Nowhere, America

“What did you wish for when you were a kid? Like, when you threw a coin into a fountain?” I ask him, his face half-smiling as he stirs his chocolate milkshake in the plastic-lined diner.

“Oh, I don’t know, dude. Probably for school to start so I could see my friends again, or for the Sox to win a World Series,” he says. “What about you?”

I open my mouth to talk, then close it. My car is outside, red paint crusting at the edges, concrete road beyond it and rolling corn fields past that, the blue summer sky stretching out to infinity. I want to tell him that I wished for this, that I wished to be here, with him, in this shitty diner in Nowhere, America, his sunburnt face staring back at mine, fresh freckles trailing down his arms, brown and soft and new.

“Probably ice cream,” I say instead, and he laughs, and my chest goes warm as his crow’s feet scrunch up.

“Well, that makes sense, you do have a weak spot for it.” He nods at the empty milkshake in front of me, then pushes his half-finished one towards me. “Here.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I don’t like chocolate that much anyway.”

I shrug, and pull the glass towards me, and drink. He closes his eyes and lets the sun fall across his face as it dips, slowly, into sunset. I focus on the milkshake, on the red checkerboard floors littered with scuff marks, on the waitress as she pours herself a cup of coffee, on him, his hair glittering in the golden light.

“You ready?” I ask, pulling a twenty out of my wallet and putting it on the table.

“Sure,” he says, and gets up, setting a five on top of my twenty. He holds the door open for me as we leave, arm lingering out behind him. We walk into the parking lot, hot concrete under our shoes. He gets in the car first, in the passenger seat, and, for a moment, I am left alone, his face obscured by the glare of the sun. I look out towards the horizon, vast and blue, then sigh, and look down, and get in the car.