In 1988, an odd pair of sorts, meditative and stern Alvin (Paul Rudd) and his girlfriend's brother, Lance (Emile Hirsch), dopey and insecure, leave the city behind to spend the summer in solitude repainting traffic lines down the center of a country highway ravaged by wildfire. As they sink into their job in the remarkable landscape, they learn more than they want to about each other and their own limitations. An unlikely friendship develops through humor and nasty exchanges, leading to surprising affection. During their adventure, they meet a drunk truck driver who seems to be unknowing about a woman that enters his truck. But it comes as a metaphor for the pair's own problems with the women in their life.