Chapter III
III
Marin
The warm air is getting to me. Or maybe it’s the darkness.
There’s an explanation for the sudden urge I feel to share with Teddy all sorts of things I usually don’t or won’t—I’m just not sure what it is.
My usual instinct, especially with new people, is to say less, knowing that control comes from restraint.
But I feel an impulse, one generally reserved for flirtation, to see what happens if I give him a little more.
“Maybe Sloane and Carter are the best parts of Iowa, and now that we have them, we’ll never have to come back again.”
I smooth my pant leg and try not to make it obvious that I’m watching for how he responds.
He’s less rigid now than he was when we merged onto the interstate four hours ago.
His perfect posture has relaxed a little, and the lack of music feels less glaring, by some miracle.
I feel tender toward him, which is unnerving—tender is not a feeling I experience, except toward my sister and Sloane.
This near stranger has unexpectedly and abruptly transitioned from being someone I planned to ditch as soon as we crossed into Manhattan to one of the few people I’ll know there.
Exit signs for Chicago and our first patches of traffic make me wonder when we’ll pull over for the night, but I realize I’m not actually ready for our back-and-forth to end.
“‘Never have to come back’ seems extreme,” Teddy starts, curious and compassionate at once. “Can I ask why? Why do you want that? And if it’s too much to share with your chauffeur, I get it.”
My usual instinct would be to slam the conversational door and get to our destination having exposed as little of myself as possible.
But something prods, telling me that it’s safe to share, that this is the kind of person who can carry the grief and the sadness, even for a few minutes on the interstate. I don’t think twice.
“There’s nothing left for me there. After my dad died, it was all people saw when they looked at me—at us. So I’m going to get my sister out, too, when it’s time. Then we’ll get to be more than kids without a parent. She deserves the space to be more than that.”
“Marin, so do you, obviously. That’s so much pressure.” He glances down before looking at me, and his eyes look watery. “I said this before, but...” He tugs on his earlobe a little hard. “Your dad would be proud of you. Any dad would be. You’ve done a lot, and you’re only at the beginning.”
My breath catches. This was not my idea of Teddy or my idea of this road trip.
Conversations about my dad usually feel like something to power through.
My role is to say “I’m OK, I’m OK, I’m OK” or to answer the dreaded “What happened?” questions from people too fixated on their own potential future pain to grasp mine.
Teddy’s ability to just sit with it and with me is not a level of empathy I’m accustomed to.
“Well, also, I have a hard time believing I’m going to find a great love story in Iowa,” I say, surprising myself.
A great love story? Am I even looking for that?
“Which makes another strong case for getting out into the world.” The comment lands somewhere between us, like a challenge or an omen.
Teddy stares straight ahead. His jaw opens, closes, and opens again.
I try to ignore the way his sunglasses dangle from the bright-white placket of his shirt and tug down the neck.
My cheeks warm, and I consciously break the spell, forcing out a laugh before he can respond.
“And there’s a good chance that, at the very least, the lay of my life is in New York, right? ”
Teddy
I notice her short, neat nails; how her watch rolls on her wrist; and the way she lands her pointer finger on her lip in conversation without thinking.
My eyes on the road, I grin every time I make her laugh, and I wonder what other objectives I had before I knew I could get my fix just from seeing her light up.
I am so fixated on memorizing what I can see from my peripheral vision that I almost don’t hear her when she instructs me to take the next exit into Joliet. I sit up straighter, check my mirrors, and remind myself that this is a rideshare, a favor to a woman who I’ve pined after for years.
I pull off the road as Marin directs me and take a deep breath as she climbs out of the car.
Unfurling into a stretch, she reaches for the starry sky, revealing a sliver of stomach under her button-down.
The parking lot lights catch her skin, and the sign for Envy’s Pub feels like it’s trying to tell me something.
I take another long inhale and open my door.
Walking in together, I’m struck by our almost identical heights, and that I can be differently close to her now that there’s not a twelve-inch center console between us.
It’s 9p.m. at a sticky dive four minutes off the highway with tater tots and chicken fingers on the menu.
“We could have gone somewhere with, uh, a little less character,” I offer, clocking a man with an eye patch in the corner throwing darts with impressive accuracy.
“This is on-theme, Teddy,” Marin says, lighting a cigarette indoors, which feels apropos.
Outside of the Buick, I can take her in the way I might at Donnelly’s.
Marin’s not like any other twenty-two-year-old I’ve encountered.
When she orders us Jamesons on the rocks, I note the certainty in her voice.
There’s no inflection at the end that makes it sound like a question.
There are no filler words. She knows what she wants, and that crystallizes what I want, too.
Pushing the sleeves of her blazer up, she spins on her stool to face me—that sliver of a black lace bra peeking through, her legs open in my direction before she crosses them.
Every move she makes enhances my regret that we spent the past four years on the same campus but never together.
“Tell me about your watch.”
She looks down, spinning the blue-faced Rolex.
“It was my dad’s. After he died, I started wearing it around the house.
Not exactly a popular look for a teen girl.
But when I left for Iowa, I started wearing it every day.
” She pauses and sips her drink. “I don’t usually talk about him so much. I’m sorry.”
“I like when you talk about him,” I say.
I reach for a bar napkin and clear my throat.
“My dad cheated on my mom in high school.” It comes out before I have a chance to consider that I’ve never told anyone that before.
Carter knows—obviously, given the circumstances.
We’ve talked around it. But I’ve never actually said that sentence aloud.
She winces. “And they stayed together? Your parents?”
I nod and fold the napkin on the diagonal, once, then twice.
She reaches for a napkin of her own. “Everyone has their shit.”
I take in Marin’s unfixed gaze, and the space between our barstools suddenly feels like a canyon. “Careful.” I pull my seat closer to hers so our legs have no choice but to touch. “You might not know me as well as you think you do, boss.”
We clink glasses as a plate of onion rings and an entire bottle of Ranch dressing land in front of us.
“Here’s to finding out.” Marin takes another sip, her eyes never leaving mine.
For an excruciatingly long moment, I don’t know what to say, what to do. I’m saved by Marin rolling her eyes. “Oh god,” she says. “This song.”
“‘Hotel California’? What’s wrong with it?”
“Please, Teddy. It has to be the least sexy song in the American songbook.”
I jump off my stool and dig in my pocket for change. “Is that so?” I grin at her and head for the jukebox, actively ignoring the hundreds of ways I’m picturing this night ending, hoping instead to allow it to unfold as it will.
I play it six times. Every time, she boos, and the leather-skinned motorcyclists on the other end of the bar cheer. We’re two, maybe three whiskeys in, and it’s a little past eleven.
Marin’s flush is back. Our stools are closer, and her gestures are more animated.
She laughs into my shoulder, doing the thing where she pushes her hair back, and now it is making my stomach drop in a way that reaches all the way to my dick.
Emilie gave me an objectively hot sexual send-off this morning, and here I am losing my bearings over Marin’s collarbones, tracing my eyes across her shoulders, shuddering at the thought of compressing the space between us.
“Loose opinions strongly held,” she says, dropping two waters in front of us after chatting up a group of truckers near the pitcher at the end of the bar.
I shake my head for her to go on. “It’s this game Sloane and I always play when we go out.
Tell me something inconsequential or abstract you believe in one hundred percent.
” She taps my chest for emphasis on every syllable of “One. Hun. Dred. Per. Cent.” I want to grab her hands, turn them over in my own, and bring them to my lips.
Instead, I’m a good sport, though it’s becoming harder to determine what that means when it comes to the two of us.
I lean back on my stool, never at a loss for opinions. “Breakups should never happen in person.” Marin feigns confusion, leaning her elbow against the bar. She gets this look in her eyes right before she’s about to say something cutting. It scares me shitless and also turns me on.
“Ok, that’s a strong start. I want to ask why, but I get the vague sense that childhood trauma or a secretly gay high school sweetheart might be to blame.”
I laugh. “Your turn.”
“Being able to pull off bangs is genetic. Some people are born with it. I am not.” Having a younger sister has taught me to never weigh in on the loaded topic of bangs.
I nod respectfully and try framing her forehead with the front pieces of her hair.
“It kind of works, unfortunately.” She’s laughing, and I’m a few inches from her face.
I wish I could smell her. I wish we were in a place where the scents of fry grease and booze weren’t drowning everything else out.
We go back and forth, draining our whiskeys, trading the bartender our bills for quarters so we can keep tormenting each other with the jukebox. Now it’s Marin’s turn again, and our stools are basically conjoined, and her knee is between my legs.
“You can’t get mad at this one. Teddy, please don’t take it personally.
” She holds my shoulders, facing me straight on, her mouth a few inches from mine once again.
“Men,” her mouth opens slowly in an attempt to prevent a smile, “and women,” she’s suddenly serious and I get the sick feeling she might not be joking, “can’t be friends. ”
“No, no, no. Objection. Absolutely not. This is surprisingly old-fashioned for a woman like you, Marin.”
“I mean it. Take it from someone who’s tried friends to lovers and lovers to friends: It’s impossible. That’s why I have zero male friends.” I guess this answers my question. The blue of her eyes was a fact in the car, but here in the pub, it’s a challenge.
“We’re friends.” I sigh, taking her hands from my shoulders and holding them in my own. These are sparks—undeniable, storybook sparks—but I mutter, “This is friendship.”
She pulls closer, palms on my knees now, close enough for me to smell the smoky perfume on her neck.
Close enough to know I’m standing at the cliff of pre-Marin and post-Marin.
It’s not too early to say this woman could ruin my life.
And I’m pretty certain that’s exactly what I’m hoping for. “Prove it,” she whispers.
I swallow, eyes drifting from the blue of her irises to the muted red of her lips.
“I’m going to kiss you right now, and it’s not going to change anything,” I whisper back, leaving any rational thought behind as I lean in, my mouth grazing hers tentatively, politely.
The second the contact registers, everything around us goes blurry.
The gleam of the Old Style clock disappears, and the sound of the patrons playing pool mutes.
Her hand moves to the soft spot behind my ear, and my heartbeat is in my throat.
Her tongue teases mine, and I am instantly hard.
I stand, releasing some of the tension in my jeans, and hover over her as I grab the fabric of her button-up in my fist. This is not the feeling of making out with someone at a bar, drunk and desperate.
This is hard-earned, the kind of kiss that’s trying to say what a thousand words cannot.
Someone cheers from the trucker side of the room. We pull apart.
“Game on,” she says, flushed with an impossible lightness in her eyes. “Just friends.” She slips off her seat, and I wonder for a second if she’s going to lean in and press her lips against mine again. But she turns toward the bathroom.
I smooth my pants, confused, dizzy, and enchanted all at once. Tomorrow we’ll be in New York. Tonight I’ll think about the words “just friends” coming from Marin’s mouth and imagine what else those lips are capable of.