And somewhere in the middle of it all, I caught Rachel watching me with this thoughtful expression. Not the look I’m used to seeing on women’s faces, which lands right around my center of gravity, with a brief trip up only to make sure there’s a face attached to the rest of me.

Rachel’s eyes on my face feel like approval in its purest form. As if everything she said out loud, selling my idea, is truth.

Like I said, it’s been a long time since anyone looked at me that way.

It feels good, and a little scary.

I don’t want it to end.

“We’re going for a picnic,” I announce. I pull the truck out and point us toward the wilderness.

“Wait!” she says. “We can’t just go for a picnic. I’m not ready for a picnic. I would have dressed differently.”

“You’re dressed perfectly.” My gaze falls to her legs, smooth and warm brown beneath the mid-thigh hem of her sundress. They’re slightly paler inside, and my fingertips desperately want to explore that softness.

“And I would have made sandwiches! Or, well, I would have gotten my mom to make Cuban sandwiches.” She wrinkles her nose. “And we don’t have a blanket. Or water bottles.”

I frown. “Rachel, baby. We don’t need a plan to have a picnic.”

“I need a plan to have a picnic.”

“Do you trust me?”

There’s a long silence. My heart pounds. Then she says, “Yeah. I do.”

We pass out of the business district and onto Highway 25. We drive for a while in silence, before she asks, “Where are we going?”

I’m torn between laughing and wanting to reassure her. “I don’t know,” I tell her, to see how she reacts.

She slumps a little in her seat. “How will we know when we’re there?”

Now I do laugh. “I’ll know.”

“Doesn’t that scare you at all?”

I shake my head. Plenty of things scare me, but driving without a map isn’t one of them.

We continue in silence, the high desert rolling out on either side of us, brown and sage green.

“Rach?” I ask her.

“Mmm-hmm?”

“Do you always have a plan?”

“Yeah.” She’s quiet for a sec, then says, “I even had a life plan. Until I got triple whammied.”

“Life plan?” I ask. Then, “Triple whammied?” Although I think I know what she means by that.

She makes another hmming noise. “Life plan.” She ticks it off on her fingers: “One, a four-oh in high school, two, college, three, grad school, four, great apartment, five, the library job of my dreams, six, awesome boyfriend, seven, meet the parents, eight, get engaged, nine, get married, ten, have two-point-five kids, eleven, live happily ever after.”