Page 71 of Road Trip to Forever
“I was going through the motions with him. Even before the breakup, I could tell he wasn’t who I was going to spend forever with. My heart didn’t skip a beat when he looked at me. I didn’t miss him when he was gone. When he broke up with me, I didn’t have any room in my heart to be angry. I didn’t care. I was too busy being sad about my dad. It made it easier to see that if I wasn’t angry over someone hurting me, they weren’t the kind worth fighting for.”
“The ones worth fighting for will never make you angry in the first place,” Patrick says. “Mad, yeah. Irritated and annoyed as hell? Of course. But never angry. Anger isn’t love.”
Silence settles around us. It’s the comfortable kind, where you don’t feel you have to say anything else or stretch a conversation past its end point. You can exist with another person, content to justbe.
Quiet usually puts me on edge, my mind working in overdrive as it thinks about all the things I need to accomplish. The need to get up and move, the inability to sit still. With Patrick, I welcome the quiet and the calm. It’s a change. Agoodchange.
There’s another question on the tip of my tongue, but I’m hesitant to learn the answer. If my thoughts on dating can change, so can Patrick’s. His dreams might have dimmed. He might feel like he’s been burned too many times, leaving him jaded and ready to throw in the towel.
I draw my legs to my chest and drop my chin to my knees. “I have something else I want to ask,” I say tentatively, nerves clawing at my back.
“I know you do. You’re so easy to read, Lola.”
“Do you still think your person is out there? You haven’t given up on finding love, have you?”
His lips pull into a smile, and he sits up. “Can I tell you a secret?”
“You can tell me anything, Patrick.”
“She’s out there. I have hope.”
“What’s that phrase you and the guys use? It’s the hope that kills you?”
“You’re hitting these sports metaphors out of the park. The phrase is right, but I don’t like it for this scenario. What’s the point of doing anything—chasing a dream or going after something you want—if you don’t believe in it? So I had a failed relationship. Big deal. People break up every day. My person—nah. Fuck that. Person is too insignificant of a word to describe her. Mysoulmateis out there. She’s the other half of my heart, made specifically for me.Justfor me. Custom ordered. It’s why it hasn’t worked out with anyone else. And I don’t care how long it takes for her to realize it and for us to be together. This year, next year, two decades from now. Hell, when we’re seventy-five. I’m a patient man. One day, it’s going to happen. She’s worth the wait.”
I hear the certainty and conviction in his words.
I see that small smile tugging at his lips—the same one he gives me when he thinks I’m not paying attention. The softness behind his eyes and the way he looks at me is not like I’m one in a million, not even like I’m one in a billion, but like I’m theonly onein the entire world.
“That’s good, Patrick. Lovely to hear,” I say. “I’m so happy for you.”
At least, I think I say it.
I can’t be sure, because he’s staring at me so rapturously, so blindingly, I have to glance away. He’s the sun and I’m Icarus, flying far too close and at risk of getting burned.
I might burst into a thousand tiny pieces the longer he stares, and Iwant to. I want to split myself in two, so one part of me is always with him, and he’s always with me too.
Soulmate.
He has asoulmate, a certified fact, andgod,I’ve never wanted to be something so bad to someone in my life. Forget the fear, forget the numbness of being left behind.I want that, the all-encompassing love and a foreverness ofgoodandhope.
I want it withhim.
With him, I wouldn’t be afraid.
“Hey.” Patrick’s voice pulls me to the present. Concern laces his tone, and he touches my shoulder. “Where’d you go?”
I shake my head. I stare at the trees past his shoulder, the edge of a deep, dark forest. “Nowhere.”
His eyebrows wrinkle together, and his smile slips into a frown. He can tell I’m lying but he lets me have my secret, just like he has his.
“Can I ask you a question now?”
“Seems only fair,” I say.
“The accidental kiss at the wedding.”
My cheeks flush. I pick up a stick and break off a twig. “What about it?”
