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After the party, they all drifted over to their stations, Meg pulling up her call log on the computer—the software was working for once—and brushing some pastry crumbs off the front of her shirt. She’d just hung up with a single dad in Cincinnati when Lillian’s round face appeared over the partition. “Hey, Meg?” she said. “There’s a call for you.”

Meg frowned. “For me?” she repeated, her heart doing something strange and complicated deep inside her chest. WeCount’s number wasn’t listed on their website. There was only one person she could ever imagine calling her here.

Lillian nodded. “I’ll transfer it over.”

Meg tugged at her bottom lip for a moment, reminding herself not to get her hopes up. It was true that in the weeks since her dad’s wedding there had been a million things she’d wanted to tell him—about Emily and her mom and her internship, about all the ways knowing him had made her brave—but no matter how many times she came close to calling, she hadn’t been able to make herself reach out. Probably she had been right: they were just too different.

But maybe that didn’t mean what they had wasn’t worth fighting for.

Now she took a deep breath and lifted the receiver. Imagined her own heartbeat echoing out across the line. “Hello?” she said, trying to keep her voice even. “This is Meg.”

“This is Colby,” he said, and she smiled.

Thirty-Seven

Colby

The truck stop was right on the side of the highway, the neon sign glowing like Christmas in the blue-purple twilight; it came up so fast and sudden that even after waiting for it for four hours Colby nearly missed the turn. He pulled into the giant lot and shut the car off, sitting motionless in the driver’s seat for a long, quiet minute. He shoved a piece of gum into his mouth, then decided he didn’t want to be chewing gum when he saw her and spit it into a receipt he found on the floor of the passenger seat. Finally, he took a deep breath, wiped his sweaty palms—why were his palms sweaty? Fuck—on his jeans, and went inside.

She was already sitting in a booth in the brightly lit diner, her own hands folded primly in front of her like she was waiting for a job interview. Holy shit, Colby loved her so much. As soon as he had the thought, he knew it was true, and that there was nothing to be done about it. Her gaze, when she glanced up and saw him, was dark and steady and clear.

“Hi,” Colby said, sliding into the seat across from her.

Meg smiled, a little uncertain. “Hi.”

For a moment, neither one of them said anything, the silence stretching out like every mile they’d both traveled. It was even more awkward than it had been the first time they met. Colby thought again that they were probably too different; he thought of all the million reasons why this would never, ever work.

Still: she’d shown up here, in this place right in between them.

He had shown up here, too.

And maybe that was all either of them—maybe that was all anybody—could ask.

Colby took a deep breath then and looked across the table. He felt like his heart was sitting there on the Formica, bloody and raw. “So, um,” he said, and his voice was an apology and a declaration and a gamble, “I was wondering if you could tell me again why I should register to vote.”

For a moment, Meg only stared at him, wonder and disbelief playing across her expression. Colby was sure he’d blown it, that he’d come with too little too late.

Then, almost imperceptibly, she nodded.

“Sure,” she said, and Colby heard her smile before he saw it. “I can probably help you with that.”