Chapter 12
We set off at five the next morning. It’s about a twelve-hour drive, which should put us in Denver with a couple hours to spare before the party.
Nate promptly falls asleep in the passenger seat, his head resting against the window and his lips parted.
Fish mouth, I used to call it, every time he passed out on the couch a few minutes into an episode of Schitt’s Creek during our month as roommates.
It’s cuter than it sounds. He looks unburdened and unguarded.
With a chill pop mix playing softly and the city lights falling away, it’s a serene morning.
I’ve woken before dawn most days for years.
It started in college, when I got a job at the local cycling studio, working the front desk in the mornings before lectures and convincing people to buy packages of classes and branded water bottles.
If someone walked in off the street, considering whether to try a class, I persuaded them.
I’d picked up a few sales tricks from my mom, but mainly I just loved spin, and people were swayed by my sincere passion.
Whenever there was an extra bike, I took classes for free, learning as much as I could.
There’s something about the overhead lights turning off and the colorful LEDs kicking on that feels completely immersive.
Like nothing exists except me and the other people in the room, all of us pedaling to the beat in unison.
I’m transported to another world for an hour and when it’s over, I’m sweating and my muscles ache and it feels good to have accomplished something for myself.
After a couple years, the owner paid for me to complete instructor training.
I taught mornings and evenings before and after school.
Once I graduated, I kept a similar schedule at a different studio, working around my day job in Philly, until Tracy recruited me.
The compensation package she offered was too good to pass up, even for a risk-averse person like me. So I packed up and headed west.
Of course, in our studio, the lighting isn’t the same as a real studio.
And now there’s no one else in the room cycling with me.
It’s not quite as magical as the early days of my career, but there are always trade-offs for financial stability.
I get to do it full time and reach tons of people at once, giving them a sense of accomplishment before the sun rises.
In the car, we don’t meet daylight until we’re crossing over the northwest corner of Arizona. I’m grateful for the timing, both because the road around the Virgin River Gorge is full of knuckle-clenching curves and because the views are stunning.
It was easy to tell Nate I was fine with giving up another piece of the trip I envisioned when we were so far removed from it in Vegas.
It’s harder to contemplate here, with a fiery gold seam tearing open on the horizon and the rock formations on either side of the road turning from black outlines to dreamy purple blurs before fully revealing themselves.
Towering cliffs and layers of gray stone shot through with orange and pink.
And us, in this tiny car on this threadlike road, winding through it all.
Nate stirs as we round a gnarly curve with massive slopes of rock looming overhead, but he doesn’t wake up.
Look how small we are, I tell myself. And my problems are even smaller. It was once somebody’s job to figure out how to build a highway through this place, how to carve through centuries of stone and manage changing elevations and, presumably, the gorge’s namesake river itself.
If they could do that, I can deal with Caleb and Tracy.
He’s annoying, and she’s pushing me too hard, but neither of them is sedimentary.
Maybe if I keep that in mind, I won’t get a stomachache the next time I see one of Tracy’s reminders to keep posting, which are now landing in my inbox twice a day.
“Everything okay?” Nate asks, startling me out of my thoughts. His voice is hoarse with sleep. “We can switch, if you want.”
“I’m good. Just wondering about the logistics of how they built this road.”
“Wow.” He stifles a yawn. “Okay, Dad. It is beautiful, though.”
“You missed the best part,” I say. “I thought about waking you up for sunrise, but you looked too comfortable.”
“Bullshit. You wanted it all for yourself.”
I let out a surprised laugh, because he might be right. “I won’t lie, it was nice.”
“Feels like I’m never going to be able to sit up straight again,” he grumbles, rolling his neck.
I poke out my bottom lip. “Poor baby. Having to rest while I forge onward in the wee hours of the morning.”
“I’ll read you Dad Facts about this road to make it up to you.”
And he does, cribbing them from both the Department of Transportation website and un-fact-checked travel blogs. He tells me how this was one of the most expensive rural interstates ever constructed, about the types of rock that make up the gorge, the local flora and fauna.
“You know what’s funny?” I say. “Neither of us has the kind of dad who would be into Dad Facts. I’m imagining, like, Johnny Rose.”
“Johnny Rose,” he repeats.
“You know who Johnny Rose is. You’ve seen the first scene of every episode of Schitt’s Creek .”
“Ah, right. Of course.”
I shake my head. “My dad’s not interested in anything other than the card games he plays on his iPad or saying the minimum number of words required to get my mom to be quiet. And yours…”
“Wouldn’t be on a cross-country road trip with me in any iteration of the universe? He might be into Dad Facts if they were exclusively about recreational boating.” He pauses, then deadpans, “You’re right, it is hilarious.”
When I snort, his mouth curves. Outside the car, rock formation after rock formation jut dramatically into the cloud-marbled sky.
“What about Mom Facts?” he asks. “Mine would be, like, ‘Remember the elementary school secretary, Miss Peg? She had that big hair and a picture of her shih tzu on her desk? She didn’t work there until after you graduated, but I’m sure you remember her. Well, she died.’?”
“Mine would just be ‘I need money.’?” It’s not something I’d normally say out loud. At first, it feels good to get the words out, to put them somewhere other than my head.
His laugh is so faint he doesn’t bother to hide it with his hand. “And then she asks you to give it to her?”
Ah, here comes the guilt, a bitter aftertaste that sneaks up on me.
“Usually. I don’t mind.” I want to be one of those people who don’t hesitate to help family.
My mom did her best. She made mistakes like everyone else, but she learned her lesson; since Jolee went bust, she’s always worked a regular job.
But it’s impossible to eradicate the resentment.
Nate is watching me like my thoughts are projected onto my forehead in clear-as-day Times New Roman. “ Don’t give me that look,” I warn.
He raises his hands in surrender. “Hmm.” A beat passes. “I have a challenge for you.”
“A challenge?” I recall the one he issued at the gas station by the clown motel. Let’s see if you can complain until the tank is full. “What kind?”
“I want you to complain again. This time until we see…” He cranes his neck to glance in the rearview mirror. “A red car.”
My grip on the steering wheel tightens. I know what he’s doing.
Giving me space to whine, vent, whatever.
Get stuff off my chest, because he thinks that’s what I need.
But it’s not like he’s got a perfect handle on life either.
“You know what? I think it’s your turn to be challenged. It’s only fair.”
He opens his mouth, wanting to object, I’m sure. But then he shrugs. “Okay, fair.” He pretends to crack his knuckles. “What do you have for me?”
I consider it. He thinks being forced to complain is excruciating for me, and he’s right. What would be excruciating for him?
“Brag,” I say.
“Excuse me?”
“Brag. Tell me how great you are and why. You can stop when we see a red car.”
He drops his head and rubs his face. “You’re evil.”
My evil twin, I think, but that reminds me of the black dress and yesterday in his bed. “If you can dish it out, you have to be able to take it.”
“You’re right. But don’t look at me. It’s going to be hard enough.” He lets out a long, tortured sigh. Then an anguished groan.
“Get bragging, already!”
“Okay. Okay. I am a great camp manager. When—”
A red Corvette whizzes past us.
“Dammit!” I shout.
He wheezes with laughter, cupping his hand over his mouth to contain it.
“I should get a do-over,” I say. “The injustice. ”
“You can go again.” He wipes his eyes. “But it has to be an easier challenge.”
What do I want to know about him? So much. Everything. Even when we were at our closest, during the month we lived together, it’s not like he revealed his deepest thoughts to me. With the SAT incident—his all-time worst moment—I know what happened, and I know it sucked, but that’s it.
“Talk about your family,” I say. “Things I don’t know. You can stop when the next red car comes by.”
“Uh, okay.” He squirms a little, rubbing his thighs. “My mom’s excited I’m coming home. We’re all going to be together for a bit, actually. My brother works remotely, so he sublet his place in Brooklyn and went home for local summer.”
Local summer. I’d never heard the expression until I met Bailey and her friends.
Like all good beach bums, they love regular summer too, but they wax poetic about September and October, when the weather is nice but the tourists are gone.
Other than Bailey’s birthday, it’s the main reason the group always reunites in Seapoint in early fall.
“I can’t believe Blake is grown-up enough to not only have a place in Brooklyn but also figure out how to sublet it.”
“I think he just handed his keys to a friend of a friend and crossed his fingers that the guy’s not the type to sit on his couch naked,” Nate says. “But you’re right. He even invested in a real bath mat instead of an old beach towel.”