Out of His Way
He was going out of his way, she knew he was. It would have been much faster to get to the market if he had turned left inside of right, but he didn’t care about getting there faster.
His mother was sitting in the front seat next to him and Rebecka in the back seat, just behind Magnus. Joanna Martinsson had offered to sit in the backseat but Rebecka wouldn’t hear of it. It had been a surprise visit…like she always did. His mother liked it that way. It gave her a better picture of how things were with them, and he was her son, still her son, no matter how old and how secretive and how distant he made himself from her. He would always be her youngest son.
She was going over the menu, the things she needed from the store and asking Magnus about cooking utensils. Rebecka was looking out the window of the car and then looking at Magnus sitting in the seat in front of her. She could see his sunglasses face in the rear view mirror.
She knew where he was going.
He distractedly talked to his mother as they drove. They had only had a small disagreement last night, it wasn’t a big deal, she didn’t bring her tea cup into the sink, again, and his mother was here and he wanted all the dishes done in the morning when she woke up. She was sure to be awake before either of them. So they had argued, not loudly or long and Rebecka agreed that she needed to be better at taking her cup to the sink before she went to bed, and she apologized. They hadn’t needed to go for a drive. They hadn’t needed the big sky and the stars shining above them to work it out, and it was a good thing, because had they left the house at midnight, his mother would have thought them very strange indeed.
Because that is what they did. Since that first fight. Since that first time when he meant to push her away, when he tried to convince her that he wasn’t worth her time, and she hadn’t listened, she had fought for him, against him, because she saw him more clearly than anyone else ever had.
When there was a fight brewing, when he could feel his shoulders tighten with anger and frustration, he would pull her to the car and they would drive out this road past that dirt road right there on the left and they would have it out, in the middle of a dirt lane, with fields all around, with the big sky above them. And they remembered the promises that were made that first night, and how no matter what, they were in this together.
Of course they usually had sex after…just like that first time. The sex after a fight was sometimes the most powerful, all of that emotion so close to the surface…
They couldn’t do that last night. They worked it out at home, in their bedroom and they could only have a little kissing and heavy petting session…because his mother was just down the hall.
Magnus knew Rebecka would know just what he was doing, and as they passed the small dirt road on the left, he looked into the rearview mirror and smiled at her. It was a private thing, between he and her, and even with his mother going on about cuts of meat and why they didn’t keep more eggs in the house, Magnus and Rebecka were in their own world. The world where it was only them, and everything was sorted, and they had each other, forever.
Rebecka watched him for a moment and then she looked away out the window at the dirt lane as they passed.
When there was a break in the conversation, Magnus asked his mother, “How long are you staying?” He did his best to keep it innocent, but he wanted to know how long it would be until he could bring her back out here, not because of a fight, but just to look at the stars…and then have sex in the backseat of his car…yeah, both of those things.
His mother didn’t notice, but he looked back at Rebecka as his mother said just a few days. He could last a few days, after all they had been through.