I’m standing in my driveway with a wrench in my hand, about to make the kind of joke that could ruin everything. My van is packed, my escape is finally real, and my 43-year-old neighbor—the woman I’ve quietly watched for three years—is sipping coffee on her porch. I should just say goodbye. Instead, I blurt, “If you were my age, I’d take you on a road trip.” She meets my eyes and says, “What are we waiting for?”

I’m standing in my driveway with a wrench in my hand, about to make the kind of joke that could ruin everything. My van is packed, my escape is finally real, and my 43-year-old neighbor—the woman I’ve quietly watched for three years—is sipping coffee on her porch. I should just say goodbye. Instead, I blurt, “If you were my age, I’d take you on a road trip.” She meets my eyes and says, “What are we waiting for?”

Thermos on the Passenger Seat

Part 1

The first thing I notice is the quiet.

Not the peaceful kind. The kind that makes you aware of your own breathing.

I’m in my driveway with a wrench in my hand, and the sun isn’t fully up yet. The light is thin and pale, the kind that makes everything look more honest than it wants to. The air smells like wet grass and engine oil. My van sits in front of me with its side door open, showing off the inside like it’s proud.

Six months of work lives in there.

A narrow wooden bed bolted to the frame. A cabinet I sanded until my forearms burned and my hands tingled when I tried to sleep. Curtains I stitched myself because I didn’t trust store-bought hems to survive Vermont roads. A little hook rack for coats. A tiny shelf for books. Solar panel on the roof. Bike rack on the back. Everything tightened, sealed, tested.

This van was supposed to be my exit.

A quiet plan. Drive until I stop feeling like I’m taking up space in my own life. Sleep in places where no one expects anything from me. Come back when I’ve reset, if I come back at all.

My name is Marcus. I’m twenty-eight. I’ve lived in this rental house in northern Vermont for three years, and during all that time I’ve barely spoken to the woman who lives next door.

Her name is Diane. She’s forty-three.

I know this because I once overheard her laughing on the phone about turning forty-three and suddenly needing reading glasses for menus. I know she teaches ceramics at the community college because every Monday morning she loads boxes of clay into her sedan, careful and practiced like she’s done it a thousand times. Two years ago, a moving truck came on a Tuesday, and only half her furniture left. I watched from my kitchen window, then hated myself for watching, then watched anyway.

Not in a creepy way. In the quiet way you notice someone because they feel important, even if you don’t know what to do with that feeling.

This morning she’s on her porch with a ceramic mug cupped in both hands. Steam rises into the cold air. She’s wearing a hoodie and jeans and hiking socks pulled up into her boots. Her hair is in a low ponytail, the same as always.

She’s watching me like she’s trying to decide whether I’m brave or just reckless.

I wipe my hands on my jeans and walk over before I can talk myself out of it. My heart does something stupid in my chest, like it’s sprinting without asking for permission.

“Big trip?” she asks.

Her voice is low and rough with sleep. Not unkind. Not warm either. Just real.

“Yeah,” I say, nodding toward the van. “Finally finished. I’m heading toward the coast. Maybe down to North Carolina. I’ve got a couple months before my next freelance job starts.”

She looks past me at the open door. Her eyes take in the bed, the cabinet, the curtain rod. She doesn’t smile the way people do when they’re trying to be polite. She looks like she’s actually seeing it.

“That’s… impressive,” she says finally.

I should say thanks. I should go back to tightening bolts and pretending I’m leaving alone like I planned. I should keep my mouth shut.

Instead, the words slip out like they’ve been waiting under my tongue for years.

“If you weren’t—” I start.

She lifts an eyebrow.

I correct myself too late. “If I’d met you when I was younger,” I say, and immediately regret how that sounds too, “I would’ve asked you to come with me.”

The air between us shifts.

You can almost hear it.

Younger. Older. The line that people pretend they don’t see until someone points at it.

My hand tightens around the wrench. My face gets hot. My stomach drops. I think, Great. You finally speak to your neighbor, and you do it by insulting her age.

Diane doesn’t react right away. She takes a sip of coffee. Her gaze stays on me, steady, like she’s waiting to see whether I’ll scramble and apologize or stand there like I meant what I said.

Then she says, “Are you leaving today?”

My brain stutters. “Yeah. In about an hour.”

She nods once. “Okay.”

“Okay?” I repeat, because my mouth can’t keep up with what’s happening.

She turns toward her front door like this conversation has already ended. “Give me twenty minutes,” she says, and walks inside.

The door closes softly behind her.

I stand there staring at her porch like it’s a stage and I forgot my lines.

This isn’t what the plan was.

The plan was: leave alone, be quiet, be safe.

I walk back to the van and pretend I’m busy. I tighten bolts that don’t need tightening. I check the oil twice. I rearrange tools on the passenger seat like that might settle my nerves.

Part of me hopes she won’t come back out, because if she doesn’t, I can pretend I didn’t just invite my neighbor on a road trip like an idiot.

Part of me is terrified she won’t, because something in me has already decided I want her to.

Twenty minutes later, her door opens.

Diane walks down the steps carrying a canvas duffel and a backpack. Hiking boots. Jacket zipped. Hair still tied back. Calm face. Like she’s done this before, like she’s not about to climb into a van with a man she barely knows.

She stops at the end of the driveway and looks at me.

“You sure?” I ask, voice too quiet.

She raises an eyebrow. “Are you?”

This is my out. I could laugh and say I was joking. I could wave the wrench and say I’m not ready. I could let her walk back inside and go back to my plan.

Instead, I hear myself say, “Yeah.”

The word feels like stepping off a ledge and realizing there’s ground.

“Yeah,” I repeat. “I’m sure.”

She holds out her duffel. Our fingers brush when I take it. It’s nothing, barely a second, but my chest tightens like it meant more than that.

I load her bag into the van.

She climbs into the passenger seat like she belongs there. Hands folded in her lap, eyes forward, calm in a way that makes me even more nervous.

I start the engine. It rumbles, then steadies. I glance at her. She doesn’t look at me yet.

“I brought coffee,” she says, like she’s giving me a lifeline.

She pulls out a red thermos and pours carefully into the lid. The smell is rich, strong, comforting. She hands it to me without ceremony.

I take a sip. It’s perfect.

I pull out of the driveway.

And for the first mile, I feel like I’m driving into someone else’s life.

Part 2

For the first hour, neither of us talks much.

It’s not awkward silence. It’s careful silence. Like we’re walking across thin ice and listening for cracks.

Diane watches the trees slide past, her hands still in her lap. I keep both hands on the wheel, but my knuckles are white. I tell myself to breathe. I tell myself to focus on the road. I tell myself not to say anything stupid again.

At a gas station just over the New Hampshire line, she hops out first. She moves like someone who knows her body well—confident, efficient, no wasted motion. She buys trail mix, water, and a map even though I have GPS.

When she sees me glance at it, she shrugs. “Sometimes I like paper,” she says.

We get back on the highway. She opens the trail mix and offers me some. Our fingers brush again, and this time neither of us pretends it didn’t happen.

Half an hour later, she asks the question I’ve been waiting for and dreading.

“Why did you say that thing?” she asks softly.

“What thing?” I try, buying time.

She looks at me. “About meeting me younger.”

My stomach drops.

“I don’t know,” I admit. “I think I was trying to say something without saying it.”

“Say it now,” she says, steady.

I swallow. “I think about you,” I say. “More than I should for someone I barely talk to.”

Diane doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t laugh. She doesn’t look away. She just nods like she’s been holding the same truth in her own hands.

“I almost didn’t come,” she admits after a moment.

I glance at her, surprised. “What changed your mind?”

She stares out the window for a few seconds, like she’s watching the answer appear in the trees.

“I got tired of being the kind of person who watches her own life through glass,” she says.

That sentence hits me hard because it’s exactly what I’ve been doing too. Watching, waiting, acting like my real life starts later.

By midday, we’re deep in New Hampshire. The trees get thicker. The road narrows. The radio catches a song that sounds like it was written for long drives and unspoken things. Diane hums under her breath, not trying to perform, just existing.

It’s strange how quickly fear can soften into something else when someone sits beside you and doesn’t demand anything.

We stop at a roadside overlook and eat sandwiches on the van’s back step. Wind off a lake makes the air smell like pine and cold water. Diane pulls her jacket tighter and looks at the view like it’s a painting.

“You build this yourself?” she asks, gesturing toward the van interior.

“Yeah,” I say. “I watched videos. Made mistakes. Swore a lot.”

She smiles. “That checks out.”

The smile is small, but it feels like sunlight.

By late afternoon, we cross into Maine. We find a quiet campsite tucked into trees, set up the little tent I packed as backup, and build a small fire. Diane’s hands are steady as she lays kindling, like she’s done it before or like she’s simply unafraid to try.

When the fire catches, she looks satisfied, the way she probably looks when a student finally centers clay on a wheel.

We eat beans from a can and laugh because it tastes terrible and neither of us cares.

Night settles in. The stars come out slowly, bright and sharp. The fire crackles between us like it’s eavesdropping.

I hand her a blanket. She wraps it around her shoulders, then looks at me.

“You can sit closer,” she says.

I hesitate for half a second, then move. The space between us disappears, replaced by warmth and the quiet thrum of something neither of us has named yet.

Her shoulder touches mine. Our fingers touch. This time, we don’t pull away.

“It’s weird,” I say softly, the words slipping out before I can stop them. “How not weird this feels.”

Diane lets out a quiet laugh. “I was thinking the same thing.”

Silence falls again, but it’s different now. Not careful. Not afraid. Just… full.

I stare at the fire, then at the stars, and my chest tightens.

“I was supposed to do this alone,” I admit. “That was the plan.”

Diane doesn’t look offended. She looks like she understands.

“I was supposed to stay home,” she says quietly. “That was my plan.”

We sit there, two people who planned to survive separately, suddenly sharing a blanket in the dark.

I turn my head slightly. “Are you okay with this?” I ask, voice low.

Diane looks at me, eyes reflecting firelight. “More than okay,” she says.

I lean in slowly, giving her time to change her mind.

She doesn’t.

The kiss is gentle at first, careful, like we’re both checking whether it’s real. Then it deepens, not rushed, just honest. She tastes like coffee and smoke and something steady.

When we pull back, my heart is racing.

Diane touches my cheek once, light as a question.

“Get some sleep,” she murmurs.

We crawl into the tent. The ground is cold. The sleeping bags are thin. Diane’s shoulder presses against mine in the dark, and her hand finds mine without searching.

Outside, the fire dies down to embers.

Inside, I stare at the tent ceiling and think, maybe this van was never meant to be an escape.

Maybe it was meant to be a door.

Part 3

Rain wakes me the next morning.

Not a storm, just a steady, patient drizzle that makes everything smell like wet earth. The tent is damp and heavy when we pack it, and the campsite looks washed clean. Diane’s hair is looser now, curls forming from the humidity. She looks younger in a way that has nothing to do with age and everything to do with being unguarded.

We drink coffee in the van with the windows fogged. Diane watches the rain slide down the glass like she’s reading it.

“I don’t usually do things like this,” she says softly.

“I know,” I reply.

She glances at me. “How do you know?”

“Because you look like you’re waiting for someone to tell you you’re allowed,” I say before I can stop myself.

Diane is quiet for a moment. Then she nods slowly. “That’s… accurate,” she admits.

When the rain lightens, we pull back onto the road. We don’t talk much at first, but it’s not tense. It’s the kind of quiet that happens when you’re digesting something that matters.

About forty minutes later, I hear it.

A low rattle under the hood, subtle at first. The van’s hum shifts.

Diane turns her head. “You hear that?”

“Yeah,” I say, stomach tightening.

I take the next exit and pull into a gas station with a mechanic shop attached. The van sputters as I park, like it’s tired of pretending.

A mechanic listens, frowns, and delivers the news I’ve been hoping not to hear.

“Alternator’s done,” he says. “Can’t fix it until tomorrow. Part won’t be here until morning.”

Tomorrow is a heavy word. It means being stuck. It means plans changing. It means reality intruding.

I turn to Diane, expecting disappointment.

Instead, she just nods. “Okay,” she says.

I blink. “You’re not upset?”

She steps closer and touches my arm lightly. “Marcus,” she says, steady, “this is part of it. Things break. Plans change. We adapt.”

The way she says we makes my throat tighten.

We walk into town together. It’s small, one main street, a bookstore, a diner, a bed-and-breakfast painted pale yellow with a porch swing that creaks in the wind.

Inside, the woman at the desk tells us there’s one room left.

“One bed,” she adds, apologetic.

I open my mouth to suggest I sleep in the van.

Diane says, “We’ll take it,” before I can.

The room is simple and clean. White quilt. Lace curtains. A lamp that hums faintly. It feels intimate in a way I didn’t expect, just standing there with her.

“I can sleep on the floor,” I blurt.

Diane looks at me like I’ve offered to sleep in the bathtub. “We’re adults,” she says. “We can share a bed if you’re okay with it.”

“I’m okay,” I say, voice too quick.

She showers first. I sit on the bed staring at the carpet, trying not to overthink everything. When she comes out in sweatpants and an oversized sweater, hair damp and loose, I almost forget how to breathe.

My shower doesn’t calm me. It just makes me more aware of how close she is.

We eat dinner at the diner across the street. Warm lights, endless coffee, booths worn smooth by generations of elbows. Diane reaches across the table at one point and covers my hand with hers like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

“This is perfect,” she says quietly.

I want to believe her. I do.

Back in the room, the silence is heavy but not uncomfortable.

Diane sits on the bed and looks at me. “Tell me what you were afraid of,” she says.

I swallow. “That you’d realize I’m not enough,” I admit. “That you’d wake up tomorrow and think you made a mistake.”

Diane scoots closer. “I’m not a teenager,” she says softly. “I don’t do this because I’m bored. I do it because I mean it.”

My chest tightens.

Then she adds, almost gently, “But I’m scared too.”

“Of what?” I ask.

“Of wanting something again,” she admits. “Because wanting means you can lose it.”

I stare at her, and something in me softens. “Then we’ll be scared together,” I say.

Her smile is small and real.

The kiss happens slowly. Not rushed. Not dramatic. Just honest. Her lips are soft. She tastes like coffee. When we pull apart, she rests her forehead against mine.

“Get some sleep,” she whispers.

We fall asleep side by side, hands finding each other in the dark like they’ve been looking for years.

In the morning, I wake first and bring back coffee and muffins. Diane smiles like I did something huge, even though it feels like a small, right thing.

We walk around town until the mechanic calls. The alternator’s fixed. The van starts cleanly.

When we pull back onto the road, the ocean calls to us from farther south, and for the first time, the future doesn’t feel like something I’m escaping from.

It feels like something I’m driving toward.

Part 4

We spend the next two days along the coast, moving the way we want, not the way a plan demands.

We stop when the light looks good. We pull over for apple cider and warm bread from roadside stands. We sit on a rocky shore and watch waves hit black stone like they’re trying to break it open.

We talk more now.

Not just surface things. Real things.

Diane tells me about the years she spent trying to be easy. Trying to be the wife who didn’t ask for too much. Trying to be the person her ex-husband wanted because it felt safer than being herself. She admits that after the divorce, she didn’t know what to do with her freedom. That she filled it with work and routines and silence.

“I was proud of being stable,” she says one night, sitting in the van’s back with a blanket around her shoulders. “But sometimes stability is just another word for numb.”

I tell her about my own version of numb. The way I’ve always been temporary—freelance work, short contracts, always leaving before anyone can get used to me. How the van was supposed to be a controlled disappearance. A way to avoid needing anyone.

“You didn’t want freedom,” Diane says softly, looking at me. “You wanted distance.”

I flinch because she’s right.

On the third morning, she’s dressed early again, sitting in the passenger seat with the thermos in her lap.

“I think we should go home,” she says quietly.

The words hit hard, even though I knew they were coming.

“Why?” I ask.

“Not forever,” she says quickly. “Just… to see what this looks like in real life. I have classes starting. You have work. If this is real, we shouldn’t only know each other in van-light and campfires.”

She’s right, and that truth tastes bitter.

We drive north in silence at first. Not angry silence—thinking silence.

That night, in another small bed-and-breakfast, we share the bed without hesitation. Diane falls asleep with her head on my chest. I lie awake memorizing the weight of her and wondering how I ever thought I wanted to do life alone.

When we finally pull into my driveway the next afternoon, the sky is heavy with clouds. I turn off the engine and neither of us moves for a long moment.

“So,” she says softly, “what now?”

I look at her. “What do you want?”

Diane’s eyes hold mine, steady. “I want to keep doing this,” she says. “I want to see where it goes.”

“Yes,” I say immediately. No hesitation. No pretending I need time.

She smiles and kisses me slow and gentle, then grabs her bags and steps out of the van.

At her door, she turns and waves.

I wave back.

That night, my house feels too quiet. The van feels too empty. The passenger seat looks wrong without her.

The red thermos sits there, forgotten.

Or left.

Part 5

The next morning I fill the thermos with fresh coffee and walk across the lawn.

Diane answers with damp hair and sleepy eyes.

“You forgot this,” I say, holding it out.

She smiles. “I didn’t forget it.”

“I… what?”

“I left it,” she says softly. “Because I knew you’d bring it back.”

The simplicity of that makes my throat tighten.

She steps aside. “Come in.”

Her kitchen is warm, bright, full of pottery and soft light. It smells like cinnamon and clay. We sit at her table with coffee between us and knees touching under the wood.

“So,” she says, wrapping her hands around the mug, “where do we go from here?”

I look at her and realize the answer is the easiest thing I’ve ever said out loud.

“Anywhere you want,” I say.

Weeks pass. We build a rhythm.

Coffee on one porch or the other. Dinner together most nights. Walks after sunset. A toothbrush at her sink. A hoodie of mine folded on her chair.

Then my travel contract starts.

Four days a week on the road for three months.

The old me would have used it as an escape hatch. The new me feels fear.

I tell Diane. She listens. She nods.

“We plan,” she says simply. “We talk. We don’t disappear.”

So we do.

I travel. She calls. Sometimes we talk five minutes, sometimes an hour. Sometimes we stay on the line without speaking, just sharing quiet.

One night halfway through the second week, her ex-husband shows up at her door while I’m away.

She tells me the story over the phone, voice steady but tight: he demanded the kiln, demanded “respect,” implied she was being ridiculous dating younger. She shut the door on him.

“I hate that he still thinks he gets a vote,” she admits.

“He doesn’t,” I say.

A week later, he tries again—an email to her department chair implying her “personal choices” affect professionalism.

Diane forwards it to HR with a calm note: documenting harassment.

The college takes it seriously.

He stops.

When I come home Thursday night, Diane is on her porch waiting, mug in hand. She walks down the steps and kisses me like she’s reclaiming something.

“You’re here,” she says.

“I’m here,” I reply.

And I realize that’s what I’ve wanted for years: a place where “here” means something.

Part 6

Our first real fight is stupid.

It starts with dishes and exhaustion and me saying, “Sometimes it feels like your life is already full.”

Diane freezes.

“It sounds like you don’t fit,” she says.

“That’s not what I meant,” I protest.

“What did you mean?” she asks, voice sharp.

I stare at the sink, the running water, the stupid words that landed wrong.

“I meant I’m scared there isn’t room for me,” I admit.

Diane’s anger flickers into something softer, sadder. She turns off the water and faces me fully.

“I left a marriage where I was lonely standing next to someone,” she says. “Why would I choose a life where you feel that?”

My throat tightens. “I’m not used to belonging,” I say.

“Neither am I,” she replies.

We stand there until the tension drains, replaced by honesty.

Then she touches my face and says, “We make the room.”

After that, things don’t become perfect. They become real.

We meet each other’s friends. I attend her student showcase and watch her light up when her students succeed. She comes to my job site once, watches me work, sees the quiet focus.

“You build,” she says afterward, proud. “You really do.”

One weekend we take the van out again—not to escape, just to be. Two nights, an ocean, a fire.

Sitting under the stars, Diane murmurs, “If you hadn’t said that stupid thing, none of this would’ve happened.”

“Worst joke of my life,” I say.

“Best one,” she corrects.

I kiss her and realize I’m not afraid of the future anymore.

Not because it’s certain, but because I’m not facing it alone.

Part 7

Spring arrives late, but when it comes, it comes fully—mud, sunshine, birds loud enough to be annoying.

One morning Diane stands on her porch and says, casually, “Move in.”

I blink. “What?”

“My place makes more sense,” she says. “Closer to the college. And I like waking up knowing you’re here.”

My chest tightens. “Are you sure?”

She raises an eyebrow. “Are you?”

I laugh, because she’s using my line now.

“Yes,” I say. “I’m sure.”

So I move in.

My tools go into her garage. Her pottery takes over one corner of my old living room because now it’s our space. We turn the spare room into a shared studio—her shelves on one side, my workbench on the other.

The van stays in the driveway like a reminder, not of escape, but of courage.

A year after that first morning, I stand in the driveway again with a wrench in my hand. The sun is barely up. The air smells like dew and engine oil.

Diane stands on the porch with a mug in both hands.

Steam rises.

She watches me and asks, “Big trip?”

I smile. “Weekend,” I say. “Just up the coast. Two nights.”

She walks down the steps carrying the red thermos.

The same one.

She presses it into my hands.

“I brought coffee,” she says.

I take it and laugh softly, because some things really do loop back into place when they’re meant to.

As we pull onto the road, Diane looks at me and says, “You know what I like about you?”

“What?”

“You stopped running,” she says.

I swallow, eyes stinging unexpectedly.

“And you?” I ask.

She smiles. “I stopped waiting.”

We drive toward the coast with the thermos between us and the future ahead, and for once, it doesn’t feel like something to fear.

It feels like something to choose.

And that’s the ending I didn’t plan—one that starts, every day, with the same simple question she asked on the porch the first morning:

What are we waiting for?

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.