Page 21 of Road Trip to Forever
“Of course I’ll come with you.” Her eagerness to include me is a flare behind my solar plexus, a rush of something precious. “When is it?”
“Soon. The second week in June. You’ll be out of school. The wedding will be over. I thought about driving down and making it a road trip. You don’t have to do that part if you don’t want to. I’ll rent a car, and you could meet me in—”
“We’ll take the Jeep.” I set her on her feet and rub my hands up and down her arms. I don’t let her finish suggesting an idea where I’m not next to her every step of the way. “A road trip sounds fun.”
“Even though we’re going to Florida in the middle of summer? You hate summer. It could be the road trip to hell.”
“I don’t hate summer,” I say.
“Patrick.” She tilts her head to the side and stares at me. Her mouth quirks, an upward tug of her lips that’s infectious and contagious. I find myself grinning back at her, the pressure across my sternum relenting. “You once told me you’d rather spend six hours in a tub of ice water than an hour out in the sun.”
“I like summer with you.”
“It’s so hot, we’re going to melt. We might not make it out alive.”
“Then we’ll be two melted puddles on the ground and I won’t care because we’ll be celebrating you.”
“Two melted puddles. That would be a sight.”
“Could be worse. It could be death by mosquitos,” I say.
“Or alligators. That would be a shitty way to go. Probably bad for the environment,” she says through fractured sarcasm, a witty quip before she bursts into tears.
I reach for her on instinct, my hand finding her hips and pulling her into another hug. My chin rests on the top of her head, her flyaway hairs tickling my nose.
“I am so proud of you,” I whisper into her ear. I don’t want her to miss hearing the praise and the truth behind it.
Lola sniffs, and I thumb away the tear rolling down her cheek. “Sorry for crying. I don’t know why I’m so emotional,” she says.
“You’re emotional because you did something scary. You chased your dreams, and they’re coming true. You’re allowed to shed some tears.”
“It’s better than sobbing over that video of the dog being reunited with his owner after weeks apart. The one I sent you earlier?”
“You cry. So what? There are worse traits to have. You could be walking around with legs for arms. Or an ass for a face. Imagine the looks you’d get then.”
“How do you always know the right thing to say?” Lola tips her chin and looks at me with a runny nose and tear-stained cheeks, a soul-crushing beam and red-rimmed eyes. So pretty, so damn beautiful, even when she’s crying. I swear a fists closes around my heart and squeezes with suffocating tightness every time she smiles. “You’re too good to me.”
Fuck every person who’s ever made her feel like she’sa lotfor expressing herself or considered hertoo muchand made her shove pieces of herself aside to fit into a mold that’s so obviously not her.
This woman is the blueprint, the pinnacle of good.
Of perfection.
Too much?
I’m not sure I can ever get enough.
I’ve been taking hit after hit of her for two decades, and still, I crave more.
“I’m good to you because it’s how you deserve to be treated,” I say. “How youshouldbe treated. Being proud of you is the bare minimum, Lola, and I’m sorry someone’s ever made you feel like you’re not worthy of support and encouragement.”
I’ve gotten freer with my touches lately, each graze a little more risky and a little more reckless. Like I’m pushing the boundaries of our friendship and trying to figure out when she’ll tell me to knock it off, to stop acting weird.
It isn’t now, as I run my fingers down the line of her jaw and capture another rogue tear that almost slips by. It wasn’t on the couch earlier either, when I almost leaned in and pressedmy lips to hers, caught up in a universe where she was staring at me and I couldn’t look away.
“Give me all the details.” I grab the green blanket folded in the corner of the room and we settle on the bed, a stack of fuchsia pillows behind our backs. Lola takes the left side and I take the right, stretching my legs out in front of me and letting out a content huff of air.
“It’s the middle of the night.” Lola crosses her ankles, and I bite back a grin at the socks she’s wearing—penguins skiing in beanies. Her favorite pair. Her thigh presses into mine and neither one of us pulls away. “You have an alarm going off in two hours. I can tell you tomorrow.”
