Page 50 of Anywhere with You
“We’ll probably drive right out of it,” Cara said.
“I’m sure it’s just a little rainstorm,” I said, but I might not have been convincing.
“Does the weather stress you out?” Cara asked.
“A little. I don’t know why. I probably watchedTwistertoo many times. I also watchedTitanictoo many times. I spent years terrified of boats. And Kate Winslet.”
“Do you want me to drive?” she asked.
“No, but thank you. Just distract me. Give me one of your road trip conversation topics.”
“How about…” She scrolled through her phone. “Where’s the weirdest place you’ve had sex?”
“Where are you getting these questions?” I asked, my voice squeaking. I wasn’t sure I could handle talking about sex with her right now, not with us so close and yet not nearly close enough. The center console between us was a thin but impermeable force field.
“Do you think that’s a weird question?” Cara asked thoughtfully. “I thought it was fun. I’ll go first. Mine is probably the foreign languages section of my college library. Do you know what countries speak Tagalog? Or maybe it was that time at the Natural History Museum. I don’t know what qualifies as weird, exactly. But we were behind a mammoth fossil, so that seems pretty weird.” She paused. “It had really, really big tusks.”
After a moment, she turned in my direction and saw me gaping at her, before I refocused on the road.
“What?” she asked.
“Cara Espinoza. I never would have imagined you were abadgirl.”
“Shut up,” Cara said.
“No, I’m serious. I am so surprised that if you literally told me rightnow that you were three raccoons disguised as a human, that would be less surprising than what I just heard come out of your mouth.”
Cara smiled, then wrinkled her nose. I needed to stop looking at her and watch the road, but it had never been more difficult. “I do seem to give off a goody-goody vibe, don’t I?” she asked. “I just figured you were able to see through that.” She almost sounded disappointed in me, which amused me even more for some reason.
“I’m starting to,” I said. “You do have that sweet innocent teacher thing going on for you. But I guess you can’t judge a slut by her cover.”
She slapped my arm, laughing. “No way. You are not going to shame me for having a good time in my twenties. Especially not when I know you were having just as much fun.”
“Oh yes,Idefinitely give off the opposite of a good girl vibe,” I admitted. “But I’ve never knocked boots anywhere more adventurous than the beach.”
“Seriously? I always imagined…Never mind.” She looked down and started fiddling with her phone.
“No,” I told her. “You can’t stop there. You imagined what? That I was doing it next to the dinosaur fossils, too?”
“Honey,” she said gently, “mammoths aren’t dinosaurs. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, whatever.”
“So what beach was it where you got…adventurous?” Cara asked.
“Bolivar Flats. Have you been out there? It’s usually deserted except for the bird-watchers. It’s just miles of sand and waves. It’s beautiful.”
“So that’s who you hooked up with on the beach? Some bird-watcher?”
I shook my head vehemently. “Never. I have zero tolerance for standing there while someone talks about migration and beak shapes. I would literally rather be shot in a nonvital organ. I would rather subsist on your granola bar bricks. I would rather—”
“Yeah, I got it. So, not a bird-watcher. Then who?”
I wrinkled my nose. “Bridget. It was a few years ago, when we were going through a rough time, just arguing constantly. So I thought I should do something romantic, something new. Ihadplanned a picnic.”
“So, what happened?” Cara asked, catching my word choice. NotWe had a picnic.Nope. It was, again, a good idea that hadn’t panned out. Our marriage, in a nutshell.
I squinted into the rain. “I packed a basket of her favorite foods. We got frisky on the beach. She said it was sandy. We walked a little farther. She complained about the wind, the temperature of the water on her bare feet, and the lack of pretty seashells. Then she stepped on a jellyfish. According to her, everything was ruined. The whole thing was a disaster. She would tell the story later like I’d deliberately planned the worst date of our lives.”
