Chapter 13 Colorado Is the Breakup Bangs of States #2
He threw his head in his hands and didn’t look up again until I flung open the passenger door. “Wait. What are you doing?”
I jumped out and crouched in front of the tire. Relief fell over my body. The pothole wasn’t nearly as big as it’d sounded.
I walked over to the driver’s side and did the universal cranking gesture for lowering a car window. “If you cut all the way left, you can back out of it.”
He stared at me for a long second. “You’re not going to give me shit for forgetting to renew my car insurance?”
I shrugged. “I think you already feel pretty shitty about it. And this pothole really isn’t so bad.”
I climbed back in, and he stared at me, gobsmacked. “How do you do that?”
I laughed, a little self-conscious. “Do what?”
“Know exactly what I need when everything’s falling apart.”
I shook my head in a jokey, deflective way, because the explanation on the tip of my tongue was too embarrassing to say out loud.
I didn’t want to tell him that I felt so close to him, I could detect his precise frequency.
I could sense his tiny disruptions, when he needed me to match his vibrations or ground him to something steady.
I was almost positive he felt that kind of closeness with me too, but couldn’t bring myself to ask, because it’d be too mortifying when he responded with a confused “Huh?”
He closed his eyes, hit reverse, and miracle of miracles, we were free from the ruptured asphalt. We both cheered, but the joy was short-lived.
“What’s that noise? Why is the car making that angry sound?”
“Goddammit,” he swore, more defeated than I’d ever seen him. “The gas gauge is broken. We’re out of gas. I was supposed to get it fixed, but I can’t afford it, and—”
“It’s fine, Powell.” I unbuckled my seat belt and interrupted his self-flagellating with a gentle shove to his arm.
We walked on the shoulder the whole way, Ethan insisting I stay on the side farthest from the road like Jimmy Stewart in a movie my mom would’ve fallen asleep to. I was just happy he remembered to wear shoes.
On the walk back, he carried both gas canisters, insisting they were easier to carry that way. “I’m evened up now,” he said. “If you want to help, distract me or something.”
“Okay,” I said, biting into the Snickers I’d treated myself to at the gas station. “A little story time for you: this is not my first time walking to get gas in the middle of the night.”
“Oh yeah?”
“It’s my fourth time. My parents ran out of gas all the time.
My dad mostly, but my mom’s done it too.
And it wasn’t like the gas gauge was ever broken or anything.
They would just ignore it. Or forget. I’m not sure.
” My voice took on that light affect it sometimes did when I talked about my parents.
The kind that was perfected after sharing one too many “cute family anecdotes” that were met with expressions of shock and mild concern.
“Are they back together now that…” He wasn’t sure how to ask it, so I didn’t make him.
“Now that we’re not in the way? I think so. They’ve been all over the country interviewing people negatively impacted by the opioid crisis.”
“That sounds important.”
I nodded because it was the part of my dad’s life I couldn’t argue with. His work always sounded sufficiently more important than everything else vying for his attention.
“Weirdly enough, my dad still takes off on her. Constantly. It’s almost like Laurel and I had nothing to do with it, and it was always a ‘them’ problem.” My attempt at levity fell flat. I still sounded too resentful, which I didn’t like. I didn’t want to care so much.
I cleared my throat. “So, anyway…as someone who’s made many a nighttime gas station trek, I can say with authority that this was one of the more dramatic ones. Care to share why tonight sent you over the edge?”
“I’m seriously at the end of my rope. I swear, if you hadn’t’ve been here, I would’ve left the minivan and walked all the way to Colorado. Started a new life there.”
“It’s not ‘moving to Colorado’ bad, is it?”
His forehead folded up like a taco. “What? Everyone loves Colorado.”
“Colorado is the breakup bangs of states. No one in an emotionally stable place has ever up and moved to Denver.” I nudged his shoulder with mine. “Spill.”
“My parents bought an RV. I’ve been helping them fix it up. They’re retiring and starting their next act. But Silver Lining Society wants Lemonface to open for them on tour—”
“That’s amazing,” I cheered, grabbing his arm and bouncing in a way that wobbled his delicate gas can balancing act.
Silver Lining Society was an indie rock band on the come up.
They’d played on one of the smaller stages at Coachella two years before and their most recent album was getting even more traction.
This would be huge for the band. For Ethan.
“It would be…” He adjusted his grip. “If I weren’t the manager of a barely profitable donut shop.
Or if my band wasn’t scoping out guitarists in Minneapolis to replace me.
Or if the thing I did all day, every day wasn’t literally trying to poison me.
But my parents have worked so hard and have earned the right to see the country and have adventures.
Meanwhile, I’m slotting into a life where there will never be any surprises.
Just the same broken gas gauge, same life, every minute, forever, until I die. ”
“Wow,” I said, letting his deluge of words wash over me. “That was…an extraordinary amount of self-pity all at once.”
“What happened to my wonderful friend who didn’t want to kick me while I’m down?”
“That was thirty-some minutes ago. Keep up, Powell. We’re on to the harsh truths portion of this nighttime walk.”
He laughed. “Fine, then. Lay it on me.”
“Have you ever considered telling your parents about the tour? Or that you don’t want to take over the shop? Or playing them ‘Donut Holes and Claustrophobic Souls’? It’s a fairly blunt track, lyrically speaking.”
“It’s a nonstarter. My grandfather built the shop from the family barn. That’s generations of expectations on my shoulders.”
“You’re allergic to your family business. I don’t think that was the family legacy Stuart Senior had in mind.”
“My dad…it’s the only thing he’s ever wanted for me.”
“Wendy and Stuart bought you your first guitar and the three other ones after that. They made custom shirts for your jazz band concerts. If music isn’t at least a part of the life they want for you, it certainly won’t be out of left field.
Maybe they’re not the only ones they want to see go on some adventures.
” I knocked his elbow with mine, offering a tiny jolt of human connection. He choked up on the gas can handles.
“Do you ever miss traveling all the time like your family used to? The adventure?” he asked.
My prepared answer, Of course not, was always at the ready.
But something about the darkness and how vulnerable he was being with me tonight made me want to give him the other answer.
The one that scared me. “Parts of it. I loved meeting new and interesting people. I liked the way every day was bound to be different. The energy to that lifestyle.”
But I’d never felt like I had any control.
Even less than the ordinary way that no kid ever feels like they have control.
Being on location with my family, where our lives revolved around Dad, who treated us more like anecdotes in a charming story than a family.
It was as though we were auditioning for a role in his life, always at risk of being cut.
I desperately wanted my place in their lives to feel permanent, but it never did.
Even the good days vibrated with apprehension like the moments before an earthquake.
I was always aware that the ground could shift under my feet.
Being safe and stable and cared for wasn’t compatible with my family’s rootless existence.
They could bend for me a little, but my parents’ resentment would always be in the room with us like a family pet.
“You make me feel like that, you know,” he said, pulling me out of the past as we approached the minivan.
“Insecure?”
“No.” He stretched the vowel in a way that sounded suspiciously like “duh” and set the gas cans on the street. “Like every day is bound to be different.”
“I thought I was a clock,” I whined.
But then he did something wholly unexpected. He twisted me around by the arm until we settled into holding hands, like a magic trick.
Tada .
He swung our hands between us. “I like how easy it is to read you. Everything’s on your face. All the time.”
My breath quickened. “Okay. What’s on my face right now?”
He stared at me with eyes that bored through me. My chest rose and fell as I anticipated whatever it was he was about to say next.
“Chocolate. Or caramel, maybe?” He pointed at my chin.
Something sank through my body from my head to my feet. Relief, I thought. And a healthy dose of embarrassment, because no woman wanted a guy commenting on the mixture of chocolate and/or caramel hardening on her cheek. Even if said guy was just a friend.
I wiped at my face with my free hand. “Snickers,” I explained, scratching at the messy hunk with my pinkie nail.
“No worries,” he said, giving my palm a squeeze. “Now you’re perfect.”
“Cool,” I said.
Cool?
But then my phone beeped, and beeped again and again, until the little perfect bubble between us popped like a balloon.
“Is it the undertaker?” he asked. I scrolled my phone screen, blinking fast.
Study group finally ended. Leaving library now.
There was an alumni mixer in the atrium and I stole us turkey burgers on pretzel buns.
Can I stop by your dorm, even if it’s only to say hi?
Owen Twombley was gone for me—or at least a more datable, baseball-loving facsimile of me—four days ahead of schedule.
This was the best part. Feeling that crush from someone new.
Being possessed by the warm glow of what could turn out to be unending affection.
Believing that we might be magic together because we were still fresh enough to be anything.
“The actuary,” I said, correcting him. “He stole me a pretzel bun.”
“Contraband buns, huh?” He let his hand drop to pick up a canister of gasoline. “Could never be me.”
He’d uttered that sentence to me a million times before, but tonight it sounded like a dare.