<🎧 Song Recommendation: Welcome To New York by Taylor Swift>
...
Emily had not been joking when she said they were driving to New York. She meant it in the most literal way possible.
Hours bled into one another as they drove through the long winding road, and the adrenaline of the escape, the sheer audacity of walking out of the Star Mansion and jumping into a stranger's van, began to wear off, replaced by the monotony of the open road.
The landscape shifted from the urban sprawl of Los Angeles to the dusty, scrub-brush plains of the desert.
It was a forced proximity that neither of them had truly prepared for, but they used the time to peel back the layers of strangerhood.
Between bouts of radio silence and the static of dying radio stations, they talked and got to know their paths better.
Somewhere around the border of Arizona, with the sky painted in oranges, Von finally voiced the thought that had been gnawing at him since the confetti fell.
