Chapter 13 Colorado Is the Breakup Bangs of States
Colorado Is the Breakup Bangs of States
Eight Years Ago
Owen Twombley still hadn’t texted me since the “Pancakes and Personal Statements” Honors Lunch and Learn two days ago.
Owen Twombley was a fellow junior, an actuarial sciences major, and a possessor of cheekbones that made me weak.
He wanted three kids, two dogs, and a second house in Door County by thirty.
He was perfect and, prior to the Lunch and Learn, had zero interest in me romantically.
That is, until I displayed a deep and expansive knowledge of fantasy baseball simply by agreeing with his opinions on the Astros’ batting order and nodding at all the right times.
I was on day three of implementing my texting strategy, in which every message I constructed was more maddeningly cryptic, mysterious, and noncommittal than the last. With any luck, he’d read my words like they were a horoscope, finding in them whatever he wanted to until he was certain I was his forever kind of woman.
I itched for him to like me as much as I liked him. I already envisioned us whisking away to suburban Chicago over the holidays to meet his parents. But the passionate overtures I was anticipating were not yet forthcoming.
I shoved my silent phone into my back pocket. Ivan, the drummer in Ethan’s band, was playing too loud for me to hear my own thoughts, let alone the notifications on my phone.
Lemonface was starting to get better gigs but, due to Ethan’s Donut Barn work schedule, usually turned them down in favor of bars closer to Lewellen.
Tonight they were playing at a college hangout that doubled as an Italian restaurant.
There were too many families eating garlic knots for Ivan to be going this hard.
“We are Lemonface!” Ethan called out into the crowd. Though I still wasn’t sold on the name, I hollered back dutifully, the lone wooer. He found my face in the crowd and sent me an embarrassed head shake. “Good night!”
After the show, I helped the band pack up the old minivan Ethan inherited from his mom. It took longer without Petey, who’d been uncharacteristically scarce since he’d been drafted to an AHL team and was now packing for his big move up to Edmonton.
“It’s still early enough to head into Minneapolis tonight,” Benson argued, throwing shut the door to the Dodge Caravan.
Ethan inhaled sharply through his nose, and immediately, I knew this conversation was gearing up for their standard fight about the direction of the band.
I stepped between them. “Ethan was supposed to drive me home. I have a practice LSAT in the morning.”
“I thought you were like…computer-y,” Ivan said to me, but before I could respond, Ethan was already pouncing on my excuse.
“I have to take her back to campus. Another time.”
Ethan opened the passenger door for me. I stepped in, grateful I wouldn’t have to explain to Ivan that, yes, I was “computer-y,” but I was in the midst of a crisis over my postgrad future.
Through my professors—most of whom were coders who’d been chewed up and spit out by dozens of tech companies—I was discovering that the tech industry was unpredictable and volatile.
But the lawyer who taught my intellectual property seminar was a partner at the same firm he’d clerked for as a law student, his entire career at one address.
His “home away from home,” he called it. It sounded perfect.
“Sure, man. Whatever,” Benson sneered.
And that was how Ethan and I wound up alone on the dirt road affectionately referred to as Pothole Alley back to campus.
“I don’t have a practice exam tomorrow, by the way. I just figured you needed a hard out.”
He sighed. “You were right.” The band’s forever sore spot was Ethan’s shift schedule and his destiny as the Lewellen donut king.
“Worked out for me. Campus rides stop at ten and Petey’s been MIA lately.”
“He’s been in Saint Paul. Wooing your sister.”
“Really?” I asked, incredulous. I tried to imagine where Petey slept in the Frogtown apartment where Laurel was crashing to save money while student teaching. Last time I visited, she was sleeping on a recliner and using a T-shirt quilt as a room divider.
He clicked his tongue. “The clock’s ticking, Beekman. He has to convince Lo she’s actually dating him before he moves to Canada.”
My eyes widened. “Well, that’s a fool’s errand.”
“Love makes fools of us all,” he said, then sang it to himself under his breath. He did that sometimes. “Is that anything?” he asked, referring to the lyric.
“Maybe? It kind of sounds like a Pinterest quote.” He physically recoiled. “Speaking of love, how’s the vet tech?”
He quirked his head to the side. “Who?”
“Quinn?” I attempted to conjure a name for the apple-cheeked animal lover who wore ribbons in her hair in a way that managed to look Parisian and not Minnie Mouse chic.
“Oh yeah,” he answered, drumming his thumbs on the steering wheel. “That fizzled out. I was too ‘unreliable.’?”
“I told you to make up a different reason for forgetting to pick her up.”
“We were watching Survivor and they’d just hit the merge. I literally could not leave your dorm room at that point. You would’ve understood.”
Whatever phase of your early twenties involved bingeing reality competition shows for hours on end like casualties in a carbon monoxide leak, we were firmly in it.
“Let’s watch more tonight. I can stay over.” He looked at me and then back at the road. It was the first time he’d approached happiness all night. I almost wanted to say yes to see whether he’d offer up a grin.
I leaned my head back and rolled it in his direction. “Rain check?”
The light in his eyes went out again. “Busy with the mortuary? How’s that going?”
“Owen Twombley is an aspiring actuary . No dead bodies in actuarial science, fortunately. They’re more like sexy statisticians.” I pulled out my phone.
Still nothing from Owen.
“Why do you call him by first and last name like he’s a person of interest in a murder case?”
I sighed and stuffed my phone back in my pocket. “Because he’s about to fall in love with me, and I’m getting used to the way ‘Twombley’ feels in my mouth. Thanks for asking.”
His head tilted to the side. “Is he aware he’s the mark in your patented man-catching system?”
“You make it sound like there are nets and hounds involved. I’m simply making myself mysterious and, thus, irresistible.”
“You run your life like the navy, Beekman. I know exactly where you are at any moment of the day. You’re the least mysterious person I’ve ever met.”
My head whacked against the headrest as we lumbered over a series of mini potholes. “Okay. Ouch,” I said, feeling the Smirnoff Ice from earlier in the night bouncing in my esophagus.
“What? It’s true.”
“No, no. Please, continue listing everything unattractive about me.”
“Why is that unattractive?” he asked, fighting with the steering wheel over the rough terrain. “You’re steady and straightforward. You’re honest and stand behind what you say. Easy to read. You’re like a clock.”
“A clock?” I asked, because it was possible I’d entered a fugue state triggered by humiliation and had misheard him.
The car threw us from side to side like we were rag dolls as he doubled down, telling me, with a straight face, “Everyone needs clocks.”
“Stop. I can’t hear the word ‘clock’ again or I’m going to be sick.”
“Are you carsick?” Alarm rang through his gruff baritone. “Are you okay? Should I pull over?”
“I’m fine,” I gritted out, stabilizing myself against the bucket seat so I could look him in the eyes. “We’re fighting now, by the way. This is a fight.”
“Come on, Chuck.”
“Don’t you Chuck me. You’re not getting out of this by being all charming. You said I was predictable—”
“I don’t remember using the word ‘predictable.’?”
“—you called me unattractive and compared me to a clock —”
“I definitely didn’t say ‘unattractive,’?” he cut in.
“How would you know?” I said. “You apparently have no memory of calling me predictable.”
We barreled over another pothole. It sent my stomach straight to my face.
His eyes darted to me. “There’s absolutely no way I’d ever call you unattractive.”
“I heard it.”
“Then get your ears checked.”
“You said it!” I shouted.
“Why would I call you unattractive when I obviously think you’re attractive?”
The sentence went off in the minivan like a gunshot. With the exception of my heart, which was confusingly fluttering up into my throat, we both froze.
That is, until the front tire cratered into a pothole the size of a small planet.
Ethan’s arm shot out in front of me as my seat belt locked against my chest with a tight snap. “Are you okay?” His eyes met mine with a wild intensity.
“I’m fine,” I assured him, but the tension in his face didn’t abate until I wrapped my hands around the arm that was still braced against me like a guardrail. “I promise. I’m fine.”
“Good.” He swallowed and removed his arm.
We both faced forward for a second, catching our breath, until I shattered the silence. “I’m kind of surprised I didn’t throw up.”
His laugh broke free from his throat, and then I started laughing too. It was that hysterical, demented kind of laughter that comes from the hollow of your stomach—equal parts release and reminder that we were alive.
“Should we call Triple A?” I asked.
His laughter died. “I don’t have Triple A.”
“Okay, well, whatever insurance you have.”
“Sure,” he responded, but he didn’t move. “What if I didn’t have insurance? Hypothetically.”
My brows drew together. “Hypothetically?”
“What if, hypothetically, I had insurance at some point and then didn’t renew it? What would we do then?”
The fluttering in my stomach was replaced by a slow sinking feeling. “Like…as a thought experiment?”
“Or a problem-solving exercise.” He waited for me to respond, but I only stared at him. “Cards on the table. It’s not hypothetical.”
I popped an eyebrow. “No shit?”
“Go ahead. Tell me how irresponsible I am. I’m a disaster, I know.”