Clyde’s hands were still framing my face, but he had knifed up from his back as he kissed me, sitting with me straddling his lap, my knees on either side of his thighs. And I wanted to stay there, connected, and press my body against him, but he rolled me off and stood, brushing the playground debris from his jeans. I wished I could crawl up his legs and pull him back to the ground, but he pulled me to my feet instead.

He searched my face for several long moments, as if composing a tongue lashing of a different sort than he’d just given me, but then he sighed and turned, pulling me along after him.

“Tomorrow,” he said.

We walked hand in hand through the gate and back through the park, winding our way toward the entrance. I followed slightly behind, the sidewalk not quite wide enough for us to walk side by side, so when he stopped short, I ran right into his back and then had to lean around him to see what had caused him to halt.

“The Blazer’s gone.”

“What?” I stepped around him and followed his gaze to the place I’d left the Blazer forty-five minutes earlier. Finn was right. The Blazer was gone. A small, dark-colored car was the only car parked along the curb.

Finn started to jog, to run toward the place the Blazer had been, and I clomped after him, the boots of my heels sounding like applause against the pavement.

“It’s a tow-away zone!” he yelled, pointing at a sign about a hundred feet beyond where I’d parked his Blazer.

“But . . . why didn’t they tow that car?” I protested, unable to believe I’d screwed up once again.

“I’m sure they will if we don’t move it!”

“This is your car?” I asked.

“This is my rental car, Bonnie. How do you think I got here?”

Oh, no. I turned in a circle, as if the Blazer had moved itself somehow, as if maybe we’d gotten turned around inside the park and come out on the wrong side. But we hadn’t. Finn’s rental car was there, and he’d obviously parked it beside the Blazer and come looking for me. I had parked in a tow-away zone, and Finn’s Chevy was gone. I sat down on the curb and rested my head on my knees. My money and my things were in the Blazer. But I could deal with that. I couldn’t deal with his displeasure. Not now. Not when he’d just forgiven me.

A few minutes later, Finn sat down beside me, a solid presence on my right, stretching his long legs into the street. I held my breath, waiting for him to tell me he never wanted to see me again. And then he laughed. It was quiet at first, just a chuckle, a soft murmur that made me lift my head from my knees. Then he started to shake with it, laughing so hard that he fell back against the grass that butted up to the curb. I turned toward him, stunned, not quite ready to laugh with him.

“Finn?”

“Unbelievable,” was all he could say, his hands covering his eyes as if he needed a break from reality. “Unbelievable.”

WITH FINN’S DISPOSABLE phone we called the number for the towing company printed on the sign—the sign that was so small and far enough away from where I had parked to engender some serious righteous indignation on my part. The Blazer was indeed in the impound yard, and it would cost $250 for us to get it out. Added to that, we couldn’t get it out immediately, because it was after hours, and the tow truck driver on duty had been called out on an accident and didn’t know when he would return. He said we could come in the next morning during office hours, which would run us another $100 in storage fees, by the way. Finn said college campuses were notorious magnets for towing, especially during the late night, early morning hours when confrontation was less likely. He said we were lucky they hadn’t had time to get both vehicles. I didn’t dare tell Finn how truly unlucky we were because my/Gran’s wallet was still in the Blazer, along with all my money and his phone.

Unable to do much more at one-thirty in the morning, Finn drove us to his father’s house. His dad wasn’t home, and wouldn’t be until sometime later the following day, which made me wish I’d just come straight there like Finn had told me to do. If I had, the Blazer wouldn’t be in the impound yard. But if I had, I wouldn’t have been kissed in the park. Once again, I found myself unable to regret the decisions I’d made. The events of our journey seemed unavoidable and pre-destined, almost as if Finn and I were being pulled against our wills toward an inevitable conclusion.

Finn’s father’s house was a narrow two-story that sat on a cul-de-sac at the end of a busy street littered with cars and similarly small houses. Finn said the neighborhood was filled with students, and most of the houses were split up into rentable rooms. It was a two bedroom, two bath bachelor’s pad with the kitchen, family room, and a half bath on the main level and the master suite and a small bedroom up the stairs. The spare bedroom featured a desk, a plaid sofa too small to sleep on, and a few boxes that Finn’s dad apparently couldn’t part with but hadn’t cared enough about to unpack in the seven years he’d lived in the little house. The rest of the house was equally sparse, the tell-tale signs of a man who works too much and has little life outside his profession.

Finn pointed me toward the master bedroom, and I stumbled into the small adjoining bath, pleasantly surprised by the tidy space. I stripped and entered the shower, letting the water run over me, streaming over my hair until the tears streamed from my eyes in sheer, exhausted gratitude. I lathered with Irish Spring because it was available and soaped my hair with Mr. Clyde’s anti-dandruff shampoo. I used the razor that was there as well, and promised myself I would replace it the next day. I hit the jackpot when I discovered an unopened toothbrush in the vanity and wrote another mental IOU for that.