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Robin isn’t sure why, but a roadtrip across Canada sounds like a great idea.
Maybe it’s just New York in the summertime: the heat, the sweat, the pervasive, disgusting smell that seems to rise up off the streets and drift down empty subway tracks. It’s July. It’s hot, humid, and the city feels emptier than it does the rest of the year: everyone gone on vacations, life slowing down, as much as a place like New York can slow down.
In the end, it’s the slowing down that gets to her. Robin likes to keep moving, to keep doing things, but she’s starting to get the feeling that she needs to slow down, too. It’s probably the heat. It’s hotter than it’s ever been; every day a new record-setting temperature, and she comes home from work – where she spends all of her time in frigid, constant air-conditioning – exhausted by her commute, pouring sweat in places she previously didn’t know she could sweat from, and flops down on the couch.
“This sucks,” she says, and Ted looks up from his laptop (where he’s probably googling for pictures of early twentieth century architecture or something; she doesn’t know what Ted does on the internet) and tilts his head to the side.
“What sucks?”
“I’m sweaty; I smell like –“ she sniffs one armpit; Ted makes a face – “I smell like salami --“
“You smell like salami?”
“I was pressed between two very large men on the subway, and the one guy had a sandwich – it doesn’t matter, okay. What matters is that if it’s a hundred degrees again tomorrow, I’m going to punch something.”
“I forgot you don’t have summer in Canada.”
Robin glares at him. “We do have summer in Canada, but do you want to know what it’s like in Vancouver right now?” She grabs her phone off the coffee table, presses the button for the weather app, and waves it in the proximity of Ted’s face. He tries to bat away her hand. “Sixty-one degrees! Sunny! Light breezes!”
“It’s not like this is your first summer in New York.” Ted types something and smiles at his screen. Robin squints; dear god, he’s on Gtalk, and he’s typing something that involves a lot of smiley emoticons to someone named Lisa. Sometimes she can’t believe she actually slept with him. Not that it was bad – no, it was great most of the time – but he’s such a dork.
“Who’s Lisa?” Robin asks.
“Oh, just this really cute barista who gave me her number,” Ted says, and his voice goes up a notch at the end of the sentence, that hint of hopefulness that she knows Ted gets whenever he meets someone new. He hasn’t dated much since things ended with Zoey. Mostly he’s been hanging around the apartment; they finally bought a blu-ray player with instant Netflix, and one day Robin came home to find Ted streaming episodes of Felicity, of all things. She didn’t even make fun of him, and it would have been so easy to. Although she did tell Barney that Ted got “sucked into the Netflix vortex” where you start browsing the instant streaming listings and start watching the most random shit.
“You might want to cut back on the smiley faces,” Robin says, and Ted just makes a hrmph sort of sound and smiles goofily at the screen a second later.
He signs off and closes the lid on his laptop, smoothing his hands over the surface. “What were we talking about? How you don’t have summer in Canada?”
Robin rolls her eyes. “Actually, I was going to say I was thinking about maybe going home for a week or two. Maybe see my dad.”
“When would you fly out?”
“I was actually thinking of driving.”
“You can’t drive from here to Vancouver.”
One thing Robin has realized about herself is that when someone says she can’t do something, she’ll do it anyway. Not to prove a point to them, but to prove it to herself.
“Yes, I can.”
“All by yourself?”
“Sure, why not?”
“You might get tired.”
“That’s why coffee exists, Ted. And hotels. And rest stops.”
“Have you ever taken a roadtrip before?”
“I wasn’t aware we were playing twenty questions.”
Ted smiles, unfazed. “It’s a legitimate question!”
“I have. I also have a valid driver’s license, because I know that’s going to be your next question.”
Ted keeps smiling. “How’d you know?”
*
The next night at MacLaren’s, Robin tells everyone that she’s leaving in a week; her boss already approved the time off and she got a rental car. Those are the only plans she has, though. No arrangements for hotels along the way, no route, and no maps – actually, getting a GPS would probably be a good idea. She also hasn’t told her dad yet that she’s coming. Actually, she dreads that phone call so much she probably just won’t do it.
“Sweet, epic Canadian roadtrip!” Barney says, raising his hand for a high-five. “When do we leave?”
Robin high-fives him back, an immediate response, but then her eyes widen and she sits back in the booth. “’We’?”
“Of course, we,” Barney says. He takes a drink. “I’m not missing out on this.”
Robin leans against the back of the booth and laughs too loudly; it sounds fake, even to her.
“Come on, roadtrip? In Canada? It’s going to be legendary, Robin. I can’t miss it.”
“Barney,” Lily says gently. “I think Robin wants to go by herself.”
“She needs company. Roadtrips by yourself suck. It gets lonely out there,” Barney says.
Robin considers it for a second. Okay, yes, he has a point: being out there alone on the road would be lonely, and maybe even scary, but loneliness and scariness have never stopped Robin from doing anything before. Somehow, having Barney there could be a good thing, though. It might be good to have backup when she visits her dad. Not that seeing her dad is going to be that bad, but maybe he won’t lay into her about how disappointed he is if someone else is there to be a buffer. Talking to her dad in person is the one thing in her life that Robin has reservations about facing head-on. Right now, they’re okay with the occasional phone calls (he still hasn’t mastered “the e-mail,” as he calls it), and she could leave it that way, but she wants to have a relationship with him. It’s something she’s been thinking about ever since that funeral for Marshall’s father: She wants to get past the bullshit and have an actual, functioning, adult relationship with her father.
“Okay,” Robin says. “You can come with me.”
Marshall’s lips quirk upward just a little bit. “Are you sure about that?”
“Yeah, do you think the rental car will have enough room for all his luggage?” Ted asks.
Barney rolls his eyes. “I can pack light.”
“Barney,” Ted says, “on your last business trip, you had a separate suitcase just for your ties. I know. I was there. I took you to the airport.”
Barney scoffs at this. “Whatever, you wish you had as many ties as I do, can I get another high-five?” He raises his hand and looks around at his friends.
“I’m leaving at nine a.m. on Monday,” Robin says, “and you better not have a suitcase just for your ties.”
*
Barney shows up at Robin and Ted’s place at 8:45 on Monday morning with one suitcase, which he puts in the trunk of the rental car next to Robin’s luggage. He’s wearing a suit. To go on a roadtrip. The man takes his dedication to suiting up quite seriously.
Robin slides into the driver’s seat and boots up the GPS.
“Oh, great navigator!” Barney says, and Robin isn’t sure if he means her or the GPS. “Where are we headed? Because, seriously, I need to call my guy to make hotel arrangements.”
“Um. You have a guy for hotel arrangements?”
“Yes.”
“I was just kind of figuring we’d pull off at whatever hotels we found along the way.”
Barney rolls his eyes. “Robin. I do not stay at Holiday Inns and Best Westerns.”
“I can’t afford anything else,” she says.
“I got this.” Barney stares at his BlackBerry, scrolling through his list of contacts. Robin is close enough that she can see him move right past people with names like “Hot Blonde from West Village” and “Acrobat Chick,” which shouldn’t make her heart hurt, but it does, anyway. Whatever she had with Barney was forever ago, and they were better off as friends. She knew this. That didn’t mean a small part of her never stopped loving him, though.
To distract herself, Robin pulls out the backup copy of the directions she printed out from Google; it actually would have taken longer and been more confusing to drive all the way through Canada, so they’re headed through the Great Lakes states, through the northern plains to Seattle, then Vancouver.
Barney dials a number and asks her, “Where are we stopping tonight?”
“Cleveland, I guess. It’s about seven and a half hours from here.”
“I thought we were driving through Canada!”
“It’s faster this way.” She hands him the map. “Epic American roadtrip?”
“Dude, what is this?” Barney flips through the pages of directions. At one point, he even turns them upside down, like that’s going to help. “I was looking forward to making fun of Canada for like, a week.”
“I’ve never gotten to see the States like this! It’ll be fun!” She reaches for the map. “Look, we get to go through Chicago, and Minneapolis, and I’ve heard Montana is really beautiful –“
“Montana, Schmontana!” Barney says, and Robin shakes her head fondly at his ridiculousness.
Robin studies the map. “Maybe once we get to Minnesota, we can drive through Canada from there. The GPS can handle it.”
“Let me call my guy,” Barney says, and he does. Then they’re off.
*
Barney isn’t as difficult of a traveling companion as Robin expected. He lets her listen to whatever music she wants, and he doesn’t complain. Actually, he sleeps during most of the trip, and he wakes up at their first rest stop somewhere in Pennsylvania as soon as Robin parks the car.
“Who what where when why?” he says when he wakes up with a start, and god. He’s so weird (and cute, the voice in the back of her brain says) and she can’t help but be amused.
“We’re in Pennsylvania,” Robin says. “It’s time to go to the bathroom.”
“Do they have a Starbucks here?”
“Yes.”
Barney’s face opens wide with delight, and he gets out of the car and bounds up to the entrance. He buys her coffee and a scone, and she gets crumbs all over the inside of the car as she tries to eat and drive.
Pennsylvania takes forever to get through. At one point, Robin becomes convinced that the state just never ends, and for the rest of her life she’s going to have to drive through farmland and exits for small towns with hotels, McDonald’s, and nothing else.
By the time they make it to Cleveland, she’s ready to fall over as she leans against her suitcase in the hotel lobby. Barney is checking in, and he’s still in great spirits – when they got out of the car, he’d flung his arms wide, took a deep breath of air, and said, “Ohio!” like he was excited to be there. Well, after spending all day driving, she felt like jumping for joy at the thought of having a bed, a shower, and a meal that wasn’t fast food. She’d jump if she weren’t so tired.
“Can you drive tomorrow, at least part of the way?” Robin asks as they make their way to the elevator, wheeling their suitcases behind them.
“Uh, I don’t have a driver’s license.”
“Barney.” Robin jams her index finger into the “up” button and turns to face him, one hand on her hip. “Seriously?”
“I didn’t need to learn! When I was growing up, I could take the ferry into the city, and cabs once I got there.” He shrugs. “And now there’s really no point.”
The elevator doors open, and a family of seven people pushes past them to get in. When they try to go up, the elevator makes a loud beeping sound, and the guy who looks like the dad announces, “Elevator’s broken!”
Robin is too tired and cranky for this shit. Obviously they’re trying to put way too many people and suitcases in one elevator, and since Robin doesn’t give a fuck anymore, she says, “Oh my god, obviously you’re trying to fit too much in there!”
“That’s what she said! What up!” Barney says, and he’s about to go for the high-five but Robin pushes him toward the other elevator that’s just opened up. Both of them laugh as they try to get away from the family who’s still insisting their elevator is broken and is now talking shit about her.
Needless to say, Robin is thankful to get away from them and is hoping they’re not on the same floor. She quickly learns that’s not going to be a problem, though, as she and Barney ascend all the way to the top floor and the doors open on the most lavish hotel room she’s ever seen.
“What the hell is this?”
“Penthouse suite,” Barney says, like it’s no big deal, and tosses his key card onto the little table by the door.
“This – this is ridiculous. Your guy got this for us?” Robin leaves her suitcase behind so she can wander into the suite’s living room, and beyond that, the bedroom. With one bed. She sucks in a breath. Sharing a bed with Barney wouldn’t be terrible, insists the part of her that still wants him. The other part says that it’s a very, very bad idea. Maybe she should take the couch.
“Hey, Barney,” she says, trying for nonchalance, but her voice sounds weird to own ears. “There’s only one bed, so I can take the couch tonight.”
He waves a hand; his other one is occupied by the TV remote as he flips through channels. “We can share. It’s a king,” he says, his eyes still on the large flat-screen.
“I –“ Fuck. She’s smarter than this, more articulate, too in control of things to be at this much of a loss for words.
“Dude,” Barney says, finally turning toward her, smiling. “It’s fine. If it’s a problem, I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“Okay. I’m – I should text the guys back home to let them know we got here okay.” Lily had made her promise to text.
Barney flops onto the couch, having settled on some sports talk show on ESPN. “We can chill here for a little bit, and maybe find somewhere to eat later?” He looks over his shoulder at her. “Unless you want room service.”
“Room service is expensive.”
Barney turns back to face the TV. “I’ll get it.”
“No, we’ll just find some place. We can take a walk.”
The middle of her head starts to throb, and she goes toward the bedroom with the intent to unpack her toiletries and clothes for the next day. Instead, she ends up passing out in the middle of the huge bed, with her arms and legs spread out and her hair in her face. She wakes up a few hours later, and Barney is still in front of the TV, not paying attention to the show that’s on and scrolling through the messages on his phone.
“Hey,” he greets her when she sits down next to him. His face relaxes from intense concentration to something resembling fondness and concern. “Are you feeling okay?”
“Just tired.” Before Robin can think of what she’s doing, she tilts to the side and rests her head on his shoulder. He’s comfortable, solid, and he smells good (how is it possible that he smells amazing when she’s certain she smells like stale air and sweat?), like soap and a hint of cologne. At first, his body tenses, then it calms, and he slides an arm around her. Robin welcomes his touch, maybe even needs it so much that she doesn’t protest or second-guess how vulnerable she is right now. She just eases into it and closes her eyes.
“I want a hamburger,” she says.
Barney laughs, and Robin can feel it reverberate through her. “I’ll order us food, okay?”
Robin yawns and forces herself to sit up, but not to get out of Barney’s hold. “I’m not paying twenty dollars for a hamburger and fries.”
“You don’t have to,” Barney says, and it’s so soft she can barely hear it.
*
Robin doesn’t remember how or why, but she and Barney end up sleeping in the same bed. It’s not a big deal, and there’s enough room that they can stay on either side of the bed and still not touch. Which doesn’t explain why they wake up in each other’s arms the next morning.
Robin goes still. Barney’s arm is wrapped around her, and her arm is stretched across his bare chest. She looks down at herself, like she doesn’t trust herself to be fully clothed, which is stupid because she would have remembered if they’d had sex. She’s still wearing a faded gray t-shirt and pajama pants, and she exhales in relief. Slowly, she moves out of Barney’s grasp, and he makes a noise in his sleep and flings his arm across the bed where Robin had been.
She runs a hand through her hair. This is not good. It would be easy to fall back into something with Barney, to let herself get carried away and then end up getting hurt again.
But this means nothing. So what if Barney is being a little too nice, if they’re falling asleep together? It doesn’t have to mean anything.
*
They drive from Cleveland to Chicago. There are two beds in that hotel room, so there won’t be a repeat of the other night, even though some nagging voice in Robin’s head wants it, wants to wake up again with Barney’s arm around her and maybe a lot less clothing on both of their bodies.
Chicago to Minneapolis isn’t a terrible drive – about seven hours – but Robin’s muscles ache and she’s starting to go crazy from spending all that time in a car. She’s almost ready to say “fuck it” and catch the next flight to Vancouver. And it’s not just the car and the endless sameness of the scenery; it’s Barney that’s driving her nuts now, too. He keeps paying for her almost everywhere they go, and something about it rankles her. Okay, so, she’s not exactly in a position where she doesn’t have to worry about watching her money, but she’s not a charity case. Part of it is just Barney being Barney, thinking he’s being a good friend, but she can afford a four-dollar sandwich.
“You don’t have to keep paying for my stuff,” Robin says, swatting Barney’s hand away. He’s holding out one of those fancy American Express cards, the kind you can get only by special invitation. “I’m perfectly capable of paying for my own lunch.”
“You’re doing all the driving,” Barney says, “so this is my way of saying thanks.”
“No.” Robin hands over the money for her own food. “You’re being weird.”
“Weird?” Barney pulls a face. “I’m not weird.”
“You’re being too nice. Also, you haven’t hit on anyone for the duration of this trip, and I know we’re only halfway through it, but by now I would have expected you to have made some inappropriate comments.”
“I’m trying to become a more sensitive person,” Barney says, with a hint of duh in his voice, like Robin just doesn’t understand him.
Robin raises an eyebrow. “I call bullshit.”
“Why?”
Robin doesn’t want to have this conversation in the middle of a fast-food restaurant somewhere in Wisconsin, but she says, quietly, “Is there a reason you invited yourself on this trip?”
“Because I wanted to be closer to you, my number-one bro! Come on, up top!” Barney raises his hand.
“I’m not your bro, Barney.”
Barney dejectedly lowers his hand. “Um, my number-one lady friend?”
Robin grabs their food and makes her way over to a table. She sets the tray down, looks Barney in the eyes, and says, “You – we – “ She closes her eyes briefly and opens them again. “The other morning –“
Barney ducks his head and says, “I forgot ketchup” and makes a beeline for the condiment bar.
Before Robin can say anything else, he’s already gone. She shouldn’t have brought it up; she barely even got the words out before he disappeared. She swears under her breath and starts to eat. By the time Barney returns, Robin isn’t expecting him to say anything, but to her surprise, he does.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “That was a dick move.” He tries a smile. “You don’t do that to your number-one bro.”
For a second, Robin doesn’t know if he means whatever happened in the hotel room or his disappearing act a few minutes ago. Then Barney continues, “I wanted to come because, one, epic Canadian roadtrip; two, I’m hoping that people recognize you as Robin Sparkles; and three, I missed you.”
“You missed me? You see me all the time.”
“I missed – “ He waves his hand between them. “Just us, hanging out.”
Robin laughs. “You could have just asked me to do something.”
“Yeah, but …” He tugs on the lapels of his suit, straightening them, and the fact that he’s wearing a suit on a roadtrip makes Robin laugh again. “What?”
“Nothing,” she says, and takes a bite of her sandwich.
Barney winks at a cute girl who walks by, and there’s the old Barney who Robin knows and loves. Maybe loves a little too much.
*
Two days later, early in the morning as they drive out of Minneapolis, after another night at yet another swanky hotel set up by Barney’s hotel guy, Robin glances at Barney and says, cautiously, “How do you feel about seeing if we can drop off the rental car and fly to Vancouver?”
“Whoa, okay, hold on a minute.” Barney sits up straighter in his seat. “If we do that, we’re completing destroying the epic, legendary experience of traveling across Canada.”
“We can have an epic experience in the sky,” Robin says, and she winces as soon as she says the sentence, aware of the double entendre.
“Oh, Robin. I didn’t know you thought of me that way,” Barney says, grinning.
I think of you that way all the time lately, she wants to say, but she bites back the words. “Seriously, I’m sick of driving, and we have four more days of it. You can’t sit here and tell me that you’re enjoying being in a car for eight hours a day.”
“It’s not the most pleasant experience in the world –“
“Ha!” Robin points at him. “I knew it!”
“But if it means getting to Canada and seeing people recognize you as Robin Sparkles, it’s worth it.”
“You can see people recognize me in Vancouver, if it means that much to you.” Robin looks over at him again, stretched out in his seat, long legs extended, his suit jacket unbuttoned. Something makes the muscles in her stomach tighten, and she needs to look away before she gets them in an accident.
“What was that?” She can see Barney’s smirk out of the corner of her eye.
“What was what?”
“Scherbatsky, you just gave me a little once-over.”
“I – I did no such thing.” Robin keeps her eyes focused on the road.
“You know, if you want to …”
“Barney! Stop it!”
“I’m just saying. Maybe it would help if we had some actual relaxation on this trip.”
“Relaxation? Is that your new code word for sex?”
“It would help us relax!” Barney sounds indignant now, like what he’s suggesting is totally normal. “Think about it: no strings attached vacation sex. Best. Ever.”
Robin shakes her head. “Was coming along your way of getting in my pants?”
“No. Yes. No,” he says in one breath.
“Yes or no?”
“Maybe?” Barney’s shoulders go up to his ears, and he curls toward the passenger side door.
Robin doesn’t think about it – can’t think about it – because if she does, she’s going to overthink it and not do what she really wants to do, which is accept Barney’s invitation.
“Okay,” she says.
“Okay, what?”
“Here are the rules: no cuddling afterward; we don’t talk about this once we get back to New York, and we are flying back; and you can never tell Ted, Marshall, or Lily. And it ends as soon as we get to Vancouver.”
“It’s like our own bro code,” Barney says, nodding and extending his hand for an awkward handshake. One of Robin’s hands is still on the steering wheel and her other hand fumbles for Barney’s. “Deal.”
Robin breaks two of those rules the first night.
*
They stay overnight in Winnipeg, and Robin doesn’t really intend on sleeping with Barney that night – she was going to try waiting it out, to see if she changed her mind or if he made the first move – but they had a fancy dinner at the hotel, there was wine involved, and she kissed him in the elevator on the way up to their room.
Which brings them to where they are right now, on the huge bed in their hotel room, with Barney’s hand trailing up her thigh and Robin mentally cursing herself because she neglected to pack any of her good underwear. Not that it matters, not that Barney even cares, but goddammit, where is her good stuff when she needs it?
Barney’s mouth is hot on her neck, kissing his way from her jaw down to her collarbone as he unbuttons her shirt and unzips her skirt. It’s foreign and familiar all at once – she’s been here before, in this same position (literally and figuratively) with him. His skin feels good against hers, as good as she remembers, and she moves her hands over his arms and his chest.
Nothing has really changed: the stroke of Barney’s fingers inside of her; the teasing kisses; the slow movement of their bodies together. They’re both tired from traveling, a little buzzed off the wine, and so used to each other by now that Robin wasn’t expecting anything frenzied and wouldn’t want it, anyway. Because it’s perfect just the way it is, and that realization is kind of cheesy but it’s true, anyway.
Robin wakes up in the middle of the night, and Barney is spooned up against her back. It’s strike one against their rules, but at the same time, it’s like they’re meant to be like this, like Robin’s been waiting all this time to feel this again. Her chest aches; she needs to talk to her best friend. Lily would be able to talk this out with her, help her figure out what to do.
So strike two comes when she reaches for her phone, squinting her eyes at the screen’s brightness and texts Lily. Something happened with Barney, she types, and Lily’s reply seconds later, Oh, honey, makes her wish she could talk to Lily right now, that it wasn’t the middle of the night, that she wasn’t starting to get freaked out.
Barney stirs behind her; his breath is warm on the back of Robin’s neck as he says, “Hey.”
“Um. Hi.”
“You okay?” Barney says, his voice a sleepy rumble against her skin.
Robin murmurs in response, then rolls him onto his back for round two. Barney wakes up then, grinning, saying, “Hell-o” and Robin can’t help herself, she grins right back.
*
The first Robin Sparkles Fangirl Experience (at least that’s what Barney is calling it) happens at a diner in a small town in Alberta. Robin is thoroughly enjoying the salty, greasy goodness of her French fries when a woman around her age cautiously approaches their table.
“Excuse me?” she says, holding on to the strap of her purse and shifting from foot to foot. “I’m so sorry to bother you, but – “ Her voice shakes slightly. “I have every Robin Sparkles cassette, even ‘Sandcastles in the Sand,’ and I just wanted to let you know how much of a fan I am.”
Robin smiles. “Thank you …”
“Ashley,” the woman says.
“Thank you, Ashley,” Robin says, and shakes her hand. She signs Ashley’s copy of her “Sandcastles in the Sand” single (“I ran out to my car to get it after I saw you,” Ashley says) and the entire time, Barney is trying not to laugh.
“Your fans are so polite,” Barney says once Ashley leaves. “I keep forgetting we’re in Canada. It looks like America! It kind of even sounds like America! But it’s a different country!” He looks so impressed with his realization – and it’s one Robin has heard before from him – that she just shakes her head.
“Someday, the wrong Canadian is going to hear you say that and is going to kick your ass.”
“Do you think you could book a Robin Sparkles comeback tour in Canada?” Barney says, looking like he’s musing over the thought. Robin can practically see the grand vision in his head, with a stage set up to look like a mall and cannons full of glitter confetti.
“Don’t push your luck, Stinson.”
“I can see it now.” Barney leans back, a wistful gleam in his eye, and spreads his hands. “We can set up the stage to look like a mall –“
“We? When did this become a ‘we’ thing?”
“—and we can have a Space Teens set for after the intermission,” Barney continues.
“No, and no.”
“I think there’s a great desire all across Canada for the return of Robin Sparkles.”
“No one remembers Robin Sparkles except for some very devoted fans,” Robin says, thinking of the time she googled “Robin Sparkles” and found a message board with a few people trading and selling VHS tapes of Space Teens and limited edition t-shirts. “I’d sell about ten tickets.”
“You’re totally underestimating your popularity!”
“Barney, Robin Sparkles going on tour would be like the one random kid from The Mickey Mouse Club who had a minor hit going on tour, to put it in American terms.”
“I’d go see that show!”
“Of course you would.”
“Especially if it had a mall theme.”
“Seriously, what is it with you and Robin Sparkles?”
“Uh, it’s only the most amazing music video I’ve ever seen in my life! Half of the million YouTube hits are from me!”
“You know exactly how many YouTube hits the video has.”
“I do. Now, back to the tour. Do you think we could sell Robin Sparkles Comeback Tour graffiti coats? Maybe some jelly bracelets?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Aw, come on. Don’t disappoint your fanbase like that.”
“Honestly, sometimes I wonder if there’s something wrong with your brain.”
“The only thing wrong with my brain is too much awesome.” Barney points at his head. “This, right here? Full of awesome.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” Robin says, and she throws a fry at his forehead.
*
The next few days blur together: driving, sleeping, eating, and waking up and doing it all over again. Robin is too tired for sex – which isn’t like her; usually she’s never too tired for it, but something about traveling just takes everything out of her in a way she isn’t used to. She and Barney manage some fumbling attempts at getting each other off, but they’re quick and not that good, and they fall asleep soon after.
It’s insane, but she feels herself falling for him all over again. She can’t keep doing this, can’t keep having sex with him without feeling something.
The night before they get to Vancouver, they’re staying in the middle of nowhere, Alberta, and the best Barney’s hotel guy could do for them was a tiny motel, a definite step down from the places they’ve been staying. Still, it’s surprisingly clean, and Robin is okay with the small room and the double beds. It feels normal, not like some exaggerated version of her life that Barney is paying for.
After a couple hours of napping and hanging out in the hotel room, Robin announces, “We’re going to a bar.”
Barney is sitting on the bed. His shoes are off, his MacBook Pro is on his lap, and he has a pair of huge headphones on. He moves one side away from his ear. “Huh?”
“Get suited up,” she says. “We’re going out.”
“But Robin,” he says, a little whine in his voice, “I’m on the season three finale of Felicity.”
“Oh my god. Not you, too.”
“Ted said it was great! He said it’s seriously J.J. Abrams’s most underrated work; he even wrote an essay. Everyone wants to talk about Lost, and Star Trek, blah blah blah, but this, right here? This is a masterpiece.”
Robin shakes her head. Maybe she really is missing out. Somehow she knows when she’s back home, she’ll be glued to the TV watching it. And will probably have Ted and Barney on either side of her on the couch, providing their own commentary track.
“We’re getting out of this room.” She unzips her suitcase and pulls out a bright blue dress, one that makes her feel hot whenever she wears it. Lily helped her pick it out, a long time ago, and it’s probably her favorite.
“Where’s there a bar around here?” Barney closes his laptop and takes off his headphones. “I didn’t see anything.”
“Right down the street. We passed it on the way into town. And,” she says, swallowing, “it’s our last night before the bro code expires.” Immediately she wants to kick herself for even bringing up the stupid bro code, which is really a code in name only since they’ve broken half the rules.
“Oh.” Barney scoots off the bed and slips his feet into his shoes. “Right.” He sounds sad about it, and Robin’s heart actually aches.
She almost says something about it – like maybe, they don’t have to stop. But things will be different back in New York, when their lives no longer consist of hotels and highways and terrible food. When things aren’t just the two of them together, telling jokes and listening to Robin’s ‘90s alt-rock mixes in the car. When their nights don’t include falling asleep in each other’s arms, content and sated after sex. Robin can already sense that she’s losing something even before it’s over.
Before they leave for the bar, she catches a glimpse of herself and Barney together in the full-length mirror. They look like they go together, her in her dress and Barney in his suit.
“We look good,” she says, grinning, and Barney tugs her hand and pulls her against him for a kiss. They don’t have many more times to do that, to be that spontaneous. She wants to soak up as much of it as she can before it stops, so she holds on to him, presses their bodies together, and kisses him back.
*
“Holy shit, this is just like the Hoosier Hut,” Barney says, looking around at the bar. Canadian flags are everywhere. There’s a poster of Sidney Crosby hanging on the wall, a picture of him after winning for Team Canada in the 2010 Winter Olympics. Next to it is another poster of Team Canada with their gold medals. A couple of stuffed moose heads are hanging above the bar. “It’s like Canada threw up in here.”
“Please keep in mind that you will get beat up if you start talking shit.”
Barney approaches the bar and orders a scotch for himself and one for Robin, too.
“I love Canada!” Barney says, and a couple of guys at the bar overhear him and raise their glasses. “Everyone is so friendly, and you have the greatest musical export of all time, Robin Sparkles. Would any of you guys be interested in a Robin Sparkles comeback tour?”
“Please, god, no,” Robin says under her breath.
“Wasn’t that the ‘Let’s Go to the Mall’ girl?” the bartender asks. She looks at Robin, narrowing her eyes. “You kind of look like her. Just without the …” She spreads her hands on either side of her head, indicating big hair.
“I’m not Robin Sparkles,” she says, too loud and too high, and slips her arm through Barney’s, pulling him away. “Don’t let me be the Canadian who beats you up, okay?” she hisses in his ear.
“I think there’s a viable market for a Robin Sparkles comeback, and what better place than – um, where are we again?”
“I don’t know.” Robin picks up Barney’s scotch. “Here, drink it, and stop talking about Robin Sparkles and a comeback tour.”
An hour later, when she ends up on a tiny stage in the back of the bar doing karaoke to “Let’s Go to the Mall,” it’s her own fault.
“Yeah!” Barney cheers, and he’s dancing and making a fool out of himself. It’s the best thing Robin’s seen in a while. The dude has no rhythm. His style of dancing involves doing the robot, then swaying his arms in the air, then putting his hands on his hips and wiggling his ass for a second. He even hops up onstage, grabs the other microphone, and starts to sing along, which encourages the whole bar to join in, too.
Robin’s eyes widen, and, okay, she’s kind of wobbly in her heels anyway, but Barney getting onstage like that surprises her so much she has to grab on to him to stay steady.
“Hey, Barney!” Robin sing-says, and Barney says back, “Yeah?”
“Let’s go to the mall! Woo!” and Robin segues into the final chorus.
It’s the best and most ridiculous moment of this entire vacation, which is a vacation that’s been full of several of them. Some people would rather go to Hawaii, or the Caribbean, but Robin is completely at home and happy here, in a bar somewhere in Alberta, doing karaoke with one of her best friends.
Barney beams at her as the song ends. “Can we do that again?”
“Why the hell not?”
And the song starts again.
*
Maybe it’s the rush of being on a stage, or the scotch, and the pleasant buzzing underneath her skin, but Robin can’t wait to get out of her clothes once they’re back in the hotel room. Actually, she can’t wait to get Barney out of his, either.
She tugs at his belt. “You wear too many clothes, you know that?”
“The suit is a lost art form,” he says, laughing and unzipping Robin’s dress – which he can do one-handed. She shivers as the room’s air conditioning hits her back, as Barney fingertips graze her bare skin.
Robin gets the belt off, and then moves on to his shirt, unfastening the buttons to reveal skin and muscles that make her mouth go dry. It’s still new, even though they’ve been here numerous times before. She pushes Barney’s shirt off, running her hands over his shoulders and arms, the whole time trying not to focus on this being the last time.
Barney slips Robin’s dress over her shoulders, and she shivers again as it glides down her legs to the floor, quickly followed by her underwear. They’re trying to kiss and get undressed at the same time while Robin backs up to the bed. Barney manages to get rid of his pants and socks, hopping around on one foot while Robin grins at him and says, “You’re so smooth.”
Barney gives her a fond eyeroll and smile. “You wish you were this smooth.”
Robin pretends to scoff and pulls him down onto the bed with her, backing up toward the pillows. Barney kneels between her legs, moving a hand from her hip to one of her breasts, sliding it around to her back to unhook her bra. Trying to refocus his attention on kissing her, she wraps a hand around his neck, thinking: this is the last time he’s going to kiss her like that, this is the last time his hand is going to be there, this is the last time that he’s going to bury his face between her neck and shoulder like that as he pushes inside her.
Everything is heightened, every part of her hyper-aware of every movement he makes, every sound, and her own, too. She comes too quickly, or at least it seems too quick, like she hasn’t had enough time to memorize how good this is or how much she’s going to miss it. When he comes, he goes tense in her arms and shudders, and she holds on, not wanting to let go.
Afterward, when Barney has wrapped his arms around her from behind, Robin blurts out, “I’m going to miss this.”
“You know,” Barney says, yawning, “our roadtrip bro code isn’t actually written down like the original bro code, so maybe we could change it up. “
“What do you mean?”
“We can keep doing this once we get back.”
Robin pulls away and turns over to face him. “I can’t do that,” she says. “I can’t – Barney, I can’t keep having sex with you.”
“Dude, if I was bad, you could have said something.” He frowns.
“No, no, you weren’t bad.” She rests a hand against his cheek, because he’s there, and he’s real, and she can’t stop herself from touching him now that she can again. “You’re great. But I can’t keep doing this.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
Robin isn’t expecting that; her hand stills on his face, her thumb absently brushing over a rough spot, some stubble that he missed. “Wait, really?”
“I think we’ve both changed,” Barney says. “I mean that I can’t keep doing this with the bro code.”
Robin’s throat constricts; it’s hard to get the words out. “I don’t know if we’ve changed enough. I know what will happen: we’ll keep doing this back home, and then after a while we’ll just decide to go back to being friends, or you’ll miss hitting on women at the bar, or something – “
“If you think that, you really don’t know me.” When Barney says that, Robin’s stomach drops.
“I know you, Barney. I’ve known you for a while, and we did this before, and I can’t – I’m not going to do that again, go through the same problems we had the last time.”
“We won’t have the same problems,” Barney says, and he sounds so sure of himself that Robin almost believes him.
“What makes you say that?” Her hand finally drops from his face. All of a sudden, she doesn’t want to touch him anymore.
“I think we both grew up. I think the timing wasn’t right the last time. I think a lot of things happened that changed. Me and Nora, you and Don. I think those relationships made us different.”
Robin winces at Don’s name. It’s been a while, but the thought of him and what he did still stings.
“I don’t know, Barney.”
She can’t keep talking about this. She wants to sleep. She’s nervous about seeing her dad for the first time in forever; the real point of the trip has started to hit her, that this isn’t just some fun excursion with Barney, that it has a point. And she just wants to be with Barney, without having to analyze it and talk about it.
“Just give us a shot,” he says, moving closer to her, backlit by the red glow of the alarm clock.
So, this is it. She can say yes or no, and either answer is going to change things. The uncertainty around them, whatever they are, is overwhelming. Not that she needs a label, but if she’s in all the way, she wants to know that Barney is, too.
“Do you think we can do this?”
He nods.
“Okay, so. The bro code is officially broken,” Robin says.
“Was it ever really in full force to begin with?”
Robin smiles. “Not really.”
Barney rests a hand on her hip and pulls her closer.
“Will you go with me to see my dad?” she asks.
“Of course I will,” Barney says.
The way he says it – like it’s already a given – makes her smile and wonder why she was so freaked out in the first place.
*
Robin’s dad is expecting them around eight the next evening, saying he’ll take care of dinner. Robin and Barney arrive five minutes early, which gives her enough time to calm herself down before walking up the front walkway to the door. She hasn’t been back home in years, and pulling up in front of her childhood home is both comforting and nerve-wracking.
“Let’s do this,” Robin says, and they get out of the car.
On the front stoop, she rings the doorbell. As they wait, Barney reaches over and takes her hand, giving it a gentle squeeze.
It’s all she needs.