Chapter 19 #2
My throat tightens, and I nod far too many times.
I didn’t brace myself for that answer. I think I expected a maybe, and now I feel a wash of guilt as I realize a secret part of me was holding on to a shred of a hypothetical silver lining at the thought that at least if he fails, we’ll be living in the same place again.
We will never have the right timing, I remind myself.
“You got what you needed out of California.”
“Yeah. And now it’s time to go home. Until everything happened with Dad, I thought Seapoint was the greatest place to live in the world. I want to see if that feels true again. I miss it.”
I nod, even though the idea of feeling that connected to a particular place is foreign to me. “There are other camps.”
“There are. None that I would risk everything to own at this point, but I could get a job in management. Or do something similar at, like, a gym.” He studies his knuckles. “Maybe I’ll go back to school or something. I don’t know.”
He says it too casually, the thing about school. He’s embarrassed. That after rejecting his dad’s expectations and growing up to be self-sufficient without a degree, he might want the thing he said he didn’t need.
“You want that?”
“I want the camp. But if that doesn’t happen, maybe. I used to like school. I like learning, although I’m a little skeptical about the usefulness of what you learn in a classroom.”
“I get that,” I say. “I don’t regret going to college, even though it wasn’t necessary for what I’m doing now.”
“And you might not have gotten into cycling if you did something else.”
“Right. I just wish I’d been smarter about it financially. But you’re in a totally different place than I was at eighteen, so I’m sure you’d go about it more responsibly than I did.”
He winces and rolls his shoulders, then pulls off his flannel, balls it up, and sticks it behind his head. “Ah, much better.”
“Shouldn’t we go soon?”
“Not yet.” But instead of staying where he is, he reaches into the backseat. After rustling around, he comes back with another flannel from his bag, which he folds into a rectangle, adjusting it until it’s sufficiently pillow-shaped. He hands it to me.
“Thanks,” I say. When we lie back down, we face each other.
“You were talking about student loans?”
My dignity shrivels inside me, curling up like a pill bug. “Sort of. I should’ve gone somewhere cheaper, or somewhere I could’ve gotten a scholarship. But I didn’t think about it. My parents said student loans were good debt.” I bite my lip. “But I got into the bad kind of debt too.”
“What do you mean?”
I mean five figures on credit cards I shouldn’t have had, for things I absolutely did not need, but there’s no way I’m saying the number out loud.
“I was a complete idiot with my finances for way too long. I only knew one way to handle money, and it wasn’t good.
Like, when I was younger, I’d buy a new outfit for a presentation as a confidence boost.”
“That doesn’t sound unreasonable,” he says.
“But I never bought the outfit at TJ Maxx. I shopped at all these expensive places where I had no business buying anything. God, I had so many pairs of those stupid fucking Tory Burch flats. If I went out with a bunch of people, sometimes I bought pizza for everyone afterward. I went on spring break in college when I should’ve stayed back and worked.
I thought it was an investment. That spending money would help me make friends.
That acting like I had money would somehow lead to having money. ”
“Well,” he says. “You didn’t have a good model for financial responsibility.”
My laugh is bitter. “Yeah. I won’t even get into the loan my parents took out in my name, which we’re still repaying. But shouldn’t I have figured it out myself? I knew why we moved from a McMansion to a little old rental house. I watched them tow the purple car out of the school parking lot.”
“You can’t unlearn a lifetime of something overnight.”
“It took me way too long to unlearn it. Things didn’t get better until I moved in with Michelle and she saw how bad I was with money, even though I was making more than I ever had in my life. She taught me how to be responsible. But the damage was done, and now I answer to Wells Fargo.”
A question is forming on his lips, and a wave of terror hits me at the prospect that he may be about to offer help.
“I’m good now,” I rush to clarify. “It’s not paid off, but it will be. I don’t know how I would do it without CycleLove. I have equity. And an emergency fund, and a 401(k), and one of those health savings accounts that you can use to get Band-Aids and Motrin.”
“I’m glad.” He tilts his head. At this angle, the glow of the lantern strung up next to the car beside ours catches his eyes, turning them silver. “You know, other jobs pay salaries and bonuses and have benefits too.”
Talking about money is embarrassing, but I don’t think he understands.
If he did, he wouldn’t challenge me on this.
“No job that I could get. Not on this level. Nate, if things continue the way they’re going for a few more years—especially if I get an apparel deal or something—I’ll be set.
I won’t be able to retire to my beachfront mansion in Seapoint to sip cucumber water on the balcony while people-watching and listening to Carly Rae Jepsen’s Emotion —”
“That’s an extremely specific description of something you aren’t planning to do—”
“—I’ll have to work, but I won’t have to worry. ”
His face softens. “That’s what you want? Not to have to worry?”
“Isn’t that what everyone wants?”
He doesn’t have the chance to answer. A powerful gust of wind blows through the campsite, and it’s followed by a loud crash. We sit up. Across the parking lot aisle, a canopy is sitting upside-down on the dented hood of a white Jetta. The wind must’ve taken it airborne.
“Oh, shit,” Nate says.
Two guys wearing nothing but underwear and light-up cowboy hats jog over from farther down the row, ostensibly wherever the canopy came from. Thankfully, nobody appears to be hurt.
I slump back down. “Is it tomorrow yet?”
“Don’t be such a downer,” he chides me, and I chuck my empty can of beer at him. After dodging it, he frowns. “My foot is asleep.” He stretches it out and wrinkles his nose and grunts as he wriggles around.
I imitate his grunt. “So dramatic.”
“I think I like when you’re mean to me.”
“Maybe you should unpack that with a professional.”
He covers his mouth, laughing, and it sends glee soaring through me like a kite.
“Ouch. This is annoying.” He brings his knee up to his chest to better reach his foot, flexing and pointing his toes.
As he drops it back toward the floor, his heel bumps the glove compartment.
It falls open, and a waterfall of condoms spills out.
I yelp. Dammit, Michelle.
He stares at them wide-eyed, his mouth twitching. “What kind of trip were you planning, exactly?”
I’m doubled over the center console, my forehead resting on my forearm. Tears of laughter track their way down my burning cheeks. “Not—my—idea,” I squeak out.
“Are you giving sex ed talks to horny teenagers? Maybe we should give some of these to our college student friends,” he says, draping a long strip around his neck like a scarf.
“No! They’re not structurally sound!”
“ What, ” he says, “does that even mean?”
I’m too far gone to remind him about overheating and breakage and jeez, maybe I do need to teach a sex ed class.
He holds one up to the window, squinting at it. “Wait. Are these supposed to be for you and me? I don’t know what kind of, uh, performance you’re envisioning, but this is a little aggressive. I’m definitely not hydrated enough—”
I yelp again, slapping my hands over my ears, too hysterically exhausted to feel weird about us making sex jokes with each other.
When the laughter subsides, it leaves me relaxed, with heavy limbs and loose muscles. We resume our positions lying on our sides with our flannel shirt pillows. I’m going to close my eyes for a second, and then we’ll get up and go to the show.
Nate grabs the sleeping bag from the backseat, where it’s folded next to my potted plant. He unzips the bag and drapes it over both of us.
“This is a total nightmare,” I murmur. “But I’m glad I’m doing it with you.”
He swallows thickly. “Me too.”
The rain isn’t falling as hard, I notice dimly. “We’ll go in a few more minutes?”
“Yeah. A few more minutes.”
I wrinkle my nose, trying to use it to move the lock of hair that’s fallen over my face. My arms are too heavy and snug under the sleeping bag to move. Nate’s fingertips brush my forehead and he rakes them through my hair, pushing it back.
Some of the KU kids are returning to their cars, I think, based on the low hum of voices just outside the window.
The last thing I hear is them singing “Rock Chalk, Jayhawk,” a slow, mesmerizing chant that drags me under completely.
And the last thing I feel is Nate’s arm falling across my waist as he goes under too.