by Leah Konen
One of the few other cars on the road zips past me.
I want to go faster, but I’m afraid.
I want to do a lot of things, but I’m afraid.
“Played,” she corrects me after a moment. And then she doesn’t explain further; she just jumps back into the game. “All right, so back to the question of the day . . . why did you and Rina break up?”
My hands clench up on the wheel. Her question shakes me out of the thoughts in my head, reminding me exactly what I’m doing here.
“Well?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I say.
She crosses her arms. “Well, you have to have some reason, don’t you?”
I tap my hand on the steering wheel. All of a sudden I feel guilty, sitting here thinking about our hug back in the Enterprise when I’m supposed to be focused on Rina.
Ammy must sense my discomfort, because she forces a laugh. “Relax,” she says. “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. I shouldn’t be so pushy about things you don’t want to talk about. You don’t owe me anything.”
And the thing is, she’s right.
I don’t owe her anything.
But at the same time . . .
I kind of wish I did.
I wish she were the one I owed something to.
I shake my head, pushing yet another intrusive thought away.
It terrifies me.
Well, it should terrify me.
In a small way, at least—
It thrills me.
That’s the problem with adventures. They open more doors, more possibilities, than they probably should.
AMMY
6:19 P.M.
I SHRUG OUT OF MY COAT, BECAUSE THE HEAT IS RUNNING properly now, and it’s warm in our tiny little haven from the cold, otherwise known as a Ford Mustang.
It’s still snowing, but I can only see the flakes through the headlights, and on the windshield—it’s too dark to see anything else.
I run my hands through my hair, feeling the dampness from all the snow. I must look a mess still, but from the way Noah looks at me, it’s like somehow it doesn’t matter.
Noah still seems a little alarmed by my earlier question, so I decide to ask him something easy, since he very obviously doesn’t want to talk about his ex.
Is it possible that he doesn’t want to talk about her because of me, or is it just because his plans are shot as much as mine are?
“What’s your favorite childhood memory?” I ask.
Noah takes a while to respond, and the car swerves on ice two more times before he does—I can tell by the way his hands clench up that he feels it, too. But the shifts are small, almost like they’re not even there. We’re safe. Kind of.
Noah tells me about this Thanksgiving when he was nine or ten. When his cousins from North Carolina were up visiting and they brought this huge deep fryer to cook the turkey. He tells me how his mom and dad decided he could be the “Official Turkey Master” that day. It was the first time in his life he’d ever had so much responsibility. He had an old iPhone without any service that his mom let him play games and stuff on, and he was responsible for timing everything—the marinating, the waiting, the down-to-the-minute instructions for the deep fryer. He even got to calculate the exact cooking time with a formula his mom had found on the internet.
He tells me how his uncle, after one too many Bud Lights, kept on arguing with his parents, claiming that Noah might mess it up, but his parents were insistent—it was Noah’s responsibility, and he could handle it. He tells me how that was the day that he really knew his parents believed in him. They’d been saying as much for his whole life, but that was the day he knew. They had his back, as he puts it.
I stare at my hands as he talks, fiddle with the jagged edges of my nails, my trusty old nervous tic. I have this emotion, one that makes me feel guilty and stupid and petty, but one that’s still hard to ignore all the same: jealousy.
I get a bit of nail between my thumb and forefinger, peel it until it comes off. I flick it to the floor. Only having to worry about the turkey timer on Thanksgiving seems lovely.
“That sounds nice,” I say when he’s finished.
He laughs. “It was, except the drunk uncle part.”
“Even that part sounds kind of nice,” I say.
“What do you mean?” he asks, without taking his eyes from the road.
I shrug. “It sounds normal.”
“What were your Thanksgivings like?” he asks.
“Fine,” I say quickly.
I don’t want to tell him about the Thanksgiving when I was eleven, one of the handful of Thanksgivings that was actually on my birthday, when my mom freaked out about whether or not we had enough yams and, after a brief yelling match with my dad, spent the rest of the day in bed with the lights off and the door closed. How my dad and I ate at the table alone, how of course there were enough yams, because it’s not that hard to get enough yams for three measly people on Thanksgiving. How my slice of pumpkin pie with the candle in it suddenly just looked sad as my dad sang “Happy Birthday” to me alone.
I don’t want to tell him how even on the good holidays, I was always afraid something was going to set my mother off. It was the details that stressed her out. All the pressure. Holidays were bad; they always had been. And even when things went off relatively okay, there was still this shadow hanging over them. Tension in the air as you waited for something to go wrong. Eggshells were always a side at our Thanksgivings.
Sometimes, I have a thought that I hate, absolutely, positively hate: no wonder my dad left.
But it wasn’t like that always. It was only like that sometimes.
And I’d take sometimes bad over always apart—well, any day.
It wasn’t even that bad, I tell myself.
It wasn’t even that bad until that last Thanksgiving.
Noah turns the music down. “You okay?”
“Huh?” I ask, startled out of my thoughts for a second. I turn to look at him. He’s free of his excess of layers, and I think I may have grown to love his Steelers shirt. He still sports the remnants of the grin he had when talking about his family. You can tell that he loves them.
Why does he have to still love his ex?
“Did I say something to upset you?” he asks, looking over briefly, and his hazel eyes seem almost gray in the darkness, the glow of the dash and the shimmer of falling snow our only light here in the car.
“No,” I say.
There’s another slip underneath us. Ice, no doubt about it. I watch as Noah’s shoulders tense up, as he grips the wheel tighter, and in milliseconds it’s over, and we’re safe again.
Just a little patch. We’re fine, I tell myself. We’ll be there soon. The ceremony has already started, and it will be over before I get there, but maybe I’ll make it before the reception is over.
Maybe I’ll still get a chance to show up for my dad and for Bea and for Kat.
Maybe it will still be a wonderful week.
Who knows? Maybe I’ll even stay longer than a week. Maybe they won’t ever want me to leave.
Either way, pretty soon, this ridiculous little jaunt will be over.
It will be a story to tell my grandkids, just like Noah said. The time that Grandma got lost in upstate New York with a cute stranger. I’ll even exaggerate his looks for the story, I think. I won’t even mention his crooked teeth. I may throw in a kiss between us, or two, just for good measure, really jazz up that moment in the rental car office.
Because it’s a story, and you can do those things in a story.
Stories don’t have consequences. Stories don’t hurt others.
Stories are safe.
“So what is your favorite childhood memory?” he asks. “I’m still waiting.”
Mine isn’t hard. I’ve played this game (or non-game, as Noah likes to call it) before. Dara talked about the first time she went to Orlando, how she threw up on the Tower of Terror but it was still the most
fun she’d ever had in her life. Simone went on about the time she and her brother put a fake snake in her dad’s toolbox, how he screamed like a girl, and they laughed so hard they had tears in their eyes.
And I told mine. Of course, it was easier then, before the very thought of my dad made me viscerally upset. Oh well.
“The first time my dad and I went hiking,” I say, grabbing Noah’s phone and flipping to the next song, my favorite.
“Hiking and lacrosse,” he says. “Quite the athlete.”
“You know you sound patronizing when you talk like that,” I say.
“Really?” He looks over, ever so briefly.
“You’d never tell a dude who plays one sport and occasionally goes on hikes something like that.”
He laughs. “Okay, okay. Fair point. All things considered, I’m surprised you let me carry your suitcase.”
“Well, you practically ripped it out of my hands,” I argue, laughing.
“Fair point, again,” he says.
“Anyway, like I told you, I don’t even play lacrosse anymore, so I’m not ‘quite the athlete’ after all.”
“Why not?” he asks.
I laugh to myself. Because divorce is expensive, and so is lacrosse. Because it’s yet another thing that my dad took away from me when he left us. Because, really, that first month, I just couldn’t bear to go there, pretend I was happy, pretend I gave a shit about catching balls with a dumb net on a stick. I couldn’t explain it, not even to Dara and Simone.
“Not important,” I say matter-of-factly. “Anyway, my favorite childhood memory . . . so when I was eight, my dad said we should go on a hike. I think he was really desperate to go because he used to go a lot before he met my mom, but she would never go with him. My mom was out shopping or something, and so my dad said he had a present for me, and he gave me my first pair of hiking shoes, which were bright pink, because it was just about all I would wear back then—”
“You loved bright pink? That’s surprising.”
“It was a phase,” I say indignantly. “A brief but intense phase. Anyway, we drove two hours to this trail in the Shenandoah Valley, and we played the Beach Boys the whole way because my dad always loved their music, but my mom thought it was cheesy, so he only really played it around me. And we did the six-mile hike like total pros. Without having to stop or anything. At the top of the lookout, we took all these selfies together. It became a monthly tradition.”
A tradition that led to him meeting Sophie, I think, but I don’t say it. Because eventually, his love of hiking grew bigger than his love of me. Eventually it was all about weeklong REI trips that I couldn’t very well join him on while I was in school.
Dara once asked me if I thought it was strange that he took vacations without us. But I defended him, said that my family didn’t do anything the normal way.
I was proud of that fact about us—back then.
Back before it screwed everything up.
“Do you still go hiking with him?” Noah asks. The car hits another patch of ice.
I wait until Noah looks calm, until the wheels feel solid beneath us, to answer.
“No, I don’t.”
NOAH
6:31 P.M.
AMMY’S FACE BETRAYS HER FEAR OF THE ICE ON THE road. She bites her lip, and her face goes white.
Quite frankly, I’m worried, too, though I’m trying not to show it. It’s only sixty more miles. We’ll be there soon as long as I focus and stay calm enough to handle whatever slickness this highway throws my way. Of course, it’s hard to stay calm when she tucks her hair behind her ears with both hands. Or says something I know there’s so much story behind. Or when she laughs, the bubbly sound filling the car like champagne in a glass.
“All right,” I say. “Next question, please.”
She turns to me. “Are you sure you’re okay? Driving in this?”
“I’m fine,” I assure her. I don’t want her to worry.
“Okay,” she says reluctantly, but she doesn’t ask me a question. She looks straight ahead, nervous.
After a few minutes, after the croony song has switched to another croony song, I clear my throat. I want to know what’s really going on with her, and this is probably our last chance. I don’t know why I need to know everything about this girl who I will likely never see again in my life, but I do. I decide to take my dad’s advice. Don’t ask for something if you aren’t ready to give something in return.
“I’ll offer you a trade,” I say.
She looks over. “What do you mean?”
I keep my eyes on the road ahead, on the ten or so feet of road I can see in the light from my brights. “I’ll tell you what happened with Rina, what really happened with Rina, if you tell me why you’re here.”
She’s silent for a moment, and I’m afraid I’ve upset her. But then finally: “Who goes first?”
I grip my hands tighter on the wheel, bracing for any ice patches. I keep my eyes on the yellow lines in front of me, flicking my brights off temporarily as another car approaches. “I’ll go first. As a display of confidence.” I shoot her a smile. “To show that I trust you.”
She nods, not looking away. I have to. I’m driving.
I decide to tell her the truth. Even though it’s embarrassing. And makes me feel foolish. Even though if I hadn’t hooked up with that girl three days later I probably wouldn’t be here.
I walked away from that cliff and went straight back to the room. I came out for dinner, but I was quieter than normal. She knew something was up. I waited until after dinner, when Rina came in, asking what was wrong. It was the last night of our trip together, and we should have been happy—she would have been, if not for me.
When I told Bryson what she’d said to Cassie, he insisted that I not let it go. She’s gonna keep pulling this shit until you stand up to her, he told me. He was like Rina in his way, always pushing me to be bolder. Just a different kind of bold. Not adventurous, but confident. Demanding, even.
At first I told her it was fine, but she kept pushing, kept asking.
Then it came out, all at once. Like the fireworks we’d seen over the lake a couple of nights before. Explosive.
I listed everything she’d ever said that had made me unhappy. She began to cry at my raised voice; she asked me how in the world I could get so mad at her over something so stupid. I stormed out of the room, spent the night on the couch.
The next day, we didn’t speak. We drove back to Hudson in silence.
She came over to my house that night. We stood in my parents’ backyard and yelled at each other. She told me I’d been way out of line for starting such a huge fight on the last night of the trip, for “blindsiding” her.
I told her that she’d been “out of line” for the last two and a half years, the way she kept trying to change me. Make me someone different from who I was.
I spat her words right back at her. “No one wants to be with a guy who’s scared and worried about the whole entire world.”
“Well, I definitely don’t want to be with you the way you’re acting right now,” she yelled.
“Good!” I said. “That’s settled, then.”
Her anger disappeared from her face instantly. Replaced with sadness. Shock.
How could you even say that over something as stupid as this?
You can’t be serious. You’re not actually serious.
Is Bryson putting you up to this?
Don’t turn around, Noah. Don’t leave me like this.
Stop!
But I didn’t listen. I walked away, left her standing there crying in my parents’ backyard.
I tell Ammy how it might not have been over. I might have backtracked. But I hooked up with that girl three days later.
I’d never hooked up with anyone else besides Rina.
I tell her how guilty I felt, how I couldn’t go back to her after that.
“Wow,” Ammy says as soon as I’m done.
“I know,” I say. “The wh
ole thing was so dumb. Ridiculous.”
I brace my hands on the wheel, waiting for her to say what I know she’ll say. You broke up with the love of your life because she teased you about not jumping off a cliff?
You left someone for that?
She’s silent, looking straight ahead.
She’s judging me, I know.
I deserve it. It was awful to break up with Rina like that. To blindside her. To hook up with another girl right away, ensuring we couldn’t go back to what we’d had.
When Ammy looks at me, her eyes aren’t judgy at all. They look almost . . . understanding?
“I don’t get it,” she says finally.
I shake my head, flicking my eyes back to the road, which is straight, at least, for now. “What do you mean, you don’t get it?”
I turn to see Ammy shrug, tugging at the cuffs of her sweater so they cover more of her hands. She keeps her eyes locked on them as she speaks. “It’s just that if she was always treating you like that, why do you want to get back with her anyway?”
It’s shocking, to hear her say it like that. It’s not what I was expecting . . . at all. This whole time I’ve just been thinking about how I screwed it all up. But . . .
But . . .
I feel another patch of ice, and I grip the wheel.
I realize in an instant that I don’t have an answer for her question.
Not when she puts it like that.
AMMY
6:36 P.M.
I FIDDLE WITH THE EDGE OF MY SWEATER, TUGGING at an errant piece of yarn.
I’m surprised I had the nerve to say that to him, to come out with it, just like that.
But what’s most surprising—or least surprising, since both of our feelings seem to change by the minute—is that he doesn’t have an answer.
And it’s only now, with the silence hanging between us, all thick and dense and present, that I realize just how badly I wanted one.
I tug at the yarn again, and two knit loops unravel. It’s crazy how easy it is to undo something that’s been knit together, if only you pull in the right place.