She is standing on the side of the highway slicing into an apple when the horn blast from a passing eighteen-wheeler makes her jump. Jerking the knife, the blade cuts into the skin just below her thumb opening a deep gash.

He is leaning against his backpack tightening the laces on his boots and doesn’t notice the knife or apple fall to the ground at her feet, but her sudden sharp intake of breath makes him look up. At the sight of blood dripping from her hand, he stands, pulling the sweat-stained balaclava from his head, and instinctively presses it into her wound.

“Don’t,” she says. “That’s disgusting.” But he waves her away. Her eyes sting, and she grimaces against the pressure.

His hair sticks to the side of his head just above his ears, and he loosens his grip to peek under the cloth before clamping down again, looking into her eyes.

“Tell me a story,” he says.

“No,” she says, annoyed. She tries to pull away from him, but his grip is strong. “Let go. I can handle it.”

“Please,” he says. “Just one story. It’ll take your mind off.”

She squints at the pain. “Which story?” she asks, and he smiles at her, and the memory of the man flashes in her mind; his graying stubble, his dimpled grin. She’d crumpled to the floor when they told her. It happened in an instant, they said. He hadn’t suffered. But all she heard was the roar of crashing waves in the silence that followed. He hadn’t suffered. How could they really be sure? Isn’t that just a thing that people say?

“This one,” he says, raising his free hand. “Tell me this story.”

She blinks hard, returning his smile. “That’s your story,” she says.

“I know, but I like the way you tell it.”

They are standing on the side of the road waiting for a bus to take them back to town, back to civilization, hot showers, and cold beer. Cars and trucks rip past them, and the gusting wind rattles through their salt-stained clothes. She brushes a strand of hair back from her face and looks at him. He smiles at her the way the man always did.

“Fine,” she says, shaking her head. “You were what, eight years old?”

“Seven,” he says, pushing down the thick wool hiking sock to show her the pale thin line of a scar cutting across his shin. “I got this one when I was eight.”

“Are you sure,” she asks. She stares at his sun-burned face, and the dirt from two weeks wandering through the wilderness, following a trail they all took together so many years ago. She didn’t want to come. It was a stupid idea, reckless even. She was too old for this. She told him as much when he landed on her doorstep with two backpacks and his weatherworn map.

“We need this,” he’d said. “Consider it his deathbed tour.”

She’d laughed at that, albeit through the tears, because isn’t that exactly what the man would have called it? She was just glad he hadn’t made t-shirts.

But now, bleeding on the side of the road, with the two weeks at an end, the world is still here, waiting to swallow her back up. She shakes her head. Two weeks isn’t enough.

A rusted old jeep rumbles by, and she flinches.

“Yes,” he says, shaking her from her memory. “I’m sure. I was seven when I got this one,” he says, raising his hand again.

She grabs it with her free hand between his thumb and forefinger, and touches the thick scar, marveling at how hard it is. “Seven? You’re sure?”

“Sure,” he says, pulling his hand back.

“That would have made me —”

“Twenty-seven,” he says.

“Twenty-seven,” she repeats, almost nostalgic now. “I was a baby.”

“I’m twenty-seven,” he says, raising his shoulders a bit.

“I know,” she says. “Still a baby.”

He raises an eyebrow, and she ignores it.

“I didn’t want you to go,” she says. “Back then, you know? He made me.”

“He was like that.”

“He was like that,” she says, nodding, “but you wanted to go alone. An adventure, you’d said. Be the lonesome traveler.”

“Just the start, I guess," he says, gesturing to their surroundings. Clouds run across the sky, settling around the mountains in the distance.

"Well, I was against it.”

“Adamantly, as I recall.”

“And I was right, wasn’t I?”

He doesn’t answer. Instead, he shakes his head and smiles.

“I was,” she says. “And you know it.”

“I clearly survived,” he says.

“Just barely.” She stares out across the horizon. Dusk is creeping up on them, and a line of amber streetlights blinks to life, mixing with the setting sun and running the length of the highway, twinkling out into the distance.

“So, you forbade it,” he continues.

She shakes away her thoughts. “Of course, I did, but he was having none of it. ‘It’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘Let the boy wander,’ he said. ‘You remember that feeling, Sweet? Being miles away?’”

“It was only a mile,” he says.

“But you were six,” she says.

“Seven.”

“I think you’re wrong about that.”

“I’m not,” he says. “And a mile is nothing. Just down the street.”

“It didn’t feel like nothing.”

“No,” he says, finally agreeing with her. “It didn’t. Might as well have been going to Mars.”

“Exactly.”.

“But still,” he says. “It was just a mile. You know how kids think. Nothing could ever happen because nothing’s going to happen.”

“But something did happen.”

He shakes his head. “Of course, it did.”

“Just like I knew it could,” she says, with a satisfied smile.

“Yes. Yes. I know.”

“I said no, but you were dead set, and so was he." She tries to lift the rag from his hand, but he shoos it away. “I was going to follow you,” she says. “Did I ever tell you that? I was in the middle of putting on my shoes, but he came in and gave me that look.”

“Ah yes. The eyebrows.” He arches his own eyebrows up and down comically, and she laughs.

“The infamous eyebrows,” she says. “He was standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame in that way he always did, shaking his head at me, holding my other shoe in his hand, saying, ‘Going somewhere, Sweet?’ And I said, ‘Give me my shoe,’ but he wouldn’t.”

“And he put it on the fridge,” he says, laughing.

“It wasn’t funny.” She huffs slightly. “He knew I couldn’t reach.”

“And you yelled at him.”

“I didn’t yell, but I was stern, the way I had to be with him sometimes. Balled my fists, saying, ‘Give me my shoe,’ but he just laughed.”

“Not mean though, right?”

“No. No. Not mean. His laugh was never mean. He was like a child, he was, so full of...I don’t know what.”

They both stare out at the horizon as lightning streaks across the sky.

“He cut through everything,” he says.

“Yes,” she says. “He did.” After a few seconds, the rumble of thunder crashes. The clouds above them seem to tumble, rolling pink into purple, purple into black. Looking for a fight.

“He loved it out here,” he says, but she shakes her head, not wanting to think about it.

Instead, she continues. “So, I’m standing there, fists clenched, getting redder by the minute, and he reaches down, and he did what he always did whenever I was getting my temper up.”

“What’s that?”

“He kissed me.” She laughs softly. Her cheeks turn pink, and she touches a hand to them, closing her eyes, trying not to smile, or cry. She doesn’t know which. “Like that was an okay thing to do. Like that was just the right time to do it.”

“Was it the right time?”

She nods. “It was.” She opens her eyes and smiles. “He was always right on time, your dad.”

“He was, wasn’t he?”

She nods and lightning crashes again, followed more closely by a rumble of thunder. He looks down at the bloody rag covering her hand, lifts it, and puts it back. “A little bit longer,” he says. “And then we should probably get moving.”

“You get that from him, you know?”

“What?”

“You know,” she says, motioning her good hand at him. “All of it.”

“Not all of it,” he says. “Some of it, maybe, but there’s other parts.”

“Other parts?”

He motions his free hand to her. “Other parts.”

“Maybe,” she says.

He squeezes her hand, and she can feel his heart pumping there, twenty-seven years of blood blazing past arteries, and valves, and slamming into her. It hurts. This cut. This story. Cars continue to rip past them.

“Then what happened?” he asks.

“He took me to bed,” she says. “He was always taking me to bed. Every chance he got.”

“Well, no wonder,” he says. “You are very beautiful.”

She shakes her head. “Not anymore.”

“No,” he says. “Still.”

“Anyway. I don’t know how long it was. Fifteen minutes, an hour. He was like that with time, stretching it out and then cutting it short. Sometimes it felt like I didn’t know where or when I was.” Tears well and settle in the corners of her eyes, but she blinks them away. “But then it ended. With a phone call.”

He looks up at her wearing a sad smile. “But not that time. That time it was me.”

“Yes. You. Crying. Bleeding, apparently.”

“Profusely.”

“Nine stitches worth.”

“It felt like more.”

“It would. Six years old, as you were.”

“Seven.”

“Right. Seven. Anyway, we ran over to get you. I was barefoot, running.”

“Shoe still on the fridge?”

“Exactly. And you were there, with this face.” She reaches out to touch his cheek. “This sad, little face, and he was smiling at you. And you looked at him, and you smiled too, like you had to. Like you had no other choice. You were his brave boy, stopping the bleeding with one of your socks.”

“And he said, ‘What do you have there, big man?'”

“Bloody sock, looks like,” she says, imitating a gravelly drawl. “And you were saying sorry, and that I was right, that you shouldn’t have gone alone, and that you would never do it again, not ever.”

“But he wouldn’t hear it,” he says.

“Nope. He just kept asking how you did it. And you told him about the dog, and the fence, and how your shoe slipped, catching and cutting yourself at the same time. And he was so proud of you, bucking up like you did. Pulling off your sock, wrapping it tight before walking to the lady’s house and asking to use the phone.”

“Said it took a man to do that,” he says.

“Indeed. You were his big man.”

He lifts the bloody rag. “Looks like it’s stopped.”

“Looks like,” she says. “Too bad I didn’t bring a first aid kit.”

“Too bad,” he says, reaching into his pack and producing a plastic bag of triple antibiotic and some bandages. Squeezing some goo onto her cut, he peels the adhesive strips from one, and a behemoth beast of an RV blasts by them, pulling at their clothes, and snatching the thin strips of packaging in its wake.

“Think we’ll beat the rain?” he asks.

“Not if this bus doesn’t come,” she says.

“Soon,” he says. “I’ve got a feeling.” Then he kisses her hand over the Band-Aid and lets go.

She smiles at this, inspecting his work, and another batch of lightning races across the sky. He reaches into his pack and pulls out another apple, handing it to her, and a crack of thunder echoes in the distance. She bends to pick up the knife lying at her feet, wiping it on her pants, before cutting into the apple’s thick, waxy skin. Cars rip by them, and she smiles when the first drops of rain begin to fall.