Page 82 of Anywhere with You
In the next video, she and Lane were standing outside the house, holding her luggage.
“I couldn’t believe it when I got the call,” she exclaimed. “Mechanic Bill is my favorite person in the world.”
“Hey,” Lane said, jovially, with a shoulder bump.
“Aww, you can be my second favorite,” she said. Then, to the camera, “Lane has been my hero more than once over the past few days. First, they let us stay in this beautiful home. Second, they fed us so much and so well that I may have to drive all the way back here sometime soon for the diner’s divine chicken-fried steak. And third”—here she stopped to take Lane’s arm in hers—“Lane has been a true friend when I needed one. When I was a blubbing fountain of emotion,they brought me ice cream and listened to me whine, and I will be grateful forever.”
Lane said, “Aww. And Cara doesn’t know this yet, but I’m taking her up on her invitation to visit Houston this summer.”
Cara squealed.
Lane laughed and hugged her.
In the next, Cara was back with her orange car, grinning and doing a little dance in the repair shop’s parking lot. I caught a glimpse of the awful motel in the background.
In the next, Cara was driving, dramatically putting on her sunglasses and turning up the radio. It wasn’t my playlist. That had come home with me.
In the next, she was on the side of the road, a Welcome to California sign in the background.
I sat up straighter.
“That’s right, guys. I’m finishing the journey alone, but damn it, I’m going to finish it. Fingers crossed my boss isn’t on Mesmio. She thinks I’m still stranded in Arizona.”
There were several after that with minimal monologue from Cara, just views of Joshua Tree National Park, waterfalls, a cupcake with a dried mango parrot perching in the icing, and the Pacific Ocean.
That was the most recent reel. Cara looked windblown and happy, the early sunrise turning the mountains behind her into black silhouettes.
“This is the first time I’ve ever seen the Pacific Ocean. The water is so cold, and the waves are so huge—I don’t know how anyone swims here. Maybe they just surf.” She turned the camera out to catch surfers in wet suits rising and falling on the waves. She looked around. Left and right, the beach stretched out, endless and almost empty.
Cara gave awowface to the camera.
I watched it again, my heart as full with her happiness as it was empty with the knowledge that I should be there with her.
This was our adventure. I had abandoned it and her, not without reason. But still. I ached to be there with her.
Maybe one day, we could salvage our friendship.
But I was still in the process of ending a marriage with someone I couldn’t trust. I wasn’t eager to jump back into anything more than friendship, certainly not with someone who had already proven that she could lie to my face.
I tried to turn my attention back to the store’s books, but the bell over the door rang three times in five minutes, so I abandoned my desk with a sigh and went to see what was happening.
What was happening was that Strings & Things was fuller than I’d ever seen. I noticed something else, too, that I hadn’t before. People turned to look at me and smiled and turned back to their friends to whisper.
Oh God. Was I a Mesmio celebrity?
My fears were confirmed later when a young woman came up to me and very enthusiastically told me all the reasons Cara and I were soulmates.
And she wasn’t the last that day.
Fortunately, most people who came into the store that day were actually interested in making purchases. Several mentioned that they had seen me play a song online and followed the link for information about Strings & Things but didn’t seem to know anything else about Cara and me.
Sure enough, when I had a spare moment to check our Mesmio stats, my song at the rental house near the hot springs had ten times more views than any other, and Cara had, indeed, put in a link to the store’s website.
After the store closed that night, Florence and Doug waited for me while I took a look at the register numbers.
“You’re right,” I confirmed to Florence. “It’s the most profitable day in the store’s history.”
“I knew it,” she said. “Can’t sneak a chicken past a chicken hawk.”
