Page 23 of Road Trip to Forever
It’s so quiet, I swear I can hear the blood rushing through my veins, a raging river.
Shit.
“Ah.” I scratch behind my ear and wish the ground would swallow me up. “Sorry. I’m—”
“I didn’t hate it.”
“Oh.” Everything in me burns hot at her admission, and I shift on the mattress. “Better than blowhard, right?”
Lola huffs, and we’re back to being us, my mistake swept cleanly under the rug. “We should go to sleep. I’m keeping you awake.”
“The headache is keeping me awake. Kinda hard to relax when it feels like there’s a jackhammer behind your eyes. I don’t want to go to sleep yet. I’d rather you read to me,” I say, grabbing the book leaning against the lamp next to the bed.
It’s become a ritual when we’re together.
Lola reads a chapter from the latest romance novel she’s enjoying out loud to me. I’ll listen and revel in the timbre of her voice. The dip in her tone when she gets to a quote she loves. How she stops to process her favorite lines, the more profound passages taking her longer to absorb.
“You just like to hear me talk,” she says.
“It’s better than listening to myself talk. I do that enough at school with the daily announcements and cafeteria chaos.”
“Do you ever get tired of sharing the weather over the P.A. system? I think it would be fun.”
“No. Sometimes I’ll add in something completely out of left field to see who’s listening. The first person to come to the office during lunch and tell me what I said gets a lollipop.”
“Stop. What do you say?”
“Stupid stuff. It’s raining meatballs. Make sure to pack your rulers, a storm is coming. Cloudy with a chance of pie. The kids love it.”
“Okay, weatherman,” Lola says. “You win.”
She opens the book to where we left off last week and tucks the bookmark under her leg. Her fingers trace over the printed words like they’re delicate and fragile, important and poignant things she wants to hold close.
I rest my head on the pillow and fold my hands across my stomach. She talks about two best friends, about their vacations of past and present. A small room in Palm Springs without a working air conditioner and a car with a flat tire. It’s my favorite book she’s ever read to me, a story mirroring our own. People who would do anything for each other. A friendship and love that runs deeper than the center of the Earth.
I smile, close my eyes, and listen.
The last thing I see before I succumb to sleep is Lola’s head on my shoulder and my heart in her hands.
SIX
LOLA
“You’re acting weird,”Emma says, staring at me in the mirror with a piercing gaze.
Her attention makes me fidget and wring my hands together, guilty of a crime I didn’t commit as she interrupts our girls’ day to interrogate me.
Damn lawyers.
“I am not. That’s the last-minute wedding prep talking. Only a few more sleeps until the big day,” I answer.
She tilts her head to the side and squints, assessing me through the smudged glass. With her arms crossed over her chest, she hums then snaps, the click of her fingers loud in the room covered in floral arrangements and centerpieces in preparation for her big day.
“That’s it. You look different,” she says.
“Different how?”
“You look strange.”
