This isn't weird.

Tunnel Vision

"We don't have time!"

Ben winced as her screech reverberated throughout the car. "Yeah, I heard you the first ten thousand times," he replied. Whatever peace they had come to earlier in the day was lost by the time they were nearing Idaho Falls, when he had announced that it was time to find somewhere to stop for the night, and Tess reacted as if he was strangling a puppy with his bare hands. But his resolve was firm, no matter how hard she tried to shatter his eardrums.

Yawning, he opened his door and swung his feet around onto the concrete, but she was faster than him, leaping out of the passenger side and darting around to block his path before he'd even finished standing up. "Just let me fucking drive! You can sleep on the way!"

Ben looked forlornly over her shoulder at the motel across the parking lot. He could almost hear a vacant bed calling to him with a sweet, sweet siren song—no, a siren lullaby. So close, and yet so far. He looked back to Tess with a sigh. "Once again, you are not getting behind the wheel of my car."

"Why the fuck not?"

They'd been having the same conversation on repeat for the better part of an hour, and Ben was beginning to suspect he was trapped in his own personal Groundhog's Day, but on a far shorter loop, and absent any sort of comic relief or emotional growth. "If you don't trust me enough to tell me where we're going, I don't trust you enough to take me there."

"I'm taking you to Millie! Isn't that what you want?"

"That's all I want."

"So let me drive!"

"Tell me where we're going, and we can leave right now."

"No."

"I guess you're not in that much of a rush after all."

"You're acting like a fucking child."

"You're acting like—honestly, I don't even fucking know. This is insane. Batshit bananas bonkers. You're dragging me across the country to some mysterious location I'm not even allowed to know! Why the hell are you being so shady about this? Why won't you just tell me?"

"If you could get there without me, you'd probably ditch me on the side of the fucking road and go by yourself."

"No, Tess, that's something you would do. I would never do that to someone."

"And I'm supposed to just take your word for it?"

"Either that, or get out of my way and let me check into this goddamn motel."

"Millie's out there right now—"

"Sleeping, probably. If she's alone, like you said, she's not just continuously driving twenty-four hours a day."

"But we could be! There's two of us!"

"I'm done talking about it. The sooner you let me get some sleep, the sooner we can get back on the road. You're wasting time."

"I'm wasting time? You're telling me we're gonna sit on our asses for eight hours but I'm the one wasting time?"

"Eight hours and three minutes now."

"What the fuck do you think I'm going to do if you let me drive?"

"I don't know, and frankly, I'd rather not find out."

"We're going to the same place either way!"

"Okay, so tell me where that place is."

Tess glared at him, lips pinched together in a rigid line.