My favorite road trip game is the Alphabet Game.
Roman
West Virginia is gorgeous in September. The trees outside our windows drop multicolored leaves, which settle into Elodie’s hair, winding through the golden spirals and making themselves at home.
“Put your head back in the car,” I order, taking my eyes off the road long enough to see her smile, carefree, as more leaves settle into her hair. “We’re almost there.”
“C’est la vie!” She extends her arm in an attempt to catch a falling leaf.
“You can’t excuse all your bad choices with a ‘c’est la vie,'” I grumble. I wish she’d stop testing the limits of her seatbelt—and my self-control. “Get back in the car.”
“That didn’t sound very character grown of you,” she tsks. “What happened to your enlightenment journey?”
My enlightenment journey, shockingly, shakes in the face of her hanging halfway out of a moving vehicle. I bite my tongue on another command to get her safely inside the car. “The thing about journeys,” I say instead, “is that they take a while.”
Something we know well. The journey to get here, in particular, waslong. Elodie’s only ever driven it with Sol before, and Sol and she apparently do things like empty out gas station convenience stores of their snack options, blast music, and play what Elodie calls “road trip games."
I am not a road trip games kind of man. My favorite road tripgame iswatching the freaking road so we don’t crash. Which I told her all fifty times she tried to start Twenty Questions or some game where you find a license plate from every state.
“I’m driving,” I’d rumbled, firm. “If you’re bored, read a book or something. And turn the music back up.”
“I only read Amber D’Amore, and she hasn’t released a book in ages. Also, can we talk about how you totally love my music?”
Her music being something from a playlist titledMinecrwaft Mwusic.
“No,” I’d grunted, turning the volume up myself and effectively ending the conversation portion of the ride.
Elodie spent the next four hours until we hit Bandera nibbling on stuff from the cooler and playing solitaire on her phone while a man in the background sang about blocks, a big moon, and water buckets. I didn’t understand a single lyric, but the music… the music wasgood.
Once the “Welcome to Bandera!” sign loomed cheery and bright, Elodie promptly set her phone aside and stuck her head, curls and all, out the window to enjoy the autumn sights.
I promptly experienced higher levels of panic than have ever graced my nervous system.
“Fall is so pretty here.”
“Yes,” I answer. “And it’s just as pretty within the safe confines of the vehicle.”
“C’est la vie!” she says again as I make the final turn onto Lyra and Jove’s street. Elodie squeals as her cousin comes into view by the road, her giant of a husband standing watch and redirecting her when she gets too close to the asphalt. “Lyra-bug!”
Lyra’s head jerks up, and a smile coasts across her face. “Elo-bee!”
Elodie unbuckles as I turn into their driveway, thenclimbs out the freaking window, not bothering with something sopesky as a door. Lyra meets her, half-catching her as she tumbles out.
“Lyra! You’re here!” she screeches, throwing her arms around her favorite cousin as I deep breathe through exiting my car. Does shewantme to have a heart attack?
Lyra laughs, music in the air that almost rivals the tinkling of Elodie’s joy, and hugs her back. “You’rehere!”
And then they both burst into tears.
“Need help with the bags?” Jove’s low, gruff tones ask to my right.
After assuring myself that, visually at least, Elodie hasn’t hurt herself playing NASCAR racer while getting out of the car, I shake Jove’s hand.
“If you don’t mind,” I answer. “Elodie’s packed her entire closet.” And none of her sense.
“C’est la vie,” she cries. “C’est la vie withoptions.”
I grunt, eyes rolling, and tug a lock of her hair as I pass to get to the trunk. Jove follows, grabbing Elodie’s gargantuan suitcases with ease. “Let’s cry in the house,” he says. “Where we’re less likely to get hit by someone’s car.”
