Soon as those words slipped out of my mouth, I wanted to look around for my mother. I sounded just like her right then. She and Daddy were always arguing about what she wanted to spend money on versus what he wanted to. Usually, she favored business while he fought for pleasure. Rasul looked crushed that his effort to impress me had failed. This wasn’t the foot I was trying to start us off on. The time to start relaxing was now. I didn’t need to put stress on myself, especially being pregnant and with a long, strange trip ahead of me. I had no idea how long this would take. There were a couple of maps wrinkled in the backseat, letting me know Rasul had pored long and hard over them. What was the point of me leaving to start fresh if I was going to take a worrying head with me? I relaxed and leaned back as Rasul made it down Halsted to get to 57 South, which would soon lead us to 80 East; I knew from Hakim that from there it was a straight shot east to New York City. All I needed was my man like Hakim at the wheel and gas money for a thousand miles. And I had both.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I guess you got it covered then.”

“I got you faded for the car and gas,” he said, “but not for the eats and shit. How much you got left?”

“Oh, we straight,” I said, not wanting to be totally honest just in case I wanted to keep a little put away for myself.

I hadn’t spent much of anything while living in the shelter. From the cabby, Hakim, and Jewel I had saved up almost six hundred dollars. I estimated that should last a good couple of weeks in New York, until I got a job at Micky D’s or somewhere. Rasul looked at me for the first time since he had gotten into the car.

“You got enough for a hotel?”

“Why we gotta stop? Shoot, I can take over when you get tired; we need to be saving that money …”

“All your ass do is sleep. How you gonna take over shit? And I don’t know how you drive.”

“My daddy taught me how to drive!” I shouted, indignant. “I bet I got behind the wheel before you did.”

This wasn’t going well. I had read in one of Jewel’s women’s magazines that you knew you had your soulmate if you could survive a road trip together. We hadn’t even made it out of Chicago’s city limits.

“Well, we’ll talk about all that later but right now I gotta pay attention to get us out of Chi.” He gave me the silent treatment for a couple minutes before suddenly saying, “I was thinking we could get a hotel tonight. You know, do something romantic.”