“And he was nice. For a while. Then it started to get near dark and I started to wonder what we were going to do. He had told me that he was going to drive me back home before dinner because he needed to stop by the diner anyways, but he told me that his plans had changed and we were going to have dinner there instead and he poured some wine. I felt so sophisticated. People don’t remember in the 60s, people didn’t really drink wine. I had never even seen it in-person and I just went with it. I drank a couple of glasses and the next thing you know, I felt the owner’s hand on my leg…”

“Hey.”

I had never been happier to hear Kyle’s voice. He strolled up to the table with the old timer who had greeted us earlier behind him wearing a huge smile.

“Sorry about that, got to chatting with Don here in the bathroom about the area and we lost track of time.”

Kyle shot me a smile just as big as the one that Don was beaming and the waitress hurried to her feet looking rather embarrassed while quietly apologizing.

The rest of our experience in there was fast and easy. We had about 30 seconds of friendly small talk with Don and then he left. The waitress took our order – two pancake plates. Kyle and I talked about the logistics of our drive from there. We ate, paid in cash so we could get the hell out of there as soon as possible, and went out to our car.

Everything would change when we got to the car.

I had never felt the kind of chill that wrapped over me when we walked up to Kyle’s dirty white RAV4 to see every single door wide open.

“What the fuck?” the words just fell out of my already-open mouth and we sprinted the rest of the way to the car.

Kyle got there first and immediately started spouting assurances.

“Everything’s here. They didn’t take anything.”

I followed Kyle’s lead of rifling through the inside of the SUV that was jammed packed with his belongings and quickly conceded that he was right until I looked in the cup holder of the center console where my brand new iPhone had been.

“You gotta be fucking kidding me,” I screamed and smashed my hand upon the hard plastic of the center console, effectively tearing up my soft knuckles.

“They just took your phone?”

“Yeah, I’m sure they knew that your shit isn’t worth anything,” I fired back. “How the fuck are we even going to get there now without navigation?”

I went on with the thought of Kyle’s navigationless, ancient flip phone searing into my soul. We were going to get fucking lost in America because he thought it was cool to have a phone from 2006 because he didn’t need all of the fancy bells and whistles of a smartphone.

Kyle shook his head and jumped into the driver’s seat and I collapsed into the passenger’s seat like a lumpy bag of bones. I felt his arm reach over across the console and fall limply upon my back and then softly begin to pet.

“I’m sorry,” Kyle’s voice lifted over the sound of the roaring semi engines that provided the score of the night and my spirit came up off the canvas.

“It’s okay,” I replied, effectively fighting off tears. “Let’s just get the fuck out of this place.”