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It would be a day’s drive, if they didn’t make any stops.
If being the key word.
Never mind that Ben doesn’t think he can drive from Derry to Omaha straight now, not after —
Fuck.
No, he really cannot.
Also, why would they even do that? Beverly hasn’t asked for it and certainly the last days have been eventful enough that maybe they actually could do with some rest.
He drives out of Derry.
They say nothing until he’s driven past Augusta. It’s not even two in the afternoon, his shirt is sticking to his skin because he’s sweating so much and his stomach feels like he just went back to being twelve and had penned that poem for her so, so carefully.
(He did try writing poetry after. Nothing ever quite felt right like the one he wrote for her.)
“I think I should find a motel,” he says, abruptly.
“I think we should find a motel,” Beverly says at the same time.
He laughs, he has to, and she does as well, her cheeks blushing a paler red than her hair.
“Right,” he says. “Right. The first that doesn’t look like we’ll find spiders on the ceiling.”
Suddenly, he realizes —
Shit.
Shit, he could have said anything else —
“It’s all right,” she breathes, looking out of the window, “I wasn’t looking forward to any of those, either.”
Ben nods, once, twice. Then he starts looking at the signs. The first two motels they pass look exactly like the kind of place where you wish you’d find only spiders as a surprise gift in the bedroom, and the rates absolutely reflect it, so he drives ahead. The others have even lower rates, and so he drives forward. Finally, some half hour before Portland, he finds one that charges seventy bucks per night for a single, which… should at least mean clean sheets and clean room. He takes the exit after Bev nods her agreement, parks the car, hands over his credit card and pays for a double.
He’s nowhere near sure that he’s not dreaming the entire exchange.
He takes the keys and Bev is already behind him — she follows him to room nineteen, which seems clean, is devoid of spiders and presumably of mice, then kicks off her shoes and lays down on the bed.
She’s asleep a second later.
Ben is not surprised at all, not with how tired he is also feeling. He kicks off his own shoes, lays down on the bed, reaches for her hand, his fingers wrapping around hers, and then he’s out.
***
He wakes up at what seems like sundown — there’s blood-red light coming in from the window, and Bev’s hair doesn’t look like winter fire, bathed in it. It looks like it’ll burn his hands if he touches it, but he can’t care less right now and so he does, fingertips brushing over the roots on her forehead, and she blinks her eyes open, staring right at him.
“Hey,” she says, and his throat feels dry and burning
(same as his heart)
so he leans forward and kisses her instead of saying anything, and she kisses back and they don’t do anything else for the next hour.
When he was a teenager, he still hadn’t been — the kind of boy girls wanted to french for the whole afternoon.
He doesn’t know how it was for her.
But from the way her hands grasp at his back, he thinks she hasn’t kissed someone for hours for the sake of it either.
***
They spend the night doing either that or sleeping. They don’t eat anything — the only nearby place is a diner on the other side of the road that smells like someone died behind it and neither of them can handle that right now.
The next morning, they’re back in the Cadillac. He drives into New Hampshire and finds a decent diner on the side of the road.
He buys pancakes for the both of them. Bev gets them with three different toppings and fresh fruit and eats like she hasn’t for the entire previous month.
When he eats his own, he feels like he hasn’t eaten for the entire previous month.
***
Before leaving, he asks the waitress if he can make a call.
He’s directed to a payphone just outside the diner.
Bill’s number rings thrice before Bill picks up.
“It’s Ben,” he says. “How are things?”
“Mike said I can bring Audra to his place,” Bill replies. “He’s doing well. She’s — really not.”
“I’m sorry,” Ben says, and he means it. He hopes Bill can hear it. “Richie?”
“Flying out to California soon,” Bill says. “Said he’d call or write, but you should probably ask Mike for his number. Just in case. And the two of you…? Still going to Nebraska?”
“Yeah,” he nods. “We can stop in Chicago on the way. For the missing person file, you know.”
“Sounds like the s-smartest option,” Bill says, and Ben can see him nodding. “F-fuck.”
“That still happening?”
“S-sometimes,” Bill sighs. “I hope we don’t forget it, this time ‘round.”
“Me, too,” Ben says. “I’ll, uh, I’ll give you a call soon.”
“N-not going anywhere,” Bill says. “Drive safely.”
“Will do,” he agrees, even if it sounds… well.
After what they passed, dying because of a car crash would be really fucking preposterous, wouldn’t it?
***
“I should have gotten it since the beginning,” Bev says all of a sudden a minute after they’re past the New York border.
“Sorry?”
“That you wrote that poem,” Bev smiles, and when her hand covers his on the gear shift, he almost loses control of the wheel — good thing the road was empty. Then again, it’s five in the morning — neither of them felt like sleeping. Who else would be around now?
“I hardly signed it, didn’t I?” It’s not like he’s angry that she didn’t figure it out earlier. He could barely believe he wrote the thing in the first place, and he never expected her to — to.
And yet.
And yet —
“Still wish I had,” she says quietly. “You remember everything still, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Ben nods. “Maybe some details faded, but — I do.”
“Good. I don’t — I don’t want to forget,” she says. “Not again.”
“Maybe we won’t if we don’t let it.”
She says nothing for a while, her hand still on his.
“Did Bill say where —“
“Mike’s in Derry for a few days still. But can you blame him for wanting to leave?”
“Hell, no,” she agrees at once.
“Bill’s staying at his place to see if his wife gets any better. He said Richie was flying off to California soon.”
“I could give him a call in a few days, maybe?” She sounds tentative. As if some part of her is expecting him to categorically forbid it.
“Sure,” he says. “You call him while I call Mike. Or Bill. Or both. Someone has to keep contacts now, right?”
“Right,” she answers, her mouth curled up in a smile.
She sounds relieved.
Ben isn’t really sad that her husband is dead, and good fucking riddance to him.
***
He finds a decent Holiday Inn outside Syracuse that evening — he took it slow and they ate at a nice restaurant along the highway that wasn’t a shit diner. She laughed all the time while they talked and they didn’t mention Derry once.
“I could get used to that,” she had said as they left the restaurant.
“What if I like that prospect very much?” He had blurted, and she had smiled a bit wider.
“You know,” he tells her as they put away their bags, “I could afford better than this. I just figured we should lay low. But —”
“What,” she interrupts him, “you’re getting cold feet now?”
“No,” he replies at once, “I — I wrote you that poem decades ago, Bev. I think I’m not.”
“Then I don’t think the lack of silken sheets will be a problem,” she smiles, and fuck that but he can’t — he steps forward and kisses her, arms going around her waist and lifting her up a tiny bit like he had dreamed of doing when they were young and like he had dreamed of doing with the few other girls he thinks he has liked in his life, but all of them —
Now he knows that all of them were a stand-in, and he’s suddenly glad it never worked out with anyone else. She laughs into his mouth, her embers hair falling freely all over her face, and then she’s dragged him to the bed and on top of her and fuck he has been ready for years but also not at all, he thinks as he kisses her again and opens up her blouse with shaking hands and uncovered the curve of her collarbone — he drops a line of kisses there, and then to her shoulder, and then to her breasts before he takes her bra off, and by the time he’s pulled down her trousers and underwear and he has his tongue on her clit, she’s moaning his name all over and saying oh oh oh he never — and then she says nothing on that anymore but Ben’s not an idiot and so he runs his tongue over the soft, warm flesh right against his mouth, swallows when she becomes wet against his lips and doesn’t move until her legs are trembling and shaking around his shoulders and she’s screaming his name and she’s coming and he’s drinking everything she has to give him —
She’s wet and warm and her fingers are trembling as she frames his face when he slides into her later, harder than he can remember being in his entire life, and he lasts embarrassingly little the moment he’s inside her, but he’s been on edge this long and he’s fucking her slowly and she’s telling him that she wants him to and it’s too much, so much —
Later, she’s laughing against his mouth as her hand reaches his dick, coaxing it back to hardness before she slides down on him and rides him until he comes again, and when he’s not floating on pleasure anymore and his vision hasn’t gone white and he has his speech back —
“Fuck,” he says, “I didn’t have condoms —”
“I don’t care,” she interrupts him. “I mean, unless you care.”
He shakes his head. “Huh, no, I mean, if — if it happened, I wouldn’t — of course I would be good with it. Just, maybe you —”
“Out of all the men I’ve known,” she says, quietly, “I think you might be the only one I’d want a child with. It’s all right. It is.”
“Oh,” he says, his heart burning in his chest, right there with the embers of her hair, “oh. All right.”
She sleeps curled up against him.
They don’t leave Syracuse until check-out time.
***
He calls Bill after they cross into Ohio. He’s at Mike’s place — Mike left, but he said he’d leave a contact number for the hotel he’s supposed to get to in some five days, so they can call him then. Audra is still… not doing any better. Ben honestly feels like shit for how it turned out — who’d have imagined that when he thought Bev would end up with Bill out of any of them then she’d be with him and Bill would maybe lose the woman he loves instead? And yet —
He sees Bev smiling from the other payphone on the opposite side of the road. She’s laughing, of course she is, Richie always made her laugh.
He feels like shit.
He can’t feel guilty about it, though.
“I hope she gets better,” Ben says, “I really do.”
“I know,” Bill says. “Where are you now?”
“Just crossed into Ohio. I’ll give you a call from Indiana, how about it?”
“S-sounds good. Have a good — a good trip.”
“Thanks,” Ben says, and hangs up.
***
“Richie said everything’s good,” Bev says later, as they eat a shitty cheeseburger at the place advertised like the only diner from here to Cleveland on this stretch of highway, and while Ben is pretty sure it can’t statistically be true, he’d rather not be proved wrong when they’re both starving.
“What, California is treating him better than Maine?”
“I think every place would treat us better than Maine,” Bev says. “He said they want him to write for a movie. He got an offer the moment he came back.”
“Good,” Ben says, “good. Anything else?”
She’s silent for a moment. She eats a couple fries.
“He said he misses Eddie.”
Of course he does.
Ben swallows bile down. He didn’t deserve it. And he didn’t deserve to be left where they left him.
“Don’t we all,” he says, and Bev nods, reaches for more fries.
Later that night, at the least shitty motel on the road, she holds on to his shoulders tight enough to hurt.
Ben thinks he sees a spiderweb in the corner of the ceiling.
He doesn’t sleep a wink that night and Bev drives all the way to the Indiana border.
***
At the next call, Richie has accepted his movie contract and Audra is still not doing well and Mike still hasn’t reached his destination.
They still haven’t forgotten anything.
Ben hopes they don’t. He knows he wouldn’t forget Bev now, he couldn’t, but —
But he doesn’t want to forget how they came to be and why they’re together and why they’re going to Chicago to file a damned missed persons report for her asshole of an husband.
He already did once.
He hates the idea of doing it again.
When Bev offers to drive until the Illinois border because he hasn’t slept much the previous couple nights, either, he nods gratefully and holds her hand over the gear shift all the way to Chicago, as they drive across the Michigan state line.
***
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with?” He asks when he stops outside the nearest police station to her old place.
“It’s all right,” she smiles back. “I won’t be long.”
He sees her off, parks the car at the corner and waits for her to come back.
It takes her half an hour. He drives her home, then she tells him to not bother coming up and comes back down with a couple more suitcases.
“I can handle the rest from — not here,” she says.
“Are you still sure that —”
“I’ve never been to Nebraska,” she says. “And if you live there, it can’t be all too bad, right?”
He snorts as he drives the car back into the traffic. “I mean,” he says, “it’s… calm. The alcohol’s good. People tend to not bother you. They still look at me like I’m insane for having showed up there by choice, but — well. I liked the idea of having my own farm in the middle of nowhere where I could make my time and so on. If you make it, no point in not doing spending your hard-earned money, right?”
“Makes sense,” Bev nods. “And honestly? The farm in the middle of nowhere seems like a great deal to me, right now.”
“Well,” he says, “good to hear it. It’s nice, this time of the year.”
“I can’t wait to see it,” she says, and she sounds like she means it.
Ben drives out of Chicago.
He doesn’t think he’s ever yearned to see the Iowa border so much in his life.
***
They stop for the night on the way to Des Moines. He calls Richie and Bev calls Bill — Richie sounds okay, even if… maybe a bit sad.
“I miss you guys,” he says, and Ben says he does, too, because he does.
Mike has arrived in Florida, or so it seems.
“I see you haven’t forgotten yet,” he says when he takes the call.
“None of us wants to,” Ben replies quietly.
Bev looks sad, when she comes back from her call.
“No news?” Ben asks.
She shakes her head and says she needs to find a pharmacy — she needs tissues and doesn’t have any with.
The next morning, Ben leaves an extra tip in the motel room for the sheets. They wrecked them to a point where they weren’t salvageable anymore.
***
He almost cries in relief when he crosses the state line and reaches Omaha — he doesn’t know why he’s feeling like he’ll only sleep well again the moment he’s back in his place and he’s left Derry behind them, but he can hazard a few guesses. Still, they get there late at night and he’s tired and Bev’s tired, so they stop at a nice hotel in the city.
“I can drive you to my favorite bar tomorrow,” Ben says as they grab a drink downstairs. “Cheaper prices, better alcohol.”
“Nice,” Bev says, smiling, “can’t wait to see it. I imagine it’s a lot less pretentious?”
“Oh, nothing’s pretentious in that area. Except for my damned farm, I guess.”
She laughs, and then says that maybe they should call the others.
She calls Richie, he calls Mike, then he calls Bill.
***
“She — she’s okay,” he tells Bev later, in the darkness of their room, not turning on the light.
“Audra?” She asks.
“Yes,” he says, “Bill said he brought her for a ride on that old bike of his and — it worked, somehow. She came back.”
“Good,” Bev says, “good, I’m glad to hear it,” and it’s obvious she does, and then she’s in his arms and her hands are grasping at his back, and —
“I bought a pregnancy test in Des Moines,” she says. “Just in case.”
“Just — in case?”
“I don’t think it would work now. It hasn’t been long enough. But — I figured I should. If — if.”
“Of course,” he nods, “of course,” and then her mouth is on his again and they’re tearing each others’ clothes off, and first he fucks into her as gently as he can possibly manage, his mouth pressed against her hair as he thrusts inside her, breathing their winter fire, and then tells him to wait and pull out and she rolls over on top of him and rides him all over again before he comes inside her with a scream, and later that evening he buries his face in that mass of bright, soft, fire hair as he holds her to him and he whispers that his heart is still burning there.
She grasps at his hand, tight.
***
“Oh,” she says as he stops the car on a nearby hill — his Junkins property is right there, but he had figured maybe she’d want to see it from afar. The sun is high in the sky and the fields surrounding the farm go from green to golden-yellow to tangerine-shaded orange, and he knows they’ll look a warmer, darker red when the sun comes down on the horizon line just before the stars come out, and here one can see them better than in Derry or New York or London or wherever else.
There wasn’t such an open sky anywhere else he has lived. It was why he eventually planted roots here.
He can’t believe he’s back, and with her, but maybe — maybe he should start. They did get this far, none of them forgot anything yet, and her hand is holding his tightly, and she’s staring down at the farm like she would love to live here.
“Told you,” he says, “there was a very nice view around these parts.”
“Fair,” she admits, “but I think you make it an even better one.”
He can feel himself blushing. “Oh, come on,” he shakes his head before clearing his throat and taking a step closer. “So, should I drive us home?”
“I like how that sounds,” she says, but then she’s kissing him instead of getting back inside the car and he kisses her back at once, and when they part he pictures doing this later, and in the fall, when the sun shines its brighter and reddest light in the evening, and he imagines her fire hair matching the scarlet fields around them as she smiles at him like that.
He thinks —
He thinks he can’t wait for it.
“Good,” he says, “then get in.”
She does, her smile showing her teeth, brightening her face as she closes the door of the passenger seat.
Ben glances at the road again, open and free and under that wide, blue sky that’s never quite looked the same anywhere else in the world, and lets himself smile a bit wider.
He thinks he won’t forget how they ended up here.
He really thinks he won’t.
He takes a deep breath, gets back into the car and drives ahead.
Neither of them looks back for a single moment.
End.