---
“…and a large coffee with two cream and two sugar,” yelled Tiffany into the drive-through microphone. “And…what did you want again, Jillie?”
“A medium non-fat, no water chai with no foam,” said Jill patiently, retying the bandana at the back of her skull and smoothing her hair under it in the visor mirror.
“Did you get that, darlin’?” asked Tiffany into the microphone. The barista chuckled and told her “yes,” and Tiffany pulled around, inching toward the window.
“In my day,” said Tiff haughtily, adjusting the rearview mirror, “it was just coffee.”
Jill laughed and shook her head and glanced back at Andee and Robin, sitting as far apart from one another as they could possibly get in the big bench seat. “How are you two kids holding up?”
“We haven’t even gotten started yet!” Robin quipped, crossing her legs and letting her arm fall along the seat. If Andee was closer, it’d be wrapped around her, but she wasn’t, so it wasn’t, but Robin’s nearness still made her stomach twist.
“I’ll be good once we get on the road,” said Andee sincerely, glancing at her watch. Ten o’clock and they hadn’t even left Blacksburg yet!
“Would you relax?” asked Jill, shaking her head and clucking her tongue, pulling her graying ponytail tighter. “We’re spending all these days together road tripping. By it’s very definition, we have no place to go and no one to see!”
“Actually, we have lots of places to go,” said Robin dryly as Tiffany gunned her engine and pulled up next to the coffee shop’s drive through window.
Tiffany handed back the two iced coffees that Robin and Andee had unwittingly ordered (they’d ordered the same drink! It made Andee miserable, but she’d ordered hers before Robin, before realizing that they’d always had the same tastes in coffee, and what could she do? Go back and amend her order? And, really, it didn’t mean anything, drinking the same drink…), and handed over Jill’s “overly complicated thing” with a laugh before paying the barista and taking her own too-large-for-the-cup holder cup of coffee.
“Well, nuts,” she said, and going against every safety concern in the world, placed the hot cup between her legs. She gunned the engine again, beaming at the three women in the car. “All right, ladies! Let’s get a move on!”
And two terrible things happened at that exact same moment.
Tiffany pulled the car forward out of the drive-through lane and into the parking lot. Where it promptly sputtered and died.
And Jill stared down at the phone in her hand, paled about ten shades and whispered, “Oh, shit.”
“Oh, shit,” Tiffany muttered, too, and threw the car into park, flopping herself against her seat. “Son of a bitch. If we hadn’t had to wait ten hours in that damn drive through lane…”
“You ran out of gas,” said Robin calmly, brows raised as she glanced at the gauge.
“And if a certain lady in the back seat dares tell a Miss Tiffany that she did, in fact, tell her to get gas before getting into line at the coffee shop,” said Tiffany sweetly, peering into the back seat at Robin and blinking her big eyes slowly--similar to a snake before it strikes—“a certain lady will find herself walking all the way to Vermont.”
“I’d never dream of it,” said Robin with a wink, leaping out of the car as she headed to the trunk. “Tiff, can you pop it? There’s a gas can back here. I’ll just run and get some gas.”
“Oh shit,” Jill whispered again, and then she took off her sunglasses and was dabbing at her eyes with a fresh tissue as she stared down at the phone in her lap as if it was made of poison. She must have gotten a text from…
“Leila,” murmured Andee, gazing at her friend sympathetically as Tiff put an arm around Jill and hugged her.
“Darlin’, do you think you could give Robin a hand?” said Tiff pointedly, not even glancing to Andee in the back seat before she turned her full attention to Jill. No one in the world could make you feel better than Tiff, and Jill really looked like she needed cheering right at that moment. Andee wondered what the text message could possibly have said, but knew it was best not to pry.
“Sure,” she muttered, leaving her beautiful iced coffee behind and hopping out of the car, too. Robin and Andee stared at one another across the open trunk of the convertible before Robin shut it quietly, hefting the empty gas can.
“There’s seriously a gas station about a half mile back there, we’ll be back in a second,” said Robin, and Tiff waved her hand as Jill and Tiffany bent their heads together, murmuring as they stared down at Jill’s phone.
Andee and Robin crossed out of the parking lot and down the sidewalk, walking alongside a strip mall as Robin carried the gas can, and the two women went along in absolute silence. It was going to be awkward and tense and morbidly quiet the entire trip if Andee couldn’t think of something to say…but Robin beat her to it.
“Aren’t you the least bit interested what I have planned for this road trip?” she asked, casting Andee an appraising glance with her mouth quirked to the side, mischief clearly visible on her face. Andee put her hands in her jean pockets, tried to look noncommittal.
“I like surprises,” she said quietly, to which Robin snorted, and Andee turned to her, glaring.
“You never did before is all,” said Robin mildly, brows raised.
“All right, where are we headed today?” asked Andee, then.
Robin grinned so widely she resembled the cat that ate an entire flock of canaries. “Picture this,” she said, sweeping her hands in front of her like she was outlining a magnificent vista, the gas can swinging. “Stonehenge. But without the thundering majesty of millennial old rock. Oh, no. Imagine Stonehenge. But made of foam. What would it be called, you ask? Foamhenge.”
Andee was laughing in spite of herself. “You’re making this up.”
“I swear,” said Robin, giving Andee a mock salute. “I am not making this up. This guy wanted to create a life-size replica of Stonehenge, and apparently had a lot of Styrofoam around, so one thing led to another…but that’s just the beginning for what I’ve got planned today,” she said, sticking her nose in the air and glancing at Andee out of the corner of her eye, grinning widely. “Wait until you see the rest of the stuff for this trip. I thought you’d like some of it.”
“Yeah, well,” said Andee, feeling the undeniable creep of a blush beginning at the back of her neck and beginning to flush across her neck and cheeks.
Robin had planned parts of the trip so that she’d actually like them? No. She’s probably just realized, after she planned it, that Andee might be a fan of a few specific things they were going to go visit. Robin had probably given Andee’s likes and dislikes absolutely no consideration when she’d planned the trip.
“I thought you’d like it,” said Robin, clearing her throat and staring firmly ahead, “because you went to Stonehenge. So, you know, you can compare Foamhenge and the real thing.”
Andee felt all the blood drain out of her head.
“You remember that I went to Stonehenge?” she asked, trying to swallow. But her mouth was too dry, and she gulped air instead.
“Yeah. You went the year after we graduated. You sent me the postcard,” said Robin, glancing sidelong at her now, brows furrowed. “It had a picture of Stonehenge on the front, you know, typical ‘I’ve been to Stonehenge’ postcard, but then you’d drawn a sun on the front of it with a sharpie because you’d said it was really sunny the day you’d gone, and there were no postcards that could actually do it justice.”
Robin hadn’t even had to think about it. All of the details from a nine year old postcard were still fresh enough in her memory to call it up at a second’s thought.
“I still have it,” continued Robin, but softer, this time.
“I sent that postcard when I was drunk at a pub in Kent.” Andee was horrified at what was coming out of her mouth, but—like watching a car wreck—she couldn’t stop it. “I’d found myself addressing it to you, and I’d al
ready put a stamp on it, so…”
Robin was walking faster, her shoulders up. When Andee trotted to keep up, she saw a glimpse of Robin’s face. Stormy. Angry.
“Yeah, well, I need to go through my stuff again. Get rid of things that don’t mean anything to me,” she said then.
“Robin…” began Andee, swallowing down her tears. And then again: “Robin.” But Robin was already too far down the sidewalk to hear.
Or listen.
A woman sat at a table on the sidewalk outside of a little diner, thumbing through her phone. She glanced up and caught Andee’s eye. The woman immediately struck Andee as lesbian, her hair short and spiky, and her well-muscled arms framed by the perfect black tank top.
“Girl problems?” she asked, her husky voice surprisingly sympathetic.
Andee was mortified that anyone had heard that exchange, and turned on her heel, ready to go, when the woman leapt up from her seat, hands out in a conciliatory shrug. “Hey, hey, I’m sorry. I just saw you were upset. She’s a looker, don’t get me wrong. But, you know…” She stepped forward then, face all sly smiles as she pressed a piece of paper gently into Andee’s hand. “If you want someone with less face but more substance…hey. Call me.”
Had that actually just happened? “Th-thank you…” Andee managed, backing up a step. Her heart was in too much turmoil to properly process what had actually just happened, so she turned, a little zombie-like, and made her way down the sidewalk toward the parking lot and Tiffany’s car.
When she rounded a corner, there was a trash can, gleaming in the mid-morning sun, freshly emptied. Waiting for the piece of paper. Andee glanced down at it. Cheryl was scrawled across it in tiny print, next to her phone number and an email address.
Why had she said that to Robin? It was stupid. And spiteful and mean-spirited. Had she wanted to hurt Robin? That wasn’t like her at all. And after Robin had told her she kept her postcard! But Robin had hurt so much… Andee put her face in her hands and leaned against the lamppost next to the garbage can, breathing in and out for a long moment.
She’d put the number in her pocket, she realized now. And what did it matter, anyway? It’s not as if she was dating anyone. Maybe Cheryl would be a nice distraction. Andee had found her easy on the eyes, at any rate, and she was pretty forward. Andee liked that in a woman. Maybe she’d…
Around the corner, lugging a full gas can, was Robin. She was moving a little fast, too, her chest rising and falling quickly, like she’d been running and trying to keep a gas can from spilling while doing so.
“Look,” said Robin, the second she saw Andee, before Andee could say anything else. “I’m sorry about what I said…about throwing out the postcard. I wouldn’t. I love that postcard, and I loved that you sent it to me, and even if you did it while drunk…”
“I was only a little drunk,” said Andee quietly, then, her hands balled into fists at her sides. “And I deliberately wrote your address. I wanted to send it to you. I wanted…” She let the words stop.
In the beginning I wanted to get back together with you. Even after what you did to me. A part of me has never stopped wanting that.
But Andee didn’t actually say that. She thought it, miserably, as Robin set the gas can down on the ground, put her hands on her hips and took a couple of deep breaths, nodding slowly as she processed that.
Andee screwed up her courage. She closed her eyes, felt her heart thundering against her ribs. And she opened her mouth and said: “In the beginning, I wanted…”
The phone rang in Robin’s jeans pocket. It made a cheerful little chirruping sound, like a little bird that needed to be freed. “I’m sorry…five seconds…” said Robin, sliding it out of her pocket with a frown and glancing down at it. “It’s Tiffany…” she said, and held up a finger. “Yeah, Tiff, we got the gas. Yeah, yeah, we’re on our way, hold your horses,” she sighed with a grin. She ended the call, slid it back in her pocket, picked up the gas can and smiled brilliantly at Andee, so brilliantly that Andee felt her heart stop completely.
“I’m sorry, what were you going to say?” asked Robin.
“Nothing,” said Andee, taking a deep breath, the courage of the lost moment come and gone. “Let’s go.”
---
“Tiff, if I paid for you to go back to driver’s ed, would you ever consider it?” asked Jill blandly as Tiffany, for the perhaps the thirtieth time that day, laid on the horn as she veered in between two cars on the right hand lane into a space that absolutely, positively, had no room for Tiffany’s convertible. But the two cars made room at the last possible second. Tiffany took the exit with a wide grin.
“Driver’s ed? Honey, I drive better than a race car driver,” she sniffed, adjusting the rear view mirror. “Everyone okay back there?” she asked cheerfully as Robin tried to pull against her seatbelt and keep it from strangling her. Andee just looked as green as the convertible.
“Never better!” Robin managed, snorting.
“I have to either pee or throw up,” said Andee, swallowing. “I can’t decide which.”
“That’s the spirit! We’re almost to Foamhenge, so just hold it a few more minutes!” Tiff practically sang out gaily.
“I think it’s my turn to drive after Foamhenge,” said Robin mildly, as Jill and Andee both said “yes” so quickly and in unison that it sounded like only one woman speaking.
“Is there an echo in here?” asked Robin, grinning sidelong at Andee.
And Andee shyly and softly returned the grin.
“Oh my God, look at you two!” Tiffany squealed from the front seat, almost running a red light because she was looking so much in the rearview mirror, but stopping at the last possible second. “You’re actually talking like normal people! I said it would happen, didn’t I say it would happen, Jill?”
Jill sunk down in the front seat, embarrassed, but Robin gazed up at Tiff with a wide smile, putting her head to the side. “Yes, well, we’ll try not to let it go to our heads, talking like normal people.”
“Oh my God, I didn’t mean it like that,” said Tiff, stepping down on the gas pedal so hard with her toes that it seemed, for a heartbeat, that the car may fly forward, rather than drive. “Did you see that sign back there? We’re on the right track for Foamhenge!”
“There will be no pictures of me at this place, okay?” said Jill, casting a glance into the back seat. “That’d be blackmail potential at my company.”
“To be seen at the world’s largest replica of Stonehenge built entire out of Styrofoam? Surely you jest,” said Robin, laughing.
“I mean it! They think I’m a pretty normal lady over there…”
“Then pretty much any pictures from this trip could be used to blackmail you,” said Tiff with a sort of malicious glee that she only usually reserved for episodes of her favorite television reality series, How Could Anyone Possibly Be This Stupid.
“It’s the little red-heads who are always evil. Always,” Jill intoned teasingly, as Tiff took a corner much too quickly, and Robin—even though she was seatbelted—fell against Andee a little. Only her thigh brushed up against Andee’s, but it caused Andee’s heart rate to skyrocket, and when Robin pulled away with a little grin, she felt her heart skip a few of probably what were essential beats.
Andee couldn’t believe that, earlier, she’d thought to let her guard down so much. It had been Robin’s confession about keeping her postcard that had thrown her for the loop. Andee had been so stunned by this that, for a long moment, she’d been ready to tell Robin that she’d wanted her, even after they broke up, even ten years later. But that would have been a stupidity reserved for the contestants on How Could Anyone Possibly Be This Stupid.
She could never tell Robin—the Robin who’d cheated on her for months all the while telling Andee how much she loved her—how she felt.
“Hold on to your britches, ya’ll!” said Tiff as she pressed her high heeled toes against the gas again as they began to drive up an imposingly angled hill.
/> “Tiff, this just turned into a dirt road—are you sure this is where we’re supposed to go?” asked Jill, stuttering out a word or two at a time as the potholes began to attack the car’s tires.
“I mean, I do what my GPS tells me to, so that either makes me crazy or usually in the right location most of the time,” said Tiff, switching her car into second gear.
“Crazy,” said all three women at once, chuckling. Tiff joined in.
“Rob, this had better be worth it!” Tiff hollered into the back seat as the road angled even higher. The women sat back in their seats like they were on a roller coaster that was clicking up slowly toward the first drop.
And then, suddenly, they arrived.
The convertible thumped down onto the small graveled parking lot surrounded by tall pine trees. A hand-painted sign reading “Foamhenge! This way!” with an arrow pointing toward a path among the trees led out of the parking lot.
Tiffany parked, adjusted her hair and sunglasses in the rearview mirror, and then all four women were spilling out of the car, emitting groans as they straightened and stretched.
“Seriously, you have to let us out of the car more often than every four hours for a pee break,” muttered Jill. “We’re getting older—we’re liable to set this way!”
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” snorted Tiff, hauling her purse up onto her shoulder and wobbling over the gravel in her heels. “Now let’s go see this big Styrofoam bastard!”
---
“Well, isn’t that…something?” said Tiffany, her head to the side.
“It’s pretty—wait for it!—foamtastic,” said Robin, which earned her a chorus of groans all around.
It did look pretty much like Stonehenge. Except…made out of Styrofoam.
Andee gazed up at the painted monstrosity and took it all in. Someone worked very, very hard to create this, and it kind of did look like the original, if not nearly as majestic.
The Thousand Mile Love Story Page 6