Beth & Alice

“Did you remember to tell Matt about the plants in our bedroom?” Beth asked; she was on hour three of picking her cuticles and gazing out the window. “And to leave a lamp on for Felix and Franny?”

“Yes. I wrote it all down and hung it on the fridge, and I told him I wrote it all down and hung it on the fridge,” Alice answered. She was on hour three of driving across the desert. “You know, it’s not too late to cancel, if you want to.” 

“I don’t want to.” Beth turned up the radio. 

The couple was crossing state lines to spend a holiday weekend with their families. 

“Is this the kind your nieces like?” Beth asked, holding up a box of macaroni and cheese. 

“No, the shells freak them out. Get the one with elbow macaroni noodles.” 

“Four boxes?” 

“Three should do it.”

Beth and Alice were about an hour away from the cabin their parents’ booked, and they didn’t want to show up empty handed. 

“Your parents still drink, right?” Alice asked, eternally desperate to make up for the Christmas when she gifted milk chocolates to her newly vegan mother-in-law. 

“Yeah, white wine is their thing at the moment,” Beth answered. “Pinot Grigio.”

The glass wine bottles barely made a sound as the couple drove. Beth watched Alice wrap each of them in three layers of paper grocery bags before loading them into their grocery cart and then into the backseat of their car. The trunk was full of luggage, hiking gear, and the extra bedding Beth insisted on packing. 

“I like to be comfortable,” she’d told Alice. “And so do you.”

Seemingly endless desert had turned into evergreens and rolling hills. They were nearly there. 

“You remember the first time I stayed with your folks?” Alice asked, her voice a grin. 

Beth smiled out the window. 

“They wouldn’t let us sleep together even though we were in college.”

“If it makes you feel any better, they wouldn’t let me sleep with the guy I brought home from college before you, either,” Beth answered, giggling a little. 

“I’ve missed that,” Alice said. “I’ve missed that giggle.” She rested her right hand, palm up, on her wife’s thigh. 

“We’ll get past this, if you want to,” Beth said, her left pinky curled around her wife’s right thumb. 

“I want to,” Alice said. She held her wife’s hand and listened to the radio.