Page 83 of Wish Lists and Road Trips

I’d gone through the motions of getting the picture for Willow, making my way down to the crowded pier where everyone I encountered looked happier than they had a right to be. I’d turned my phone sideways and snapped a photo of the harbor without bothering to look at the final result. I made it all the way to the end of the pier before guilt pushed me back to the spot I’d just been. I tried again, getting closer to the edge, setting up the shot. I took my time with the frame, centering the ball of sun hovering over a horizon of blue.

After I got a postcard-worthy shot, I cast one more look at the water just as an old, rotted sneaker floated by. In that moment I thought my brother might be the stupidest asshole I’d ever met, but I had to pull my cap down low and haul ass back to my truck to keep from breaking down.

My phone had been buzzing non-stop for the whole trip and I pulled it out of my pocket, scrolling while I went to the kitchen to scrounge up something to eat. I found a package of Saltine crackers, shoved a few in my mouth and flopped down on the couch.

I’d been gone two weeks now. I should have probably ordered some food, put away my clothes from the trip, but my father had sent me a list of sub-contractors I was going to have to beg to and it was a mile long. I had tonight and tomorrow morning to get it done before I had to take my mom to Sunday Mass and to visit Alex’s headstone. Plus I needed to comb through the entire bid package to make sure my father hadn’t missed anything else. Sunday night would be for catching up on my own projects.

So much for a weekend.

I flipped on the television while I worked. Usually the background noise distracted me, kept me from my own thoughts, but tonight it didn’t sound right. The voices were wrong and no one had anything clever to say.

My phone buzzed again and I chucked it onto the carpet, squeezing my temples. I missed Brit. Her chattering beside me as we drove. Her breathing in the bunk above me that first night on the train. The vague hint of tropical flowers that had been in my nostrils since Louisiana. I couldn’t stop imagining what Brit’s laughter would sound like in this space. How she’d look sprawled out on my bed in those penguin shorts. What her makeup and hundreds of bottles of hair products would look like all over my bathroom counter.

How she said she would move here and I laughed.

I missed her so much it felt like my chest was splitting in two, making a hole for my heart to climb out and go running back to her. But she was five hours away in a completely different world than the one I knew her in.

When she’d said she would come to Philly, I wanted to scoop her up and run to my truck before she changed her mind. But I knew if I took Brit home from this vacation and brought her into the chaos of my real life, she would see first-hand just how much of my time wasn’t mine to give. It had always been too much for any relationship I’d tried to maintain. She’d decide she didn’t sign up for this, and then I would’ve uprooted her whole life because I was selfish and wanted her here.

God, I wanted her here, but if she couldn’t understand this, how was she ever going to put up with the late nights at work, the calls at two a.m.? Brit wanted something big, something I wanted to give her, but promising that wasn’t enough. Just like Alex, she didn’t understand there was a time and a place for these blow-up-your-life gestures. And just like Alex, she’d tested me. And I failed.

We both know you’re not that guy.

That accusation felt like glass shattering. I’dbeenthat guy for the last two days. I liked that guy. Brit was the one who convinced me that I could have more out of life—she and Alex—and yesterday, I was ready to uproot my whole life and do something crazy. But last night reality had yanked my leash back. I wasn’t the guy Alex wanted me to be, the guy Brit needed me to be. This was my life. All I could offer her was disappointment.

My stomach tightened like a fist and I rolled over to my side on the couch. It physically hurt to not check in to make sure she got home okay, but I didn’t know if she’d answer. I could never predict what she was going to do, and, instead of feeling invigorated, I was back to feeling helpless to keep up.

I fetched my phone from the floor and opened up the last text Brit sent me last night from the bathroom at the bar.I think Annie’s going to puke.

I brushed my thumb over the screen like I might be able to feel her soft lips. I made Siri read it to me, but it didn’t sound like Brit.

I just needed to know she wasn’t a figment of my imagination, something I’d conjured up in my dreams. That she was a real, live person who lived on this earth, even if I couldn’t have her. I typed out a text with my thumb. I knew it was a juvenile, cowardly thing to do, but if I called her, what would I say? I had no more answers than I had when she’d left me a few hours ago. And if she didn’t answer, I’d never know why. Was she telling me to fuck off, or was she just in the shower? So I typed out the only thing I could say:I miss you.

When I pulled up to the steep, pillar-lined driveway at my parents’ house, my face was puffy and red from hours of highway crying. Just the sight of this place made my stomach hollow—the perfectly pruned pine trees, the pretentious address sign on the gate. God, what I wouldn’t give to be back in a dirty roadside motel with Nick.

Nick, who I’d left speechless in a train station. I’d replayed the conversation in my head a million times on the ride home, waffling between indignant anger and panic that I’d done the wrong thing. I’d settled on a sinking, aching depression.

I parked my car in front of the three-bay garage where my dad kept his vintage cars that were worth more than the college education I’d wasted, and for the first time, I had a good look at my outfit—cheap yoga pants and my Texas sweatshirt. My face was smeared in black mascara Halloween-style, and my hair was living off of dry shampoo and the scrunchie that had been on my gear shifter for going on a year. I looked like a caricature of the mess everyone thought I was.

Everyone except Nick. He looked at me like I was the Picasso of messes—something beautiful hidden under the chaos. I felt my throat close around another sob.

Steve, the guy who’d been tending my parents’ lawn since I was a kid, waved a gloved hand to me from behind a snow blower on one of the brick paths. I stepped out of the car, arms loaded, and nearly slipped and fell on my butt. Somehow the snow and ice here weren’t nearly as magical as the woods beside a stopped train, or a middle-of-nowhere town with Nick.

Steve turned off the snow blower and rushed to my aid. He hefted my bag out of the snow and brushed it off, handing it back. “How was the cruise?”

The question seemed to be from another lifetime and it took me a minute to find an answer. It was jarring to look at Steve’s face and realize that nothing that had happened to me in the last week had a single witness. No one to corroborate my whole life changing. Since I’d last been here, I’d failed pretty much as hard as you could at a solo vacation, I had my heart broken worse than I’d ever experienced, and I lost my dream house, so really . . .

“The cruise was great!” I said with a cheerfulness I should have won an award for. It wasn’t a lie. When I’d been on that ship, I’d only been recovering from a broken engagement to a serial philanderer. What an easy task compared to letting Nick go to come back here.

Maybe my father did know what was best for me. Maybe me being at the helm of the USSBrithad me destined for an iceberg.

I thanked Steve and treaded carefully up the stone steps to the house. The heavy oak door swung into the foyer and I kicked off my boots. I should probably have just tossed them in the garbage at this point, ruined as they were, but I didn’t have the heart. Everything I had on my person was a souvenir from my time with Nick.

I heard my mother’s heels clicking on marble tile and I prepared myself, running a thumb under my eyes one more time. Yup. Still caked in what used to be a perfect cat-eye.

“Bridget, my God.” My mother was wearing a tailored pants suit and she looked at me like I was a dead mouse a cat had dropped at her feet.

“Hi, Mom.” I set my bags on the floor and instinctively straightened for her appraisal. I’d been gone for two weeks, half of that time I’d been lost and making my way home in precarious fits and starts, but she didn’t make a move to hug me. I pretended that didn’t sting and tugged at the hem of my sweatshirt.

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