The Thousand Mile Love Story

by Natalie Vivien

  “I love you,” she said. For the first time. “I love you so much,” she said, searching out the words as she searched Andee’s eyes, her own eyes dark and large in the blackness of the night. “You’re the greatest thing that ever happened to me,” she whispered, as she leaned down, brushing her lips over Andee’s. “And I’m going to spend the rest of my life showing you how grateful I am for your existence.”

  In that moment, Andee felt complete for the first time in her entire life.

  Dreaming Andee’s heart began to beat faster as the scene blurred again.

  Andee opened the door to Robin’s dorm room. She’d brought her flowers. It was a patriarchal thing to do, they’d joked with one another in one of their feminist classes, but she didn’t know how else to articulate how much what Robin had said to her last night meant. She wanted to surprise her girlfriend. She wanted to make love to her again, wanted to kiss her, taste her, tell her that she loved her, too, because last night, she’d been too overwhelmed by emotions to do much of anything besides kiss Robin back.

  And when Andee opened the door to the dorm room, everything fell apart.

  Because there was a naked young woman in Robin’s bed. Her face was round and full and very pretty, her curly blonde hair cascading over her soft, creamy shoulders in waves. And Robin stood over her, a cup of tea in her hands, the top few buttons of her shirt undone. And as the young woman clutched the sheet to her chest, as she stared in horror at the door and at Andee, who stood there, silent, tears forcing themselves out of the corner of her eyes, Robin turned and realized who stood there, watching them.

  The teacup fell from her hand, the flowers from Andee’s arms, and as both objects hit the floor, Andee turned and walked away from the open doorway, holding her hand to her mouth as she sobbed.

  You’re the greatest thing that ever happened to me.

  Andee woke up, gasping for air and trying to swallow the deep emotions of ten years ago that were taking hold of her once again. She drew her knees to her chest and let two tears slip out of her eyes and plunk down onto her pillow before she wiped her sleeve over her face, sniffing.

  Ten years ago. Ten years. And she still had the dream, reliving the same nightmare over and over and over again. She wished she could make it stop. She wished she could forget it easily. Other people forgot their past pains, or at least could move forward with their scars.

  And to some extent, Andee had. She’d dated a lot of women over the past decade, a lot of women who were completely unlike Robin in every way. She’d seen to that. They couldn’t have her slant of head, the way her eyes would flash when she came up with a crazy plan, the way she joked and made everything, even the dullest moments, funny.

  The way that she’d betrayed the woman she’d promised to spend the rest of her life loving.

  Andee curled her arm beneath her pillow and breathed out, closing her eyes.

  She should never have agreed to go on this trip.

  ---

  Four months earlier had been a day like any other. Andee’s life was predictable that way. Safe, sane, and utterly boring. She never thought she’d enjoy a life like that, but it seemed to suit her now. Not the woman she’d once been, but the woman she was becoming.

  She walked to the Puppy Parlor, wondering if today was going to be the day she would finally ask Danielle out. Tiffany, whose bakery was one street over, had met her outside with a delivery of dog treats, a huge grin on her freckled face as she waved a cream-colored padded envelope beneath Andee’s nose.

  “Did you get your mail yet?” she asked, practically vibrating in place, stomping her tennis shoes in a strange shuffle-dance of glee.

  “Um…no…” said Andee, fiddling with the lock as she opened the door. She reached into the pouch mailbox on the other side of the door and took out a huge stack of bills, advertisements and junk mail, and there, just like Tiffany’s, was a cream-colored padded envelope.

  “Oh, my God. Open it,” said Tiffany, chortling. Andee raised her eyebrow and let her best friend take the dog biscuits into the Puppy Parlor as Andee shut the door. She ripped the envelope open, perplexed. The return address, in curling, fancy script, read “Elizabeth and Heather Butler-Young.” Andee knew her friends as Elizabeth Butler and Heather Young… When had they started hyphenating their last names?

  A small package wrapped in tissue paper dropped out of the envelope, into her hand, along with a smaller purple envelope. “Andee” was written across it in the same formal, fancy script, and the little purple package had a polka-dotted ribbon elaborately knotted over it. Andee set everything down on the counter and opened the package first as Tiffany bounced from one foot to the other, making little excited sounds.

  There was more bubble wrap under the tissue paper, which Andee had to laboriously unwrap, and then, beneath that…

  A locket.

  “What?” Andee whispered, staring down at the gold locket in her hand. It was an oval locket, with a delicate gold chain, the face of the locket carved with tiny vines and what appeared to be ivy (not that Andee was much of an expert when it came to plants). She clicked it open.

  Inside the locket was a lovely picture of Elizabeth and Heather, kissing. It was a recent photo, because when Andee had seen the pair at Christmas, Heather’s black hair had been in a much shorter trim. They looked ridiculously happy, as per usual. But that’s not what held Andee’s attention.

  Across from the picture, on the other half of the locket, was a tiny piece of paper. And in the same, fancy script, it read, “Will you be our bridesmaid?”

  “What?” Andee whispered again, feeling the floor fall away from her. And then the elation poured into her, rich and vibrant and true.

  After all of these years together, Elizabeth and Heather were finally tying the knot.

  “Oh, my God!” she squeaked, and she turned to Tiffany, her mouth hanging open and shifting into a grin in a heartbeat as her best friend grabbed her and hugged her so tightly, they both lost their breath.

  “About time, right?” said Tiffany, bouncing up and down, her curly red hair flying all over the place, as it tended to do. “I just called Jill,” she said, flashing her cell phone out of her pocket, “and she got one, too. And…” She trailed off, and that’s when it all really sunk in.

  “And Robin,” said Andee, surprised by the sound of her own voice. There was no emotion in it. There was nothing.

  “Yes. And Kimberly,” said Tiffany quickly, clearing her throat. “You haven’t read the card yet,” she said, soldiering on ahead and not looking at Andee, “but they’re getting married in Burlington, Vermont! Isn’t that great? They just bought a house up there. I didn’t even thinking they wanted to move out of Massachusetts.”

  “I did,” said Andee, numbly. “Heather was telling me at Christmas that there were too many people. Too many tourists.”

  “So…I think you should read the card,” said Tiffany. There was something in her voice, something that denoted urgency. With dread, Andee opened up the pastel purple envelope and slid the card out.

  It was a very nice card, with a gigantic rainbow on the front made with different colors of glitter that ended in a star, outlined in silver. Heather was pretty crafty; she’d probably made the card herself.

  On the inside:

  Dear Andee,

  It happened—it finally happened. I asked Heather, and she said yes, and we’re getting married. Can you believe it? I know that neither of us really cared about marriage for the longest time, but we’re starting to now. It’s important. And it’s important to us. We want to, in front of everyone we love, profess undying love to one another. It’ll be the happiest day of our lives.

  Andee, we would be honored beyond measure if you would agree to be one of our bridesmaids. And we were wondering……… (there were a lot of dots here, making Andee’s stomach clench in knots) Heather and I have never forgotten the pact we made as the “Adventure Lezzies” all those years ago. We know that you and Robin have never reall
y made up, and you know how we both love to meddle. I say this so that it’s clear, right at the beginning, exactly why we’re asking of you. :)

  We want the Adventure Lezzies to make that road trip.

  Not with Heather and me. And not with Kimberly—she can’t get out of work. But we’ve asked everyone else, and everyone else has agreed…including Robin. We were going to call you, but we thought if we put it in writing, it might feel better to you, make you feel less pressured if we gave you time to think it over.

  Would you do this for us? All of our dearest friends reconciling for our wedding would be the greatest gift we could ever receive.

  All our love,

  Elizabeth (and Heather and Mutley and Simon and Maurice and Godiva Esquire)

  Andee closed the card gently and slid it back into the envelope, the glitter giving her a little grief until she finally shoved it in, smoothing the front of it and setting it down onto the counter. She picked up the locket, realizing that Tiffany was watching her very closely, waiting for a reaction.

  The locket was such a sweet gesture. There in Tiffany’s hands was one just like it. They must have sent a locket to all of the Adventure Lezzies. What a lovely way to ask if someone wanted to be your bridesmaid…

  “Earth to Andee… Come in, Andee…” said Tiffany nervously, fiddling with the clasp of her locket with watermelon pink nails.

  “Who’s Simon?” asked Andee, from a million miles away.

  “What?”

  “Simon. It’s signed Elizabeth, Heather, Mutley, Maurice, Godiva Esquire…and Simon. Who’s Simon?”

  “Oh…” said Tiffany, shaking her head, flustered. “He’s a turtle. They took him in from one of the local exotic animal rescues.”

  “Ah,” said Andee, patting the envelope serenely. “That’s nice.”

  “Andee?” Tiffany looked worried now.

  “You knew about this?” There was nothing accusing in her tone. Her voice was as flat as people used to believe the earth was.

  “I mean, we all did,” said Tiffany, her own voice close to despair as she nervously plucked at the edges of her sleeves. “We really did think it best to have it in a letter rather than just outright asking you…” She trailed off, licked her lips. “Are you all right?”

  Andee thought about that for a long moment. Yes, she still had the nightmares. But they were relatively infrequent. Yes, there was a lot of pain in her heart, still. Yes, she’d never forgotten Robin (or, let’s be honest, gotten over her). Yes, she’d dated other women, but it wasn’t the same, never the same. Yes, she’d…

  Yes, she’d go.

  It was strange, how instantaneously she’d made that decision. Her insides were clenching, and she felt like she was going to throw up, but she knew how much her cooperation would mean to Elizabeth and Heather. She’d seen how what had happened between her and Robin had wedged all of their friendships apart, and though it wasn’t her fault (none of this was her fault), she still felt terrible about it.

  She could be cool and serene when she saw Robin. She could go on a road trip with some of the most important people in her life, and one who was no longer the least bit important (even then, she felt her stomach turn at that lie).

  She could do this.

  “When’s the wedding?” she’d asked Tiffany. Tiffany blinked.

  “Late June,” she murmured.

  “Great,” she said, cutting open the case of dog biscuits and beginning to stack the boxes of them onto the counter. “Oh, Tiff, could you make some more peanut ones for next week? Mrs. Nelson always comes in for them for her dog Troy. You should see him; he’s this great big St. Bernard, and such a sweetheart! And—”

  “Andrea Shaw, what the heck is happening?” asked Tiffany then, accenting each word as she slapped her hands down on the countertop.

  Andee stared her in the eyes, her own eyes flashing.

  “We’re going on that damn road trip,” is what she said, causing her best friend to fling her arms around her neck and squeeze her tight enough to choke.

  Andee had felt triumphant then, had felt it really was possible, because that was March. And June was forever away.

  But time flies by faster than you want it to.

  And now…June was here.

  ---

  It was six o’clock in the morning. This was the time that Andee normally got up, shut off the blaring alarm clock on her bedside table, shuffled over to the other side of her bedroom and shut off the blaring alarm clock on her dresser, and practically fell into the bathroom to shut off the third alarm clock that screamed next to the toilet.

  Andee had tried to get by with one alarm clock, like a normal person. But she always slept right through it. And two didn’t work, either, because she’d get up to turn off the one on the dresser and then find herself awake a few hours later, having somehow stumbled back to bed. But the third alarm clock was the charm, and as she splashed cold water onto her face this morning, as she stared at herself in the mirror and tried to remember why it was, exactly, she should be unhappy (because she felt it buzzing in the back of her head, this very insistent feeling that things were bad), she remembered, all in a rush, why.

  Today was the day the thousand-mile road trip began.

  Crap.

  Crap, crap, crap.

  Andee gulped down a deep breath of air and splashed another handful of cold water onto her face for good measure before she turned off the tap and grabbed the towel off the rack.

  She paced out into her living room and stared at her two suitcases. They were small for a seven-day road trip, plus one day of wedding rehearsal and one day of wedding. But Elizabeth and Heather had had all of the bridesmaids send their bridesmaid dresses ahead to Burlington, because they were going to have to fit four ladies and four ladies’ worth of luggage into one extremely green convertible (Tiffany had valiantly agreed to put her car through one thousand miles of hell, because Andee’s car was perpetually trying to commit suicide and was still in the shop; Jill and her girlfriend only shared one car; and Robin…well, Andee hadn’t asked about Robin). So Andee had packed as lightly as she could, secretly doubting that she would go through with the whole thing, anyway.

  There was a backup plan. A plan she’d concocted a few days after she agreed to go on the road trip, just to make herself feel better. And it had made her feel better. So much better, in fact, that she wondered why she’d ever agreed to the road trip in the first place. She knew she shouldn’t have. It was just, in the moment, she’d been feeling a lot of emotions, mostly jubilance for Heather and Elizabeth, but also hope. Because Heather and Elizabeth had been together well over ten years, and they were still—no, more—in love, and their love grew more every day, it seemed. So if Elizabeth and Heather could make it this far, maybe that meant that somehow, someday, Andee could be like them, with a woman who loved her, with a woman who would never break her heart.

  But those feelings had quickly faded when faced with the enormity of spending seven days with Robin, when they hadn’t even seen each other since graduation, and hadn’t really spoken coherently since That Night.

  So the backup plan was to book an extraordinarily expensive plane ticket from Raleigh to Burlington, Vermont. Fly in so that she was in time for the wedding rehearsal. Then have an extremely awkward wedding rehearsal and rehearsal dinner—during which she and Robin stayed on opposite ends of everything, so that they couldn’t talk, couldn’t make eye contact... And then Andee would just have to get through the wedding.

  That’s all she had to do.

  And then she would not have to see Robin ever again.

  Andee paced in front of her two small suitcases, glancing at them every few steps, as she chewed on her thumbnail. She could unpack. She could unpack right now, get online, and book the plane ticket. Then, when Tiffany came, she could… She could what? She glanced at the big clock hanging over her couch. Six-thirty. It was all right. She had two-and-a-half more hours to make this decision. Two-and-half more…

&
nbsp; There was a knock at the door.

  Andee stopped, her heart pounding. She crossed woodenly to the door and opened it.

  Tiffany.

  Of course it was Tiffany.

  Tiffany’s hair was up in a bandana, spilling out in two twisty, curly red braids on either side of her face. She wore retro-looking sunglasses, too-tight jeans (that had probably made her girlfriend weep on her knees at the door after she left), and a blouse that she’d unbuttoned at the bottom and tied at her navel. She looked a little like Audrey Hepburn, if Audrey Hepburn had been a redhead and slightly deranged. Tiffany flashed one of her most convincing smiles and stepped into the house past Andee.

  “Oh, good!” she exclaimed, staring down at the suitcases. “You’re ready to go!”

  “Tiffany…” began Andee miserably, but Tiffany put up one finger, the intensity of the cobalt blue glitter polish on the nail temporarily blinding Andee.

  “I was in the neighborhood.” She said each word smoothly, sweetly, coated in sugar. “So I’m sorry I’m early.”

  “I can’t do this,” said Andee, collapsing on the couch and running her hands through her hair. “I thought I could do it, but I just… I can’t.”

  Tiffany sat beside Andee and wrapped her arms around her, drawing her close and rubbing her back in small, comforting circles. “I know, darlin’,” said Tiff soothingly. “I know it’s hard.” And then, in a much smaller voice: “You know you don’t have to come.”

  Andee closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Tiff held her tightly. Tiff, who had been there since the beginning. Tiff, who had held her and reassured her and made her laugh in the heartbreaking months after Robin had… Well, after. Tiff, who made certain, when the women got together for major holidays and parties, traveling in from all areas of the country, that Andee was there when Robin wasn’t there, and that Robin was there when Andee wasn’t. Tiff, who had done her best to help Andee every day in every way. Always.