The Six Rules of Maybe

wild rock shorelines, tumultuous waves, trees bent and twisted by insistent wind. The Cinque Terre—rugged, ragged Italian hill towns spilling out toward the sea, oranges and reds and old stone and clotheslines of white sheets set against blue azure waters. Ile Saint-Louis, cobbled streets and winding alleys and immense old doors and secret courtyard gardens.
    None, though, is as beautiful as the land of your body—the curve of hip, breasts, ass, mouth. Skin white and smooth as eggshells. Softness, woman, a country to disappear in forever.
    I put on some music and sat at my desk. Zeus lay underneath, and I kept him close by petting him with my foot. Hayden asked me to keep my eye on him so he didn’t have a revenge pee on the carpet. He didn’t always take well to being left behind.
    I folded paper cranes out of roof-washing advertisements and credit card applications and real estate flyers. I sifted through Mom’s postcards and chose one from Madrid with a bullfighter on the front. The weather is superb here , I wrote. We saw the Vazquez collection at the Prado and thought of you… . I took another sheet of stationery, yellow with a wildflower border, and wrote, Mail carriers are AWESOME! on its empty center. I folded it three times and tucked it into the yellow wildflower-bordered envelope.
    Being needed was a handy trick. It could fill you up so full you never even noticed all the places that were empty.
    I heard them come home, and for a long time, the house was silent. Hayden in bed could make you forget just about anything… .
    But then I heard the door handle turn, slowly, with effortful quiet, and then I heard the creak of stairs, the shushing of Zeus, who thought he was waking for a night adventure.
    My heart was beating fast, and I was weirdly excited, the way you are on your birthday morning, or when you’re taking something new you’ve bought out of a shopping bag, or when you are about to see someone you really like. Really like. I didn’t stop to think, or maybe that was just another lie. Maybe I decided not to stop andthink. I tossed on my shorts and my sweatshirt. I made the same quiet path down the stairs.
    “What are you doing here?” I whispered.
    “Scarlet.”
    “Can’t sleep?”
    “Nah. You? What are you doing up?”
    “I’m the worst sleeper in the world,” I lied. “Happens all the time. Sometimes I just need to get up and out. Sometimes I go for a walk. I walk and look at all the quiet houses.”
    “Yeah? Same here. I like to drive, though. Once I crossed the state line. The night I met Juliet.”
    “I thought you would have slept like a baby after your night out tonight. Romance, dinner, tra-la-la.”
    “We had a great dinner, thank you, Scarlet. It really was great. Your sister just puts a lot on my mind. She can’t help herself.”
    I left that alone. The joy I had felt when I heard him head outside started to slip a little, and I didn’t want it to slip. It felt so good. I had a sudden idea.
    “Let’s go for a drive now,” I said.
    “I don’t think so, Scarlet. I don’t think that’s such a great idea.”
    “Come on, why not? A spin around Deception Loop. It’ll help us both.”
    “No car keys,” he said. And then he seemed to reconsider. He felt up inside the bumper of his truck, near the tire. He held up a small metal box. “Car keys.”
    I smiled.
    “I have a feeling your mother would not like this,” he said.
    “We’re not doing anything wrong. It’ll be our secret.”
    I liked this idea, us having a secret. No one would need to know, just like no one needed to know any private feelings I might have.They would be a secret between me and myself, kept from doing anyone harm by staying locked away. They would be mine and mine alone. A person, a girl, could have all kinds of thoughts and none of them mattered, none of them could betray or embarrass or complicate as long as she kept hold of them, made them her own business and no one else’s, kept them tucked in a box of metal, same as those car keys, which Hayden now slipped out and dangled on one finger.
    “Windows down … ,” he warned. “Night air blowing in.”
    “No other way,” I said.
    We got in and he started the engine. It sounded so loud there on that late, dark street. I closed the door so softly that I had to open it again at the stop sign to shut it hard.
    “You’ve got to warn me when you’re going to do that,” Hayden said. “I was just about to push the gas pedal. Maybe