The woman decides to leave her boyfriend because she is unhappy with him cooking and selling meth. After a year of putting up with it, she loads her belongings into her car, along with one of his guns. She drives down along California’s highways and hopes to get to her cousin’s house in three hours. She then takes a quick stop in Palm Springs for lunch, but her car fails to turn on afterward. An old man near her takes a look at what’s going on and helps her jump it successfully, but he still recommends that she get her car checked out before getting a move on.

In her car, the woman follows the old man to a mechanic shop that his friend runs. The mechanic says that fixing her alternator will take a few days and seven hundred dollars. Hesitantly, she says she’ll stay in town until her car is up and running. The old man says he also has a friend who runs a motel nearby and that she could get a discount. She accepts his offer, and they officially introduce themselves to each other.

At the motel, the woman offers her bottle of tequila in exchange for his help today. They spend the day together, drinking, stargazing, swimming, and eventually making love in her bed. He stays the night with her, and in the morning after, he sees the scars on her body and asks about them. She says it’s from her abusive boyfriend, after which she says that he probably won’t be able to track her down. They get ready and head to the mechanic shop together.

The mechanic says that more maintenance will be required than previously thought, and her bill would be well past a thousand dollars. She thinks it over and says that she can take her time in town, though she doesn’t know how to make the money. The old man asks the mechanic shop about the bar nearby, during which the woman overhears that a bunch of staff have been laid off. The woman offers to pick up a job at the bar in order to pay off her maintenance. Everyone agrees.

After a week, the woman already makes half her bill to the mechanic shop. She periodically gets texts from her boyfriend, which she replies to by telling him to leave her alone. One night, the old man says that the boyfriend is in town and stopped by the mechanic shop, as he may have recognized her car. He then walks her home later, and they have their usual evening routine of looking at the night sky and swimming in the motel pool.

The next night, the woman works at the bar and sees her boyfriend’s RV pull up into the parking lot. The old man comes in, and she fills him in about who she just saw. She says that she has his gun at the motel, which he may have come to get back. The old man goes back to the motel and promises to bring it back unloaded. Before he returns, however, the boyfriend comes in and demands that she come home. When the boyfriend takes a restroom break, the old man comes in and gives the woman her gun, which she stashes in her pants.

When the boyfriend comes back, the old man tries to intimidate him and get him to leave. The boyfriend then puts his hands on the woman, after which she pulls her gun on him and tells him to leave. When she shoots, the bullet misses and accidentally strikes the old man’s shoulder. However, the old man quickly reacts, pulls out his own gun, and shoots the boyfriend dead in the bar. She urgently tends to his wound, sets up the scene to incriminate her dead boyfriend, and calls the authorities.

From then on, the woman and old man are involved in the dead boyfriend’s case. They say that the boyfriend went crazy, chased after the woman, and caused a violent incident at the bar. Eventually, they are allowed to go, and the woman finally gets her car back after a week of repairs. However, further questioning by the locals leads the authorities to bring the woman back in for interrogation. She’s nervous that they’ll pick out a discrepancy and convict her. She asks the old man to run away with her to Mexico, but he says he has his own business to run. On the day of her questioning, she keeps to her story. The case is dropped, but one police officer still keeps a suspicious eye on her.

The woman is nervous about the police officer who looked at her suspiciously in the interrogation room. She knows that he can’t stick around, even though she wants to be with the old man. In her car, she keeps on driving to Mexico.