Chapter 20
Will and Rachel’s run of dry weather on the trip had come to an end at the botanical gardens.
Despite their earlier hesitation regarding the animal life on the nature trails, they had always planned on walking at least one of them again, like they’d done on their second date. It had been misting as they were about to start, but so lightly they couldn’t even really see it on their clothes. He’d stopped at the head of the trails to read (and then reread) the paragraph on the sign about how not to annoy the massasauga rattlesnake—something his younger, more adventurous self apparently hadn’t given a second thought because he’d had no memory of being concerned before.
“It tends to avoid human contact,” Will had said to Rachel, who’d been studying which path to take.
“What does?”
“The snake.”
“Ah. That makes sense. I don’t think they’d let people just go for walks out there if it were, like, a Snakes on a Plane situation.”
And just as he had been telling her he’d seen that movie in high school and hadn’t slept for a week after, the sky had opened up and unleashed a downpour.
It had gotten so heavy so fast that they hadn’t even bothered with the performative “What’s a little rain?” reaction you’re supposed to have as a well-adjusted adult and instead had broken out almost immediately in the wild, full-on sprints of an elementary school field day. They’d made it inside the car in under a minute and had still been dripping like they’d just failed in an attempt to hoist the Jolly Roger in rough water.
After using the T-shirts from the pizza place on Mackinac Island to wipe down their heads and arms and then putting on something dry from their bags, they’d decided to head to the tattoo place, reasoning that going in the middle of the afternoon would mean little to no wait. Will had also liked the idea that there’d be fewer people around in case he asked for it in a font they didn’t have. Or in case you weren’t supposed to say font at all to a tattoo artist. Or was it tattooist?
He’d kept these doubts to himself, which hadn’t been hard since what he’d really been thinking about at that point was telling Rachel about the interview once those numbers were etched on his arm. Getting the tattoo right then would mean less time to lose his resolve.
Situated between a hot dog joint and an arcade on South University Avenue, Work of Art Tattoos and Piercing looked just like they remembered. The hours on the door said it had opened half an hour earlier at 3:00 p.m., and the inside was empty except for a guy, whose left arm was already fully covered, getting ready to have something added to his right by a woman with gauged ears and wearing a black bandanna and overalls. Unfortunately, she told Will and Rachel from her chair as she got her equipment ready, she was the only one working that day, and she was booked up with appointments.
“Tomorrow afternoon might be better,” she suggested. “You can make an appointment on the website.”
“Thanks,” Will said, mostly disappointed but also slightly relieved to have something beyond his control both keeping a needle out of his arm and his confession, for the time being, off his lips. He was also highly aware of the man with the biceps depiction of SpongeBob decapitating Squidward scanning him for any visible ink. “But ... uh ... we actually won’t be around tomorrow. We went to school here, so I just thought I’d take a shot while we were back.”
“Oh,” the woman said, stopping what she was doing to look at Will with more purpose. There were no bare spots on either of her arms. “Well, what were you looking for? If it’s something pretty basic, I might be able to squeeze you in that last hour before we close.”
“I mean, I think it’s basic?” Will replied, unsure how to answer. A few numbers separated by some hyphens sounded like the definition of simple, but under the watchful eyes of two people who clearly knew this world in literally painstaking detail, he clammed up.
“It’s just a date,” Rachel said, jumping in. “Like, a calendar date. February nineteenth, 2012. But written in numbers, so 2-19-12.”
“And where do you want it?” the woman asked.
“Uh, on the inside of my wrist?” Will said, but again as a question. For some reason, saying that out loud felt like the tattoo equivalent of standing at the Emily Henry display in the bookstore. Like a man’s man would’ve gotten it elsewhere. But to his surprise, both customer and artist gave slight nods of approval.
“Okay, so not that big then. Any colors, or just black?”
“Just black,” he said.
“Cool. Yeah, if you can come in around nine thirty, we can totally do that tonight. I’m Clarissa, by the way.”
Will thanked her and said they’d be back, and he and Rachel turned to go. The rain had let up before they got there and had stopped completely in the few minutes they were inside, and he could already feel the humidity gaining strength as they emerged onto the sidewalk. The mugginess seemed to spur on the swarm of butterflies that arose in his stomach when he heard the tattoo machine switch on as the door closed behind them, and it sank in that he would still be telling Rachel today—just not yet. Waiting around once he’d decided to do it was the one thing that could make it even harder.
“You doing all right there?” Rachel asked him.
“Huh? Why?”
“You seem a little ... woozy.”
“Just a little anxious, I guess.”
“About the needle?” she asked as they started walking.
“Yeah, partly. Partly how glaringly obvious it was I had no clue what I was doing in there.”
And partly because I don’t know what the hell’s going to happen when I tell you all this.
“Pfft,” she said, waving his spoken concern off. “You were totally fine. And who cares if you were anxious? I guarantee you she’s seen far worse. Especially on a college campus.”
Rachel’s assuredness helped. Even though in reality, it was just about him getting the tattoo, and even there, she didn’t know any more about tattoo-shop etiquette than he did. She just had the one, and although it was more involved than what he’d be getting, it was still relatively small and simple. There was of course the huge caveat that she actually knew what it felt like to have that needle go into your skin while he had only watched her from a distance in the waiting area. But that didn’t mean she was some sort of expert on the culture around tattooing. As in many other areas of their lives, though, she possessed a natural ease that eluded him.
He could use some of that ease right about now.
“You know, I think it’s late enough that we could probably check in at the hotel,” Will said. “Do you want to go back to the car and get our stuff?”
They’d parked in a garage a few blocks away from the Michigan League, a student union that had a hotel built right into it. Will had thought that would be a fun place to stay that would also put them within walking distance of anything they wanted to do.
“Not yet,” Rachel said. He sensed she had a destination in mind but was a little confused by it.
“It seems like we’re going to the library.”
“Does it?”
“Yes. But I can’t figure out why.”
“That’s because we’re not going to the library. We’re going close to the library.”
“Oh, don’t tell me,” he said.
Rachel’s smile threatened to consume her entire face. “Did you bring your hacky sack?” she asked as the sidewalk began to cut a path through the trees to the big open area known as the Diag, the quad where he’d first tried (unsuccessfully) to ask her out.
“Joke’s on you. Because it’s fifteen years later, and here we are again.”
She cackled as they approached the big block M that was set in the ground, and the sound bounced off the massive paving stones around it.
“You were lucky you were so cute,” she said. “I can’t believe Ali let you go out of the house with that.”
“He was going through a real disc golf phase back then, so he had his own problems.”
“Disc golf? Yikes. You two really were quite the pair.”
“I know. But that gives me an idea. Do you mind backtracking just a little?”
“Lead the way.”
Will steered them along a route he’d taken more times than he could count—but not once since graduation. When he’d walked it regularly, he’d been a college junior, then senior, who hadn’t wanted those four years to end. Not just because of what it might mean for him and Rachel but also because of how much he’d loved living in that town with the guy who’d become his best friend. He’d known even back then that while he and Ali would always be tight, it would never again be like it was in that apartment on Church Street. It couldn’t be.
He hoped he wouldn’t someday be saying the same thing about him and Rachel after those emails. That in the event it all went wrong, that tattoo could almost serve as a talisman tethering them to before.
“Ah, Moonshine Manor,” Will said fondly when they arrived outside the building’s front door.
“What was the story behind that name again?”
“Moonshine was because of the time we tried to multiply the recipe for a Hurricane so that the resulting beverage could fill a Gatorade cooler. Manor was because we were distinguished gentlemen in charge of our first estate.”
Rachel looked across the street. “Yes, the unobstructed view of the brick wall is rather stately.”
“God, we had so much fun here.” He tilted his head back and to the left. “Ours was the one with the Michigan flag in the window,” he said, pointing four floors up. “I have to text him.”
“Hold on. Give me your phone so I can take your picture in front of it.”
He handed it to her and stood up on the wooden edge of a curbside flower box while she crossed over to the aforementioned brick wall to make sure she got their old apartment in frame. When she asked him if he was ready, he made a fist with his right hand, held it to his heart, and said yes.
“I really wish you two got to see each other more often,” Rachel said, walking his phone back over to him.
“I know.” Ali had taken a job with a law firm in Brooklyn about six months before Will and Rachel had gotten married. Work brought him to Chicago once or twice a year, but his schedule usually only left time to grab a dinner while he was there. That was another reason the Thanksgiving trip had been so special.
Much love from A2, old friend, he typed, and then attached the photo.
“We always talk about coming back here for a weekend for a football game,” Will continued. The parking garage was about a 10-minute walk away, and they’d begun to move in that general direction. “But he and I are terrible about actually planning anything.”
“Ironic given that you put together this whole week for us in, like, a night.”
“True. But you and I are married, so we just sort of fall into taking trips together.”
“Um, I mean this in the best possible way, but nothing about this week has felt fallen into.”
You have no idea,he thought, his mental clock ticking down toward his tattoo appointment and afterward.
“But you get what I’m saying,” he said. “He and I have completely separate lives and responsibilities. Not to mention men on the whole are just worse about friendships.”
Was it friendships, or relationships generally? You came across a lot more examples of husbands and dads checking out on their families—whether literally or emotionally—than the other way around. Will’s father was no unicorn, and Will realized the glass-half-full interpretation of that would be that his parents’ divorce had had nothing to do with him. It had just been his dad doing what so many other men had done.
Half-empty, on the other hand, questioned whether Will could be sure he was any better than the rest of them. It felt like the outcome of this week would have a lot to say about the answer.
Ali’s response came through. Will looked at it and laughed and then held it up for Rachel.
“‘Ah, Moonshine Manor,’” she read and laughed too. “Like I said, quite the pair.”
He had just turned the screen back to him when Ali’s next text popped up.
Is Rachel enjoying the trip down memory lane as much as you?
Will could tell Ali had kept his question vague on purpose in case Rachel saw it, and he appreciated that his friend remembered the conversation they’d had when Will was at the Clemens house about the balancing act he was trying to pull off on this trip.
And yes, internally Will was going with balancing act due to its implication of precision and skill rather than manipulation and deceit.
I think so, he replied.
That’s great. Keep making good choices.
Ha—I said the same thing to my mom last week.
Oh, I have no doubt your mom got up to something you’re never going to want to know about.
Thanks for that.
But there’s still hope for you, Ali wrote.
Will wasn’t sure how he wanted to respond. He thought about it as he and Rachel came to a crosswalk and had to wait for the little light-up pedestrian to appear.
“Promise me you’ll set something up for this fall,” she said. “You and Ali.”
“You think that’ll work? I mean with the baby coming and everything?”
“We’ll make it work. And besides, football season starts in August, and my due date isn’t until November. We’ve got time.”
“You’re the best, you know that?” Will said. The light changed, and they began to cross the street.
“I do. Plus he flies all the time, and as long as you don’t go through the Upper Peninsula first, you can do the drive in an afternoon. It’s not like Chicago is that far away from here.”
He hesitated a split second and then nodded.
Chicago wasn’t that far. But Los Angeles was.
Will looked back down at Ali’s last message and pecked out his reply.
Check back with me around midnight.