When You Know

It took two days, but Murphy finally felt able to breathe. There was no more planning to be done, no more home to organise, no more animosity to navigate. There was nothing to be done but enjoy two-thousand miles of road with the only six people in the world she had the capacity to care about. It had become somewhat of a routine, that they would sleep when driving and explore when stopped. It was the only way they managed, particularly by day three when Sarah developed cabin fever and demanded they stop two hours early so she could go on a solo hike to "clear her mind". Murphy had lay on Vinny's bed with him that day, muttering tiny words about being good people no matter what, before Harry took over and the two men finished the day kicking footballs against the concrete wall of a rest stop. When Sarah arrived back, life seemed good again, and they chose to do shots on a moving bus as opposed to sleeping that evening.

Megan called somewhere through Denver, showing off the cardboard boxes she'd managed to retrieve and asking what Murphy wanted to do with her things. She spoke quietly about it, telling her flat mate to just shove it in a storage container somewhere and send her the bill, but Harry had booted everyone else off the bus not long after which let her know she was showing more emotion than she wanted. It wasn't to be helped; she no longer had a home to go back to. But who needed a home?

By simple planning, Murphy worked out that one of their stops would be in the literal middle of nowhere. It was the only stop they had on their route where there was nothing to do, and they'd stop there at two in the morning, and weirdly she was excited about it. Most of her excitement, she kept to herself, citing something about having more work to do when Harry tried encouraging her to get some rest. They'd spent half a day somewhere in Utah, and Murphy hadn't taken the opportunity to sleep once they were back on the road. She should have done, but her mind was racing, a thousand good thoughts finally filling her mind. Nothing could tear her away from her plans, no matter how good her boyfriend looked, curled up in the sad excuse they called bedsheets.

'She won't sleep now,' Vinny spoke from his own bed, shirtless and half asleep. A side product of spending days on end together had been how comfortable he'd become in Harry's presence, and he had no shame in gracing the bus with his sticker-book tattooed body. 'She's set on something.'

'Good luck to her,' Harry spoke, half into his pillow. 'If she bolts, we'll just carry on without her, yeah?'

'Best idea you've ever had,' Vinny laughed, reaching out a hand to shake Harry's. Sarah was wrapped around Vinny's side, fast asleep before the bus had even roared into action, and she'd stay that way until she had to be woken. It was weird; a person could learn so much just by existing in someone else's presence. Rather than worry about what Murphy was doing, Harry opted to sleep too. The embers of what she was when he'd arrived had transformed into a roaring blaze, and even though he noticed the tiny bag of canned alcohol pushed into a nook at the front of the bus, he passed it off as something normal.

Then they stopped, and Murphy was up before anyone. Vinny was asleep, Sarah was asleep, Harry was asleep. At the front of the bus, one of the lighting technicians was rolling a spliff, but he never asked questions or gave answers. There was nothing between her and the desert outside. Nobody packed for the outdoors on tour, so she shoved on a pair of cycling shorts and lifted one of her plain shirts to throw over her body. She only stopped when she saw Harry stir, watching his arms stretch out over the place she'd recently vacated, praying he wouldn't notice her absence. Seconds later, he rolled over, the muscles in his back tensing against the sudden chill of air where the covers had slipped away. Maybe she shouldn't go, maybe she should just curl up against him again and find solace in the fact he was actually here instead. But she'd promised herself this since they landed back in America, knowing just how much space you could put between a bus and the next whiff of civilization. It was too good an opportunity to pass up.