The inside of his car is warmer than I expected. The door closes behind me and the sound of the rain cuts in half and suddenly I can hear myself breathing. Water is running off me onto everything — the seat, the floor mat, the dashboard where my elbow drips. The bag goes on my lap and I hold it there with both arms.
He puts the car in drive before I've got my seatbelt on. Pulls out of the gas station lot and onto the road and the wipers are going full speed and still losing.
My shirt is second skin at this point. The cold from the vent isn't helping — my nipples are hard and visible through the wet fabric and I'm pressing the bag against my chest like a shield but it's not covering enough.
He reaches into the back seat. His arm brushes past me and I press myself against the door to make room. He grabs something and drops it on my lap without looking at me.
A brown hoodie.
I don't argue. I pull it over my head with one arm while keeping the other on the bag and it swallows me. Sleeves past my hands. Hem almost at my thighs. It's warm in the way that means someone wore it recently.
The windshield is useless. Rain is coming down so hard the wipers can't keep up and everything beyond the glass is just shapes and light bleeding together. He drives for about two minutes before he pulls off the road into a parking lot — some closed business, dark windows, empty. He puts the car in park and leaves the engine running.
We sit there.
My teeth are chattering. I'm clenching my jaw trying to stop it and it's making it worse. The sound of it fills the car between the rain and the low music and I want to disappear.
I shift my legs to get comfortable and my knee hits the center console. It opens. A strip of condoms slides out onto my side. Gold wrapper. I pick them up and put them back in the compartment and close it. He doesn't look at me,I don't look at him either
His music is still playing low — something I actually recognize. Nadia was a musicaholic and it was rubbing off on me, but the surprising thing was his taste in music. This was the last thing I expected to hear in this car from this man.
"I know this song," I say because I physically cannot sit in silence anymore.
Nothing.
"It's on my roommate's playlist."
Nothing.
"She plays it every morning when she's—"
"Do you ever stop talking?"
I close my mouth. Open it again. "Do you ever start?"
I pull his hoodie sleeves over my hands and tuck my knees up on the seat. My wet shoes are probably ruining his floor mat. I don't care anymore. I'm cold and tired.
With nothing else to do I start looking around. The interior is clean. Not just tidy but maintained. The leather on the dash isn't cracked. The stitching on the seats is tight. There's no trash anywhere, no air freshener hanging from the mirror, nothing personal except a small keychain on the ignition I can't see properly in the dark. The car feels looked after in a way that tells me more about him than any conversation would.
"Is this a Challenger?" I ask.
He looks at me for the first time since I got in this car. He turns his head and looks at me like I just said something offensive.
"A Challenger."
"Yeah. The — it looks like—"
"This is a '69 Mustang."
"Okay. They look similar."
"They look nothing alike."
"They're both old and loud. That's similar."
He stares at me. I can't tell if he wants to push me out of the car or if something else is happening on his face because it's dark and the rain is loud and his expression is hard to read on a good day let alone in a dim parking lot at ten thirty on a Monday night.
"A Challenger," he says again. Like he's tasting something rotten.
"I said okay. I was wrong. It's a Mustang."
"A '69 Mustang. There's a difference between a Mustang and a '69 Mustang."
"Is there?"
"Is there." He says it flat. Not a question. More like he's repeating it to confirm that I actually said that. His hand goes to the steering wheel and he grips it once. "The engine in this car is a 351 Windsor V8. Ford stopped making this block in '74. The body style is a SportsRoof fastback that they only ran for three years. This car has a four-speed manual transmission. A Challenger is a Dodge. This is a Ford. They are not similar. They don't look alike. They don't sound alike. They are completely different vehicles."
He said more words in the last thirty seconds than he's said to me in the entire time I've known he exists.
"You're really mad about this," I say.
"I'm not mad."
"Your hand is choking the steering wheel."
He looks down at his grip. Loosens it. Puts his hand on his thigh instead. The rain hammers the roof and I'm trying very hard not to smile because this is the most human I've ever seen Owen Calloway. Annoyed about a car. Genuinely bothered that I called his '69 Mustang a Challenger. Three minutes ago he was a wall. Now he's defending his vehicle like I insulted his mother.
"So what's the difference between a Mustang and a '69 Mustang?" I ask.
"You don't actually care."
"I'm stuck in a parking lot in a rainstorm. I've got time."
He doesn't answer right away. The rain fills the space. His music shifts to the next track — something slower, someone's voice layered over a beat that vibrates through the seat under me.
"The '69 was the last year before they started shrinking them down," he says. Not to me exactly. More to the windshield. "Ford got scared of the insurance companies and the emissions regulations coming in and they started making them smaller and weaker every year after. This was the last version that didn't apologize for what it was."
I look at the dashboard. At the way his hand sits on the gear shift.
"How long have you had it?" I ask.
"Three years. Rebuilt the engine myself."
"Yourself?"
"What, you think I paid someone?"
"I think most people would."
"Most people don't know what they're driving."
He says it without arrogance. Just fact. The way you'd say the sky is blue or the rain is wet.
The rain starts easing. The shapes beyond the windshield turn back into buildings and streetlights and parked cars. He watches it for a minute, checking the visibility, and then puts the car in drive and pulls out of the lot.
"What's in the bag?" he asks. Eyes on the road.
"A birthday gift. For Ethan."
He glances at my lap. At the bag I've been holding against my body this entire time. The only dry thing in his car.
He doesn't say anything else. We ride the rest of the way with his music playing and the rain thinning. I watch streetlights pass through the wet window and the leather seat is warm underneath me.
He pulls up to my dorm. The rain has softened to something steady but manageable. I can see the lobby through the glass doors, lit up and empty.
"Thank you," I say. "For coming to get me. And for the hoodie. And for the car history lesson."
He's looking at the steering wheel.
"How do I get this back to you?" I ask, pointing at the hoodie.
The car revs once. Just enough that I understand the conversation is over.
RUDE.
I grab the bag. Open the door. Step out into the rain. Close the door behind me and the car pulls off before I've taken two steps, taillights cutting through the wet dark, that engine,fading until it's just me and the rain.
I walk inside. The bag is dry. I'm not. The elevator mirror shows me exactly what I expected — ruined hair, smudged makeup, shirt clinging to everything.
My phone is dead. My feet hurt. My shirt is see-through. And I just learned more about a 1969 Ford Mustang SportsRoof fastback than I ever planned to know in my entire life.
I step out of the elevator, walk to my room, and realize I'm smiling.
I don't know why.
Yes I do.
No I don't.
I open the door. Nadia and Kira are asleep. I shower with the lights off and climb into bed with my hair still wet on the pillow.