The airport is all the way in Tampa. About sixty miles. I measure on the map with a strand of my hair before we leave. He gets in the car while I put the key back in the lockbox. He doesn’t look at me when I get in the driver’s seat. He doesn’t play his mixtapes. Road noise, breathing. He pretends to read the owner’s manual for my car, flipping pages faster than the words could register. Then he just looks out the window, and that’s worse. Head turned away from me like he’s trying to pretend I don’t exist.

Finally, finally, he says, “It’s this exit coming up. Thirty-nine.”

I nod and change lanes. “What time is your flight?” I ask.

“Five fifteen.”

It’s a quarter to noon.

“Do you want to stop? Get something to eat?”

“No,” he says. And nothing more.

“It’s a long time to wait,” I say when the silence starts to get to me.

“I just want to go.” He heaves a disgusted sigh.

I feel wrong. Dirty. Less than. Angry. “How is staying at that house so different from stealing your dad’s credit card?”

“I didn’t steal it!” he yells. “He gave it to me. He’s my dad. You broke into someone’s house. You made me a thief and I didn’t even know it.”

“We didn’t take anything,” I say. “We just used—”

“Whatever you have to tell yourself to sleep at night.”

I follow the signs to the airport. The things I want to explain are thin and wispy. Too delicate for words. His life is so simple and mine is full of knots. He’ll fly home and forget me. Pretend this didn’t happen. Maybe pull it out as a drinking story when he wants someone to think he has a wild side. One time he took a trip without a plan. One time he broke into a house with a crazy girl. But I don’t think he’ll let himself believe it was the time he followed his heart. He won’t let me matter that much.

I stop at the curb for departing flights.

“Bye,” he mumbles, getting out of the car without looking at me.

The door slams. I drive. I cry. There’s no end in sight. No gigs to get to in time. No one waiting for me. Nobody missing me. Nothing. I could disappear completely and no one would even notice.

It gets harder and harder to follow the road. My ribs ache from fighting sobs. My eyes can’t stand the sun.

I stop at a pay phone and dump all the change from the bottom of my bag into the slot. It’s been way too long since I called. A year. Maybe more. I probably have no business calling at all.