"I hate roadtrips."
"Yer gunna love 'em when I'm gone."
All they ever had in front of them was road. They faced an endless stretch of asphalt and rolling hills that trundled lazily beside them like tired giants with aching feet, and they stared the setting sun right in the eyes. It was like looking into the barrel of a gun, and when the trigger got pulled, they both were bathed in murky night with nothing to guide them but headlights and starlights. Keegan Mac Namara was a road that Molly was willing to walk.
Their journey across the verdant farmlands and everlasting clusters of villages falling into decay was only five hours in, and they had three more to go. Molly knew that when they stepped out of the car again, they wouldn't talk, and they'd just smile and laugh and cry without a spoken word. Two of the saddest free spirits without moral compasses to keep them on track. Before Molly left, it was always like that, and that was the best part about it.
She had met him in a pub after Ronan's funeral, and for the six months after, they were inseparable.
Keegan Samuel Mac Namara was the summer in the winter of Molly's life, the breeze to clear the smoke left behind Finnian Aherne, the anchor which kept her grounds from shaking with the tremors and aftershocks of a toddler-sized earthquake and even after he died she could still feel the thrum of her heart in her chest with the thought of him, of them, of what they were, and what they could have been, but never became.
He taught her how to love roadtrips, he taught her to be free, and he taught her to love.
He taught her how to shoot a gun, he taught her to sing, and he taught her to love.
He taught her how to smile, he taught her to laugh, and he taught her to love.
He taught her how to love.
They never got married and they never had children and they were never official; he never gave her something to remember him by: only memories of long nights spent together in the back of their van making up stupid songs or the feeling of laughing so hard that she cried and her cheeks rushed red for ten minutes afterward or driving so long that they forgot where they were going and where they had come from.
When he died, there was no reason to make up stupid songs, no reason to laugh until her stomach hurt and she had a headache, and the ten thousand roads that they traveled together were just lines that kept them from growing too attached; even if those ten thousand winding roads failed at that.
He made her lose her way, and she never wanted to be found. He let her find out who she was by keeping the tempest at bay..
When he died, the storm was all around her.
Their love was a roadtrip away from the sorrows that everybody faced. She was just lucky enough to be asked along the ride..
"I still hate roadtrips, Kee." She can hear him answer, in his voice so low..
"Then I ain't gone."