Page 50 of Road Trip to Forever
“I think that’s the point of a wedding, isn’t it?” I grab the leg of her chair and pull it closer to me. She’s too far away. “True love and all that. Otherwise, it would be a total sham.”
“I thought the point of a wedding was presents.”
“Also true. One can never have too many blenders.”
“Do you want a big wedding?” Lola sets her plate down. She angles her body toward mine. “You do, don’t you?”
“I don’t know, to be honest. A ceremony would be nice,” I say. “Flowers and a cake and the whole nine yards. I’d be fine with the courthouse, too, though. I just want to be with someone who makes me happy. I don’t care about the rest.”
Lola breaks into a wide grin. “You’ve always been a romantic, Patrick. Have a wedding.”
“What about you, Wanderlust? Would you have a wedding?”
“No way. If I ever got married, I would want it to be just for us. Maybe we’d have a picnic in a field with wildflowers and dandelions. Maybe we’d get caught in a rainstorm after a secret ceremony. Maybe we wouldn’t even make it legally binding, just a mutual understanding that neither one of us is ever planning to leave. Just me and them, two souls tied together for eternity. Until we become stardust. We’d wait to tell our friends until they saw our rings and then we’d say,oh, these old things? No fuss. No party. And it would be beautiful.”
I think of Lola wearing a white dress and holding a homemade bouquet. SayingI doto a person who isn’t me and finding out about it by seeing the ring someone else gave her.
Ihatethat.
“Sounds nice,” I say.
“You look like you just ate a lemon,” she says.
“What? I do not.”
“Yes.” Lola laughs. “You do. Say it again without grimacing.”
“I blame the frosting from the cake. It’s super tart,” I say.
We sit there for a few minutes in silence, watching happiness bleed out in front of us. Everywhere I glance, there’s a couple bursting at the seams of infatuation, hopeful looks on their faces as they watch Henry spin Emma out of his hold, then back in, her dress fanning out around her ankles and showing off her white heels.
“Can I tell you a secret?” Lola asks.
Despite that pull of loneliness in my gut, I can’t help but smile.
We used to play this game as kids, back when we thought reading under the covers past our bedtime was some dark, confidential admission. We’d lay on the floor of the treehouse and talk for hours until there was nothing left to hide.
Our secrets got deeper as we got older.
Lola’s attraction to both guys and girls and how she wasn’t sure what she wanted to classify herself as, but it certainly wasn’t straight.
My reluctancy about going to medical school, heart tethered to the education field from an early age. I didn’t want to follow in the footsteps of my parents and become a surgeon or pediatrician. I wanted to help the kids with bright futures, all the soon-to-be leaders who were just waiting for someone to tell them howgoodthey are at things and believe in them.
I wonder what our younger selves would say if they could see us now. Still friends. A constant presence in each other’s lives. Healthy and happy. Good jobs. Good friends. Good everything.
“You can tell me anything,” I say, exactly like I did all those years ago.
“Promise you won’t hate me?”
“I could never hate you, Lola.”
“Not even if I ate the last French fry in the bag?”
“We might have to reevaluate things if you did that. That’s a capital offense, because everyone knows you can easily split a fry into two. But no. Never hate.”
“During the ceremony, I felt angry.” Lola’s quiet, afraid to share this admission with the world. “Then I was angry with myself for being angry in the first place. How is it possible to be so happy for someone else but feel so fucking lonely at the same time?”
“You’re lonely?” I ask. My smile slips into a deep frown, one I can feel in my chest.
