Chapter 34 Third Wheelin’ Road Trip
T he passing of trees, grey-dull highways, and road signs all twisted into one unending, insignificant blur as we drove to my parents.
Ethan was driving us, Monica next to him in the passenger seat and I was stuck in the back, forehead against the window as I wondered how badly it would hurt if I threw myself from a moving car.
We’d been on the road for just over three hours now, and no one had said one word the entire time. The radio was a soft soundtrack easing what it could of the tension in the car, but it only helped so much.
Monica had been typing away on her phone most of the trip, presumably answering work emails and putting out holiday fires at her job.
Meanwhile, Ethan barely looked like a living, breathing person, but rather a statue chiseled from blocks of personified stress.
And me, I had nothing to say or nothing that I could say to both of them in the presence of the other, so I said nothing at all.
To be fair, I didn’t have enough mental capacity left for conversations out loud when I was too busy having so many of them in my head.
For three hours, I’d been silently debating where I should move next and how soon, what a non-suspicious strategy would be for when I cut myself from Ethan and Monica’s life, and of course, Ethan’s last three words to me.
‘Don’t forget Slim.’
He could have been just a bit more specific with what he didn’t want me to forget because without knowing what it is he didn’t want me to forget, chances were, I was going to forget it.
Another forty or so minutes went by before Monica uttered the first words in hours.
“Do you want to listen to any of your music, Alice? I’m pretty over the radio and the same twenty pop songs on repeat.”
“Oh, no that’s okay. I’m actually going to try and nap for a bit to pass the time.”
“Now that’s an idea.” Monica turned around to face me. “You nap now and when we get to a rest stop, we’re trading places.”
Please don’t make me sit up there.
“Deal,” I responded, forcing a rise in my lips. “Wake me if I start snoring, okay?”
“No deal. You snoring is rare and hilarious. You sound like a drunk kitten.”
Huffing and too exhausted to be embarrassed, I balled my jacket up and shoved it underneath my head.
“I do not .”
“Yes, you do. Now shut up and go to sleep.”
Knowing there was no point in arguing with her, I did as she said and shut my eyes—
But I didn’t fall asleep.
Not even as much as I tried for the next many minutes, my mind wouldn’t press pause on all the open-ended conversations I’d begun with myself.
Great . I’d have to spend the next couple hours pretending to be asleep if I wanted to keep my coveted backseat position.
Any movement or peep from me and Monica would snap her fingers and demand to switch seats.
I’d fake sleeping for a whole year if it meant not being stuck next to Ethan in the front seat for the rest of the drive.
Just a few minutes passed by before Monica’s hushed voice pulled my attention, picking my heartbeat up with it.
“Can we talk?“
“Your sister is three feet away, Monica.”
“She’s sleeping,” Monica argued. “She’s a heavy sleeper.”
Even with my eyes closed, I could picture so perfectly the look on Ethan’s face. Lips thinned, cheeks dented in from where he was chewing on them, eyes a flurry with upset.
“Like I said last night, I would prefer to wait to talk again until we got back tomorrow night.”
“Well, I can’t wait till then. You know me, I’ll be all hyper-panicky and paranoid during dinner and my mom will know something is up.”
That’s true. She would. My mom was scarily attuned to whenever her daughters were feeling off in any small way. She wasn’t the most hands on mom in the world, but where she lacked in helping out with school plays and packing lunches, she made up for with her sixth sense of emotions.
“Monica—”
“Just hear me out, okay? Alice had an idea that I think is actually pretty damn good.”
Horror cranked my eyelids open with the mention of my name.
The look Ethan was giving to no one in particular showed in the rearview mirror and pirouetted my stomach in a quick display of guilt.
He was confused at my name being brought up at all, and only someone who knew him as well as I did could pick up on the hurt peaking though, like rays of sun streaking through storm clouds.
“What did she say?”
“Well,” Monica began, shifting in her seat to face him. As she did, I watched Ethan’s knuckles turn white as his grip around the steering wheel tightened. “She suggested that maybe we try out a couple classes of pre-marital counseling before the big day. Just to get us back on track.”
And there it was.
I was still watching Ethan when Monica finished explaining my idea, and it happened so fast that there was no way I could have moved quick enough to stop it.
Ethan’s eyes caught mine in the rearview mirror and screamed at me through the brief connection before I slammed mine closed.
Half a second of eye contact with him and my heart was pounding against my ribcage, excited to have been seen by him but furious for having put such a betrayed look in the eyes of the man I loved.
He looked wounded and livid and sad all the same. And it was just another tick I could add to the growing list of things I’d done that hurt the people I love most.
“I don’t think that’s…” He paused and let out the heaviest, saddest sigh. “That’s not something I want to do, Monica.”
I knew he’d fight the idea. There was no way he wouldn’t, especially now that he knew I was listening to their every word. He wanted me to hear him fight for us even though it was as pointless as sprinklers during a rainstorm.
“You have to give me at least one session. You owe our relationship that much. I’ll sign us up when we get home.”
“Monica—”
“Ethan, we’re doing it.” The finality in her tone almost made me flinch. “If you won’t fight for us, then I’ll just fight twice as hard. That’s who I am, Ethan. I fight and I fight and I won’t stop fighting for the thing I want—and I want to be married to you.”
My sister really was someone to be admired.
Even while my heart was falling apart piece by piece inside of me like falling petals from around a dying rosebud, I still had to take a second to revel in Monica’s strength.
She was resilient and would not be taking no for an answer.
I’d always envied her for that. She had more bravery in the tip of her pinkie than I had in my entire body.
She would get her way no matter what, and the sooner Ethan succumbed to that, the easier it would be on all of us.
“Why? Why do you want to marry me when you don’t even love me?”
In that question, the entire car held its breath.
“Who said I don’t love you?”
“We’ve never said it to each other. Don’t you think that’s a little weird for two people getting married?”
The tops of my ears sizzled as I waited for my sister’s response.
“There’s just never been a right time to say it.”
Anyone who didn’t know my sister would have pegged that as a cop out answer. For anyone who did know my sister, they would have just heard the tremble of fear in her voice as it died off.
With my sense of sight shut off for now, all I had to rely on was listening to every beat and lingered sigh between them both and what they were telling me. I knew these two people to such a degree that even their silence read to me like a fully fleshed novel.
Ethan was the next to speak, and in the loaded quiet before he spoke, he whispered to me that what he was about to say was just for me, and to listen closely to every single word.
“Don’t you think that both of us deserve to be with someone that… every time you’re with them feels like the right time to say it?”
To that, Monica had no response.
Silence threaded between their stiff tension with a needle that aimed its sharp tip right at my chest. It poked and pierced until it broke past my flesh and sunk right down through my heart. The open wound bled fresh tears down the sides of my face, none of which I could brush away.
The petals of tears dripped and stained down my cheeks, the evidence cold and humiliating. In the backseat, I laid still as a corpse save for the occasional tremor in my body as more cries were swallowed down to pretend they never existed.
* * *
After a while, I eventually really fell asleep. I woke up in a delirious state some odd hours later via my sister’s loud curse.
“What the fuck ? They’re already here!”
The inside of Monica’s car blinked through my vision as I opened my eyes, testing them against the sunlight beaming in through the windows. Lifting myself up from where I slept against the side door, I winced, my spine stiff from being stuck in such an unusual position for so long.
“Did you know they were here already?”
“No, because I’ve been driving the entire time and haven’t checked my phone,” came Ethan’s voice, pulling my focus up to the couple.
“What’s wrong?”
Monica threw me a half-assed eye roll through the mirror she’d pulled down in front of her. “Morning Sleeping Beauty. We just pulled up to Mom and Dad’s and from the looks of it, our in-laws made it here before us.”
My face reacted to the news before I could tell it not to, and Monica caught my terror in her mirror.
“Why do you look so scared? It’s not you they’re going to eat as an amuse bouche to Thanksgiving dinner.”
To that, I gave a half laugh, trying not to focus on how wrong Monica was. I was about to come face to face with the woman who promised me she would destroy my life if I so much as looked her son’s way, and since then, I’d done a whole lot more than look.
“All right, I’m going to go inside and play nice between the families. Can you bring in my bags, babe?”
Ethan winced at the endearing term, and I sincerely hoped that Monica didn’t catch it as I had.
“Sure. Alice, would you mind giving me a hand with the bags?”
Oh my god, no.