Joe, a middle-aged executive driving home from the airport and still smarting from a recent divorce, picks up Ginger, a much younger, pretty hitchhiker with a guitar and a suitcase full of poetry books. Ginger, with a candid voice and a light, joyful spirit, is headed for Colorado Springs, so Joe pretends he’s bound for Denver, concealing that his real home is in Santa Fe. When they need a place to stay for the night, motel rooms prove elusive, and Joe drives to his house, presenting it as a friend’s place who’s out of town and has offered him access.
Joe is clearly taken with Ginger, and she discovers that he’s capable—even if imperfect—of singing and dreaming about a better life, while listening to her ideas with an open, if uncertain, heart. Their connection swells despite a few clumsy lies, and they seem to be sliding toward a romantic, hopeful night together. But the mood shifts abruptly when Charlie, Joe’s best buddy and a wild, boisterous presence, arrives unannounced. In his raucous humor, unaware that Ginger is listening from upstairs, Charlie casts Joe as someone just hunting for a single, easy encounter with a pretty girl. Ginger’s trust fractures in the instant, and she is ready to leave for the bus station at once.
Yet Charlie is not a villain at heart; he recognizes the harm he’s caused and urges Ginger to stay, while Joe, trapped in confusion, cannot articulate the sincerity he really feels beneath the surface. In a misguided bid for payback, Joe enlists Charlie’s ex-wife, Sugar, to complicate the evening further and turn Charlie’s night into a nightmare. The four of them end up at a dinner together, where alcohol and pent-up tension between Charlie and Sugar spill over, getting them ejected from the restaurant and nearly facing arrest.
Back at Joe’s house, tensions simmer as Ginger reveals she’s pregnant by a former boyfriend, prompting the two women to retreat to a hotel. Joe and Charlie drive into the mountains, each wrestling with their own fears: Joe about committing to Ginger and her unborn child, and Charlie about the consequences of his impulsive choices. Ultimately, all four find their way back to Joe’s home, where Joe’s inability to commit remains intractable, and Ginger declares that the affair is over, leaving for the bus station in a mix of resolve and heartbreak.
In the final act, a growing alarm at what he’s missed drives Joe to enlist the town’s Slim Pickens as the sheriff to chase and stop the bus Ginger is on. On the roadside, the driver pulls over, and Joe steps off with other passengers, hoping to salvage something—only to see Ginger standing alone on the opposite side of the road as the bus pulls away, a quiet, aching reminder of opportunities lost and a future that might have been.
