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"I heard they were doing a classic series this spring."

"I haven't been to this drive-in since I was fifteen years old." She was looking at the screen, at the first stars coming out above it, at the whole improbable beautiful thing of it. "His name was Alvin, and I thought he was a dream. It turned out he was an octopus, and I had to climb out my window to get away from him.”

I glanced over at her to see if she was joking, and saw that she wasn’t. “Are you okay being here?”

“With you? Yes. As long as we can buy all the popcorn and candy they have.”

I found a spot, pulled in, and parked. They were showing previews, so we had plenty of time to go to the snack bar and load up on things that were bad for us. We wandered back to the car just as the last preview was finishing.

“Hurry up,” Zoe called out.

We hustled to my truck, and she opened up the door to the backseat. I raised my eyebrow.

“Well, we need to be able to cuddle,” she explained. “We can’t do that with the console between us.”

“What happens if I turn out to have eight arms?”

“I’ve been with you in this backseat before. I trust you with my life.”

God, she humbled me.

I hooked up the speaker, then got in on the other side, and put my arm around her and she snuggled close. Then there it was, that first low note, those first three seconds of silence before the orchestra swelled, before the words began to crawl up the screen in that yellow cascade that had been making people lean forward in their seats for over fifty years.

She settled in even closer against my side like she'd been doing it a long time, and the music filled the cab of my truck, and the stars came out over the mountains one by one, and above us on that giant white screen, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, a small rebel ship raced across the darkness with everything on the line.

It felt, I thought, like exactly the right place to be.

Chapter Twenty-Two

"Beckett, did you notice that the whole evil empire was screwed over by some crappy architect's design flaw?"

I looked over to see how Adam was taking my teasing as we got closer to my house.

"In fairness, that was the best possible outcome for poor quality control in the history of construction."

I barked out a laugh. He just kept getting better and better. And he didn't like Milk Duds either. If he had, that would have been a deal breaker.

He pulled into my driveway and cut the engine, and for a moment we just sat there in the quiet dark with the leftover warmth of the evening still between us. The kind of quiet that didn't need filling.

"Would you like to come in?" I asked. "There’s the same beverages on offer as the last time, coffee, hot chocolate, juice boxes⁠—"

"Water is all that I can handle after all we ate at the drive-in."

“Well, come do the gentlemanly thing and help me out of the truck, so we can get inside and I can get you your water.”

“Sounds like a good plan,” he said as he opened his door.

As soon as we were in my house, I turned on the two lamps in the living room, the tall one by the bookshelf and the small one on the side table.

“I’ll be right back with the water,” I promised. Adam wandered over to my bookshelf which was less a bookshelf and more a catch-all of knick-knacks and photos. He seemed interested so I left him to it, as I headed for the kitchen.

I stood at the counter for a moment with my hands flat on the cool surface, just breathing. The evening had been… it had been a lot. The overlook and the mountains going purple and gold. Little Grandma's fried chicken on a tailgate with a man who handed over his cornbread before I even had to look at it sideways. The drive-in, the cuddling, the candy and the slow open mouth kisses.

I grabbed two bottles of water from the fridge and went back out.

He was looking at the shelf of photos. I knew which ones were there without looking. My bet was on him mentioning the one with Olivia, Zarek, and Chloe. He surprised me when he picked up the one with me and all my sisters and Drake.

"Is this all of you?"