethan’s shoulder. “He looks annoyed.”

“He is annoyed.”

“Make him smile.”

“Jacob.”

“No.”

“The dinosaur’s eating your head,” May called.

Jacob glanced behind him despite knowing the distance. Ethan took the photograph as he laughed at himself.

“Delete that.”

“No.”

The couple near the fence offered to take a group picture. May accepted before either man could decline. They stood beneath the tyrannosaurus. Jacob took the outside position. Ethan stood on May’s other side. The stranger held May’s phone horizontally and told them to move closer. May pulled both men inward. Jacob’s arm settled across her shoulders. Ethan’s hand rested at her back. The wind pushed all three toward one another before the picture was taken.

“One more,” the stranger said.

May looked up at Jacob because his shirt had caught against her sunglasses. Ethan tried to free it. The camera captured that instead. They thanked the couple. May checked the images. The first was good. All three faced the camera, tired and bright beneath a dinosaur none of them had expected to see that morning. The second was better. Nobody looked forward. Jacob bent toward May, Ethan’s hand caught between her sunglasses and Jacob’s shirt, all three visibly laughing. She sent the second to the group chat. Christopher answered immediately.

Christopher: YOU ACTUALLY DID IT.

Eddie: Of course they did.

Athena: Location received.

Buck: WHY WAS I NOT INVITED?

May looked at the time. “Why is Buck awake?” Ethan read the messages. “Why is Christopher still awake?”

Jacob typed.

Jacob: Go to sleep.

Christopher: You first.

Buck: Seriously. Dinosaurs.

May: Next time.

Jacob looked at her. “Next time?”

“There are other ridiculous places.”

“That isn’t reassuring.”

Ethan had opened his messages to Kit. He selected the first group photograph, then hesitated above the text field. May did not read over his shoulder. Jacob stood beside him without speaking.

Ethan typed.

Ethan: Recognize these?

He sent the picture. Three dots appeared immediately.

“He’s awake,” Ethan said.

Kit: Why are you at the Cabazon dinosaurs at 3:30 in the morning?

Ethan: It’s 12:30 here.

Kit: That did not answer the question.

Ethan smiled down at the phone.

Ethan: Spontaneous decision.

The typing dots returned.

Kit: You?

May covered her mouth. Jacob read the message and laughed. Ethan typed with both thumbs.

Ethan: Yes, me.

Kit: I’m proud of you. Also go home eventually.

The smile remained on Ethan’s face after the screen went dark. May looked toward the apatosaurus.

“We need that one too.”

They crossed the lot. The wind strengthened near the open side. May held the sunglasses in one hand. Jacob carried the water. Ethan took photographs of details: painted scales, the curve of the neck, the illuminated sign below. The gift shop windows were dark, merchandise visible beneath security lights. May pressed close enough to read the shirts without touching the glass.

“We came too late for souvenirs.”

“We bought a magnet at the gas station,” Ethan said.

“A generic California magnet.”

“It has a bear.”

“That isn’t a dinosaur.”

Jacob stood several feet back, comparing the dark building to the hours posted near the door. “It opens at nine.” May turned. “We could wait.”

“No.”

“That was faster than usual.”

“Class.”

“Right.”

She photographed a plush dinosaur through the glass. Ethan pointed out the reflection would cover it. May took another from an angle, catching Jacob behind her in the window.

“Now it looks haunted,” she said.

“Delete it.”

“The ghost of responsible decisions.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“It’s after midnight.”

A truck door closed across the lot. The driver approached with a small dog on a leash and asked whether they wanted a picture together. May accepted. The dog sat at Jacob’s feet while the driver used Ethan’s phone.

“Closer,” the man said.

They moved closer.

“You too, big guy.”

Jacob looked as if he might explain spatial limitations. May caught his sleeve and pulled until his shoulder pressed against hers. The dog looked at the camera. None of them did. The man took another.

“There you go.”

They thanked him. The dog refused to leave Jacob until he crouched and let it sniff his hand. Its entire body wagged when he scratched behind one ear.

“You made a friend,” Ethan said.

“He smells the jerky.”

“Still counts.”

The driver called the dog away. Jacob stood. May checked the photographs. In the second, Ethan looked toward Jacob and the dog instead of the camera. The smile on his face had not been posed. She saved it separately.

“What?” Ethan asked.

“Nothing.”

“You looked pleased with yourself.”

May stared at him. He heard it too late.

“No,” he said.

Jacob began laughing.

“You walked into that,” May told Ethan.

“I know.”

She let him survive. Near the apatosaurus, May discovered a plaque with the history of the structures. She read it aloud until Jacob took over because the lower lines were difficult to see in the uneven light.

The dinosaurs had outlived their creator. They had become landmarks, changed colors, appeared in movies, and accumulated generations of travelers who remembered the first impossible glimpse from the freeway.

“Kit saw them like this,” Ethan said.

“Not exactly,” Jacob replied. “Different paint.”

“Still them.”

May looked up at the long concrete neck. Same structure. Different surface. Enough change for Ethan to notice without making the thing unrecognizable. She thought of Athena moving through the house after Bobby. Same rooms. Different weight. Every object retaining its place while changing what the place meant. The thought arrived without warning and remained without demanding the night stop.

“My mom would hate this,” May said.

“The dinosaurs?” Jacob asked.

“The timing.”

“She told you to have fun.”

“She can mean that and still hate it.”

“Both—” Ethan stopped before completing the phrase.

May looked at him.

“Don’t.”

“I didn’t.”

“You almost did.”

“I corrected.”

Jacob read the final line of the plaque. “Better.” They moved beneath the apatosaurus. May imagined Bobby here unwillingly, hands in his pockets, checking the lot before allowing himself to look up. He would know something about the construction or pretend he did until somebody searched it. He would take photographs of everyone else. Athena would complain that he stood too far back. Harry would ask whether they could climb it. Buck would attempt to find out. The imagined scene hurt because it was easy. May lifted the disposable camera.

“Take one of me,” she told Jacob.

“Where?”

“Here.”

She stood beneath the concrete body rather than arranging herself against the obvious view. Wind pulled strands of hair across her face. She left them. Jacob waited until she looked directly at him. The flash fired.

“Good?” she asked.

“We’ll find out.”

The uncertainty comforted her more than reassurance would have. For twenty minutes, they acted like people who had crossed a continent instead of two counties. They posed. They argued about angles. May used three more exposures. Jacob stopped checking the time.

Near the apatosaurus, the family from the minivan asked Jacob to take their photograph. He did, then crouched to show the youngest child where to look on the screen. The child asked whether the dinosaur was real.

“It’s really here,” Jacob said.

The answer satisfied him. When the family left, the lot became quieter. May stood beneath the long neck and looked up. Bobby would have complained about the timing while getting into the car. He would have packed water, checked the route, and made them call when they arrived. If he came, he would take the photographs nobody remembered to ask for and appear in almost none. The thought hurt. It did not ruin the night. May pressed the disposable camera into Jacob’s hand.

“One more.”

She stood alone beneath the dinosaur. No severe pose this time. No sunglasses. Wind across her face, hands in her pockets, looking directly toward him. Jacob took the picture. May did not ask how it looked. They returned to the Land Rover at twelve forty-seven. Jacob opened the driver’s door and stopped.

“Home?” he asked.

May looked east. Ethan already had the map open.

“Palm Springs is nineteen minutes,” he said.

Jacob rested his forehead against the roof.

May smiled.

Before leaving, they walked once around the edge of the lot without taking pictures. The decision happened because all three phones had dropped below half charge and the disposable camera had begun feeling too valuable to spend on every angle. May put both hands into her pockets. Ethan matched her pace. Jacob followed several feet behind, still tracking the lot and the people inside it.

“Stop monitoring,” May told him.

“I’m walking.”

“You checked the truck twice.”

“Its engine’s running.”

“It was running before.”

“Exactly.”

She dropped back beside him. “Do you do that everywhere?”

“Notice cars?”

“Notice everything.”

Jacob considered the question. “Mostly.”

“Is it tiring?”

“Sometimes.”

“Useful?”

“Sometimes.”

“That’s not much of an answer.”

“It’s the answer.”

May accepted it. At the apatosaurus, Ethan stood beneath the plaque again. He took out his phone but did not photograph it. The message from Kit remained open above the group picture.

“You okay?” Jacob asked.

“Yeah.”

“Real?”

“Real.”

Ethan looked toward the concrete dinosaur. “I keep finding pieces of my parents in places they never expected me to be.”

May joined them.

“Good pieces?”

“Mostly.”

Kit’s magnet. Maddie’s face in Ethan’s own. Buck’s gestures appearing before Ethan knew they shared blood. The hospital where Chimney had called him his boy without planning the words. None replaced the others. They accumulated.

“Send Kit another picture in daylight sometime,” Jacob said.

“We’d have to come back.”

“I know.”

May looked between them. “Road trip two.”

“No,” Jacob said automatically.

“You proposed it.”

“I suggested a hypothetical future photograph.”

“That’s how this started.”

Ethan smiled.

They returned toward the vehicle. Near the tyrannosaurus, May stopped one final time. She put the white sunglasses on Jacob before he could move away. The arms pinched above his ears. He looked deeply offended. Ethan took a photograph.

“Delete it.”

“Kit needs context.”

“For what?”

“The spontaneous decision.”

May retrieved the glasses before Jacob broke them. They were still laughing when the Land Rover doors closed. At the Land Rover, Jacob opened the rear hatch and handed out food. They stood beneath the parking light eating nuts and vegetables because the diner remained hypothetical. May leaned against the bumper. Ethan sat on the edge of the cargo area. Jacob stayed standing until Ethan shifted a container and made room.

“How many exposures?” Ethan asked.

May checked. “Fourteen.”

“You used thirteen here?”

“History.”

“We haven’t reached Palm Springs.”

“The camera has twenty-seven. That’s plenty.”

“At your current rate, it’s twenty minutes.”

Jacob took the camera before the debate expanded. “I’ll hold it.” May narrowed her eyes. “Why do you get custody?”

“Because I understand scarcity.”

“That was dark.”

“It was arithmetic.”

He placed the camera in the center console. May ate another carrot and looked back at the tyrannosaurus.

“I thought it would feel stupider.”

“It does feel stupid,” Jacob said.

“Not in a bad way.”

Ethan closed the hummus. “Most things can be stupid without being bad.”

“That sounds like a governing principle.”

“No more governing principles,” Jacob said.

May looked at him. “You’re smiling.”

“I’m eating.”

“Those can both—”

She stopped.

Ethan looked at her approvingly.

“Progress,” he said.

Jacob groaned and climbed into the driver’s seat.

“We’re already here.”

Ethan entered the Palm Springs route but did not start navigation.

“Vote,” Jacob said.

“Yes,” May replied.

“Yes,” Ethan said.

Jacob raised his own hand halfway. “Conditional yes. One diner, food, then west.”

“Accepted,” Ethan said.

May held out her hand from the back seat. Jacob ignored it until she moved it into his peripheral vision.

“I’m not shaking while driving.”

“We’re parked.”

He shook once.

“Binding,” she said.

“It was binding before.”

“Now it has ceremony.”

Ethan started the route. The voice announced nineteen minutes and instructed Jacob toward the freeway. He looked once more at the dinosaurs through the windshield.

“Worth it?” May asked.

Jacob let the answer arrive without qualifying the cost, the class, or the drive still ahead.

“Yeah.”

She settled back, satisfied. Before pulling away, Ethan photographed the dashboard with the dinosaurs visible through the windshield. The time read 12:47. The route showed Palm Springs ahead and Los Angeles behind.

“Why the dashboard?” May asked.

“Context.”

“You criticized my documentation all night.”

“I criticized the dark exposures.”

“Now I understand the appeal.”

Jacob shifted into drive. “If either of you keeps narrating, I’m taking us home.” They became silent until he reached the road. They drove past the tyrannosaurus slowly enough for May to wave through the window. Ethan took one final blurred photograph. Jacob refused to circle the lot again, though the smile remained visible in the dashboard light.

The freeway entrance waited ahead. Palm Springs glowed beyond the turbines, close enough now to feel inevitable. Ethan rested the phone in the mount and let the navigation speak for them. May watched the dinosaurs shrink in the side window until darkness absorbed them. The postcard inside her casebook now had a real location attached to it, and the disposable camera held images none of them could revise. She liked leaving with evidence they would have to wait to see.

Jacob kept both hands steady on the wheel as they accelerated west, then east again toward Palm Springs. The contradiction in direction matched the night: home remained the endpoint, but not yet the objective. May chose the next song. It began softly as the dinosaur lights vanished, carrying the night forward without trying to summarize what had already happened. None of them asked what came after breakfast yet. The diner sign appeared on Ethan’s map, nineteen minutes away and bright enough to promise coffee.

Jacob had agreed to one diner, food, and then the drive west. He repeated the order once after they left the dinosaur lot, not because either passenger had argued, but because saying it aloud gave the detour a boundary.

“One diner,” he said.

“One diner,” May agreed from the back seat.

Ethan adjusted the route in the phone mount. “Then home.” Jacob glanced at the estimated arrival time. “Then home.” The answer did not sound reluctant anymore. He had made the decision and moved into the practical part of it: nineteen minutes farther east, food before the long drive, another honest check of his fatigue before they left Palm Springs.

May opened the paper map but did not attempt to navigate with it. She traced the route with one finger, found Palm Springs near a crease, and folded the page onto her lap.

“I thought you were emergency backup,” Ethan said.

“I’m observing.”

“Anything useful?”

“California continues in both directions.”

Jacob laughed before he could stop himself. The sound came out tired but real. The city lights thinned again as they left Cabazon. The dinosaurs disappeared behind warehouses and freeway signs, visible in the mirrors for less time than May expected after the distance they had driven to reach them.

She looked at the disposable camera resting beside her. None of them knew whether the photographs had caught the wind, the movement, or the way Jacob had finally stopped checking the time. They would have to wait.

For several miles, the freeway between Cabazon and Palm Springs belonged to wind and darkness, with no buildings close by. Turbines rose on both sides, red lights blinking across the field. Ethan lowered the window with permission and let warm air enter.

The alcohol had receded into thirst and a softness around the edges of his thoughts. He had stopped drinking before eight. By the time they left Palm Springs, he would be safely sober enough to take over if Jacob needed him. For now, Jacob drove.

He looked different at night. The dashboard light outlined his hands and the lower edge of his face. His attention settled outward, calm enough that the vehicle felt anchored around it.

“Tired?” Ethan asked.

“Still a four.”

“You never gave me a number before.”

“I’m giving you one now.”

“Four out of ten?”

“Yes.”

“Normal first-day tired or driving tired?”

Jacob glanced toward him. “You’re enjoying this.”

“I need accurate information.”

“Normal tired. I’ll tell you if it changes.”

Ethan accepted the answer.

May leaned between the seats. “What number am I?”

“Nine,” Jacob said.

“I’m not tired.”

“That wasn’t the scale.”

She threw a napkin at him. It landed near the cup holder.

“No projectiles near the driver,” Ethan said.

“It was a napkin.”

“Still.”

May sat back. “You’ve both become less fun since the dinosaurs.”

“You’re the one who wanted food.”

“I contain multitudes.”

“You contain two drinks and half a bag of chips,” Jacob said.

The Palm Springs lights appeared ahead. Ethan had seen photographs: low buildings, palms, mountains rising behind bright streets. At one in the morning, the city looked staged for people who had left. Signs glowed over mostly empty sidewalks. Traffic lights changed for no cars. Jacob exited and followed the route downtown. May lowered her window.

“It smells different.”

“Like what?”

“Warm.”

“Warm isn’t a smell,” Ethan said.

“Dust. Plants. Pools.”

Jacob inhaled. “Chlorine.”

“Pools.”

They passed hotels with courtyard lights, closed galleries, and bars releasing the final clusters of people into the night. Palm trees stood along the street beneath uplighting that made every trunk look intentional. May took photographs through the window without flash.

“Those won’t develop,” Ethan said.

“You’ve said that.”

“It remains true.”

“Maybe I want uncertainty.”

“You bought the wrong camera for reliable results.”

“Exactly.”

They did not go directly to the diner. May saw a brightly lit sculpture near an intersection and asked Jacob to circle the block. The second pass revealed a public art installation shaped like enormous metal flowers. He found an open curb without a restriction sign and stopped.

“Five minutes,” he said.

“You’ve started saying times like they mean anything,” May replied.

“Five.”

They got out. Downtown Palm Springs at one in the morning felt emptied for maintenance. Music escaped from one bar half a block away. A street-cleaning truck moved slowly along the opposite curb. Warm air held perfume from flowering shrubs, chlorine from a hotel courtyard, and dust disturbed by the wind. May stood beneath the metal flowers and used the disposable camera again.

“Limited exposures,” Ethan said.

“We have eighteen.”

“You counted?”

“The wheel has numbers.”

“That isn’t—”

Jacob touched his arm. “Let it go.” Ethan let it go. They walked one block because the next corner displayed a row of stars set into the pavement. May read names she recognized. Jacob recognized different ones. Ethan read the plaques rather than admit he knew fewer.

“You know who that is,” May said.

“I know the name.”

“From?”

“Existing.”

“That’s not knowledge.”

Jacob stopped over another star. “I know this one.”

“Of course you do,” May said.

“What does that mean?”

“You contain unexpected elderly-person knowledge.”

“I’m twenty-four.”

“Spiritually complicated.”

He pointed toward her night sunglasses. “You look like a retired heiress.”

“Thank you.”

“That wasn’t praise.”

“Too late.”

Ethan photographed the two of them arguing over the star. Jacob checked the time. “Diner.” They returned to the Land Rover after twelve minutes.

“Five,” he said while starting the engine.

“Time is flexible in the desert,” May replied.

“It isn’t.”

“The heat affects clocks.”

“Please stop.”

They drove farther downtown. At a red light, May opened the casebook and attempted to read the first sentence of Wednesday’s assignment aloud. She reached the third line and stopped.

“I understood every word separately.”

“Put it away,” Ethan said.

“I’m being responsible.”

“You’re reading constitutional law in a moving vehicle after two drinks.”

“I’m not driving.”

“The words will still exist tomorrow.”

“They already existed for two hundred years.”

“Then one night won’t hurt.”

May closed the book.

Jacob watched in the mirror. “That worked?”

“He appealed to precedent.”

“I didn’t.”

“You did accidentally.”

Ethan rested his head against the seat. They passed a hotel entrance where a valet sat alone beneath a fan. May waved. The valet waved back.

“We have a friend,” she announced.

“You waved at a stranger,” Jacob said.

“That’s how it starts.”

“We’re not collecting people.”

“You collected a record.”

“That’s an object.”

“People are more complicated collectibles.”

“Please never say that again,” Ethan said.

May laughed and leaned back. The route sent them down a quieter street before turning them toward the diner. Mountains rose as solid darkness beyond the low buildings. Ethan watched their outline shift between palm trees.

He had spent most of his life in places where darkness came with woods, water, or buildings close enough to interrupt it. The desert placed emptiness directly against the city.

“Have you been here?” Jacob asked.

“No.”

“Anywhere this far east?”

Ethan looked past the windshield at the mountains. “Not since I moved here.” May leaned forward between the seats. “So this is new for all of us.”

“Pretty much.”

The answer felt larger than the geography required. None of them had a prior version of this place to compare against; the night belonged only to what they were seeing now. They passed another row of palms lit from below. Ethan had spent months learning Los Angeles through routes that served a purpose: the hospital, the station, Eddie’s house, the Grant-Nash house, UCLA, the roads between them. This was the first time distance itself had been the reason.

“Christopher’s going to be mad,” May said.

“He already is,” Jacob replied.

“Not about the dinosaurs. About missing the rest.”

Ethan pictured Christopher in the back seat arguing over the playlist and correcting every fact May read from the paper map.

“We can bring him next time,” he said.

Jacob glanced over. “There’s a next time?”

“Not tonight.”

Jacob looked over. “You know what I meant.” Ethan faced the road again. “Maybe.” May settled into her seat, satisfied. She had already accepted that there would be another trip. The thought should have felt presumptuous. Instead, Ethan pictured the Land Rover farther south, Christopher arguing from the back, Jacob choosing music, and May finding something unnecessary at another gas station. Before Jacob found the diner, the route led them past a twenty-four-hour pharmacy. May pointed at it. “We forgot painkillers.”

“We have painkillers,” Ethan said.

“Where?”

“First-aid kit.”

“You keep painkillers in the car?”

“I keep a first-aid kit in the car.”

“Of course you do.”

Jacob turned into the lot anyway.

“Why are we stopping?” Ethan asked.

“Bathroom.”

He parked near the entrance and went inside. May remained in the back seat. Ethan stayed in front. For the first time since leaving Westwood, the two of them were alone. The pharmacy sign painted the interior blue and red. May rested her head against the window.

“You okay?” Ethan asked.

“Yes.”

“Real yes?”

“Tired yes.”

He accepted it. May watched Jacob through the store windows until shelves blocked him.

“He had a good day.”

“Yeah.”

“You were worried.”

“He was worried.”

“That isn’t what I said.”

Ethan turned in the seat. The alcohol had left his expression more open than usual, though his voice remained careful.

“He worked for it.”

“That still isn’t what I said.”

“I wanted it to go well.”

May smiled faintly. “There.”

“Don’t.”

“I was going to say you’re a good friend.”

Ethan looked toward the store.

“Oh,” he said.

May studied the side of his face. “What did you think?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s clearly something.”

He reached for water. May let him avoid the answer. The night did not need her to identify every current running through it.

“You’re a good friend too,” Ethan said after drinking.

The words landed with more force than their simplicity should allow. May looked down at her hands.

“We’ve known each other six weeks.”

“Time isn’t the only measurement.”

“That sounded like something from a hospital poster.”

“Forget it.”

“No.”

She smiled toward the window.

“You’re a good friend too.”

They sat inside the acknowledgment without enlarging it. Jacob returned carrying a small paper bag.

“What did you buy?” May asked.

“Painkillers.”

She turned toward Ethan.

He looked offended. “We had them.”

“Now we have accessible ones,” Jacob said.

He put the bag in the center console and started the engine.

“Anything happen?”

“No,” May and Ethan said together.

Jacob looked between them, decided not to investigate, and returned to the route. At the next light, he rubbed one hand over his eyes.

Ethan watched. “Five?”

“Four and a half.”

“That isn’t how the scale works.”

“It does now.”

“Food, then reassess.”

“Agreed.”

May leaned between them. “I also agree.”

“Nobody asked you,” Jacob said.

“Shared responsibility.”

He smiled despite the fatigue. Jacob found the diner. The sign promised twenty-four hours in red neon. Half the parking spaces were empty. Through the windows, a server refilled coffee for one booth while two people in evening clothes shared fries near the counter.

“This is either perfect or terrible,” May said.

“Both,” Jacob replied.

He parked beneath the sign and turned off the engine. The sudden silence made all three sit still.

“We really came to Palm Springs,” Ethan said.

Jacob looked at the clock. “For food.”

“After dinosaurs,” May added.

“Then home.”

“Yes.”

She sounded sincere enough that Jacob looked suspicious. Ethan opened his door.

May stopped him. “Wait.”

She set the phone on the dashboard, started the timer, and climbed forward between the seats.

“What are you doing?” Jacob asked.

“Proof.”

“We have photographs.”

“Not here.”

The timer reached three. May’s face appeared between them. Ethan looked toward the camera. Jacob was still objecting when the photograph was taken. She checked it.

“Perfect.”

“I was talking.”

“That’s historically accurate.”

Inside the diner vestibule, May stopped beside a machine dispensing temporary tattoos.

“No,” Jacob said.

“They’re temporary.”

“Still no.”

Ethan examined the options. Palm trees, flamingos, a sun, and one badly drawn lizard.

“That could be a dinosaur.”

Jacob looked toward the dining room as if hoping staff would remove them. May inserted two quarters. The machine produced a capsule containing the lizard.

“Who gets it?” Ethan asked.

Both looked at Jacob.

“No.”

May put the capsule in his backpack pocket. “Future Jacob decides.” A host led them to a booth. Before sitting, Jacob went to wash his hands. Ethan and May slid into opposite sides, then changed positions when they realized Jacob needed the outer seat. By the time he returned, the casebook, backpack, camera, postcard, map, and sunglasses occupied an entire fourth place setting.

“We look like we evacuated,” he said.

“We’re prepared,” May replied.

The server brought menus the size of folders. May opened hers to breakfast, flipped to dinner, then returned to desserts.

“Pie,” she decided.

“Food first,” Jacob said.

“Pie is food.”

“Not the type I meant.”

Ethan studied the breakfast options. “They have eggs.”

“Revolutionary,” May said.

Jacob looked at the all-day breakfast and felt hunger arrive now that the road no longer required his attention. The menu became harder to read because every option sounded necessary.

“Order enough,” Ethan said quietly.

Jacob glanced up.

“I am.”

“You looked at the prices first.”

“People do that.”

“I know.”

No offer to pay. No instruction to ignore the cost. Only recognition. Jacob chose the largest breakfast combination and closed the menu.

“Pancakes?” May asked.

“Apparently.”

“Good.”

She returned to pie. The host gave them water before the server arrived. Jacob finished his immediately. Ethan moved the second glass toward him. May moved the third.

“I can ask for more,” Jacob said.

“Then ask,” May replied.

He did.

The server brought a pitcher and left it on the table.

“You’ve become a hydration project,” Ethan said.

“I drove you here.”

“Exactly.”

Jacob poured a second glass. “You’re both going in separate directions if we survive tonight.”

“Where?” May asked.

“Anywhere away from me.”

“That seems inefficient. We live in the same city.”

“One of you lives in my house,” Ethan said.

Jacob looked at him. The phrase had arrived without hesitation. Not the loft. Not my place. My house, containing Jacob. Ethan appeared to hear it after the fact. May looked down at her menu to give them somewhere not to look. Jacob poured water into Ethan’s empty glass.

“One of us does,” he said.

The answer remained deliberately ordinary. Ethan took the glass. “So separating you will require planning.”

“Tomorrow.”

“Today,” May corrected.

Jacob opened the menu between them like a barrier. “Breakfast.” The subject changed. The fact did not. They entered the diner. While they waited to order, May opened the group picture and zoomed in on each face separately. Jacob looked tired but unguarded. Ethan’s smile was wide enough to narrow his eyes. May stood between them with windblown hair and one arm disappearing behind each man.

“This is going in the album,” she said.

“Which album?” Ethan asked.

“A new one.”

“We made one Friday.”

“That was for Bobby and Nash. This is different.”

Jacob leaned across the table to see. “You’re starting an album for one night?”

“Maybe summer.”

The word gave the photograph somewhere larger to live. Summer had begun that morning as schedules: classes, placements, internships, deadlines. May could imagine it now as accumulated evidence. Dinosaurs. Beaches. Food. Bad decisions small enough to survive. People becoming familiar outside emergencies.

“Send me the original,” Ethan said.

“You’re in the group chat.”

“It compresses.”

May sent it directly.

Jacob held out his phone. “Me too.” She sent it. Three copies of the same moment settled into three separate lives. The server approached with a coffee pot and waited while they ordered. Jacob changed his side once after hearing Ethan order potatoes. May added whipped cream to the pie, removed it, then restored it when the server assured her nobody was auditing the decision.

“Somebody is,” May said, looking at Jacob.

“I’m not auditing dessert.”

“You audited the gas-station candy.”

“Inventory isn’t judgment.”

“That belongs on a shirt,” Ethan said.

The server wrote nothing down and repeated every order correctly. When she left, all three watched with the respect of people whose own short-term memories had begun failing.

“We need food,” Jacob said.

“It’s coming,” May replied.

“I know. I’m explaining us.”

No one disputed the diagnosis. May took off the white sunglasses and placed them beside the syrup holder. Without them, the exhaustion around her eyes became obvious. Jacob’s hair had flattened where he repeatedly rubbed it. Ethan had begun folding and unfolding one napkin. Their condition should have made the booth feel grim. Instead, it made the night tangible. They had spent enough of it to show. The kitchen bell rang. All three looked toward the swinging door.

“That better be ours,” May said.

It was the pie. While the pie approached, Jacob moved the casebook farther from the edge, Ethan cleared space between the coffee cups, and May unfolded a napkin across her lap. The small choreography happened without instruction. They had spent one afternoon learning one another’s movements and already behaved as if the table belonged to all three.

The server placed the pie before May with three forks without being asked. She had understood the table faster than they had. May distributed the forks, giving Jacob the unbent one this time. He noticed, said nothing, and took the first bite only after she did.

Outside the windows, Palm Springs remained awake in scattered lights. Inside, the booth became its own temporary room: belongings piled safely, food approaching, nobody expected anywhere else for the next hour. May lifted the first fork. Jacob reached for coffee. Ethan watched the kitchen door open, and all three leaned forward when the plates appeared. The food arrived in a procession of plates too large for the table. They rearranged everything again, laughing before anyone had taken a bite.

They ate.

By one twenty, breakfast covered most of the table. Jacob had pancakes, eggs, and coffee. Ethan had eggs, potatoes, toast, fruit, and the extra potatoes May had predicted she would steal. May’s pie occupied the remaining clear space between their plates. The server set down a fresh coffee pot and left them to rearrange the table for the third time.

At the counter, two people in evening clothes shared fries without speaking. A woman in scrubs paid near the register. Nobody looked at May’s casebook, Jacob’s backpack, or the disposable camera beside the syrup as though any of it required explanation. May cut the point from the pie and moved the plate toward the center.

“You ordered that,” Ethan said.

“I’m sharing.”

“After announcing you’d steal my potatoes.”

“Both things can be true.”

Jacob accepted the fork she handed him. “Take the potatoes before he starts counting them.” Ethan moved the plate within her reach. “I wasn’t counting.”

May took two. “Good.”

The exchange ended there. Hunger had removed their interest in defending food that would be gone within minutes. For a while, eating required all the conversation they needed.

“How tired?” Ethan asked.

“Five.”

“Increase from driving?”

“Increase from sitting.”

“That happens.”

“I know.”

May looked between them. “Are you going to do this every hour?”

“If necessary,” Ethan said.

“It isn’t,” Jacob replied.

“Then the answers stay easy.”

Jacob drank the coffee. The first cup helped less than the smell promised. The second would help more. Food would help most. He had learned that through grocery-store doubles, long drives, and the false economy of replacing meals with caffeine because caffeine cost less in the moment. The server brought water and May’s pie first.

“That’s breakfast?” Jacob asked.

“It has fruit.”

“Cherry filling isn’t fruit.”

“Tell the cherries.”

She took one bite, then pushed the plate toward the center.

“Try it.”

Jacob did.

Ethan took a bite after him. May looked offended. “You said you didn’t want pie.”

“You offered it.”

“To Jacob.”

“It was in the center.”

“That’s communal territory,” Jacob said.

They finished half before the other food arrived. Plates filled the table. Eggs. Toast. Potatoes. Fruit. Pancakes Jacob had not realized came with his order. The server refilled coffee and left them inside the temporary abundance. For several minutes, nobody spoke.

May stole potatoes exactly as promised. Ethan moved the second plate within reach. Jacob gave May one pancake because she looked at it twice. She gave him the remaining edge of pie.

“This is terrible nutrition,” Ethan said.

“You ordered eggs,” Jacob replied.

“I meant collectively.”

“We have fruit,” May said.

All three looked at the untouched bowl. Jacob took a strawberry.

“Solved.”

The woman in scrubs paid and left. As she passed their booth, she glanced at Ethan’s UCLA Health tote folded beneath his chair.

“Starting there?” she asked.

Ethan looked down. “Research placement. Next week.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

She left before he could qualify it. May watched him reorganize the napkin beside his plate.

“You were going to explain that you’re not treating patients.”

“She might’ve assumed.”

“She saw a tote.”

“People infer.”

“She congratulated you.”

“I said thank you.”

Jacob cut into a pancake. “Good.” Ethan looked at him. “You’re both overusing that.”

“It remains true,” May said.

They ate.

The teenagers in the far booth left after dividing their check with a calculator. The people in evening clothes moved from fries to pie. The man with the tablet fell asleep upright for several seconds, woke, and continued reading without acknowledging it. Jacob’s phone lit with the course portal again. He read the notification this time.

“What?” Ethan asked.

“Instructor posted the lab groups.”

“At one thirty?”

“Scheduled post.”

He opened the file. His name appeared in Group Four beside Priya Shah, Matthew Reyes, and Nora Park. He recognized Priya from discussion and neither other name.

“Good?” May asked.

“Probably.”

“Priya’s in it,” Jacob said.

“From discussion?” Ethan asked.

“Yeah. Two other people I don’t know.”

May nodded. “At least one familiar person.”

“After one day.”

“Still counts.”

Jacob locked the phone. He did not need them to make Priya into a friendship before one existed. Even so, seeing one recognizable name had eased something. UCLA was the first place he had entered alone since Charleston, and the lab group was one small piece of it beginning to belong to him rather than to everyone who had helped him get there.

“She seemed nice,” he said.

Neither May nor Ethan turned the admission into more than it was. Jacob reopened the file long enough to check whether the group assignment included instructions. It did not. Four names, one station number, and a reminder to arrive ten minutes early.

“Station six,” he said.

“Is that good?” May asked.

“It’s a station.”

“You sound relieved.”

Jacob put the phone away. “I like knowing where I’m supposed to stand.” Ethan nodded as though that made complete sense. It did. By tomorrow afternoon, the room would have a layout, the equipment would have assigned places, and three unfamiliar people would be less unfamiliar than they were tonight. May opened her own phone. Lena’s number remained at the top of her notes, transferred into her contacts during the drive while nobody watched.

“A woman in my class asked me to join a reading group.”

“Are you going?” Jacob asked.

“I haven’t decided.”

“Do you like her?”

“She told Brandon she was still speaking.”

“Then yes,” Ethan said.

May ignored him. “It’s Thursday.”

“The experimental theater is Thursday,” Jacob said.

“You kept the flyer?”

“You put it in my bag.”

“And you didn’t throw it away.”

“I forgot.”

Ethan looked at May. “Reading group first. Theater after.”

“We’re not going to the theater,” Jacob said.

May entered something into her calendar.

“What did you write?”

“Nothing.”

“May.”

“Potential experimental theater.”

Jacob looked toward the ceiling.

“This night has consequences.”

“The best kind,” May said.

Ethan’s phone buzzed next. Kit had sent a photograph. The old Cabazon magnet remained on the workshop cabinet. Beside it, taped crookedly to the metal, was a printed childhood photograph of Ethan holding a wooden toolbox he had assembled badly enough that one side leaned.

Kit: Still there. Both of them.

Ethan enlarged the image.

“How old were you?” Jacob asked.

“Thirteen.”

“You were tiny,” May said.

“I was normal.”

“The toolbox is crooked.”

“The photograph’s angled.”

Jacob examined it. “The side panel is higher.”

“I fixed it.”

“After the picture?”

“Obviously.”

May smiled. “Send him the sunglasses photo.”

“Absolutely not.”

“The dinosaur eating Jacob?”

“Maybe.”

Jacob held out his hand. “I need approval.”

“No.”

“It’s my face.”

“You’re smiling.”

“That makes it worse.”

Ethan sent the first group picture instead. Kit reacted with a heart. Fatigue altered the table gradually. May began laughing at things before anyone finished saying them. Ethan lost track of where he had put his fork while holding it. Jacob read the syrup label twice because the first attempt did not become meaning.

“We should establish facts,” May said.

“Why?” Ethan asked.

“For the record.”

She opened the postcard on the table.

“We left UCLA at—”

“We left the gas station at ten seventeen,” Jacob said.

“How do you remember?”

“I checked.”

“Of course you did.”

May wrote it.

“Arrived at dinosaurs?”

“Twelve twenty-three,” Ethan answered.

Jacob looked at him. “You checked too.”

“For Kit’s message.”

“Arrived here at one oh-nine,” May said.

“The parking lot,” Jacob corrected. “Inside at one fourteen.”

“Does that matter?”

“You said facts.”

She wrote both. The postcard ran out of space. May turned it sideways and continued.

“What else?”

“Jacob bought a record,” Ethan said.

“Irrelevant.”

“Historically significant,” May replied.

She added it.

“Ethan’s fake ID worked,” Jacob said.

“Also significant.”

“May bought sunglasses at night,” Ethan contributed.

“They were on sale.”

“Twelve dollars,” Jacob said.

“They look expensive.”

May added the sunglasses. By the time they stopped, the back of the postcard contained cramped notes in three directions. May placed it inside the casebook.

“We need a title.”

“For what?” Jacob asked.

“The night.”

“Monday.”

“It’s Tuesday,” Ethan said.

“Then Monday into Tuesday.”

May rejected this. They proposed worse alternatives.

Dinosaurs After Dark.

The Cabazon Decision.

Jacob Has Class at Eight.

The third made May laugh hard enough that the server looked over.

“That’s not funny,” Jacob said.

“It’s extremely funny.”

“I actually have class.”

“That’s why.”

Ethan drank water. “What the Hell, Why Not.”

The laughter settled.

May looked at him. “That’s it.” Jacob shook his head. “That’s not a title.”

“It’s the governing principle.”

“We had rules.”

“Rules beneath the principle.”

“That sounds legally dangerous.”

“I’ve had one day of constitutional law. Trust me.”

“Absolutely not.”

May wrote the phrase across the remaining edge of the postcard. The table quieted again. Outside, a car crossed the parking lot and returned darkness behind it. The neon sign painted red against the glass. Jacob looked at Ethan and May.

May’s hair had mostly escaped whatever she had done before class. The white sunglasses rested beside the syrup. Ethan sat with one sleeve pushed up and the faintest shadow of exhaustion beneath his eyes. That morning, Jacob’s entire horizon had been the first day. Wake. Drive. Attend. Keep up. Do not let the year show. He had not imagined ending the day in Palm Springs.

“I didn’t think I’d be here,” he said.

May glanced around. “Nobody does. That’s why diners are open.”

“I mean today.”

She stopped.

Ethan waited.

“When I woke up,” Jacob continued, “I only wanted to get through class without proving I should’ve stayed gone.”

The sentence came out plainly enough that he could not pretend it meant less. May lowered her hands to the table.

“You didn’t,” she said.

“I know.”

He did.

The certainty was small and incomplete. One day did not finish the degree. One good answer did not erase the wrong one. He still had a laboratory at eight and forty-six pages waiting in a loft he might not see until morning. He also knew.

“The day was good,” he said.

Ethan’s foot touched his beneath the table.

“Yeah,” Ethan replied.

May rested her chin on one hand. “Mine too.”

“Brandon?” Jacob asked.

“Still terrible.”

“Allowed.”

They smiled.

Ethan looked toward the window.

“I didn’t want to go home.”

Jacob followed his gaze. “The loft?”

“No.”

The answer came immediately.

“I wanted the loft. I didn’t want the night to turn into work and sleep because that was what came next.”

May nodded. “Same.”

Jacob understood.

They had not fled their homes. They had refused the schedule for one night. The distinction mattered. The server refilled coffee again.

“Where are you headed?” she asked.

All three answered, “Home.”

She looked at the plates, the casebook, and the exhaustion.

“Eventually,” May added.

The server smiled as if she had heard worse. They asked for the check at two fourteen. Nobody moved when it arrived. Jacob calculated the drive. Two hours without stops. Longer if traffic or fatigue required one. Back around four thirty if they left now. Enough time for a shower, coffee, and class. May watched him calculate.

“One more place?”

“No.”

“I didn’t say where.”

“That doesn’t improve it.”

“The windmills.”

“We saw them.”

“From the freeway.”

Ethan checked the map.

Jacob pointed at him. “Do not.”

“There’s a safe turnout west of here.”

“How far?”

“Twelve minutes.”

Jacob looked toward the parking lot. May smiled carefully.

“Twelve minutes,” she said.

The server returned with the check and three takeout containers they had not requested.

“You’ll want these,” she said, looking at the remaining pancakes and potatoes.

Jacob thanked her. May packed the pie first. Ethan organized everything else by whether it could survive the drive. Jacob watched them turn leftovers into provisions as if the overnight trip had entered a second operational phase.

“No food in the lab,” he said.

“Eat before,” Ethan replied.

“I will.”

“The pancakes?” May asked.

“Probably.”

She wrote JACOB—DO NOT LET ETHAN EAT on the container. Ethan took the pen and added HE DOESN’T WANT THEM. Jacob crossed out both and wrote his name once. The server returned to collect payment. This time Jacob paid before either could object.

“Driver’s privilege,” he said.

“Not a thing,” May replied.

“Already happened.”

Outside, the temperature had dropped only slightly. The parking lot remained bright and nearly empty. Jacob placed the leftovers in the rear storage area, separated from their school materials. Ethan stood near the passenger door checking the route west.

“Two hours eight minutes.”

“Traffic?”

“None significant.”

“Construction?”

“Same lane closure. Minor delay.”

Jacob nodded.

May walked to the edge of the lot and looked toward the dark mountains. “The turnout is west.”

“So is home,” Jacob said.

“Exactly.”

“That’s not how detours work.”

“It’s twelve minutes.”

“Each way?”

Ethan checked. “Seven off the route. Five back.” Jacob looked at him. “You already mapped it.”

“You asked how far.”

“Before I agreed.”

“Information supports consent,” May said.

“One day of law school,” Jacob muttered.

“Seminar.”

“Worse.”

He opened the driver’s door, then stopped. The coffee and food had restored enough energy for the scale to return to four. He could drive. He also knew the return would be harder than the trip east. The novelty would thin. May would fall asleep. Ethan might. The road would remain.

“You take over at four,” he told Ethan.

Ethan checked the time. Two twenty-seven.

“I’ll be sober.”

“I know.”

“Earlier if you hit five.”

Jacob looked at him.

“Agreed,” he said.

May climbed into the back seat. “Shared responsibility.”

“Seat belt,” both men replied.

She buckled it loudly. The Land Rover started. Jacob entered the turnout as the next destination. Before leaving the booth, May opened the casebook to the page where Lena had written her number.

“Should I text her?”

Jacob looked at the time. “At two thirty?”

“Not now. Later.”

“Yes,” Ethan said.

May traced the number without touching the ink. “What do I say?”

“That you want to join,” Jacob replied.

“What if I don’t?”

“Do you?”

“Probably.”

“Then say that.”

“You haven’t texted Priya.”

“I’ll see her in five hours.”

“You could say you’re looking forward to working together.”

“At two thirty from Palm Springs?”

May considered it. “No. That sounds threatening.” Ethan laughed into his coffee. May saved a draft for later: Thanks for inviting me. I’d like to join Thursday if there’s still room. Simple. No explanation of why making a new commitment felt larger than one reading group. No mention of Bobby, nursing, law school, or the fear that choosing one future betrayed another. She closed the phone.

“Done?” Jacob asked.

“Drafted.”

“That’s not sent.”

“I know.”

He waited.

May scheduled it for eight thirty in the morning.

“Sent eventually,” she said.

“Counts,” Ethan replied.

He should have known Palm Springs would not be the final stop. Jacob carried the casebook while May balanced the takeout containers. Ethan held the map, camera, and three water bottles. They left the diner in a line that would have looked purposeful from a distance. At the Land Rover, May stopped them before loading anything.

“Diner picture.”

“We took one,” Jacob said.

“Inside the car. Before.”

She set the phone on the hood with the neon sign behind them. The timer began. Jacob stood in the middle this time. May leaned against his left side. Ethan took the right. All three faced the camera. At one second, Jacob yawned. The photograph caught May laughing, Ethan turning toward him, and Jacob covering his mouth too late.

“Perfect,” May said.

“Delete it.”

“Never.”

She sent it to neither family nor group chat. Some evidence could remain theirs until morning. May climbed into the back seat and arranged the casebook beneath her head like a pillow until Ethan removed it.

“That’s a terrible idea.”

“It’s thick.”

“It has corners.”

He replaced it with the folded blanket from the footwell. May accepted the exchange and tucked the postcard safely inside the book before placing it beside her. Jacob watched through the mirror. “You’re going to sleep?”

“Not yet.”

“Seat belt over the blanket.”

She corrected it. Ethan put water in the front cup holders and painkillers in the console. Jacob checked the mirrors. Their ridiculous trip resumed with the procedural order of people determined to remain safe enough to enjoy it. Jacob entered the turnout address and reviewed the route twice. The detour remained small enough to defend and unnecessary enough to belong with everything else.

“Twelve minutes,” he said.

“Twelve,” May agreed.

“Then west.”

“Then west.”

Ethan added the route to the navigation queue. The diner’s neon receded behind them. Ahead, the road narrowed toward darkness, turbines, and one final place the night had not originally contained. May watched the diner disappear through the rear window. She expected exhaustion to flatten the night eventually. Instead, every added hour made it feel more distinct from ordinary time. Monday had become Tuesday somewhere on the freeway; school and work still waited, but neither owned these hours anymore.

In the front, Jacob adjusted the temperature lower to keep himself alert. Ethan watched the fatigue scale without asking again too soon. The agreement between them had become practical rather than protective: observe, report, switch before risk. Jacob could accept that because it treated his judgment as part of the plan instead of a problem to overcome.

May closed her eyes for one traffic light and opened them before the vehicle moved. She was not asleep yet. Jacob was still at four. Ethan was nearly sober. The facts aligned well enough for one final detour, and the mountains waited ahead without asking why they were coming.

Jacob turned away from the main road. The navigation counted down seven miles. May opened the camera case but waited for the stop before touching it. Ethan lowered the music. Their rules held even as the plan continued expanding beyond anything sensible. The diner lights disappeared completely. Ahead, the road entered darkness, and the turbines began appearing one red signal at a time. None regretted it. The night kept going.

The turnout was not a destination. It was a widened strip of pavement beyond the last hotel lights, protected from the road by a low barrier and marked by a sign May could not read until the headlights swept across it. Beyond the barrier, the desert opened toward the wind farm. Jacob parked facing west. The engine stopped.

Turbines moved through darkness on both sides of the valley. Red lights blinked above them in measured unison. The blades nearest the road appeared and disappeared against the faintly lighter sky, too large for May’s eyes to hold at once.

“Twelve minutes,” Jacob said.

May opened the rear door.

“You keep saying that like time has worked tonight.”

“It works whether you cooperate or not.”

She stepped into the wind. It struck harder than Cabazon. Her shirt pressed against her body. Loose hair whipped across her mouth. She caught the white sunglasses before they flew from the top of her head and put them inside the casebook bag for the first time all night. Ethan got out on the passenger side. Jacob remained behind the wheel long enough to check the time, location, and route home. May waited near the barrier.

The diner warmth left her quickly. Exhaustion settled beneath the wind without feeling unpleasant yet. Her body had begun operating on the understanding that normal sleep would not happen. The knowledge made every movement slightly delayed and every thought either unusually sharp or impossible to hold. Ethan joined her.

“The camera won’t catch this,” he said.

“You don’t know.”

“I do.”

May took the disposable camera from its case.

“No flash toward the road,” Jacob called as he approached.

“I know.”

She aimed away from traffic and pressed the button. The flash illuminated the barrier, two scrub plants, and nothing beyond them.

“Beautiful,” Ethan said.

“You haven’t seen it.”

“I saw what the flash reached.”

“Maybe the darkness is the subject.”

Jacob stood on her other side. “You’ve used that defense already.”

“It remains applicable.”

She advanced the film. The turbines continued turning. From the turnout, the nearest towers looked slow enough to be harmless. The blades crossed the red warning lights one at a time, vanished against the sky, and returned. Farther out, dozens more signals blinked without ever synchronizing. May braced both hands on the barrier. “They looked smaller from the freeway.”

“Everything does,” Ethan said.

Jacob stood several feet back from the edge, studying the access road and the dark land beyond it. “The wind’s stronger here.”

“That might be why they put the turbines here,” May said.

He looked at her.

“I’m helping.”

“You’re doing great.”

The response was dry but not sharp. May smiled and turned back toward the field. A truck passed on the interstate below. Its headlights moved across the base of the towers without reaching the blades. The sound arrived several seconds later, softened by distance and wind.

May had expected the stop to feel like an extension of Cabazon—another strange object made important because they had chosen it. Instead, the turnout felt separate from everything around it. No storefronts. No people posing beneath lights. Nothing to buy or enter before closing.

Only motion, darkness, and three people who had driven far enough that ordinary time no longer seemed to apply. The turnout asked nothing from them beyond standing still long enough to see it. For once, that was enough. They stayed for another minute.

For several minutes, nobody tried to make the stop productive. They watched. Trucks moved on the distant freeway, headlights sliding beneath the red signals. Wind filled the space where conversation might have gone. May rested her forearms on the barrier.

“Bobby would’ve hated this.”

Jacob looked toward her.

“The drive?”

“The lack of planning. Being out after three. Me drinking before getting into a car for two hours.”

“You weren’t driving,” Ethan said.

“He still would’ve had a list.”

She could hear it. Water. Driver. Fuel. Route. Check-in. Emergency contacts. Bobby would say the list as though nobody else had considered safety until he introduced it. Then he would pack twice what they needed and pretend the extra food had appeared by accident.

“He might’ve come,” May said.

“Would he?” Jacob asked.

“If we asked the right way.”

She smiled toward the turbines.

“Buck would’ve gone first. Bobby would say somebody responsible needed to supervise. Then Athena would tell him we were adults and he’d say that wasn’t the point.”

“It wasn’t,” Ethan said.

“No.”

The imagined argument arrived easily enough to hurt. May let it. Grief had spent six weeks making ordinary memory feel like a trapdoor. A mug. A recipe. Someone saying Cap across the firehouse. Sometimes the fall took the entire day. Tonight, Bobby could appear in a ridiculous hypothetical and remain beside them without turning the dinosaurs into a memorial.

“He would’ve packed better sandwiches,” she said.

“The sandwiches were fine,” Ethan replied.

“You inspected the hummus for thirty seconds.”

“The seal looked loose.”

“It was condensation.”

“I confirmed that.”

Jacob laughed quietly.

May turned toward him. “Scale?”

“Four and a half.”

“Still?” Ethan asked.

“Food helped. Sitting hurt.”

“Drive how long?”

“To the next safe stop.”

“We agreed you’d stop at four.”

Jacob faced him. “The agreement was four unless I hit five.”

“You said I’d take over at four.”

“I said at four o’clock.”

May checked her phone. “It’s three oh-eight.”

“Then I’m driving to four.”

Ethan considered him in the darkness.

“If it changes, you stop.”

“Yes.”

“Before five.”

“Yes.”

May looked between them. “Can we write the scale down?”

“No,” both said.

She opened the postcard anyway. There was no space left. May turned it over twice, searching for an edge not covered by notes. Ethan gave her a receipt from the diner. She wrote the fatigue scale on the back.

3:08 a.m. Jacob: 4.5. Ethan: annoying. May: perfect.

Jacob read it.

“You almost fell into a sunglasses display.”

“Hours ago.”

“You thought the map opened to Southern California.”

“It did eventually.”

“You’re at least a six.”

“On what scale?”

He had no answer ready. May folded the receipt and tucked it beside the postcard. A stronger gust moved across the turnout. Ethan stepped behind May before she needed the wind blocked. Jacob moved to her other side. Their bodies formed a partial shelter large enough for the camera strap to stop striking her wrist.

May noticed the arrangement only after the wind eased. Neither man had told her to move or taken the camera from her. They had adjusted themselves around the problem and left her in control of what she was doing. She checked the frame. The turbines remained visible beyond Ethan’s shoulder, and the Land Rover’s lights caught enough of their faces to make the photograph possible.

“Group picture,” she said.

“It’ll be dark,” Ethan warned.

“Phone. Night mode.”

She positioned the phone on the Land Rover’s hood, angled toward the turbines. The first attempt captured mostly sky. The second cut off Jacob’s head. The third required balancing the phone against a water bottle and running into frame before the timer ended. May arrived late and collided with Ethan. Jacob caught both of them. The camera took the picture while they recovered.

On the screen, the turbines were blurred shadows. Red lights dotted the sky. Jacob stood behind May with one arm braced around her waist. Ethan had caught her shoulder. All three looked toward one another instead of the phone.

“Perfect,” May said.

Neither man argued. She saved it without sending it anywhere. The night had produced enough public evidence. This picture could remain theirs until daylight. At the turnout, Ethan asked May about Tuesday.

“No internship?”

“Cleared day.”

“Because of class?”

“Originally. I was going to use it for reading.”

“You still can.”

May looked at him.

“After sleeping,” he added.

“Better.”

Jacob leaned against the barrier several feet away, giving them privacy without pretending not to listen.

“Do you like the internship?” Ethan asked.

“Most days.”

“Not an answer.”

“You’re one to talk.”

He accepted the correction. May watched the turbines.

“I like knowing what to do,” she said. “At dispatch, there was always a next instruction. At the office, there’s a form, a filing, somebody who needs an answer. School has answers even when the entire class argues over them.”

“And when you go home?”

“There’s laundry.”

Ethan waited.

“Home doesn’t have a next instruction,” May said.

Jacob looked toward them.

“Neither does grief,” she continued. “Everybody keeps acting like time is a treatment plan. Six weeks means something different from one. Summer means something different from spring. I don’t feel different because the calendar moved.”

“You went to class,” Ethan said.

“That’s an action.”

“Exactly.”

May considered him. He did not mean class proved recovery. He meant an action could remain only an action without being forced to represent the state of her grief.

“I bought sunglasses,” she said.

“Also an action.”

“A bad one.”

“Twelve dollars.”

“They look expensive.”

Jacob approached. “They don’t.”

May lifted the camera as a threat. He held up both hands.

“Time,” he said.

They checked it together. The seventeen-minute stop had become twenty-four.

“You failed to enforce your own limit,” May said.

“I was outvoted by conversation.”

“That’s democracy.”

“That’s exhaustion.”

They gathered the last items beside the vehicle. May found the gas-station map beneath the passenger seat and folded it into a smaller, worse shape. Ethan took it from her and restored two original creases.

“Control issue,” she said.

“Preservation.”

“It was free.”

“That doesn’t make destruction necessary.”

Jacob waited beside the driver’s door. “Are we leaving?”

“Yes,” both answered.

They returned to the Land Rover. Ethan took the disposable camera and receipt. Jacob opened May’s door while she reorganized the casebook bag. Nobody mentioned that she had begun moving more carefully. Inside, she arranged the folded blanket against the window.

“Seat belt over it,” Jacob said.

“I know.”

She demonstrated.

Ethan handed her water.

“I know,” she repeated.

Ethan waited until she drank. Jacob started the engine at three seventeen. The navigation route pointed west. No additional destinations waited in the queue. May put the sunglasses in her bag, closed the casebook, and rested her head against the blanket.

“Wake me if something happens.”

“Nothing is going to happen,” Jacob said.

“Then don’t wake me.”

Her eyelids lowered before they reached the main road, but she was not asleep yet. She heard Ethan lower the music. She heard Jacob say something about the temperature. The Land Rover turned west. Before May slept, she asked Jacob to open the sunroof.

“The wind will be loud.”

“For one minute.”

He opened it halfway. Desert air entered from above, warmer than May expected and carrying no recognizable city smell. The turbines’ red lights passed across the opening as Jacob turned toward the road. May looked straight up. Stars appeared between the lights. Not many. More than Los Angeles offered.

“Bobby tried to teach Harry constellations once,” she said.

“Did he know them?” Ethan asked.

“Absolutely not. He had an app and confidence.”

Jacob laughed. “Did Harry know?”

“Enough to catch him.”

She could hear Bobby defending himself. The app had been oriented incorrectly. The porch roof blocked the important stars. 'Minnesota skies were different', which made no sense and had not stopped him.

“He would’ve liked the turbines,” May said.

“Why?”

“Machines doing one job forever. He loved anything with a system.”

Ethan looked through the windshield at the turning blades. “They stop for maintenance.”

“You would tell him that.”

“He’d already know.”

The imagined conversation made her smile. Jacob closed the sunroof before they reached the main road.

“One minute,” he said.

May checked the time. “That was two.”

“Gift.”

She settled into the blanket. Once she was settled in the back, May found a message from Harry.

Harry: Mom says you drove to dinosaurs.

May: Jacob drove.

Harry: That is not the important part.

She sent the group photograph.

Harry: You all look stupid.

May: Jealous.

Harry: Yes.

The direct answer made her laugh.

“Next time,” she typed, then stopped before sending it.

There would be a next time. Harry could come. Christopher. Others. The night did not need to remain unique to remain important. She sent it. Harry’s answer appeared before she put the phone down.

Harry: I pick the next place.

May: You can submit a proposal.

Harry: No.

Harry: I pick.

May smiled and locked the screen. She could argue with him after daylight, when the photographs stopped looking like evidence from another planet and the drive sounded less reasonable than it had felt.

Jacob waited for an empty stretch before merging onto the freeway. Ethan read the next two directions aloud, then lowered the phone into the console when the route became a straight line west. The Land Rover settled into highway speed. Wind noise filled the cabin around the soft instrumental track Ethan had chosen.

May looked back once. The turnout disappeared almost immediately, swallowed by the dark shoulder. The turbines remained visible longer. Their lights spread across the valley behind hotel signs, low buildings, and the black outline of the mountains. From the moving car, the entire stop reduced itself to a few red points and a photograph none of them had looked at closely.

She resisted opening the picture again. It would still be there in the morning. So would Harry’s demand, the casebook, and every message waiting for an explanation. For now, Jacob’s hands were steady on the wheel, Ethan was awake beside him, and the seat belt held the blanket in place across her chest.

The first several miles west remained quiet. Ethan controlled the music and selected songs without lyrics. Jacob drove below the limit while his eyes readjusted from the turnout lights. May attempted to stay awake.

She wanted to remember every transition: leaving the turbines, passing the diner exit, seeing the Cabazon dinosaurs from the opposite side of the freeway. Sleep felt like surrendering part of the night after fighting so hard to extend it. Her body disagreed. The road signs blurred before she finished reading them. She closed her eyes only between exits, then opened them after losing track of the agreement.

“You can sleep,” Ethan said.

“I’m documenting.”

“Your phone is on the floor.”

May opened her eyes. Her phone was on the floor. Jacob looked at her in the mirror. “Sleep.”

“What if you need conversation?”

“Ethan’s awake.”

“What if he becomes annoying?”

“Already happened.”

“I heard that,” Ethan said.

“Good.”

May retrieved her phone and placed it securely inside the bag.

“Wake me at Cabazon.”

“We’re not stopping,” Jacob said.

“I want to see them.”

“From the freeway?”

“Yes.”

“If you’re awake.”

“Wake me.”

She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, a green dinosaur rose beyond the passenger window and disappeared behind darkness before she could sit up.

“You didn’t wake me.”

“You opened your eyes,” Jacob said.

“At the end.”

“We’ll come back.”

May stared at him in the mirror. He heard what he had said.

“During daylight,” he added. “With other people. Planned.”

“Monthly tradition,” she murmured.

“Go to sleep.”

She smiled and obeyed. May drifted back to sleep before Cabazon disappeared behind them. The dream came quickly. In the dream, the turbines were stationary and the dinosaurs moved. Bobby stood beneath the apatosaurus with his hands in his pockets, waiting for everyone else to finish taking pictures. Every time May approached, the parking lot lengthened. She woke enough to hear the tires cross a bridge.

“Still there?” she asked.

“Still here,” Jacob replied.

The answer reached her through the dark without requiring her eyes open.

“Ethan?”

“Here.”

May returned to sleep. She surfaced again when Jacob and Ethan argued quietly over an exit. Neither raised his voice. Jacob insisted the navigation had changed. Ethan said the route had always shown the next ramp. May opened one eye, saw both men still calm, and let them solve it. Her mother would have called that poor situational awareness. May called it trust and went back to sleep.

At another waking, a gas station passed outside. The bright canopy made the Land Rover interior briefly visible: wrappers consolidated into one bag, water in every holder, Jacob upright at the wheel, Ethan watching the route. The adventure looked less like chaos from inside than it would sound when explained. They had rules. They checked one another. They stopped. They ate. Spontaneity had not required abandoning competence; it only gave competence a ridiculous destination. May smiled without opening her eyes.

“What?” Ethan asked.

“Nothing.”

“You laughed.”

“Dream.”

“Good?”

May thought of Bobby beyond the moving dinosaurs.

“Complicated.”

Ethan accepted that answer. The road continued. During a longer waking stretch, May opened her notes app and made one list.

Cabazon. Palm Springs. Wind turbines. Pie. Jacob’s record. Ethan’s fake ID. Reading group Thursday. Invite Harry next time. Print the second dinosaur picture.

She stared at the final item.

Tell Mom it was good.

May deleted that one. Athena had seen the photographs. She would hear it in May’s voice. The night did not need to become a report proving joy had occurred. She added something else.

Do not make every good thing mean recovery.

That remained long enough for her to read twice. Then she deleted it too. The idea could exist without becoming a rule. Her phone slipped against the blanket. May secured it in the seat pocket before closing her eyes.

“Phone away,” Jacob said from the front.

“Already done.”

“Good.”

“You sound pleased.”

“I’m proud of you.”

May opened one eye. Jacob’s attention remained on the road. Ethan looked toward him with a smile he hid by reaching for water.

“Thank you,” May said solemnly. “This is a major milestone.”

“Sleep.”

She closed her eyes again. May’s last awareness was the rhythm of freeway lights crossing the ceiling above her. She let it pass without turning it into evidence of anything. The blanket stayed warm around her shoulders, Jacob kept the vehicle steady, and sleep returned before she could begin another list. Nothing followed her into it. The road kept moving west.

At three forty-one, Jacob missed an exit. The navigation corrected without comment. Ethan did not.

“That was our exit.”

“I know.”

“Why didn’t you take it?”

“I thought the next one connected.”

“It does. In six miles.”

“Then we’re fine.”

Ethan looked at him. Jacob kept both hands on the wheel. The freeway remained mostly empty. Lane markers passed at a steady rhythm. No drift. No sudden correction. No immediate danger.

Still.

“Scale?” Ethan asked.

“Five.”

“Pull over.”

“There’s a service station at the next exit.”

“How far?”

“Eight minutes.”

“Take the first safe place.”

Jacob’s jaw tightened.

“I’m awake.”

“You missed an exit and hit five.”

“The exit wasn’t safety-critical.”

“The agreement wasn’t ‘five unless the mistake is recoverable.’”

May slept in the back, cheek pressed against the folded blanket. The casebook bag occupied the footwell beneath her. Her seat belt remained secure. Jacob looked toward the next sign.

“I said I’d stop.”

“Then stop.”

The directness cut through every argument Jacob had prepared. He signaled and took the next exit. A twenty-four-hour travel center appeared beyond the ramp. Jacob parked beneath lights near the entrance and turned off the engine.

“Happy?”

“No.”

Ethan unbuckled. “Move.”

Jacob looked at him.

“You’ve been drinking.”

“I stopped before eight. It’s almost four. I ate. I’m sober.”

“You’re tired too.”

“Three.”

“You assigned yourself a number quickly.”

“I’ve been checking.”

Of course he had. Jacob rested his hands in his lap. The old reflex insisted that stopping meant failure. He had volunteered to drive. He had class. He had said yes to the trip partly because he wanted the choice to remain his. Handing the wheel to Ethan felt like losing control of the decision after making it. That was not what was happening.

Ethan had waited until the agreed threshold. He had asked, checked, and accepted Jacob’s answers until the answers changed. Now he was taking responsibility because that had been the plan. Jacob opened the door.

“I need five minutes first.”

“Okay.”

No victory in Ethan’s voice. They got out quietly. May did not wake. Inside the travel center, fluorescent light made four in the morning feel institutional. Jacob washed his face in the restroom and stared at himself in the mirror. He looked tired. Not destroyed. Not incapable. Tired enough that eight more minutes had become a negotiation. He returned to the store and found Ethan buying water and coffee.

“No more caffeine for me,” Jacob said.

“It’s mine.”

“Good.”

Ethan paid.

Outside, they switched sides. Jacob adjusted the passenger seat farther back. Ethan checked mirrors, wheel position, and navigation. He did not need instructions about his own vehicle. Jacob supplied them anyway.

“Construction near the lane closure. Trucks were merging late.”

“I know.”

“Wind’s less now.”

“Okay.”

“May’s asleep.”

Ethan looked into the mirror. “I see her.”

Jacob stopped.

“Sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize.”

“I’m telling you things you know.”

“You’re handing off.”

The phrase settled correctly. A handoff was not surrender. At the store, Jacob had done it dozens of times without thinking: register counts, delivery notes, the location of a damaged case in the stockroom. The information mattered because somebody else was continuing the work, not because Jacob had failed to finish it alone. This was no different except for the hour and the people involved.

Ethan opened the navigation overview and checked the next services without asking Jacob to verify them. The route west remained clear. The wind advisory had dropped. Fuel would last beyond Los Angeles.

“Anything else?” Ethan asked.

Jacob considered the question seriously. “No.”

“Okay.”

That was the whole transfer. Outside, the travel center continued through its overnight routine. A truck pulled away from the diesel pumps. Someone crossed the lot carrying a paper cup and keys. The stop belonged to people changing drivers, taking breaks, and admitting the road required more from them than it had twenty miles earlier. Jacob had treated the decision as though it revealed something uniquely weak about him. Under the white parking-lot lights, it looked ordinary.

He put the remaining water within Ethan’s reach and moved his own phone to the passenger-side charger. The practical gestures helped his body catch up with the decision. They also gave his hands somewhere to go. Jacob buckled in. Ethan started the engine.

“Sleep,” he said.

“I’m not going to sleep.”

“Okay.”

They returned to the freeway. Jacob lasted eleven minutes. He remembered watching Ethan pass a truck. He remembered checking the speedometer and finding nothing to correct. He remembered turning his face toward the window because the seat belt sat more comfortably that way. Then he woke when the road changed texture beneath the tires.

For one disorienting second, Jacob believed he was still driving. His hands tightened against the empty space above his lap before the passenger-side window and the angle of the dashboard corrected him.

Ethan had moved into the right lane behind a truck. The navigation showed more than an hour remaining. May slept in the back exactly where she had been, one hand closed around the edge of the blanket. Jacob checked the lane position, speed, and mirrors before he could stop himself. Everything was fine.

“Where are we?”

“West of Beaumont.”

“How long?”

“Twenty minutes.”

Jacob checked the mirror. May remained asleep.

“You okay?”

“Yes.”

“Scale?”

“Three.”

Jacob closed his eyes again.

“You can sleep,” Ethan said.

“I know.”

He did not sleep immediately. He listened to Ethan drive. The differences were smaller from the passenger seat than they had looked from behind the wheel. Ethan accelerated earlier when a lane opened and left less space before changing lanes, but nothing felt abrupt. He checked the mirrors in a pattern Jacob learned within several miles.

Jacob’s body continued responding as though he remained responsible. His foot tensed when brake lights appeared ahead. His attention tracked trucks approaching from the left. Each time, Ethan reacted before Jacob needed to speak. Eventually, Jacob let his foot rest flat against the floor.

The passenger seat carried no obligation beyond staying awake if he could and sleeping if he could not. May breathed evenly behind them. The navigation counted down toward Los Angeles. The road remained somebody else’s task for as long as Jacob needed it to be. His eyes closed again.

The first stretch of sleep had happened despite him. The second required permission he was not accustomed to giving himself. Jacob counted the reasons he could stay awake—navigation, traffic, May, the possibility that Ethan’s number might change—and found that each one already had an answer.

The phone would announce the route. Ethan had driven farther while more tired after overnight shifts and knew the threshold they had agreed upon. May was secured beneath the blanket. If anything changed, Jacob would be woken.

He had spent the previous year treating sleep as something that made him unavailable when a problem arrived. In the passenger seat, with Ethan’s hands steady on the wheel, being unavailable for a while was the point.

“Wake me if you need anything,” Jacob said.

“I will.”

“Not just if you hit five.”

Ethan glanced over. “I know.” Jacob accepted the answer. This time he did not listen for the next correction. The steering corrections were small. Turn signals clicked before lane changes. The speed remained steady. Music played low enough that Jacob could hear May breathing in the back. Trust did not arrive as a feeling. It arrived as the absence of work.

Jacob did not need to stay awake to monitor the road, the vehicle, or Ethan. He did not need to calculate how much longer his body could maintain what it had promised. Somebody else had taken the open place. His hands relaxed.

“Thank you,” he said without opening his eyes.

“You drove us there.”

“I meant for taking over.”

Ethan was quiet for a moment.

“I know.”

Jacob woke again near Redlands and remained awake long enough to understand that Ethan had changed the route around the construction.

“Why are we off the freeway?”

“Lane closure backed up.”

“How far?”

“Adds three minutes. Saves twelve.”

Jacob checked the map.

“You don’t trust me?” Ethan asked.

“I’m orienting.”

“You were asleep.”

“Now I’m not.”

“You could be.”

Jacob watched a closed shopping center pass. Streetlights replaced freeway darkness. The route turned twice and returned them toward I-10.

“I hate sleeping in cars,” he said.

Ethan kept his eyes on the road. “Because of the year?”

“Partly.”

Sleeping as a passenger meant trusting the driver. Sleeping in his own parked car had meant remaining aware of every engine, footstep, and sweep of headlights. Neither version allowed the full absence his body wanted.

“You did earlier,” Ethan said.

“For eleven minutes.”

“Twenty.”

Jacob checked the clock. Ethan was right.

“That doesn’t feel better.”

“It isn’t supposed to prove anything.”

Jacob rested his head again without closing his eyes.

“You make accepting help sound annoyingly neutral.”

“It is neutral.”

“Not to me.”

“I know.”

“You’re bad at it too.”

“I know.”

“That was too easy.”

“I’m driving.”

Jacob smiled despite himself. They rejoined the freeway.

“When did you know?” Jacob asked.

“Know what?”

“That I hit five.”

“Before you said it.”

“Then why ask?”

“Because you needed to report it.”

Jacob looked at Ethan’s profile in the dashboard light.

“You could’ve ordered me out of the driver’s seat.”

“Would that have worked?”

“No.”

“Exactly.”

The answer did not flatter either of them.

“I missed one exit.”

“And corrected safely.”

“But?”

“But the mistake matched the threshold we agreed on. Waiting for a worse one would make the agreement useless.”

Jacob understood the logic. He disliked how perfectly it resembled the reasons he wanted paramedicine: information gathered before crisis, thresholds recognized before collapse, decisions made while options remained.

“You’re going to be unbearable in medicine.”

“Probably.”

“Patients will hate you.”

“Some.”

“Residents.”

“Definitely.”

“Attendings.”

“Dr. Patel already does a little.”

Jacob laughed quietly. May shifted in the back but did not wake.

“Thank you,” Jacob said again.

“Stop thanking me for driving my own car.”

“That’s not what I’m thanking you for.”

“I know.”

The repetition felt less exposing the second time. Jacob closed his eyes. He woke once when Ethan stopped for fuel he did not technically need. Ethan used the bathroom, bought another coffee, and walked one circuit around the vehicle before returning. Jacob noticed each step without feeling responsible for it.

“Scale?” he asked.

“Three and a half.”

“Increasing?”

“Gradually.”

“Wake May if you hit five.”

“She drank.”

“Hours ago.”

“I’ll stop first.”

“Good.”

Ethan returned to the freeway. Jacob’s final waking thought before sleep took him fully was that Ethan had not promised to keep going. He had promised to stop. That was safer. During Jacob’s next waking stretch, rain appeared. Not real rain at first. A few drops struck the windshield east of Pomona, large enough to leave dusty marks before the wipers cleared them.

“Weather said clear,” Jacob murmured.

“It is mostly clear.”

“That’s rain.”

“Technically.”

Jacob opened one eye. “Don’t become annoying because I’m tired.”

“Become?”

“Exactly.”

The shower strengthened for three minutes, then stopped. Ethan reduced speed, increased distance, and changed nothing else. Jacob watched until the pavement dried.

“Kit teach you?”

“Driving?”

“In rain.”

“Rose first. Kit made me learn stick.”

“Can you?”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“Enough.”

“I’ll take that as a no.”

“It means I don’t stall.”

“Often?”

Ethan glanced at him. “Sleep.”

Jacob smiled.

He asked about Rose instead. Ethan described an empty school parking lot, a used sedan, and Rose refusing to let Kit narrate from the passenger seat. She taught Ethan to reverse before she taught him to go anywhere, because, according to her, everyone became overconfident when the road appeared to move in the expected direction.

“That sounds like her,” Jacob said.

He had spoken to Rose through video calls and heard her from other rooms. She always asked whether he had eaten in a tone that made lying inefficient.

“She likes you,” Ethan said.

“She hasn’t met me.”

“She has.”

“A screen doesn’t count.”

“It counted when you talked to Christopher.”

Jacob did not answer.

“She wants you to visit,” Ethan added.

“When?”

“Whenever.”

“That isn’t a date.”

“It’s permission.”

The word struck too close to the room waiting in the loft, the Diaz key, and every invitation Jacob continued treating as provisional.

“Okay,” he said.

Ethan did not turn the agreement into a plan. Jacob slept again. He dreamed of the Charleston pool with concrete dinosaurs standing beyond the fence. Shannon sat in the lifeguard chair. Christopher was six and somehow fourteen. Ethan repaired a lane marker with tools from Kit’s workshop while May argued with Randy about constitutional law. When Jacob woke, he said, “That was terrible.”

“What?” Ethan asked.

“Dream.”

“About?”

“No.”

“You brought it up.”

“Regretted it.”

Ethan let him keep it. The road continued west. Jacob’s body accepted sleep more readily each time he surfaced. The passenger seat became only a seat. The car remained in motion without requiring him to manage it.

At one point, his hand fell from his chest toward the center console. Ethan moved a coffee bottle before Jacob struck it and returned his hand gently to the armrest. Jacob woke enough to register the touch and not enough to defend against it. That felt important later, though in the moment he only slept. Jacob fell asleep again. Ethan drove through the hour when the night felt least inhabited.

Gas stations remained open, but their lots emptied. Apartment windows went dark before early workers began turning others on. The freeway carried trucks, rideshare vehicles, and people whose reasons for traveling at four in the morning remained private. Jacob slept beside him. May slept behind him. Ethan had never driven with two people trusting him at once.

Kit slept during family road trips only after Rose took the wheel. Rose slept only after asking where the next fuel stop was. Tyler and Hannah fell asleep indiscriminately and woke demanding information they had missed. Ethan usually stayed awake with whichever parent drove, offering navigation before smartphones made the role unnecessary. He liked being awake when other people slept. It placed him at the edge of the group where he could watch without being watched. Tonight felt different.

Jacob’s hand rested open on the armrest. May’s face was visible in the mirror, unguarded beneath exhaustion. Neither needed Ethan to perform wakefulness as proof he deserved the seat. They needed him to report accurately and stop when the scale changed.

He drank water before coffee. Adjusted the temperature colder. Changed music when one song made his attention drift toward the lyrics. The scale held at three and a half. At four forty-eight, he pulled into another rest area even though the scale had not changed. Jacob woke as the vehicle stopped.

“Five?”

“No. Preventive.”

Jacob blinked, then nodded. “Good.” Ethan walked beneath the lights, stretched his legs, and washed his face. When he returned, Jacob stood outside too.

“You can sleep,” Ethan said.

“I needed to move.”

They stood near the hood while trucks idled beyond them.

“I didn’t want to give you the wheel,” Jacob admitted.

“I know.”

“Not because I thought you couldn’t drive.”

“I know.”

“Because I said I would.”

Ethan leaned against the vehicle. “Stopping when you said you would is also doing what you said.” Jacob looked toward the road.

“That sounds obvious.”

“Most useful things do afterward.”

“You should put that on a hospital poster.”

“May would critique it.”

“She’d add a footnote.”

They smiled.

Back inside, Jacob fell asleep more quickly. At five ten, Jacob woke hungry again. He found the diner leftovers in the rear cooler and ate potatoes cold from the container while Ethan drove. May slept through the opening lid, the plastic fork breaking, and Jacob’s quiet swearing. Ethan handed him a better fork from the glove compartment.

“Why do you have utensils there?”

“For food.”

“That answer explains nothing.”

“It explains the fork.”

Jacob ate.

Energy returned slowly, not enough to drive and enough to think.

“I’m going to be terrible in class.”

“You’ll be tired.”

“Same result.”

“No. Terrible means you can’t do it. Tired means it costs more.”

“That sounds like runner logic.”

“It is.”

Jacob considered tomorrow’s—today’s—lab preparation. Safety procedures he knew. Equipment he had used. New people expecting the version of him who arrived on the first day alert and prepared.

“What if Priya thinks I’m unreliable?”

“Because you’re tired once?”

“First impressions.”

“She lent you a pen before she knew anything.”

“That doesn’t support your argument.”

“It means she’s capable of updating information.”

Jacob ate another potato.

“If she asks, tell her the truth,” Ethan said.

“That I went to concrete dinosaurs?”

“Yes.”

“That will improve reliability concerns.”

“It will make you a person who did one strange thing, not a person failing mysteriously.”

Jacob looked at him. The distinction reached beyond class. For a year, he had hidden the cause of every shortcoming until people could interpret only the shortcoming itself. Missed work. Delayed graduation. Unanswered messages. Weight loss. Exhaustion. He had called himself between places because the truth felt like an excuse offered too late.

“Dinosaurs,” Jacob said.

“Dinosaurs.”

He closed the container.

“You need food?”

“Later.”

“Water?”

“Cup holder.”

“Scale?”

“Three and a half.”

“Good.”

Jacob returned the leftovers to the cooler and watched the sky begin changing behind them in the mirror. He had surrendered the wheel and remained part of getting them home. The realization was obvious, irritating, and necessary.

In the mirror, the eastern edge of the sky had begun to lighten. Jacob watched it for several miles without calculating how much sleep remained before class. Ethan had the route. May was safe behind them. For the moment, Jacob’s only task was to sit in the passenger seat and allow the distance home to shorten without his help. He let the changing light reach his closed eyes and stopped tracking the exits. Sleep returned quietly again before the next green sign appeared.

May woke to sunrise behind her. Light entered through the rear window in a pale strip and moved across the ceiling as the Land Rover descended toward Los Angeles. For several seconds, she did not know where she was. The folded blanket held her cheek. Her neck hurt. The casebook bag occupied the floor. Jacob slept in the passenger seat with his head turned toward the window.

Ethan drove.

Memory returned in pieces. Dinosaurs. Pie. Turbines. Jacob saying five. The disposable camera.

“What time?” she asked.

Ethan looked into the mirror. “Five thirty-eight.”

“Where?”

“Almost Pomona.”

May sat up carefully and checked her seat belt.

“How long was I asleep?”

“About two hours.”

“Jacob?”

“On and off for about an hour and a half.”

“You?”

“Driving.”

“I meant sleep.”

“I’ll sleep at home.”

The answer would have irritated her more if Ethan’s hands had not remained steady and his voice clear.

“Scale?”

“Three.”

May accepted it. The city gathered around them by degrees. More cars. Distribution centers. Fast-food signs switching breakfast lights on. The eastern sky behind them turned peach above the mountains while the road ahead remained blue-gray.

May pushed herself upright and folded the blanket away from her face. Sleep had left one cheek warm and put a seam from her sleeve across her skin. She checked the seat belt before reaching for her phone.

Three messages from Athena waited beneath the lock screen. The first asked for confirmation when they changed drivers. The second acknowledged Ethan’s update. The third, sent twenty minutes earlier, said only Drive safely. Call when you’re back. May answered with a photograph of the sunrise through the rear window and the word Westbound. Athena reacted almost immediately. Apparently, neither of them had slept much.

“Mom’s awake,” May said.

Ethan kept his attention on traffic. “She answered?”

“Already.”

Jacob shifted beneath the folded jacket he had used as a pillow but did not wake. May lowered her voice. “Has he woken up?”

“Twice. Checked where we were and went back to sleep.”

She looked at Jacob’s reflection in the side window. The tension around his mouth had disappeared. One hand rested open beside him rather than closed around a phone or strap. The sight reassured her more than another fatigue number would have. Jacob had stopped measuring long enough to rest, and Ethan had kept the road steady enough to let him.

Morning traffic thickened around them. Ethan moved one lane left before an entrance ramp and returned after the merge. He drove without the precision Jacob announced aloud, but the same care existed beneath it.

May watched the two men in the front seats: one asleep because he had finally stopped when he promised, the other driving because the promise had included him. Neither arrangement diminished what Jacob had done by carrying them east. The night belonged to all three of them. So did getting home.

“Did I miss anything?”

“Jacob handed off.”

“Without fighting?”

“With limited fighting.”

May looked at him sleeping.

“Good.”

She found her phone beneath the blanket. Twenty-seven notifications waited. Athena had asked for an update at four. Ethan had answered from May’s phone while she slept: Heading west. Ethan's driving. Everyone safe. Her mother responded with a thumbs-up and Call when you’re back.

Christopher had sent six messages, three dinosaur emojis, and a demand for every photograph. Buck had supplied four possible destinations for the next trip. Eddie had told him to stop encouraging them.

May smiled.

“You texted my mom.”

“You were asleep.”

“Thank you.”

“She asked.”

“Still.”

The conversation rested beneath road noise. May opened the group picture from the turnout. Night mode had brightened the sky enough to reveal the turbines as blurred forms. Jacob held her securely after the collision. Ethan’s hand remained at her shoulder. Nobody looked prepared. She sent it to herself at full resolution.

The rest of the camera roll moved backward through the night. The dinosaurs appeared in sharp phone images and crooked screenshots from the group chat. The gas-station photograph showed nobody looking forward. A picture from the plaza caught Ethan mid-objection beneath the string lights.

May marked several as favorites and left the others alone. Not every image needed to be sent to the family chat before breakfast. Some belonged first to the people who had been there. She created a new album and named it only with the date: June 2–3, 2025.

The title did not try to explain the trip. It gave the night somewhere to remain while the three of them slept, went to class, and returned to the obligations waiting in Los Angeles.

The disposable camera would add photographs later—imperfect frames none of them could inspect or correct yet. May liked that the album remained unfinished, waiting for the photographs they could not see yet. It meant the night still had something left to reveal after the exhaustion faded and the practical consequences had passed. May added the turnout photograph first.

“You saved that one?” Ethan asked.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

May studied his reflection. “You’re having a good time.”

“I’m driving home at sunrise.”

“You didn’t answer.”

His smile appeared faintly.

“It was good.”

“Past tense?”

“Jacob still has to survive class.”

“Indeed, he has to survive it.”

“We caused the condition.”

“He consented.”

“You sound pre-law.”

“One day.”

They laughed quietly enough not to wake Jacob. The sunrise strengthened. May turned to watch it through the side window when the freeway curved.

“Bobby liked mornings,” she said.

Ethan waited.

“Not waking up. He hated waking up. But once he was up, he acted like everybody else had wasted the day by sleeping.”

“Kit too.”

“Workshop?”

“Coffee first. Then workshop.”

“You going to tell him everything?”

“He’ll ask.”

“My mom too.”

“Regret it?”

May looked at Jacob asleep, the casebook, the snack wrappers gathered into one bag, and the white sunglasses resting on top.

“Not even a little.”

Ethan nodded.

“Me neither.”

The words fulfilled the rule before morning had the chance to hurt. May remained awake after the sunrise conversation. She moved into the center of the back seat where she could see between them without leaning forward. Jacob slept with his arms folded loosely. Ethan drove with the patience of somebody preserving the last usable portion of energy rather than spending it.

“What happens when we get back?” she asked.

“You sleep.”

“I mean generally.”

“Jacob showers. I take him to class.”

“You’re taking him?”

“He shouldn’t drive.”

“Neither should you after that.”

“I’ll come home.”

“And sleep?”

“Yes.”

“Real yes?”

Ethan met her eyes in the mirror. “Real.” May accepted the answer. The freeway entered denser traffic. Ethan reduced speed and increased following distance. Morning radio replaced their playlist for exactly one traffic report, then he turned it off.

“We should’ve called it,” May said.

“When?”

“The record store. Live from somewhere ridiculous.”

“We weren’t somewhere ridiculous yet.”

“We bought a record and drove to dinosaurs. The trajectory was clear.”

“You proposed the dinosaurs after the record store.”

“Ethan did.”

“Right.”

May watched his hands.

“Do you do that often?”

“What?”

“Decide something and make it sound like it already makes sense.”

“I showed you a picture.”

“You said we could be there before midnight.”

“We could.”

“You wanted something else.”

Ethan thought while the car ahead changed lanes.

“I wanted to know what happened if we went.”

“That’s it?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

May looked through the windshield at Los Angeles assembling itself ahead.

“Apparently.”

She liked the answer. Not destiny. Not a lesson. Curiosity followed by keys.

“You should do that more,” she said.

“Drive two hours after drinking?”

“Want things without proving they’re useful.”

Ethan’s expression changed around the edges.

“You too.”

“I bought sunglasses.”

“Twelve dollars isn’t a personality transformation.”

“They look expensive.”

He laughed.

Jacob woke at the sound.

“Where?”

“Covina,” Ethan said.

“Time?”

“Five fifty-two.”

Jacob rubbed his face. “I slept.”

“Yes,” May said.

“How long?”

“Enough to become less charming.”

“That’s not possible.”

“There he is,” Ethan said.

Jacob checked the route, then caught himself and put the phone down.

“Scale?” he asked Ethan.

“Three and a half.”

“Need me awake?”

“Not yet.”

Jacob stayed awake anyway. They passed into the city as the sunrise lost its dramatic color and became morning. Traffic thickened. Commuters occupied every lane with coffee, makeup mirrors, work badges, and no idea that the Land Rover beside them carried dinosaur photographs and a half-finished pie. May began narrating invented lives for other drivers.

The woman in the silver sedan was leaving a secret second family. The man in the truck had stolen the dog beside him. The bus driver had a screenplay.

“Everyone in Los Angeles has a screenplay,” Ethan said.

“That’s why it’s plausible.”

Jacob contributed one: a man in a compact car was driving to confess he had lied about understanding cryptocurrency.

“Too common,” May said.

They laughed until the traffic stopped. None of them minded the delay. For the first time that night, distance remaining no longer threatened the plan. They were returning. The loft existed at the end whether arrival took twenty minutes or forty. May’s eyes closed during the final slow miles.

She remained aware of voices without following them. Ethan and Jacob discussing where Jacob’s clean lab clothes were. Whether the pancakes needed refrigeration. Whether May could safely be moved if she refused to wake.

“I’m awake,” she said.

“You were snoring,” Jacob replied.

“I don’t snore.”

“Evidence exists.”

She opened one eye. Ethan’s phone sat in the cup holder recording nothing.

“Liar.”

“You woke up.”

The city surrounded them completely. At six twelve, Maddie called Ethan. He answered through the vehicle while May and Jacob remained awake.

“Hi.”

“Where are you?”

“Forty minutes from the loft.”

“You went to Palm Springs.”

“Cabazon first.”

“That doesn’t improve it.”

May covered her mouth. Jacob looked out the window.

“We’re safe,” Ethan said.

“I know. Athena updated everybody at five because apparently the family now requires overnight travel bulletins.”

“Useful.”

“Are you driving?”

“Yes.”

“When did you stop drinking?”

“Before eight. I ate. Jacob handed off at four.”

“How tired?”

“Three and a half.”

“You made a scale?”

“Eddie did.”

Jacob turned. “Ethan did.”

“Shared development,” Ethan corrected.

Maddie exhaled.

“May?”

“Here,” May called.

“Jacob?”

“Awake.”

“All right. Call when you’re home. And Ethan?”

“Yes?”

Her voice softened despite the irritation. “I’m glad you had fun.” Ethan looked toward the road.

“Me too.”

The call ended.

May leaned forward. “Your mother accepted the crime.”

“She doesn’t know about the ID.”

“Yet.”

“May.”

“I’m not telling her.”

“Why say yet?”

“Because the universe hates secrets.”

Jacob rubbed both hands over his face. “Too early for the universe.” They stopped for breakfast coffee near downtown despite having diner coffee and bottled coffee. Ethan parked, assessed himself, and went inside with May while Jacob remained in the car. May bought three plain coffees and one pastry nobody wanted until she tore it apart. They ate pieces over napkins on the center console.

“This is breakfast four,” Jacob said.

“Dinner, fries, diner, pastry,” May counted.

“Fries weren’t breakfast.”

“Time is flexible.”

“No.”

The coffee helped them through the final traffic. As the loft drew closer, the night began acquiring consequences visible in daylight: wrappers, tired faces, unread messages, Jacob’s class in less than two hours. None transformed it into regret.

May gathered the loose wrappers into the gas-station bag. Ethan passed back the empty coffee bottle from the cup holder. Jacob woke long enough to hand her two napkins he had somehow kept folded in his jacket pocket, then closed his eyes again.

“What’s the order when we get back?” May asked.

“You take the couch,” Ethan said. “Jacob changes and gets his bag. I drive him to campus.”

“And you?”

“I come back.”

“Then sleep?”

“That’s the plan.”

May watched him in the mirror. The answer sounded genuine rather than designed to end the question.

“What time do you need to pick him up?”

“Class ends at ten.”

“I can do it.”

“You’ve had less sleep than I have.”

“I can sleep while you take him.”

“And I can pick him up.”

May considered arguing, then stopped. Ethan was not refusing help to prove he needed none. He had already worked out the simplest route.

“Wake me if that changes,” she said.

“Okay.”

Jacob spoke without opening his eyes. “I can get the bus.”

“No,” both of them said.

He opened one eye. “I’m awake.”

“Clearly,” May said.

“Bus is forty minutes,” Ethan added. “The drive is twelve.”

Jacob accepted the arithmetic and closed his eye again. The plan remained ordinary: couch, class, pickup, sleep. The adventure did not need to continue after sunrise to remain worth having. May opened the new three-person chat and sent the turnout photograph.

May: Evidence.

Jacob: We are all in the car.

Ethan: Full resolution?

She sent it directly.

“You’re impossible,” Jacob said.

“You saved it.”

He did not deny it. They drove west. May photographed the city waking. No disposable flash. Only her phone against the window: delivery trucks backed into alleys, someone unlocking a bakery, sprinklers darkening a strip of grass, a bus collecting three people beneath a pale shelter. Most photographs were blurred. She kept them. The night had been built from bright evidence: neon, dinosaurs, wind-farm lights, a diner sign. Morning offered quieter proof that they had crossed it completely. Jacob looked through several pictures while traffic stopped.

“That one’s a trash truck.”

“Morning texture.”

“That one’s your reflection.”

“Self-portrait.”

“That one’s entirely gray.”

“Atmosphere.”

Ethan listened without taking his eyes from the road. “She’s going to put them in an album.”

“Obviously,” May said.

“Including the gray one?” Jacob asked.

“Especially.”

She created an album on her phone and named it What the Hell, Why Not. The title had begun as a joke at the diner. In daylight, it looked like a promise broad enough to hold more than this trip. She added the first-day pictures from UCLA. Jacob in orange sunglasses. Ethan caught mid-objection. The group outside the bar. Gas station. Dinosaurs. Diner. Turnout. Trash truck. Forty-six images, plus fourteen exposures trapped inside the disposable camera.

“We took too many pictures,” Jacob said.

“Not possible.”

“We experienced parts through screens.”

“We also have evidence.”

“Of the experience we interrupted to create evidence.”

“You’re exhausted.”

“That doesn’t make me wrong.”

May selected the turnout image as the album cover.

“We’ll take fewer next time.”

Jacob turned toward her. “Next time?”

“You said daylight.”

“That was about Cabazon.”

“Counts.”

Ethan smiled toward the windshield. Jacob saw him. “Don’t encourage her.”

“Too late,” Ethan said.

Traffic moved. The conversation paused without ending.

May added a note beneath the album title:

First trip: June 2–3, 2025.

First implied another. The final half hour became logistics. Jacob opened his course portal and confirmed the building had not changed. May checked traffic between the loft and UCLA. Ethan estimated arrival, shower time, and the minimum food Jacob could eat without becoming sick during lab.

“Stop building my morning,” Jacob said.

“You asked when we’d arrive.”

“That was one question.”

“Six thirty-five,” May said. “Traffic-dependent.”

“Shower ten minutes. Clothes five. Food in the car,” Ethan added.

“I can feed myself.”

“Then do it.”

Jacob opened the cooler and removed a pancake.

“Not now,” Ethan said.

“You said food.”

“At the loft.”

“Why does location matter?”

May began laughing. “You two made it twenty-seven hours before fighting over pancake timing.”

“We aren’t fighting,” both said.

Jacob ate the pancake.

“Problem solved.”

Ethan looked betrayed.

“Drive,” Jacob told him.

May photographed the remaining half pancake.

“Historical record.”

Their families began waking in earnest. Chimney sent a message asking whether Ethan had eaten. Maddie asked for arrival time. Eddie requested confirmation that Jacob would not drive himself to class. Christopher sent a photograph of his alarm clock to prove he had slept, though nobody believed the time displayed corresponded to when the photograph was taken. May answered for the group until Ethan reclaimed his own phone at a red light.

May: Everyone alive. Ethan driving. Jacob eating pancake against medical advice.

Chimney: What medical advice?

Ethan: There was no medical advice.

May: He objected.

Ethan: That isn’t medicine.

Buck: Sometimes it feels like it.

Jacob turned off dashboard message previews.

“Safety,” he said.

Morning radio reported an ordinary commute. Weather clear. Temperatures climbing. No disasters large enough to reach the broadcast. May rested her head against the seat.

“We did all of that on a Monday.”

“Monday and Tuesday,” Jacob corrected.

“One continuous day.”

“Technically two.”

“It didn’t feel like two.”

Ethan smiled. “Twenty-seven hours.”

“We haven’t finished,” May said.

“What remains?”

“Getting Jacob through class.”

“That’s his checkpoint,” Ethan said.

“Shared responsibility.”

Jacob looked from one to the other. He should have objected to being managed. Instead, the words felt like people standing outside a lecture hall with food.

“Fine,” he said.

May smiled. “We’ll get you through class.”

“You’re sleeping.”

“Emotionally.”

“That isn’t useful.”

“Not everything has to be.”

The answer quieted him. They exited the freeway toward the loft. Familiar streets appeared altered by morning only because they had left them under night. The bakery had a line. A dog walker managed six leashes. A construction crew unloaded equipment beside a building Ethan had passed a hundred times. The gate came into view. Ethan reduced speed. May looked at the clock.

“Six thirty-seven.”

Jacob unbuckled only after the vehicle stopped.

“We made it.”

No one said home. The word was already around them.

The garage gate lifted at last. May watched the familiar concrete ramp appear beyond the windshield and felt the night contract into something they had completed rather than escaped. Jacob woke beside Ethan as the Land Rover descended. The three of them returned carrying the same unread work, the same obligations, and one story none of those obligations could cancel. Morning had arrived, but it had not revised the choice they made at night. The garage lights replaced sunrise across the windows as Ethan pulled into their space.

They reached the loft at six thirty-seven. The building looked unchanged in the early light. Delivery trucks occupied the curb. Someone walked a dog past the gate with a coffee in one hand. Nothing about the street acknowledged that the Land Rover had left the night before carrying three people with no destination and returned from Palm Springs after sunrise. Ethan parked in the garage and left the engine running long enough for Jacob to orient himself.

May unbuckled, gathered the casebook and camera, and checked beneath the seat for anything loose. She found one piece of candy, the badly folded map, and a receipt Jacob had failed to obtain at the pump but somehow acquired inside the store.

“We made it,” she said.

Jacob opened his eyes. “We still have to go upstairs.”

“I’m counting the garage.”

Ethan shut off the engine. The sudden quiet made the ticking metal beneath the hood audible. For several seconds, nobody opened a door. The vehicle held the remains of the night around them: empty bottles, chargers, the postcard inside May’s casebook, Jacob’s backpack, and the disposable camera whose photographs would not exist for them until the film was developed. Then Ethan took the keys, May shouldered the tote, and Jacob reached for the backpack. The ordinary work of getting inside finally began.

They crossed the garage more slowly than they had left it. May carried the camera. Ethan carried the cooler bag and keys. Jacob carried only the backpack he needed for class. The elevator arrived empty. Its mirrored wall returned three exhausted people in yesterday’s clothes, still smiling despite themselves. May took one photograph of the reflection and kept the flash off. The elevator carried them upward before any of them checked it. Jacob checked the time again as the doors closed.

“Six thirty-seven.”

“I see it,” Ethan said.

“I need to leave by seven twenty.”

“Shower. Clothes. Food.”

“Coffee,” May added from the back.

Jacob opened the door. “I know.” They carried the night upstairs in pieces. Backpacks. Casebook. Leftovers. Camera. Map. Sunglasses. The postcard with no remaining space. Ethan gathered trash into one bag. May carried the pie. Jacob carried everything else until Ethan removed two bags from his hands. The loft smelled faintly new near Jacob’s room. The permanent mattress waited behind the frosted doors, made with the same sheets that had covered the air mattress Sunday night. Ethan had transferred them after delivery. Jacob looked at it through the open door.

“You haven’t slept there yet,” May said.

“I’m aware.”

“That’s tragic.”

“Forty-three minutes,” Ethan reminded him.

Jacob went to shower. May lowered herself onto the couch and stopped moving.

“Upstairs bed,” Ethan offered.

“No.”

“It’s more comfortable.”

“The couch already has me.”

“You’ll wake up sore.”

“Future May’s problem.”

Ethan brought the folded blanket from the Land Rover and covered her.

“Shoes,” he said.

May kicked them off without sitting up.

“Water.”

She opened one eye.

“You’re becoming Jacob.”

“Drink.”

She drank.

Her phone remained in one hand. She set an alarm for noon, sent Athena Back at the loft. Safe. Sleeping here, and placed it on the floor. May’s eyes stayed closed.

“Wake me at noon,” she said.

“Alarm?” Ethan asked.

“Set.”

The shower ran beyond the bathroom door. May pulled the throw blanket higher and turned toward the back of the couch. Her breathing evened before Ethan finished gathering the containers from the kitchen island. Ethan let her sleep.

Ethan packed Jacob’s diner pancakes, fruit, and bottled coffee into a bag. He added painkillers, then removed them because Jacob could choose whether he needed them. He put the container labeled with three crossed-out warnings on top. Jacob emerged at seven oh-eight wearing clean clothes and carrying the exhausted clarity of somebody held upright by schedule alone. His hair remained wet.

“Eat,” Ethan said.

“I’ll eat there.”

“Eat now.”

Jacob took half a pancake from the container and ate it while standing.

“Keys?”

Ethan held them up.

Jacob looked toward the windows. “You drove back.”

“I can drive you.”

“Then you have to come home.”

“Yes.”

“You need sleep.”

“So do you.”

“I have class.”

“Exactly.”

Jacob stared at him.

“I’m driving,” Ethan said.

Jacob surrendered without reaching five. They left May asleep on the couch beneath a note telling her where they had gone. The drive to UCLA took thirty-two minutes. Morning traffic had begun. Jacob ate the rest of the pancake and drank coffee while Ethan drove. At seven fifty-one, Ethan stopped near Jacob’s building.

“You have your phone?”

“Yes.”

“Bag?”

Jacob looked at the backpack between his feet. “No.”

“Food?”

“Yes.”

“Call when you’re done.”

Jacob opened the door, then paused.

“Worth it,” he said.

Ethan smiled.

“Go.”

Jacob went to class.

He survived.

The safety review lasted fifty-three minutes. Priya took one look at him and offered coffee. Jacob showed her the unopened bottle in his bag.

“Long night?”

He considered the complete answer.

“Dinosaurs.”

She waited.

“Cabazon.”

“Before an eight o’clock lab?”

“It made sense at the time.”

Priya smiled. “Did it?”

“No.”

The instructor began. Jacob took notes, answered when addressed, and did not volunteer for anything requiring coordination beyond speech. At nine oh-two, he texted Ethan.

Jacob: Done.

Ethan: Outside.

Of course he was. Ethan drove them home. Neither spoke much. The loft remained quiet when they returned; May had not moved except to pull the blanket over her head. Jacob carried his backpack into his room. The new mattress waited. He removed his shoes, set an alarm for two, and lay down without changing clothes.

The mattress was firmer than the air bed and softer than every borrowed couch he had used during the year away. It held his weight without lowering him toward a floor. His phone buzzed. May had sent the dinosaur group photograph to a new chat containing only the three of them.

May named the group What the Hell, Why Not.

May: Monthly tradition.

Jacob: No.

Ethan: We’ll discuss it later.

Jacob saved the photograph. The first day had lasted twenty-seven hours. After dropping Jacob at UCLA, Ethan drove the first mile home with both windows open. Cold morning air kept the scale at four. Traffic required enough attention that sleep felt impossible. He knew better than to confuse impossible with safe. He stopped at a coffee shop, walked once around the block, and reassessed before continuing.

Four.

At the loft, May remained asleep. The note had shifted beneath one hand, but the words were still visible. Ethan put water beside the couch, stored the leftovers, and set alarms for nine and nine fifteen. Jacob’s message should arrive around then. If it did not, Ethan would call. He climbed to the mezzanine without changing clothes and lay down on top of the covers. Sleep came before he plugged in his phone. The nine o’clock alarm woke him.

No message.

Ethan sat up, checked the time, and remembered that Jacob’s session ended at nine, not before. He waited three minutes. Then five.

Jacob: Done.

Ethan was already pulling on shoes when he replied. At UCLA, Jacob came out carrying the backpack on one shoulder and the bottled coffee unopened in one hand. He looked worse than he had at eight and better than Ethan expected.

“Did you learn anything?” Ethan asked.

“Where the eyewash stations are.”

“Useful.”

“How not to store three reagents I’ve never stored incorrectly.”

“Also useful.”

“Priya thinks I’m insane.”

“She sounds fine.”

Jacob stopped beside the Land Rover. “May told you?”

“You told us about her.”

“I said she was in my discussion.”

“Strong foundation.”

Jacob opened the passenger door. “Drive.” On the way home, he described the class in pieces. The safety officer who read slides verbatim. Matthew, who arrived late and blamed parking. Nora Park, who had already built a shared folder. Priya, who took one look at Jacob and asked whether he had slept.

“What did you say?”

“Dinosaurs.”

Ethan laughed hard enough that the car ahead began moving before he noticed.

“Watch the road.”

“I am.”

“It moved.”

“I see it.”

Jacob smiled toward the window. At the loft, May had migrated from the couch to the rug. She lay wrapped in the blanket with one arm under her head and the white sunglasses still on the side table. Jacob stopped inside the door.

“Is she alive?”

“She moved.”

May raised one hand without opening her eyes. “Alive.”

“Why are you on the floor?”

“The couch got hot.”

“The floor is wood.”

“Cool wood.”

Jacob stepped around her.

“Bed,” Ethan told him.

“I need to set an alarm.”

“Do it there.”

“I need to put food away.”

“Done.”

“My notes—”

“Later.”

Jacob looked for another task and found none. May opened one eye. “Still worth it?” He looked down at her. “Yeah.” She gave him a tired thumbs-up. Jacob entered his room. The mattress had expanded fully while they were gone. The fitted sheet sat tighter across it than it had across the air mattress. One pillow remained where Ethan had placed it Monday afternoon. The room smelled faintly of new foam and sawdust trapped in the partition track. He set the backpack by the desk.

His first textbook came out by habit. He placed it on the table, opened to the assigned chapter, and read the first paragraph without retaining a word. Jacob closed it. That was enough, though he would not tell anyone. He put his phone on the charger, set the alarm, and lay down.

The mattress adjusted beneath him instead of collapsing. His body registered support along shoulders, back, hips, and legs. No hardwood beneath an air pocket. No couch arm pressing into his calf. No steering wheel near his chest. A real bed behind a door he could close. Outside, May told Ethan something unintelligible. Ethan answered. The refrigerator clicked once. Jacob smiled into the pillow. His phone buzzed with the new group-chat name and May’s monthly-tradition proposal. He said no because somebody needed to.

Ethan postponed the argument. The picture showed all three beneath the dinosaur, caught in motion rather than arranged. Jacob saved it to a folder he had not possessed the day before.

Los Angeles.

Then he changed the folder name.

Home.

May woke at eleven forty-eight on the rug. For several seconds, she believed she was still in the Land Rover because the blanket remained tucked around her and traffic moved somewhere beyond the windows. Then the loft ceiling came into focus.

She sat up.

Water waited beside her. Two painkillers remained in their packet, not placed into her hand or presented as an instruction. A note on the island read:

Jacob survived class. We’re both sleeping. Food in fridge. Door locked.

May drank the water. The loft was quiet in layers. Ethan’s breathing above. A faint hum from Jacob’s room air filter. The refrigerator clicked.

May smiled.

She moved back to the couch and checked her phone. Athena had responded to the safe-arrival message with Call when awake. Harry wanted photographs. Christopher had created a list of destinations he should have been invited to. Buck had found a twenty-four-hour doughnut shop ninety miles north and labeled it for next time. May called her mother.

“I’m awake.”

“How’s your head?”

“Fine.”

“Real fine?”

“Tired. Not hungover.”

“And the boys?”

“Sleeping. Jacob went to class.”

“Of course he did.”

May looked toward the frosted doors.

“It was good, Mom.”

Athena was quiet.

“I know.”

“You do?”

“I saw the pictures.”

May opened the group photo.

“I want to do things like that again.”

“Then do them with slightly more notice.”

“That defeats the point.”

“Not every time.”

May accepted the boundary hidden inside permission.

“We’ll invite Harry.”

“Then you will absolutely give me notice.”

They ended the call. May found the postcard in her casebook. The writing crossed every available space. The diner receipt documented fatigue levels on the back. She placed both on the island beside the disposable camera. At noon, her scheduled message went to Lena.

May: Thanks for inviting me. I’d like to join Thursday if there’s still room.

Lena answered within minutes.

Lena: Absolutely. Brandon is not invited.

May laughed loudly enough that a door moved downstairs. Jacob appeared behind the frosted panels, hair flattened on one side and eyes barely open.

“Why are you awake?” he asked.

“It’s noon.”

“You were supposed to be asleep.”

He walked into the common room, took the water Ethan had left for May, and drank half before realizing.

“Sorry.”

“There’s more.”

He filled another glass.

“How was the mattress?”

Jacob looked back toward his room.

“Worth waiting for.”

“Worth missing the first night?”

He considered.

“Yes.”

May held up the phone. “Monthly tradition.”

“No.”

“Every six weeks?”

“No schedule.”

“That sounds like agreement in principle.”

Jacob opened the refrigerator and found the pancakes labeled with three versions of his name.

“It sounds like I’m going back to bed.”

“After food.”

He looked at her.

“Shared responsibility,” May said.

Jacob ate the pancakes cold at the island. Ethan came downstairs twelve minutes later, stopped when he saw both of them awake, and looked personally betrayed.

“Why?” he asked.

“Reading group,” May said.

“Pancakes,” Jacob added.

Ethan took one from the container.

“Those are mine.”

“There are three.”

“One person.”

May watched them argue and took a picture without flash.

Neither noticed.

Later, it became her favorite image from the trip: no dinosaurs, no desert, no carefully chosen destination. Only Ethan barefoot at the island, Jacob half asleep over cold pancakes, and the loft holding all three as if it had expected them. He would not have returned a single one of them. That afternoon, the disposable camera remained on the island between them.

Ethan woke first after three. Jacob followed twenty minutes later. May had moved from the rug back to the couch and fallen asleep again after eating cold pancakes. They stood over the camera.

“Same-day development?” Jacob asked.

Ethan searched. “Two places nearby.”

“We are not leaving again,” May said beneath the blanket.

Neither had known she was awake.

“Tomorrow,” Ethan suggested.

“After class,” Jacob said.

May raised one hand. “I approve.” The camera went into a drawer so nobody would accidentally expose the film. Ethan made food from what remained in the refrigerator. Eggs, spinach, cheese, toast. Jacob stood at the island long enough to help, then sat when Ethan pointed toward a chair.

“You don’t have authority here,” Jacob said.

“My house.”

The words came easily again. Jacob looked at him, then around the loft.

“Our refrigerator,” he said.

Ethan placed a plate before him. “Our refrigerator.” May opened both eyes. “That was disgustingly domestic.”

“Go back to sleep,” they said.

She smiled.

During the meal, they reconstructed what each had missed while asleep. May learned about the handoff. Jacob learned about sunrise and Maddie’s call. Ethan learned that May had promised Harry a next time.

“We need a capacity limit,” Jacob said.

“The Land Rover has seats,” May replied.

“That isn’t the only limit.”

“Maddie has a larger car.”

“Why is Maddie involved?”

“Trusted adult.”

“We are adults.”

“One has a fake ID.”

Ethan ate toast.

No plans were finalized.

That did not prevent them from discussing beaches, twenty-four-hour restaurants, roadside attractions, and how far a trip could go before becoming an overnight stay instead of an overnight return. Jacob rejected every option. He also asked which routes were safest.

May added a second note to the album:

Jacob’s no means provide more information.

He made her delete it. She moved it to the private three-person chat instead. The group chat continued through the afternoon. Christopher demanded a full itinerary. Harry wanted to know whether the dinosaurs could be climbed. Buck proposed joining the next trip and was vetoed by three separate people for reasons nobody explained. Athena requested that future spontaneous interstate travel include a destination before departure. May responded with a photograph of the paper map.

Athena: That is not helping your case.

Eddie asked whether Jacob attended class.

Jacob: Yes.

Eddie: And?

Jacob: Dinosaurs.

Eddie: I’m glad you went.

Jacob read that message twice before reacting with a heart. After food, Ethan returned to the mezzanine. May reclaimed the couch. Jacob went back to his room and stood beside the bed without lying down. His Tuesday notes remained incomplete. The forty-six pages for Wednesday remained unread. Clothes occupied one open box. The desk table Ethan had planned did not exist yet. None required action before sleep.

Jacob placed the Cabazon postcard on the existing desk. May’s writing crossed the back. He propped it against Christopher’s photograph. The room had gained evidence of a life outside survival within twenty-four hours of becoming his. He lay down.

Sleep did not arrive immediately this time. His body remained tired enough, but the day replayed in bright fragments: Ethan outside class. May emerging with the casebook. Smoke lifting from a drink. Orange sunglasses. A record-store bag. Dinosaur teeth. Wind turbines. Pie. Ethan’s hands steady on the wheel. Jacob had spent years believing good decisions were the ones he could defend afterward. This one resisted defense.

He could explain safety measures, sober driving, location sharing, food, rest stops, and the handoff. None explained why they needed to go. They had not needed to. That was why it mattered. His phone showed a final message from May.

May: Seriously. Monthly.

Jacob: Absolutely not monthly.

Ethan: Quarterly?

Jacob: Sleep.

May: Not a no.

Jacob muted the chat for eight hours. He did not leave it. The muted phone went dark beside him. Beyond the frosted doors, the loft settled into midday quiet: plumbing in another unit, a vehicle passing below, one brief creak from the mezzanine. Jacob turned onto his side. The postcard remained upright on the desk, proof enough that the night had happened. He closed his eyes and finally slept without calculating when he would need to move again. The room held still around him. For once, the next obligation could wait outside the closed door.