Maggie stood in the driveway. He'd lifted the hood of his truck and was peering inside, whistling something tuneless between his teeth. She watched his back move beneath his shirt, and bit her lip.

"We could just take my car," she said. Her subcompact, a grey and thoroughly nondescript vehicle, stood at the ready to her left. The driveway was long, but it curled around her feet, a sputter of gravel and clumps of grass. The forest around them stood still.

"We may have to," he said. He stared into the abyss of his engine and shook his head.

"It has AC," she said. Already it was sticky as hell outside, the ten o'clock July morning pushing hot wet breath over her neck. She lifted her hair and exhaled.

He stared at a point just over the truck, wiping his hands on a greasy towel. Her arms felt heavy.

"Are you okay, there? Can I get you something?" He sounded oddly distant. She considered. A night of courage, she thought, brings a morning of consideration. Does it mean anything? She called out, "Lemonade. I could use some lemonade."

She followed him up to the veranda and sat gingerly on one of the chairs littering the porch. He followed suit, hunkering down near her, breathing her in. He lifted a cold and sweaty glass to her hand and she took it, suddenly feeling very small-boned, fragile, winged like a bird.

She could smell the sugar in the lemonade, and see the chunks of citrus swirling around the bottom of the cup. Oh, cold lemonade. She drank eagerly. Somewhere down the highway, a dog howled.

He cautiously rested one hand on her knee. "Maggie," he said. His voice was full of flint, shining, a little dangerous. She rested her head against the pillar of the porch and asked him, "Do you do this often?" She regarded him with her critical writer's eye, the one he knew so well � that assessing, professional distance.

Adam smiled at her throat. "What, asking girls to marry me? Or givin' out lemonade on Thursday mornings?"

"I meant all of this. Do you think," she leaned forward eagerly, her tiny hands cupping the glass with unfounded urgency, "that this � this right here � will actually succeed?"

Adam considered. "You're bein' awfully verbose," he said. "You're not answering my questions," she returned.

He looked a little shamed, at that. "You're right. I'm not. Maybe I don't want to. Maybe I just know something good when I see it." He turned his back on her then, walking inside, wounded but unwilling to relent. Maggie stared at his retreating form and then called after him.

His feet betrayed him and he walked back out onto the veranda where she stood, small and luscious, a waif of a girl wrapped in the strong scent of literature. Her hands were white and cold and when he took them in his own, he could feel them trembling. Inside, flies buzzed through the open screen door and the houseplants wilted under the muggy, cloudy day. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

"I didn't say no," she said. Her heart swelled suddenly, pushing tears into her throat. She opened her mouth again to say something, but the words scattered like seeds in the wind. Suddenly he was leaning down to kiss her, and it seemed as if he were suspended from such great heights; she felt drawn up, the breath whisked from her throat, the tears stolen from the back of her tongue. She blinked once, grey eyes beneath black-rimmed glasses.

He took her car keys from her fingers. "I can drive us," he said, tenderly, brushing a strand of her hair from her lips. She nodded, mute, and her hands clenched into little fists. He walked toward the car, a faded blue chambray shirt tucked into brand-new 501s, a towering giant of a man.

Her feet bade her follow. When she reached the car and settled into its Spartan surroundings, he covered her hand with his and put the car in gear. Slowly, achingly, they turned right onto the highway, back into town, toward a justice of the peace.

Maggie kept her hand out the window the entire ride.