Page 26 of Anywhere with You
“So, your birth name is Honoria?” Cara asked when she had properly woken up.
“Yes,” I said.
It was Cara’s turn to drive, and I was using the opportunity to stretch my legs out as far as I could. Driving sucked, and we probably wouldn’t even bother stopping for lunch after our hotel breakfast smorgasbord, so it was going to suck for many hours consecutively.
“I was named after my grandmother,” I said, “who was deathly ill when I was in utero but recovered miraculously once the birth certificate was signed. She’s still fine, living just outside of Vegas with a professional blackjack dealer and their six rescue dogs.”
Cara laughed. “Dear goodness. Does she go byHoney, too?”
I scoffed. “No, no one would dare, not even my grandpa when he was alive. She isHonoriaand nothing else. She doesn’t even want to be calledgrandma.”
“You, on the other hand…”
“I hate the name. Honestly, I hate the nickname, too, but it was kind of inevitable.”
She thought about that. “You could’ve insisted that people call you Nora. Or Nori, like seaweed.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it. Had I really never considered that? There was a brief time in middle school when I tried to get everyone to call me Amy because it was an easy-to-spell, easy-to-say, not weird name. But there were four other Amys in my grade, so it’s not a surprise that it didn’t take.
“You majored in music?” she asked.
“We’re just speeding through my childhood here,” I said.
She managed to give me anI’m waitingexpression without taking her eyes off the road.
“I…double majored,” I said.
“In…?”
“Music. And accounting.”
“Accounting,” she said, then gasped. “Oh my God, Honey, are you an accountant?”
“Iwasan accountant.”
“But you’re all like certified and all that? Can you help me with my taxes?”
“Shut. Up.”
She cackled.
“What about you?” I asked. “Education?”
It took her a second or two to finish laughing at me, but then she answered, “Biology with a seven-to-twelfth life science certification.”
“Exciting. You went to college with Lorenzo and Bridget, right? University of Houston?”
Cara nodded. “I was a couple years behind them, but yeah. Bridget and I had some friends in common, so when she and Lorenzo organized a fundraising party for an LGBT+ charity, I went and met them both.”
“You went?” I asked, then bit my lip.
“You can ask me questions, too, Honey.”
“You went asL,G,B,T, or plus?”
Cara snorted. “I don’t know if that was smooth or stupid. I’m bi. So’s Lorenzo. You knew that, right?”
“Yeah, Bridget and I gossiped about Lorenzo, just never about you.”
