An odd couple of sorts, introspective and stern Alvin and his girlfriend's brother, Lance, dopy and insecure, leave the city behind to spend the summer of 1988 repainting traffic lines on a desolate country highway where the surrounding areas have been ravaged by wildfire. The men bicker and joke with each other, eventually developing an unlikely friendship.

The story of Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple, whose challenge of their anti-miscegenation arrest for their marriage in Virginia led to a legal battle that would end at the US Supreme Court.