Jack and Kelsey's meandering drive up PCH 1 took nearly all day, and they enjoyed every moment of it. Around ten in the morning, they put the top down, and Kelsey took over driving for a while. She tied her hair tightly, braided it, then wound the braid into a bun, much like she did for swim practice. Jack even helped, being a pro at this hairdo from numerous swim meets. Then she tied a scarf over the whole thing, and anchored it in place with sunglasses.

"Very glamorous and chic, very Grace Kelly," Jack said as she started the car.

"You know who Grace Kelly is?" Kelsey asked. "You are the cutest, most amazeballs guy, Jack LaGuardia." She shook her head at him.

"Please! To Catch a Thief, Rear Window? Total fan," Jack replied, lowering his own shades and flashing her a grin.

It was a perfect day for a drive, and being close to the ocean kept it from being too hot. It sparkled off to their left all day, darkly blue, as they passed fields of yellow mustard flowers and orange California poppies.

They stopped for lunch in Carmel, and Jack, worried about the state of Kelsey's shoulders, broke out his sunscreen in the parking lot afterward, squeezing the lotion onto her pink skin and smoothing it in as she watched, twisting her neck, protesting that she could do it herself.

"I want to, though," he protested, dropping a kiss on her shoulder when he was finished. "Your shoulders are very nice, and valuable to me, so let me do this, and stop being such a baby."

Kelsey watched Jack as he put the sunscreen away, carefully wiping the excess off the bottle before putting it back in the resealable ziplock bag. He then put it in the outside pocket of his duffel, using his thumb to clean up a small smear that had gotten on the blue exterior of the car. His hamstrings bulged as he lifted his bag into the car, and she could see his abs harden as he closed the trunk.

Wow and damn. Jack was smokin'.

Jack turned around and caught Kelsey's eye. He grinned at her.

"What?" he asked, walking over and putting his hands on her hips.

"I've just never known anyone who just got more and more attractive, the longer I knew him," she explained. "Usually it's the complete opposite, so that after awhile the guy doesn't do a thing for me, and I don't know what I ever saw in him, you know?"

He shook his head.

"It's the same for me, though. Every day that I'm with you, I notice something new, it seems like. I didn't know that wasn't normal. It's not?"

Kelsey shook her head.

Jack pulled something out of his pocket and held it out to her.

"Lip balm. Come on, so you don't get blisters," he said. He pulled off the cap and applied it to her lips himself as she puckered for him.

"There," he said, kissing her when he was finished. "Now your beautiful lips will be protected."

They hit the road again, and drove through Monterey, Salinas, and Santa Cruz, and continued up through Half Moon Bay. The day wore on to a beautiful afternoon, and they finally arrived in San Fransisco in the very late afternoon.

When they came down out of the hills and saw the iconic skyline, with San Francisco Bay on their right, shining in the afternoon sun, Kelsey gave a little scream.

"Oh my god, Jack, look, there it is! Look, there's the Transamerica Building! Is that the Golden Gate?" She clutched his shoulder as he tried to concentrate on the rush hour traffic.

Jesus, no, Kels! That's the Bay Bridge, see how it spans the bay?" Jack shook his head and laughed. "That's Oakland, over there. The Golden Gate Bridge spans the entrance to the whole San Francisco Bay, it runs north to south, it's way north of here, north of the city, actually."

"Oh, don't you laugh at me," Kelsey said, sitting back. "Just because you grew up here or whatever."

"I didn't grow up here," Jack corrected. "I grew up about three hours away. I've just been here a lot. My brothers and I did the Alcatraz swim quite a few times, and we came here for plays and field trips and all that."

They drove through the city, which took quite a long time, because they arrived in the evening, but it was all joy to Kelsey. Jack promised her that they would ride a cable car and all that the next day, but for now, he just wanted to get to their destination.

"Uh, Kels?" he began as they sat at a light on Van Ness. "The place where we're going to stay probably isn't the kind of hotel you're used to. I mean, it's not a hotel at all."

She turned to him. "What do you mean? Are we staying at someone's house?"

Jack shook his head. "No. It's a motel, right near Fisherman's Wharf, where I stayed with my brothers when we did the Alcatraz swim. Have you ever stayed at a motel?" He was a little afraid to look at her.

Kelsey shook her head. "Jack. I know you have to pay attention to the traffic and stuff and can't look at me right now, but we need to talk about this, I guess."

He looked over at her briefly before looking ahead again, nodding.

"We both know I'm the one with the money, and the truth is that the amount of money I have is insane. It's ridiculous." Kelsey stopped to think. "And if our genders were reversed, it probably wouldn't be that much of an issue. We might not want that to be true, but it is, it is," she continued as Jack tried to interrupt.

Jack kept quiet, and concentrated on using his feet on the clutch, brakes and gas to crawl up the hill and not stall the car.

"So you planned this trip, and you paid for everything, and this is what you can afford. And if you want me to pay for it, I can and I will, and I'd be happy to." She turned to him and placed a hand on the arm that was on the gear shift. "If you'd rather upgrade and stay at a luxury hotel, we can do that, too, I'll pay for everything, I don't care at all." She squeezed his arm. "But I must say that I'm looking forward to staying at the motel where you stayed with your family all those years."

He looked over at her, and she saw gratitude in his smile. And his smile made her stomach feel like there were butterflies fluttering in it, made her feel like there wasn't enough air in the little car. Kelsey had never felt that way about a boy before in her life.

She turned and looked out the window some more, at the amazing hill they were climbing. She noticed that the people were kind of bundled up, with scarves and sweaters, and she lowered her window.

She gasped at the cold air that swirled in.

"Oh my god, Jack! It must be sixty five degrees out there!" Kelsey declared. She rolled her window down the rest of the way, filling the car with the brisk sounds and smells of the San Francisco evening.

"Aren't you cold?" Jack asked.

"Maybe a little," Kelsey replied, shrugging. "But I don't care, it feels amazing, you know? I mean, it's San Francisco cold, right?" She did give a little shiver, but it was delight she felt, not the chill. "Is it always this cold?" she asked.

Jack shook his head. "The weather here is what you might call 'capricious,' for lack of a better term," he said. "I've never lived here, but there's this phrase I've heard? It goes: The coldest winter I ever spent, was the summer I spent in San Francisco." He smiled over at Kelsey. "It just depends. Sometimes it's cold and foggy in the morning, then it warms up, then cold and foggy again in the evening, you just never know."

At every light, Kelsey could look down the various streets which fell away to their right and look downhill toward the east. It looked like a ride at an amusement park. Wow.

They finally arrived at their motel, a tiny place with an actual neon sign on Jefferson Street, from which they could see the water, and a tiny piece of Alcatraz island.

Kelsey could see that Jack was very concerned about her car, which stood out like a Rockefeller at a dive bar.

"Jack, I'm sure it will be fine," Kelsey reassured him, squeezing his arm as he took their bags out. "It's closed in, you can't see it from the street, and we can see it from our room. Just look out the window at it from time to time."

Jack just sighed and nodded, and they went up to their room. Kelsey looked around curiously as Jack opened the door. She'd never stayed in a room that you just entered directly from the outside. It was small, and basic. The bed took up most of the space, but it had a TV, a small fridge, even a microwave, which Kelsey had never seen before in a hotel room. There was a small but functional bathroom, with a shower stall but no bathtub.

"Are you sure you'll feel safe here?" Jack asked, looking at her. His brows were furrowed, and he was biting his lip.

She walked over to him and took the key card out of his hand. "Jack." She put her arms around his neck. "I'm with you. How could I not feel safe?" She rubbed her nose against his. "Now come on, I finished those Oreos hours ago, I'm starving, let's go get some dinner, okay?"

He leaned in and kissed her, making a happy moaning sound as he put his arms around her, putting a hand on her bottom and squeezing, making heat bloom between Kelsey's legs from this innocent action.

"You're going to need a sweater or something, okay?" he murmured as he continued to kiss her. "The fog's rolling in, it's going to get even colder according to the app on my phone."

She nodded and grabbed Jack's UCSM swim team sweatshirt, knowing he liked to see her in it.

They left and began walking, thinking they might catch a cab, but Kelsey enjoyed the snapping cold air so much that they ended up walking the entire half hour walk to Ghirardelli Square. Jack held her hand the entire way, and Kelsey was glad, because she really felt like she might just float up into the sky and get carried away by the breeze if he let go because she was so happy. The gulls were calling to each other, and there were sailboats in the bay, and she could finally see the Golden Gate Bridge, which was red. The sun was behind them, and Jack seemed to just glow. He gave off some kind of radiant light, from his hair, with the golden high lights, to his amazing eyes, framed by the lashes, to his smile, to his skin.

"I'm starving," she said as they sat down. Everything on the menu looked good to her, and she ended up ordering a huge meal, plus dessert, which she managed to finish, barely.

Jack watched approvingly as she pushed away her empty plate.

"What?" she asked. "You look very happy, LaGuardia."

"I am," he said, grasping her hand where it sat on the table. "Everything about you makes me so happy. I just can't believe I'm here, to be honest," he continued. "I mean, my senior class voted me 'Most Likely To Be The Best Designated Driver'." He blinked at Kelsey, squeezing her hand. "That's basically code for 'most boring person to ever walk the planet, you know? Yet here you are, with me." He shook his head. "I'm not as smart as Jeremy, not as handsome as Julian, and not as cool as Jake. And I'm here, eating dinner in San Francisco with Kelsey Carlisle. So yeah, I'm happy."

Kelsey blinked rapidly and rose. "Uh, I need some air, okay? I'll wait for you outside. Please excuse me." These last words came out in a whisper. She grabbed the sweatshirt she'd been wearing off the back of her chair as she practically ran from the restaurant, knocking the chair over in her haste. "Sorry," she threw over her shoulder as she fled, leaving the chair overturned in her wake.

Jack, too, rose, very worried. He quickly gestured for the bill and paid, trying to see out the windows, looking for Kelsey in the dusk. He could see her, facing the ocean, definitely wiping tears from her face.

What?