We share a picnic of fruit punch, crackers, nectarines and trail mix. We lay our small lunch out and slowly savor the food and the sun and the rickety motion of the train while a sleepy horizon passes by. I have everything I need right here, in this moment.
I set the food aside and rest my head on Gray’s lap. He’s sitting against the side of the door, eating a nectarine. I wipe some juice off his chin with my finger before it drips and he catches my hand in his and licks the juice off my finger. He runs his warm hand over my forehead and through my hair. His touch makes it hard to keep my legs still. He brushes hair out of my eyes as the wind picks it up around me.
“This was a good idea,” he says.
He hands me the nectarine. I take the last couple bites and nod.
“I’m glad we both appreciate white trash dates,” I say.
Gray laughs and grabs the red pit out my hand and throws it out on the desert ground. I sit up and lean my head against his shoulder.
“I love you,” I say.
“Why is that, exactly?” he asks. He gives me this patient look, as if I’ll need time to answer this. But I automatically know.
“There are three things I look for in a person. And you’re the only person I’ve met in the world that has all of them.”
Gray waits for me to continue.
“First, you’re always in the moment. You’re not trying to be ten places at once. You don’t have to be glued to your cell phone and texting your friends every two seconds. It seems like people only feel important when every second of their life is packed. They’re always trying to plan for tomorrow and they miss out on things happening in front of them.”
“That’s a good one,” he says.
“Second, you’re real. You don’t try to candy-coat life. You don’t try and fix everything. You don’t try to pretend life’s perfect. Even if it means letting yourself be miserable or angry or upset. That’s so stressful to me, to try and act my way through life instead of just relaxing and being myself.”
He nods. I look out at a row of scrubby bushes with pink flowers blooming in the sun.
“Third, you let me stop and take pictures.”
Gray creases his eyebrows together. “That’s your third thing?”
“And most important.” I say. “You let me be who I am. So many people ask me why I need to take pictures all the time. Why I’m staring at something they can’t see. It’s like I have to apologize for having eyes. But you’ve never rushed me. I’m at my best around you. You’re my nova. You light me up.”
GRAY
The train slows down as it passes a railroad crossing, almost four hours later, and we take our exit opportunity. We jump down to the dusty ground and watch our red, wobbly car disappear down the track. The air is so still around us it feels like the earth has stopped moving.
I take out my phone, which I realize is dead and of course Dylan’s doesn’t have Internet. I use it to dial Lenny’s number. When she answers, I tell her I’m stranded.
“You’re stranded?” she asks. “What happened? Did your car break down?”
I stare at the train still visible in the distance. “Um, not exactly,” I say.
“Where are you?”
“I’m not sure,” I say. I look around at what appears to be a ghost town. There’s an RV park down the road, with two ramshackle trailers parked in a field overgrown with weeds and scraggly shrubs. Everything looks deserted. Dylan’s off taking pictures of a dilapidated shed—she’s no help at all.
“I need a bit more detail than that, Gray,” she says. “Is there a street sign or something?” I walk down the road and look for anything, even a landmark that could pinpoint our location. There’s an old, brick church with the doors and windows all boarded up. I tell her to get online and look up St. Mary’s Church.
Dylan wanders back over to my side. “We passed a town called Magdalena a while back,” she offers. I tell this to Lenny.
“Where the hell is that?” she asks.
“Southern-ish?” I guess.
Lenny’s typing on her computer. “How did you end up there?” she asks. I explain Dylan kidnapped me and forced me to ride on a cargo train with her for a few hours.
“He dared me,” Dylan yells into the phone.
“I’m not seeing any church listing, Gray,” Lenny says.
Dylan tugs on my fingers. “Tell her to look up Bill’s General Store, it’s right down the street.”
Lenny looks it up and I hear an annoyed groan. “You’re over two hours away!”
I laugh at this. “Please, Lenny? We’re stranded.”
“Serves you right.”
“I’ll give you gas money.”
“Damn right. And your Spinal Tap shirt.”
My jaw drops open at this outlandish demand. “I can’t believe you’re taking advantage of me right now.”
She isn’t apologetic. “What’ll it be?”
“No way, not the shirt. I’ll buy you beer for a month.”
“You’re not even twenty-one you idiot, and you have a crappy fake. How are you going to buy me beer? Spinal Tap or no ride.”
I tighten my lips together. “You can borrow it until I buy you your own shirt.”
“Deal. Try not to get kidnapped out there.”
She hangs up and I give the phone back to Dylan.
“We have some time to poke around downtown,” I say like we’re in a tourist hub surrounded by souvenir shops. Dylan and I examine the road in each direction. We appear to be on a main street of sorts. There’s a broken-down mill, half caved in. I tell Dylan it must have been a mining town. Probably zinc or iron. We walk down the street until we come to the last building in sight, a brick warehouse with a crumbling roof and boarded up windows.
“Not a strong local economy,” I observe. Dylan’s busy taking pictures of old, faded signs and cracks and weeds growing up through holes in the brick wall of the abandoned warehouse. She asks me to pose in a few of her shots. I frown in front of the barricaded church and look disappointed next to the closed general store. I take a few pictures of Dylan. She holds her face in her hands as she sits in front of the boarded-up warehouse door, like she’s modeling for high school portraits. She lies seductively on her side in front of a stack of car tires. She twists a few weeds into her hair and holds a bouquet of tumbleweed. I get a close-up. It’s priceless.
We walk back towards the church and I sit in the middle of the road and stare up at it. Dylan sits next to me and takes out a bag of crackers.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a church closed down,” I say.
Dylan nods. “It’s not a good sign when God goes out of business.” She nibbles on a few crackers and stretches her legs out. “How long would you say we have to wait?” she asks.
“About an hour,” I say and pop a cracker in my mouth.
“That’s a perfect amount of time to write the history of this church,” she says.
I look at her and raise an eyebrow. “The history of this place?” I ask.
She nods and flashes me a smile. It makes my heart jump. “I’ll start,” she offers. “The church was built in the year 250 B.C., when King Archibald the 11ruled the land.”
I study the old church. “The king had only one son,” I add, “who was born with leprosy.” Dylan smiles and grabs a handful of crackers. “But back then, they didn’t know what leprosy was, so the King thought his son was possessed by demons and banished him from the castle to live in this church.”
“Where he was locked up in the basement until he healed. He was never allowed to have visitors,” Dylan says.
A neon orange sun sets behind the old ghost town. Dylan still has weeds tied in her hair and dust all over her clothes. I smile and tell her she’s more herself today.
She leans back on her hands. “It’s weird, but I feel the most at home when I’m roaming.” I nod because the more time I get to spend with her, the more I witness how this is true.
Dylan’s phone suddenly rings
and the sound makes her scream with surprise. I almost jump off the ground.
“You really need to stop doing that,” I say.
“Sorry,” she says, and looks at the screen. “It’s the gallery.” She answers it and while she listens her eyes light up.
“What?”she asks. “He’s interested in hiring me?” She laughs and listens for another minute and something in her face changes. Her smile turns to disappointment.
“Oh,” she says, the excitement slipping out of her voice. “I don’t know if I can commit to that. Yeah, if I’m interested I’ll call him. Thanks so much for the reference, Mary.” She hangs up and looks out at the sunset, but her eyes are dazed.
“What happened?” I ask.
“A travel photographer came into the gallery,” she says. “He’s looking for an assistant and he liked my work, so Mary recommended me. He’s interested in hiring me.”
“Are you serious?” I ask. “That’s great.”
“The shoot’s in Australia,” she says.
“Isn’t that on your wish list?” I ask.
She nods. “It’s number one on my wish list.”
“Then call him, what are you waiting for?” She looks at me as if I’m forgetting something. I start to register what’s wrong.
“How long is the job for?” I ask her.
“He has a three month shoot scheduled, starting next month, but he wants to stay for a year if he can get enough work.”
I nod at this news and my own excitement for her deflates. One year?
“I’m not going to call him,” she decides and shakes her head quickly.
“Dylan—”
“It isn’t meant to be,” she says. She looks back at the church and continues with our story and I watch her closely while she talks. I feel a pang of guilt in my chest. We’re going to destroy her if we keep her here. It’s like holding someone hostage.
So why am I allowing her to stay?
We don’t get halfway through the story before we hear a car coming towards us, Nine Inch Nails blaring out the open windows. We watch Lenny’s blue Toyota speed up to us and take our time to finish off the last of our crackers. I brush a few crumbs off my shirt.
Lenny rolls to a stop and pokes her head out to glare at us.
“Did you find it okay?” I ask. She narrows her eyes at me, clearly annoyed.
“I just have one question,” she says.
Dylan and I look at each other and then back at Lenny.
“Are you two planning on getting married someday?” she asks.
My face heats up. “Why?” I ask.
“Because I’m officially worried for your children,” she says.
GRAY
A week later, Todd becomes my first friend to officially hit marriage status. Scary. Getting married is probably the lamest thing you can do in college. College marks your pre-adulthood years, where you’re meant to screw up on a daily basis. This includes embracing your curfew-free schedule, studying only when you experience a lag in social engagements, and enjoying drunken debauchery with your fellow peers. Not discussing matrimony dates and picking out dishware and sheet sets.
Bubba and I hide out on the front porch to escape the overbearing estrogen levels concentrated in our living room. The Liz Wedding Party is currently spread out watching the DVD of their ceremony. I’ve already seen it. Twice. Bubba’s chewing and he hocks a thick wad of brown spit off our front porch into the grass. The stream barely misses my shoulder.
“Dude, that’s sick,” I say.
Bubba shakes his head. “Not as sick as the freak show happening in my living room right now. Since when did our house become the headquarters of Future Housewives of America?”
Just as he says this there’s a chorus of laughter inside, all high pitched squeals. Bubba shudders.
“If I ever, even consider getting married, will you do me a favor?” he asks. He looks at me with serious eyes and I nod. “Shoot me in the head?” he asks. “Poison me, knock me unconscious, anything. Just talk me out of it.”
I chuckle at this and finger-pick a few strings on my guitar. “It couldn’t be that bad,” I say. “I hear it’s a pretty common relationship move.” A long stream of sighs escapes from all the girls inside.
“And half of those moves end in divorce,” Bubba points out. He glances in the window. “I just can’t believe Todd got married in the middle of the season. They’re not even living together until the fall. What’s the point of getting married if you can’t at least bang each other on a daily basis?”
“Love makes you do crazy things,” I say.
“Tell me about it. Look at Miles. Pretending to like mediocre chick bands that play covers of other mediocre chick band’s music.” He shakes his head with disappointment.
“Cat’s good, you have to admit,” I say. I decide to call him on his own behavior.
“What about you?” I ask.
“What about me?”
“I know you’ve been helping out at Lenny’s place. She told me you built a fence in their backyard and fixed their kitchen sink. Since when are you a repair man?”
“It’s just her and her mom right now,” Bubba says. “They need a hand.”
“See, even you have a sensitive side.”
He eyes Dylan inside, sitting with a couple of Liz’s friends. They’re putting finishing touches on the gifts for the dinner party this weekend. They’re stuffing white, sparkly bags with music mixes and chocolates and tying white bows on the top.
“Dylan has surprised me more than anyone,” he says.
I stare at him and ask him what he means.
“She turned herself upside down, flipped herself inside out. I don’t even recognize her anymore. She’s like this whole different person than she was a few months ago.”
I follow his gaze to Dylan. She’s sitting on the rug with the other girls and she fits in. She dresses like them. She’s neat and groomed and accepted—and almost indistinguishable.
Bubba stands up and stretches.
“Don’t get me wrong, she looks good,” he says. He slaps his hand against my shoulder and grins. “It’s just nice to know we’re all idiots when it comes to love,” he says, and disappears inside the house.
I sit on the chair outside and I watch Dylan. Even though her hair is styled and her outfit is brighter and her lips sparkle, something about her has dimmed.
Bubba’s right. She transformed. All for me.
I watch her laugh when the other girls laugh. She swoons at all the right times like she’s following along with a script someone passed out. It’s too programmed. Too normal. She never wanted to be normal. She called it stifling, and I fell in love with her for being so extreme.
I stand up and walk down the street and try to clear my head. I think about Amanda and wonder what I would do if someone tried to narrow her horizons, if someone cut her dreams short or controlled her. I would have stepped in and forced sense into her, even if it made her mad, even if she hated me for it. Because I loved her too much to let her settle. The people that love you have the responsibility to look out for you, to see your potential. I knew the difference Amanda would have made in the world. I saw the glow of optimism she showered around her that needed to be spread out. Dylan’s like that. So, how can I let this happen?
A few raindrops start to fall and they’re cold against my skin. It gives me the chills. I stand in the street and look up at a black sky. There’s only one thing left to do.
DYLAN
I observe Gray across the room. Even though I broke down his walls, a few beams and studs are still standing. There are nails sticking out of them and I snag myself on them once in a while. I trip over some of the fallen beams that lay scattered on the floor.
I still can’t figure him out sometimes. Maybe that’s why I’m so fascinated by him. I never know what to expect.
I watch the wedding party unfolding around me, but I feel like a wallflower, like I’m inside a movie set and this is all a dress rehearsal.
This can’t be real. Have I really hit the marriage zone? How can people get married when they’re twenty? And if this is such a joyous occasion, why do I feel sorry for them?
It’s strange to think that I’m coming back to this place. These friends will all be waiting for me. I’ve never returned to a place I’ve lived before. Why go back to something known, when there’s so much waiting to be discovered? But all I have to do is look at Gray to be reassured why I’m doing this.
I try to be happy about this decision, but there’s something in my gut that tightens. A little voice is questioning me because I never thought I’d put my dreams on hold. For anybody. I never thought I would change myself for another person.
I watch guys who are used to living in grass stains and dirty clothes all standing awkwardly in dress slacks and button up shirts. I grin at Miles, who succeeded in burning the collar of one of his dress shirts and melting two buttons off of another. I came to his rescue before he scorched shirt number three. I watch him stand next to Cat. They look mismatched standing next to each other. Miles is so clean cut and all-American, while Cat’s in a flowing, long blue cotton dress that looks hand-made, a scarf tied around her hair. But their differences complement each other. You can never guess who people are going to fall for. Love is more like an accident than a plan. It’s more of a question than an answer.
I turn and see Lenny standing with a frown on her face. She’s wearing a black dress that she keeps pulling and yanking down. She stands awkwardly in her black heels, like she’s wishing they were boots. The only time her face relaxes into a smile is when Bubba’s at her side, which is most of the time.
I sigh as I look around. Weddings are supposed to be happy so why do I feel like something tragic is in the air? Is it because Gray’s been avoiding me tonight? We came to the party together, but other than our entrance, you wouldn’t know we’re together. He’s always on the opposite side of the room. He wears a tight, forced smile instead of his usual lazy grin. It’s part of his outfit—uncomfortable and constricting, like underneath he’s unraveling. I want to ask him what’s wrong, but I can’t get him alone.
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