Chapter 7
Rory
Garrett looks at me like I’ve got two heads. “Pardon?”
“You said it yourself; you don’t know how to explain our breakup.”
“I don’t want to explain it,” he growls. “It’s not anyone’s business but ours.”
“I agree.”
“So we should just tell people that.”
I can’t agree with that. “It won’t work.”
“Why not?”
“They won’t believe us.”
“That’s too bad for them, because it’s pretty fucking real.”
I rub my chest. Don’t I know it. “Just hear me out.”
“About a staged breakup?” He makes a face. “Once wasn’t enough for you?”
I ignore that dig.
“It might be easier,” I say, sounding more uncertain than I’d like.
“Easier for…?”
“Well… My parents, for one. If they…see it, then they won’t question it.”
“So you think we should lie to them?”
“We haven’t been honest with them in months,” I snap. “If anything, this is just correcting an assumption.”
He doesn’t respond to that, which pushes my internal panic index into the danger zone.
“Garrett, I can’t handle the constant questioning and lecturing from my family.
You know what they’re like. If we don’t make it crystal clear, then the entire visit will be spent explaining what happened, over and over again.
Not just explaining, but having to justify it.
They won’t believe that I did enough to try and save our—”
I cut myself off, because I probably didn’t do enough to save our relationship. But neither did Garrett. We just let it slip away, and that’s a regret I’ll have for the rest of my life, because he was—is—so important to me.
But I didn’t grieve the loss of him for eight long months only to re-hash it all with my parents.
If I wanted their opinions about it, I’d have told them sooner.
“Never mind,” I manage to stammer out. “Fine, we can do it your way.”
And he just nods.
I want to cry.
I won’t, though. I have more control over myself than that. So I drill all my attention into picking better holiday songs, weird stuff that maybe Garrett hasn’t heard before, or stuff that I know he likes, like “Fairytale of New York” by The Pogues.
Over the next hour and a half, we listen to an eclectic mix. But we don’t fight again, and he doesn’t side-eye any of the songs. His thumb even starts tapping along to some.
It’s a minor road trip victory.
“You hungry?” he asks suddenly.
Right on cue, my stomach growls. “Um, maybe.”
He shifts slightly in his seat and jerks his thumb back to the cooler.
I twist and open the lid, looking at his picnic. There’s a massive wrap that looks like it’s got turkey and spinach on it, as well as some apple slices and clementines, which surprise me. I love clementines, they’re my fave, but he’s never been a fan before.
The wrap looks like he pre-cut it in half, so we could share that.
“Turkey, you say?”
“It’s good, I promise.”
“I believe you.” I grab it, as well as two clementines, which I let roll into the cup holders between us before I take half the wrap out of the Ziplock bag.
Up close, it’s not just a turkey and spinach wrap. It’s like a chopped salad with spinach, red pepper, celery, and other veggies, dressed and neatly folded inside turkey breast and a whole wheat wrap.
I stare at it. “There are vegetables in here.”
Garrett muffles a laugh. “Correct.”
“You made this?”
“Correct again.”
I narrow my eyes. “That’s not treading water.”
“You sound suspicious.”
“You just randomly swung by to see me this morning?”
“I wouldn’t say randomly. But I didn’t pack a delicious sandwich in the great hope that you might need to get in my truck and eat half of it, if that’s what you’re thinking.
I promise, you, Roar, if I thought we’d have ended up road tripping together today, I’d have vacuumed out the cab and packed a second sandwich for you so you didn’t have to eat half of mine. ”
“I don’t have to eat it.” I shove it across to him.
He doesn’t take it.
“That’s what you heard?” He sighs and shakes his head. “I just would have made you something without spinach because I know it’s not your favourite.”
Oh.
“Thank you,” I whisper. The lump gets bigger so that’s all I get out.
“I’m still the jerk who broke up with you,” he says gruffly. “Don’t go being soft on me.”
I take a bite of his wrap and shake my head.
“I won’t,” I mumble around the deliciousness.
We’ve just finished the wrap when we see a sign for a coffee shop a few minutes ahead.
“Might as well stop and stretch our legs, yeah?” Garrett asks.
It’s where we usually stop, after all.
I nod and start gathering up the wrappers to toss when we get out.
Inside, there’s a crowd of travellers all thinking the same thing as us. The line up for the men’s room goes faster than the ladies’, though, and by the time I get out, Garrett’s already ordered and he’s holding two coffee cups at the door.
“Mocha or double-double?” He holds up one cup, then the other, giving me a choice of my two favourite coffee orders.
“Thank you,” I mutter, reaching for the mocha. He’s already holding it out, knowing that’s the one I’ll pick, and my fingers don’t just meet the cup but wrap around his hand, too.
My breath catches at the visceral flashback, the odd déjà vu of it all, and from the low grunt he makes, I think he’s also remembering other times we’ve stopped here on drives home.
The memories surge as we climb back into the truck.
Last winter, neither of us had heard “Last Christmas” by Wham yet, so we spent the entire drive listening to the radio in a hilarious game of Whamaggedon Chicken.
We’d leave it on a station for a few songs and then switch to a new one, always holding our breath as we scrolled lest we accidentally stumbled across it.
We didn’t hear it once that drive, and we were grinning from ear to ear when we arrived at my parents’ house—only to hear them listening to it as we walked in the door.
“So close,” Garrett whispered in my ear, his breath hot against my skin. “We definitely get a consolation prize, right?”
The consolation prize was very quiet mutual masturbation orgasms, because my childhood bed squeaks, and my parents are—were—fine with us sleeping in the same room, but I don’t need them to know we have—had—sex under their roof.
After putting his coffee cup in the cupholder, displacing the clementine I dropped there, Garrett cranks the heat and we get back on the road.
The first winter he had this truck, we pulled off to the side of the road and had a frantic quickie because I’d been so busy with exams the week before we left it had been a while, and I knew I wouldn’t want to have sex once we got home.
I take a big sip of my mocha trying to chase that memory away.
It’s hot on my tongue, a little uncomfortable, but the distraction works—for a moment. More memories cascade into the void, though. Like the year we realized halfway home that we’d forgotten all of the presents, and we stopped at a Giant Tiger and did our best.
Buying last minute discount presents for everyone was the highlight of the entire holidays that year. The way we laughed, the way we hyped up every mediocre choice, convincing each other it would be loved by the recipient.
Damn damn damn.
I pretend to scroll through my phone to avoid watching him. His hand is on the gearshift, and I have a sudden, stupid flash of how he used to rest that same hand on my thigh during long drives. Just because he could. Just because he liked to touch me.
And I liked it too.
I’m not allowed to like it anymore.
“You got any more songs on that playlist?” Garrett’s sudden question breaks the silence.
“I didn’t realize it had stopped.”
“We could listen to the radio?” He turns it on and gets static. “Think we’ll get lucky and avoid—”
The chorus of “Last Christmas” interrupts him as he lands on the first station after pressing search.
“No luck for us this year, I guess,” I mutter.
He turns the radio off again.
“Hey, you can stay asleep if you want. I just gotta stretch my legs.” Garrett’s voice drifts through the muzzy heaviness of a blissful nap.
I blink my eyes open. It’s dark outside, and when I blearily focus on what’s outside the truck window, I realize we’re less than two hours from home. “Shit, how long was I asleep?”
“A couple hours.”
I push myself to sit up, my stiff muscles protesting. “I should pee, too. And it’s my turn to get coffee.”
He hops out and comes around to my side of the truck, waiting for me as I stretch and get blood flowing to my sleep-heavy limbs again.
“Let me guess, you worked nonstop for the last week to carve out this vacation time,” he says as we hurry across the parking lot to the rest stop.
I would shrug if I wasn’t shivering so hard against the cold. I work nonstop every week. “Thanks for letting me nap.”
“Yeah, of course.” He grabs the door and holds it for me, frowning.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
And then we go our separate ways into the washrooms.
I come out first, so I get in line for coffee. He joins me before I get to the cash. “Do you want anything else?”
He shakes his head. “I’m good.”
We step forward, and I place our order. After I pay, and we move down the counter to grab the drinks, he says, “I want to ask how work is going.”
I immediately bristle.
He sighs. “Yeah, I didn’t think you wanted to talk about it.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Sure. I get that.” I hate how understanding his smile is. Understanding, but sad, and it doesn’t go anywhere near his eyes.
“Double-double and a decaf mocha?” Our order is called out.
“That’s us.” I snatch mine and whirl away.
Garrett doesn’t catch up until we’re at the truck.
As I bundle myself into the passenger side, he peels off his parka and gets the truck turned on. Where I like to wear my warm coat the whole drive, he prefers to drive in just his shirt, even though his breath is visible until the heater catches up.
Once we’re back on the road, he brings it up again.
“I get that your work is off-limits,” he says, his eyes never leaving the road. “But when it’s the only thing you care about, it makes small talk...hard.”