Chapter 5 Don’t Be. Do.
Don’t Be. Do.
Saturday, Now
The minute we got off the phone with Laurel, I jammed everything within arm’s reach into a weekender bag and shoved Ethan back into his van. Ethan didn’t need to pack anything, of course, as we were traveling in his dwelling.
We’ve been on the road only forty minutes, but after an inconveniently timed bathroom emergency—I had to pee the moment we left my driveway and tried to will away the building pressure in my bladder with the power of thought—we’re already off the rails and parked in front of a combination Kwik Trip / Dairy Queen Grill and Chill.
While taking off on a whim is simply a Tuesday for Ethan, it is completely out of character for me.
My last vacation was my honeymoon. Rich and I spent five months planning every detail down to the service station stops on the way to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and I still ended it two days early, because I couldn’t relax so far out of my comfort zone.
I was imagining every possible worst-case scenario occurring back at the office, in our house, or with Laurel.
What if Pamela finally handed me one of the software startups I’d been begging her to put me on and I wasn’t around to jump on it?
What if the ants made a comeback in the downstairs laundry room and established a new society in front of the dryer by the time we returned?
What if Laurel got in another fight with her roommate and the treehouse Airbnb she booked wasn’t the architectural wonder superhost Satchel promised but a literal children’s treehouse of the Fisher-Price variety?
Why hadn’t Ethan texted me anything in days?
But here I was, my arms overflowing with everything Kwik Trip has to offer, stomping through the convenience store parking lot in the direction of Ethan’s van home, feeling that same honeymoon anxiety starting to spike.
“Have you ever heard of a more Laurel-and-Petey thing in your life?” I ask, maneuvering my feet around a suspiciously hued Aquafina bottle lying in the parking lot like a live grenade.
“You mean besides the time they almost got married on a dare?” Ethan’s question is rhetorical, and kind of rude, considering I’m mid-freakout. But he doesn’t seem to register that from the driver’s seat.
“Why couldn’t they just keep their chaotic dynamic platonic like we did?” I parry through gritted teeth. Two can play the infuriating rhetorical questions game.
When I try to open the passenger door with the only two fingertips I can spare, the handle snaps back down. I try again, but there’s no movement.
Ethan eyes my haul. “Oh good. You’re still weird about hydration,” he says dryly, stretching his arms through the window to take a couple of the water bottles from me, freeing up the hand that isn’t cradling four extra-large Fiji waters and two lemon-lime Gatorades like a newborn baby.
I fling open the door and drop my goods onto the beige leather captain’s seat.
The front control panel is oversized and spotless.
Everything about it screams “new” and “luxurious,” which are words I’ve never associated with camper vans.
The buttons and knobs yell at me with all-caps abbreviations I don’t recognize.
I’d sooner assume I’ve been thrown into the cockpit of a small plane than inside Ethan’s motorized house.
I push my sunglasses into my hair, and the sharp stab above my eye is instantaneous.
“I’m still hungover, Powell, and I doubt the woods have a clean tap.
” I hunch in front of the passenger seat to tuck my bottles in every corner of available storage.
My hip knocks a knob that kicks on a Minnesota Public Radio station, and Ethan switches it off.
His eyes drift down to the rigid set of my shoulders. “You okay, Beekman?” There’s something about the timbre of his voice that turns it into a command: Be okay, Beekman. You’re going to be okay. And then, suddenly, I am. Or my body is. My life, however, remains in shambles.
He’s always had that effect on me, this steadying siren only I can hear. It’s his incredibly specific (and useless) superpower.
I don’t realize how choppy my breathing has gotten until it slows back down to normal.
Ethan takes me in, deciding how he’ll handle the woman in front of him.
He must decide I’m well enough to meet with our normal antagonism.
“This is a lot of plastic, Beek. Did you pack that Corkcicle bottle I got you for Christmas?”
“Oh good.” I cut him off before he can step onto his upcycled soapbox. Ever since a young Ethan watched a particularly incendiary rerun of Captain Planet , he’s been a dogmatic—and somewhat judgy—advocate on behalf of Earth. “You’re still weird about single-use plastic.”
I unscrew my Gatorade and make a big show of taking a sip. His brow furrows in such adorable irritation that I can’t help but let a teasing smile creep up the corner of my mouth.
He fastens his seat belt with a click. “What?” He wipes his face self-consciously, as though my amusement is not to be trusted.
“I’m just enjoying you in your natural habitat.” I gesture between the dumpster and the bike rack in front of us, which is securing various rusted-out parts, the sum of which does not add up to a whole bike.
“The Kwik Trip parking lot is not my natural habitat,” he objects, reaching for the glove box.
His arm brushes against my bare legs as he pops it open, and a satisfying tingle ripples from the point of contact.
I’ve been so touch starved since my divorce that every swipe of skin from the FedEx guy or Barista Nancy or even Ethan has left me twitching for more.
But he tosses a bag into my lap, unaffected.
“A peace offering. Friends again?” He tugs the gearshift.
I turn the package on my lap and beam. It’s chocolate, the individually wrapped ones with inspirational quotes. He began mailing bags of them to me in law school. My “study diet,” he called it.
Sometime in the second semester of 1L year—when even the strong ones were starting to snap under the pressure—I fell into a bleak bout of anxiety-fueled superstition.
I couldn’t walk into a test without unwrapping a Dove Promises chocolate and reading the message.
It wasn’t that any of the wrappers were particularly insightful—they definitely weren’t—but the ritual was essential.
Reading “Calories only exist if you count them” or “Hands are meant to be held” just before opening that blue book and regurgitating everything I wished I didn’t know about the rule against perpetuities was a security blanket I desperately needed.
Twenty minutes before my property final, I realized I’d run out and called Ethan so he could talk me down.
Do they sell them at the bookstore? he asked me, voice crackling over the atrocious phone connection. He was somewhere near Vancouver at the time, opening for a big indie rock band on the Canadian leg of their tour.
It has to be one you send. It’s dumb. I know it’s dumb. I’m being dumb.
You’re not being dumb , he assured me. If you need a Dove Promise from me, I’ll get you a Dove Promise. Just trust me, okay?
The weirdest part was, I did trust him. It didn’t make any sense to, but his superpowers were strong, even internationally. He had this confidence in his voice that soaked into my skin like rain.
Seconds before I walked into the exam, his text came through. It was a picture of his hand, and between his long, dexterous fingers was a chocolate wrapper that read “Don’t be. Do,” followed by a message: I don’t know what that means, but I know you’re going to kick adverse possession in the ass.
And I did. Even after I graduated, he still sent the occasional bag of chocolates from the road.
“Yes! How did you know I’ve been craving these?” I greedily pop open the bag in the passenger seat.
“I can sense it across continents.” He pulls onto the frontage road headed north. The air-conditioning kicks back on, circulating the scents of sunscreen and the inexplicably happy basil plant that hangs over Ethan’s kitchen counter.
“I don’t know why you’re so surprised about Lo and Pete,” he says, checking his blind spot. His face is filled with such unbridled affection for them. If I didn’t know any better, I’d assume this wedding was a good thing. “They were always going to get hitched like this.”
“Don’t say ‘hitched,’?” I beg around the half-eaten chocolate in my mouth. “It makes it sound even more unserious than it already is.”
“I think you could stand to be a bit more open-minded about relationships. Not everyone needs to be…” He trails off, noticing the corner into which he’s painted himself.
“Me and Rich?” I ask, finishing his thought for him.
He has the decency to appear a little sheepish.
“Look. Would I have liked my marriage to have lasted longer than a year? Of course. I’d also like to be farther along in my career and have the confidence to wear leopard as a neutral, but sometimes we don’t get everything we want just because we want it.
Regardless of my marital track record, I know my sister.
I can tell she’s not thinking straight. This whole wedding-crashing mission…
” I circle my finger around the van. “It’s for her.
It’s not as though I’m excited to reenact Deliverance with you.
I’m trying to prevent my sister from making the biggest mistake of her life. ”