“It’s still Fall Out Boy.”
“Lord save me.”
She grinned. “I can put some good old-fashioned worship music on there, if that’s a request.”
“It’s not.”
He let her have control of the music, though. So his irritation seemed a little bit for show.
“What would you choose?” she asked.
“Disturbed. Fuel.”
“Naturally.” Because of course he would be a fan of the hard rock of the early 2000s.
“I also like Chappell Roan.”
“Oh, you do not.”
“I have a nineteen-year-old daughter. Chloe gets to choose the music when she rides with me.”
She laughed. “I do not let my boys choose the music.”
“Why not?”
“Because, it might be perfectly fine for me to listen to music about women’s anatomy being juicy or otherwise, and quite enjoy it, thank you, but I don’t want to listen to itwiththem. So best we both pretend that’s not the kind of thing we’re listening to at all.”
He chuckled. “You like denial.”
She was going to just laugh and move through the moment, but something stopped her. “I… What?”
“Was the statement unclear?”
“I don’t like denial.”
“You just told me denial works best for you when it comes to your kids’ taste in music.”
“That’s normal parental levels of denial,” she said.
“Is it?”
“Do you want to know everything about Chloe?”
He cleared his throat. “I believe in boundaries. That’s different than denial. I need to keep Chloe safe, but much in the same way she doesn’t need to know everything about me, I don’t need to know everything about her.”
“Boundaries. That’s your superior way of saying denial?”
“I don’t care if it’s denial, actually. You’re the one acting triggered by the word.”
She knew why. Because it felt like he wasn’t talking about music, or her kids. It felt like he was talking about Will.
She put her elbow on the window ledge and her chin on her hand. “It’s just a normal amount of coping,” she said. “Not a high level of denial.”
She watched the scenery change from hills to trees. Then as they wound down the mountain into California, the view opened up again, and California Welcomed Them with a blue sign with a cheerful poppy on it.
Then they stopped at the check station, where the person working asked if they had fruit and waved them through before they even had a chance to answer.
She couldn’t let go of what he’d said. “You can’t say things like that and not explain,” she said.
