Page 65 of Road Trip to Forever
“Did you know that was the first book you ever read to me?”
“Really?” she asks.
“Yup. I didn’t ask you to. You just did. It was raining and we were sitting in the treehouse with nothing to do. You opened the cover, started reading to me about Pemberley, and you never stopped.”
“I talked a lot as a kid.”
“I liked it. We balanced each other out.”
“Look at us. Hundreds of books later,” she says.
“We really branched out with our preferences and tastes. Aliens. Stalkers. Werewolves. Who cares? We’ll read it all.”
“Don’t forget the time my mom found that old regency book hiding under my pillow. The cover with the shirtless guy.Her Salacious Night with the Insatiable Duke.God, I was mortified when she sat me down and tried to havethe talk.”
“You avoided your kitchen table for a week,” I say. “My mom didn’t know why you were joining us for every meal.”
“Ah, the good ole days. Kathy would really panic if she found out what I read now.”
“What’s next on your question list?” I ask.
“What’s your favorite memory?”
“This is a walk down nostalgia lane.” I drum my fingers on the steering wheel. “Favorite memory. That’s also easy: the day I met you.”
“Stop it,” Lola says. “Be serious.”
“I am being serious.”
“Of all the great things you’ve done in life and all your accomplishments, you’re picking that day in July?”
“Given the fact that you’ve been a catalyst for a lot of those great things, yeah,” I say. “I am.”
She stares at me. Her fingers play with the ends of her friendship bracelet, spinning the string around and around her wrist.
“I’ve never told you this, but I wasn’t happy before I met you,” she says. “I was angry a lot. I felt like I had all this energy inside of me I couldn’t let out. I never had someone who wanted to hang out with me, and making friends was hard. I wanted to be liked by other kids, but I was afraid of what they’d see when they got to know me. Deep down, I thought there was something wrong with me. My brain felt wired wrong. My emotions felt wired wrong. Then I met you, and I couldn’t stop smiling. I felt different. Lighter. That energy went into our friendship. I felt like I belonged. Like I had a place in this world. You made me feel right. And I’ve kept feeling right in all the years since.”
I reach over and find her hand, squeezing her fingers tightly with my own so she knows how much I mean these next words.
“Your brain is my favorite brain, Lola. You see things others don’t, and that’sspecial.Before you came along, I was too quiet to make friends and too shy to care that I didn’t have anyone to spend time with. Then you walked across your yard and came into my life and… that kind of changed everything, didn’t it? I had been so very alone and then suddenly, I wasn’t. I haven’t been alone since, and I know I never will be again. That’s why meeting you is my favorite memory.”
I love you,I should add, but I don’t. We drive on, my heart dangerously close to falling out of my chest.
* * *
“Now this is some fresh air.”Lola stretches out her arms and ducks under a branch, brushing a clump of bark from her hair. “Look at the trees. Look at the lake. It’s so serene.”
I kill the ignition of the Jeep and jump out. My feet hit the dirt and I take a deep breath. There’s a shift out here in the mountains, buried behind rows of trees and singing songbirds. A steadiness and calmness in the breeze and running creek. The rustle of leaves and the smell of campfires left behind.
“Let’s move here,” I say. “I’ll build us a big log cabin. We could have s’mores and jacket potatoes every night. Our friends would visit, right?”
“They’d visit, but they wouldn’t stay. Your snoring would keep them awake for hours.”
“Says the woman I had to shake away this morning when our alarms went off. Didn’t seem to bother you too much.”
I purposely leave out how we’ve woken up the past two days—with her leg thrown over my hip, my hand under her knee, her head on my chest, and my arms wrapped firmly around her waist.
The pillow barrier I built to separate our sides lasted all of three seconds. I don’t know who moved first, her or me—me, probably, if I’m being honest with myself—but we gravitated toward each other in the night, moths to a flame.
