Page 33 of Road Trip to Forever
“Perfect,” Lola says. “There’s also a bookstore outside Orlando I want to visit. It’s in this cute small town, and it has a coffee shop inside. A bakery, too, with homemade desserts that looksogood.” She sighs around her bagel, undoubtedly dreaming about an assortment of pastries with whipped cream and chocolate frosting. I like that look of hers, when she’s concentrating on something she really, really wants. “They have miniature pies, Patrick. Not just slices of pie, but actual little pies.”
“Miniature pies? Forget everything else about this trip.Thatwill be the highlight.”
“The pies are high on the list, but I’m even more excited about my role model being at the show. I hope I have time to meet her.”
“Tell me about her,” I say. “Would I recognize her stuff?”
“Vivian Lee. Her work is gorgeous. Do you remember that—oh, there’s no way you would.”
I lift an eyebrow. “Do I remember what, exactly?”
“The first dress I bought with my babysitting money after watching those horrible twins for weeks.”
“Actual spawns of Satan,” I agree. “Didn’t one of them cut your hair?”
“Yup. The first and only time I ever had bangs.”
“What did the dress look like?”
“It was pink with thick straps. Kind of long, and I liked the way it spun out around my legs when I twirled in a circle. I wore it to the freshmen year sock hop with those patent leather shoes and the frilly white socks. Arthur McBride told me I looked like a watermelon. I told him to go to hell and then spent Monday afternoon in detention.”
I rack my brain and all the time we’ve spent together.
Childhood and the treehouse. Lemonade stands and racing down the big hill at the end of the street on our bikes. Building forts in her living room during rainstorms and swimming in the creek behind my house.
Middle school and acne. Homework and baseball games. The first time I realized I had a crush on Lola. She touched my elbow after I helped her with our math homework and smiled really big. I forgot my name and thought I was going to die.
The summer before freshman year when Lola’s skin turned from fair to a light bronze after lounging outside every afternoon, a towel laid out on the grass and sunglasses over her eyes. I spent the entire month of July inside pretending I had sun poisoning so I wouldn’t have to see her in a bikini.
“You bought it on Newbury Street,” I say, thrown back in time and still flipping through memories. Our first cell phones and texting each other from our rooms instead of throwing notes across our yards. Getting dropped off at the dance and when I told her she looked pretty. “We went to the city for your birthday, and you tried on a hundred outfits.”
“I doubt it was a hundred.”
“It felt like a hundred. It was that day, right? You paid in cash and counted out ones and tens for so long, the sales associate walked away to help someone else.”
“You do remember,” she says proudly, and I’m rewarded with a bright beam.
Fuck, I’m greedy for her smiles. I’m always scrambling to find a way to make her grin again.
One isn’t enough.
I want them all.
“I took the dress home, hung it in my closet, and said to myself,someday, it’s going to be my name on that tag. I spent years admiring Vivian’s designs, so to finally have one of my own? It was surreal. I look at that outfit every day and—it’s silly, but it motivates me to want to keep learning. To be a better designer. I know it’s just a dress, and what I do is just sew some pieces of fabric together, but when I look at that outfit, I know my purpose. I can see my future laid out in front of me. She’s going to be at the show, so it’s a full-circle moment.”
“We all have things that make us happy,” I say. “For you, it’s that dress. Never think what brings you joy is silly.”
She reaches over and taps my nose. The salt shaker gets knocked sideways and crystals spill on the table. “What brings you joy?”
You, I think.
I’d spend one minute with Lola over a hundred minutes with anyone else and be the happiest person in the world.
“Three weeks off from school,” I say instead, giving her the safe answer. It’s the answer that won’t send her running for the hills in fright and keeps our friendshipsafe,despite how dangerously I’ve been acting as of late. “The only time of the year I don’t have to check my email, answer questions about curriculums and attendance policies, or hearMr. Walkera hundred times a day. I love my job, but I need a break.”
“So I shouldn’t call you Mr. Walker on our trip?” Lola asks, her voice low and painted with amusement. Her eyebrows wiggle and her teeth sink into her bottom lip before she turns her cheek andwinks.
A rubber band inside me stretches, close to snapping. My body heats as fire licks up my spine and spreads across my shoulders.
