"Your surprise is a drug store?" I asked Luke when he pulled into the parking lot.

Luke nodded. "In case you needed vitamins or chocolate or tampons. I wanted to be thoughtful."

"I do need some knock off perfume."

Luke disappeared when we were browsing the candy aisle, and when he met me back at the self checkout, I had loaded up.

I looked him up and down. He was empty-handed. "You got what you needed?"

"Yeah," he said nonchalantly.

"Are you shoplifting?"

Luke rolled his eyes and relieved me of half the candy.

"I swear you're more mysterious than me," I told him.

Back on the road, we tore open the sour gummy worms first, and our fingers kept touching inside the huge bag like teenagers sharing popcorn at the movies. I ignored it. I could get through this for one more day... and then another week. Maybe whenever the strike ended I could book a flight home from whatever city we were in. I'd checked the news on my phone twice an hour that day, but still no luck.

When we both started to feel candy sick, Luke pointed up through his windshield. "There is your surprise."

I ducked my head to follow his finger. "What is that?" I said in awe. All I could make out was a shape of a person high on the top of a mountain.

"The fourth largest statue in the country."

"Some surprise," I murmured and smirked. "Why didn't you bring me to the first?"

Luke caught my thigh and dug his fingers into me, making me squirm.

"Is it a woman?" I asked, squinting my eyes up at the figure.

"She's called Our Lady of the Rockies."

"What's special about her?" I asked because I knew that it wasn't just a statue.

"You'll see."

We boarded a school bus at the base of the mountain and traveled up a bumpy road until we reached the top. When I stepped out, I read a rock taller than me, notched into the ground, that said she was dedicated to all women and mothers. My heart spun in my chest. How could he be this thoughtful?

"This is beautiful." My voice caught. I smiled at Luke. I felt the tears behind my eyes, but I tried to stifle them when he stepped up and put his arm around my shoulders.

I looked around, surprised I couldn't see the statue. We were on rocky terrain with trees lining the road that curved around the edge of the mountain.

We walked through the Women's Memorial with thousands of names lining the walls. I ran my finger over a couple of names as I read them before we went inside the chapel above it. On one side of the room, a large white steel heart sat on a pedestal.

"You can write someone's name on it and put it inside the heart," Luke said, extending a piece of paper and a pen out toward me. "When it's full, it'll be sealed."

I slowly took the pen from his hand as he placed the paper down on the table in front of us.
I scribbled my mother's name, Helen Adler, down on the small white piece of paper and stuffed it into the slot in the base. I stepped back into him.

"That'll be here forever," Luke whispered in my ear. He let me lean on him as I stood in silence, trying to relive every faded memory I had of her and wishing my twelve-year-old brain had been able to retain more.

Then we made the short walk up to the statue between the black gate at the edge of the mountain and the trees planted in dedication to women. Each one with a tiny plaque in front of it.

This place was a beautiful tribute. I pulled out my phone as we walked and set myself a reminder to look at their website to see if they had any future events planned for more dedications. I wanted to be able to have something showing my mom's name in memory of her.

The back of the statue came into view as she looked out of over Butte, Montana. Luke and I walked around to her front to look up into her face before we made our way back around and went inside through a small door. I didn't know what to expect, and when I realized what I was looking at, a lump formed in my throat. Gold plaques lined the walls in loving memory of someone's family member or friend. And where there weren't gold plaques, people had tacked photos and letters to the walls in their own tribute to the women who had been taken from their lives.

Luke and I walked around, reading the names and studying their pictures. I studied each one wondering what their stories were and who loved them. What were their accomplishments? What were their flaws? And thinking about every person walking around whose lives had been touched by these women.  Who missed them? Who loved them? There were millions of people walking around on this planet just like me—a woman, mother, wife, sister, daughter taken from them too soon. When we came to the last wall, I felt completely hollow.

"I wish I had a picture of my mom to leave in remembrance of her," I said to Luke, who was standing behind me looking at the opposite wall.

He stepped into my back, and his arms wrapped around my shoulders, a picture of me and my mom miraculously in his hands. "I was hoping you were going to say that."

My voice faltered. "Where'd you get that?"

"I shoplifted it," he chuckled.

I slid it out from between his fingers and leaned into him as he hugged me hard. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a box of thumbtacks.

I had Luke attach it to the wall as high as he could reach. I loved the idea that it would be there for forever on top of a beautiful mountain among all of the other women and mothers loved by thousands of people.

He stepped back behind me and put his arm around my collarbones as we both admired it.

"What's going on in that picture?" Luke asked.

I laughed under my breath and hung my hands on his forearm. "I think I was eight. We were on vacation at one of those indoor water parks, and I cried because I wasn't tall enough to go down that water slide by myself. That's why I look so upset. My dad took the picture of us at the bottom. Turns out, it's one of my favorite photos of the two of us."

Luke pressed his cheek into my hair. "It's the only one you put up on social media."

"I don't have a ton of just the two of us together. It's true that moms are always the ones taking the pictures, not the ones in them, but I have lots of memories."

Something shifted. I felt it hit me. Hard.

After a minute I said, "I like you like this, Luke."

"Like what?"

"I don't know," I laughed. Honestly, he was the same as always, just more mature, older. "Maybe I like me like this—not hating you so much."

"Yeah, well, I've never been the best at timing."

—

We pulled into a hotel right across the Washington state line a little after eleven, and I exited the car to get a room while Luke parked.

"Hello," I called at the empty front desk.

A tall, lanky twentysomething rounded the corner from the back. "I'm sorry. I didn't hear you come in."

I smiled instinctively at his good looks, and wondered if this was what Paige's new man looked like. He pushed his clear frames higher on the bridge of his nose as we looked each other over. All the buttons of his polo were fastened up to his neck in a way that was clearly working for him.

"How can I help you?"

I eyed Adrian on his name tag. "I need a room with two queen beds, please."

He nodded and began typing. "What brings you to Spokane?"

"Just passing through on our way to Seattle."

"My hometown," he smiled.

"Me too! Do you go to Gonzaga?"

"Law school," he replied and looked up at me through his glasses. "What's your name?"

I thought he was hitting on me until I realized he was checking me into a room.

"Reese Adler."

He typed again as I slid my card across the counter.

"Reese," he said, leaning across the desk, "do you need any suggestions about what to do while you're here?"

There it was. His voice had dropped an octave. His eyes lingered on mine.

"Nope, we're good," Luke replied for me as he wheeled our luggage up next to me.

I stifled my smile. Jealous Luke was cute with his cutting eyes and his clenched jaw.

Adrian straightened after taking in Luke's presence with his eyes. It wasn't lost on him that I'd just gotten a room with two beds. "Let me know if you change your mind." He was only looking at me with a side smile he wasn't trying to hide. He handed me our keys, brushing his fingertips against mine.

Luke couldn't push us toward the elevator fast enough. He placed his chin on my shoulder when the doors closed. "I already can't stop touching you, and now I have to be subjected to that?"

My heart did a little dance—I couldn't control it—and I smiled to myself. I was not going to point that out, of course, but it wasn't lost on me that Luke found a way to innocently touch me every chance he got. He was toeing the line of our newfound friendship.

"You won't have to worry about it so much in a week," I joked.

The elevator dinged open, but Luke stood still, his lips forming a hard line. He watched me walk out, standing firmly where I'd left him. I looked behind me thinking I'd gotten off on the wrong floor, but when I did, he followed behind me.

Unlike him, he hurriedly pushed our luggage haphazardly into a corner, not bothering to line them up perfectly. "I'm going to go work out."

I stopped at the end of the first bed. "It's almost midnight."

"I'll come in quietly when I get back. Goodnight."

He brushed past me and was out the door before I could string a sentence together in reply.

I showered and lay down in bed, trying to shut my mind off. I tossed for thirty minutes before I gave up. I picked up my phone to see if Paige was still awake.

One week and I care too much about Luke, I texted her. I think I upset him, and I actually feel bad.

I waited another twenty minutes before I gave up on her too. She was either sleeping or partying.

I'd made him mad, another emotion I didn't think I'd ever seen on Luke. My stomach was twisted into a knot, thinking about how his face looked when he left.

I heard the lock click a few minutes later, and Luke slipped into the bathroom. The glow around the closed door illuminated the room before the shower started to run. A minute after the shower shut off, I heard Luke brushing his teeth until it fell silent.

A clean Luke emerged from the dark bathroom and slipped into his bed noiselessly. He picked up his phone, and the light from the screen cast him in a yellow glow as he texted, unaware that was I awake.

I wanted to say something, but I didn't know what. How could I make him feel better? I wanted to know how to comfort him and make everything all right.

When he placed his phone on the night stand in between us, I whispered to the ceiling, "Did I make you mad?"

It took him a few seconds to respond. "Have you been awake this whole time?"

I turned on my side to face him. "Yes. I've been worrying that I pissed you off."

Luke sighed and reached his arm across the space between us and grabbed my hand resting on the edge of the bed.

"I'm not mad at you," he said, but I didn't believe him from the tone of his voice.

"Did you just let your anger out by screaming and dropping weights?"

"Maybe."

I knew it. "What are you mad about then?"

"It's stupid," Luke said, lacing his fingers through mine. "I'm mad at myself." He paused and pressed his fingers into my knuckles. "For not somehow forcing you to hang out with me years ago. For knowing how much I've always wanted to hang out with you and then putting myself in this situation—now of all times."

"You've always wanted to hang out with me?" I laughed. "I'm boring."

"No. You're not," Luke said slowly. "You light up when you want to."

"When you asked me out, you actually wanted to hang out with me?"

"Well, yeah," Luke responded. "I wouldn't have asked you for any other reason. I chose to sit behind you freshman year when I walked into biology and saw you smiling at me. I thought you were always so happy to see me, thought you loved talking to me as much as I loved talking to you. And then after you turned me down, I had to be tortured by your hair hitting my desk every other day."

I just stared at him, unable to decide if this was a joke, and he laughed.

"You didn't know that?" he continued. "It's okay. I got over it. I thought for sure you might give me a chance outside of high school when I found out we were going to college together. I thought you might not hate me so much when I got away from competing with you; being the valedictorian. But you couldn't get far enough away from me every time we saw each other. I gave up years ago."

"I'm sorry," I whispered in shock, not sure if I even had anything to apologize for.

Luke furrowed his brow into a straight line. "And much to my surprise, we're sitting at the same gate on the way back home, and by some stroke of luck, I have you all to myself for an entire week. Then I can't believe it myself, but I'm turning you down—after fighting back and forth with myself all week. So yeah, I was taking my anger out on some goddamn weights. Fuck."

I didn't think any response I could give him would be good enough. I didn't know which words to put together; which words would make him feel better or which words would make him angrier.

"And I know what happens when we get back to Boston. We'll go our separate ways. You'll be nicer when you see me, but none of this will matter anymore. And that's all right. I just don't have to like it right this second."

"It matters, Luke." He didn't realize how much it mattered to me—having him apologize for the one thing that had always been so heavily weighed down on me.

We lay like that for a few minutes while Luke caressed my hand with his eyes closed. When he stopped, I thought he had fallen asleep. But a minute later Luke gently pulled my arm out from under the comforter. He wrapped a hand around my wrist, then another hand around my forearm, and softly tugged me out of the bed.