Chapter Thirty-One
I glanced in the side mirror of the truck, looking again at the car behind us. Colin, behind the wheel, was saying something while Lana, who had her bare feet up on the dash, trailed one hand out the passenger window. I could only imagine what the topic was.
At least they were talking. Ben and I had sat in silence for the entire ride so far. But quiet in an enclosed place is the opposite of restaurant time, dragging.
Finally, a noise. Bzzzzzz. On the seat between us, his new phone jumped, the screen lighting up. UNKNOWN NUMBER, it said. He glanced at it, then turned his attention back to the road.
Bzzzzzz.
“Your phone’s ringing,” I pointed out, unnecessarily.
He picked it up. “Hello?” I heard a voice, speaking quickly. “Wait, what? Tonight?”
Whoever was on the other end of the phone continued speaking, undeterred.
“No, I agreed, reluctantly, to the happy hour,” Ben said as I again glanced in the side mirror. Lana was now holding a bag of some kind of snack, she and Colin both chewing. It felt surprisingly intimate. “Dude. I’m not getting into semantics. The answer is no.”
Then he hung up, dropping the phone onto the console between us. Clunk.
“Hector,” he muttered. The word itself sounded like a curse.
“What’s going on?”
He glanced at me. “He’s trying to get me to agree to a gig he wrangled in Bly Corners. Local showcase at some club.”
“Wow,” I said.
He turned his attention to the road, switching lanes. “Apparently, there will be a talent manager there with connections to other venues around here. He’s decided this is our moment. Like, he literally used those words.”
“Looks like you might be in a real band after all.”
I kept going back to our old inside jokes, as if it might somehow get me closer to him. It seemed pathetic, even to me. Yet I couldn’t stop.
“Nothing’s changed,” he replied. “That’s what Hector doesn’t get.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning,” he said, “that just because you want something doesn’t make it happen.”
I had the feeling we were not just talking about gigs anymore. “So… what do you want?”
Now he took a pointed look in the rearview, at Colin and Lana behind us. “Does it matter?”
“I didn’t tell him to come here,” I said quietly.
“But he is here,” he replied. “So it’s pretty clear what comes next.”
“Oh, really?” An edge had crept into my voice now. “And what’s that?”
“You get what you wanted,” he said. “Your tornado. Colin as your boyfriend again. School together in the fall. It’s like I said: Nothing’s changed.”
“Except me,” I said softly.
A minivan passed us. PROUD PARENT OF AN HONOR STUDENT, said the sticker on the bumper. “Real change is visible, though. It doesn’t happen only in secret, or the dark.”
“So for you to believe me, you need a passionate embrace by the bus pan,” I said, clarifying.
“What I need,” he replied, “is something that tells me what’s between us isn’t all in my head. Because that’s what it feels like right now.”
Just then, there was a loud beep from my right. I looked over: Colin and Lana were now beside us. He had his window down.
“Liz just texted,” he called out, over the sound of air whizzing at high speed between us. “She wants us to stop at PartyHQ after for an aisle runner.”
I did not even know there was a PartyHQ nearby. But from his easy tone, he’d been there a million times. Lana poked him on the shoulder, holding up the bag. He nodded, opening his mouth, and she threw a piece of popcorn in. Then they kept driving.
“It’s okay, you know,” Ben said after a moment. “To want that. A person who’s not awkward and weird and always saying the wrong thing.”
“That’s not who you are,” I said quietly.
“I’m not sure you know that.” The words hit, as he intended. “That’s my whole point. To really understand something, you have to be willing to see it in the light.”
Bly Supply was in view now. Back at the house, my first tube of toothpaste was on the shelf over the sink. It had only a small dent, was barely started.
Then we were turning into the parking lot. A beat later, Colin and Lana were right beside us. There was no time to reply, even if I had known what to say.
I thought Ben and I would have time to finish our conversation on the way back. But then Hector had called again, and my dad phoned me. It was so weird, sitting side by side and both talking to other people. I didn’t like it.
A black Prius was at the house when I returned. Inside, I found my mom at the table with Jeremy. A pile of paperwork was between them.
“… which is why I figured it would be better to explain it in person,” he was saying as he flipped through a couple of pages. “But the upshot is that it turns out several of the species your mom and Kasey have nurtured here are protected. Which means the land may be as well.”
She pulled a sheet closer, peering at it. “And that means…”
“They’d have to rethink a total razing, for a start.” He tapped another page with a finger. “But first they need a more in-depth report of what’s here, which I’m trying to knock out now. I was hoping to get an assist—”
“Kasey’s busy with wedding stuff,” my mom said. “But I could take a look. I mean, if you’d like.”
“That would be great,” he said. He scooted his chair a little closer. “I’ll, um, just walk you through it.”
As my mom nodded and both of them bent over the papers, I had a flash of the word Kasey had used during our talk a while back about the flowers and hummingbirds.
“Cultivate.” It didn’t mean a quick fix, but something achieved over time.
Trial and error. Second chances. The work you put in and how it pays off, often when you least expect.