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Alabama is hot and sunny and totally hopeless, and if Donna weren’t there with him, laughing next to him on the bus, Josh sort of thinks he might go crazy.
They’ll never actually go to Alaska—too costly a trip for a state they couldn’t win in a thousand years—but he swears he’ll take her with him if they do, and she believes it.
In Arizona he gets her a pair of sunglasses because she didn’t bring any, and they’re a bright, offensive, ridiculous orange, and Donna holds on to them for years.
When she tells him that Arkansas is famous for its diamonds, reading aloud from the pamphlet she picked up at the hotel, he almost says he’ll buy her one before he thinks better of it.
She draws stick figures on the back of a “Welcome to California!” postcard, one of him surrounded by papers and one of her holding a binder, and when they get back Josh tapes it to his computer monitor and leaves it up there for weeks.
Colorado is endlessly green, mountains stretching out for miles, and when Donna stops to snap a photo, she doesn’t even notice Josh in the edge of the frame, looking over his shoulder and smiling at her.
The way Josh talks about Connecticut you’d think everyone in the world would want to live there, and though she found it silly at first, the longer Donna knows him, the easier it becomes to imagine a life there.
In Delaware they hold a campaign event on a boardwalk, and when she nearly trips and falls into the water he’s there in seconds to catch her, almost like he was waiting for it to happen.
They throw alligator puns back and forth in Florida, but when she stops to strip off her outer layer, complaining of the humidity, Josh suddenly doesn’t feel like laughing.
He brings her back a crate of peaches from Georgia, kept frozen on the plane, and when Donna bites into one the taste of devotion is so strong she could choke on it.
One time Donna makes a joke about him taking her to Hawaii, just the two of them, and though it’s over and gone in the next second, he can’t get the images out of his head all day.
“When in Idaho, do as the Idahoans do,” she tells him, smiling, and Josh almost misses catching the potato she throws at him because he’s grinning back so broadly.
Their flight is delayed in Illinois, and when she falls asleep with her head on his shoulder in the Chicago airport, Josh doesn’t move a muscle for an hour.
He complains so much about Indiana’s time zones even after they get back that one day Donna draws up an official memo suggesting a change, and even though it never leaves the office, Josh’s answering laughter is worth the trouble.
They do grassroots in Iowa, still saving the money for a campaign bus, but Josh’s hands on the wheel and hers on the radio dial make Donna wish they could stick to rental cars forever.
The waving golden tops of the Kansas cornfields remind him of her hair, a compliment she doesn’t appreciate: he doesn’t know how to explain it’s one of the prettiest things he’s ever seen.
When he mocks Kentucky as a flyover state, he doesn’t expect her casual response of “What if this was where I was from?” to change his vision of the place so completely.
In Louisiana they use their precious hour of free time to walk through the French Quarter together, and though they don’t hold hands, the baker they purchase beignets from seems to think they are a couple anyway.
From a local staffer they learn that Eastport, Maine is the first city in the United States to see daylight, and for once Donna doesn’t complain at the early wake-up time as she watches Josh watch the sun slowly paint the sky in orange from the conference room window.
Black-eyed Susans, the state flower, infest the Maryland roadsides, and when he jokingly picks one and offers it to her, Donna’s smile as she tucks it behind her ear makes Josh’s breath catch suddenly in his chest.
The whole campaign switches to tea instead of coffee for their day in Massachusetts, and when Josh hands Donna her cup she’s surprised to find he’s put the exact right amounts of sugar and milk in without even having to ask.
They shiver through the rally in Michigan, cold lake air chilling them to the bone, and though his lips are just as blue as hers Josh wraps her in a blanket as soon as they’re back on the bus and won’t let her take it off until every spot of color has returned to her cheeks.
In Minnesota he offhandedly tells her he loves her when she hands him the folder he’s been searching for, and for some reason it’s hard for them to look each other in the eyes all day.
Josh gets himself badly sunburned in Mississippi, but it’s Donna’s concerned expression, combined with her gentle hands as she touches his forehead, that makes the pain almost unbearable.
When they stop for gas in Missouri they lean against the side of the car together, and the place where their shoulders touched buzzes on Donna’s skin for hours.
There are grizzly bear warnings posted for every other mile in Montana, and when he jokes that he only has to run faster than she does, neither of them acknowledges the obviousness of the lie that he’d ever leave her behind.
“You look good,” Josh says suddenly in the Nebraska sunshine, even though she’s wearing the same shirt as yesterday, even though her hair is tangled, even though she looks the same as she always does.
“No gambling,” he tells her in Nevada, and Donna wouldn’t even think of it: both of their poker faces have always been terrible.
Every time they go to New Hampshire she thinks with wonder, this is where he gave me a badge, and now here we are, and when she looks at him, she knows he’s thinking the exact same thing.
There are diners on every corner in New Jersey, but Donna shakes her head when he proposes lunch there—she isn’t sure she could handle staring at him across the booth like that, trying not to touch her shoe to his under the table.
The sun presses down on them like it’s got something to prove in New Mexico, but Josh doesn’t take so much as a sip from his bottle of water until he’s watched her finish hers.
New York is claustrophobic and overwhelming, but watching Josh beam on the campaign stage as they scream the candidate’s name makes the crowd around Donna seem to disappear entirely.
They’re late and they’re racing down a North Carolina sidewalk when he says “Follow me,” and in the breathlessness of the moment she almost tells him, “Anywhere.”
It rains the whole time they’re in North Dakota, ruining half their campaign events, but when they’re huddling together under his umbrella, Josh can’t bring himself to wish for clear skies.
Their bus has to stop for an engine check on the side of an Ohio road, and when Donna complains of the sun Josh steps in front of her without speaking, his shadow blocking her eyes from the blinding brightness.
In Oklahoma they stay up past midnight hammering out the next day’s schedule, and Josh is on the point of exhaustion until Donna pulls him over to the window and points at the sky, where all the stars are out and glittering.
“Don’t die of dysentery,” she warns him when he goes to Oregon, meaning, “Be safe”—“Cholera, more like,” he responds, meaning, “I will.”
They get separated from the rest of the group at a rally in Pennsylvania, and when Donna puts her hand on his shoulder to steady herself as she peers over the crowd, Josh is pretty sure his stomach shouldn’t flip over the way it does.
She calls from the office while he’s in Rhode Island, and when she asks if there’s anything else she should know, he has to bite his tongue to stop himself from blurting out, I wish you were here.
He grits his teeth when he sees the Confederate flag lurking in someone’s window in South Carolina; Donna nudges his shoulder, a mischievous look in her eyes, and together they decorate the person's yard with campaign signs, free of charge.
In South Dakota they visit Mount Rushmore, and as they tilt their heads back to stare up at the carved stone, he says, “They should put you up there,” and when she looks over she sees that his grin is half sincere.
The mockingbirds that sing in the Tennessee trees are meant to be good omens, and though Josh hopes they’re all for the campaign, Donna can’t help but wish some for herself.
Together they pick shapes from the Texas clouds, drifting across the bluest sky Donna’s ever seen—she points out one that looks like an apple, but when he looks closer, Josh thinks it reminds him more of a heart.
He’s never though of Utah as a particularly beautiful place, but watching her stare raptly out the window at the sunset-colored rocks would be enough to change anyone’s mind.
In Vermont they sneak maple syrup like it’s contraband, all their loyalty still to the neighboring state, and it’s secret and it’s spirited until Donna holds a finger to her lips and winks at him and Josh feels the syrup dissolve to chalk on his tongue.
Virginia is stuck somewhere between winter and spring when they visit, pale green and gray with wind that feels sharp enough to draw blood, but when Josh drapes her in his coat Donna feels like she could jump into a lake and still come out safe and dry.
The Washington evergreens are inescapable, hiding around every turn, but when Donna leans over to pick bits of pine out of Josh's hair, he wishes there were twice as many.
They sing “Take Me Home, Country Roads” in West Virginia so many times they all go hoarse, but hearing Donna collapse into laughter at the end of each verse is enough for Josh to spur on another round.
Home is where the heart is, reads the sign on her mother’s door, and standing in her childhood bedroom in Wisconsin, Donna realizes that somewhere along the line, that ceased to mean here.
They’re listening to the candidate speak in Wyoming when he loses sight of her; he pushes through the crowd until he sees her standing on the road, and when he calls and she turns and smiles at him across the plain, it’s like the tide returning to the beach, or magnets: there was never, he thinks as he smiles back, any stopping this at all.