“You’re pissed off at me,” Kyle unclamped his teeth and spoke at me out of the side of his mouth.

“I’m not. It’s fine. I’m just tired, and hungry.”

It’s true, I was extremely tired. It was nearly 2 AM and I had been up since six in-the-morning when I got up to get ready for work. However, I was mostly pissed because of a common Kyle behavior that he was exhibiting that I internally referred to as the “Kyle trap.” In this trap, he would do something that would assuredly, and justifiably, get under my skin and then act as if he was completely mystified as to why I was upset so it would seem like I was being the irrational bad guy.

This time, Kyle made us stay in town to watch the Giants’ World Series game at his favorite bar even though he knew that we had to make it to New York by Monday morning and that waiting till the end of the game would make it so we could barely stop along the way to even take a piss if we had to. He didn’t care. It wasn’t him that had to be at his first day of a new job in Manhattan bright and early Monday morning.

“Well, the good news is that I know there is one of those little America’s coming up here in just a few miles,” Kyle interrupted my self-loathing. “We can stop there and get some food, and some sleep.”

“That sounds good,” I made sure to perk my voice up an octave or two.

Fuck, I could just not stay mad at him.

After a few more minutes of silence, we were pulling into a parking lot that was the size of a football field bathed in towering streetlights that reminded me of the palm trees that we were leaving behind in California. Stepping out into the frigid winds of the meadow of dark paved asphalt also served a bitter reminder that we were leaving the comfort of reasonably warm October nights behind. A chilling gust swept in and seemed to go right up my shirt like an overzealous high school boy after just a few moments of making out.