Chapter 3
Two days later, I pull Tim’s car into the beachfront parking lot by Ocean View Park. It’s not particularly convenient for me and extremely inconvenient for him, but if I’m going coast-to-coast, we need to start at the coast.
I snag a spot at the front of the lot, with a view of unblemished sky and the gleam of the ocean. My windows are closed, but the voices of early-morning surfers returning to their cars filter in anyway. And then I wait.
When Nate messaged me, I first thought he wanted to hitch a ride all the way to Seapoint, and the idea of that was overwhelming.
Turns out he only wants to go to Tahoe, to meet up with Logan.
They’re an odd duo, best friends since kindergarten but complete opposites.
Nate has always been steady and low-key; Logan has the energy and temperament of a puppy and has done two stints on reality TV.
I check the time. In front of me, a woman follows two toddlers who are teetering down the promenade, pointing at gulls overhead.
This trip is important, and I have a clear vision for how it’s supposed to go.
Nate’s presence is not part of that vision, especially since we haven’t been alone together in two years.
But this L.A.-to-Tahoe leg is a tiny fraction in the grand scheme of things, and it’s going to be fine.
It’s good, actually. For reasons I will excavate from the knotted-up jumble of feelings in my gut any second now.
I’m still watching the woman and her toddlers when I hear the passenger door open. Someone drops into the seat. I catch a whiff of salt air and all my best Septembers, and a prickling sensation tiptoes across the back of my neck, and I know without looking that Nate Reed just got into my car.
“Hey,” he says.
I turn toward him slowly, at the exact pace you’re not supposed to rip off a Band-Aid. It’s still not slow enough for me to ease myself into this moment.
He looks, I think, exactly like Nate. Which is maybe the least intelligent thought I’ve ever had.
Sandy brown hair, fine but thick, that one piece in the front veering left.
Nate’s hair. Blue-gray eyes that always make him look softer than he’d like.
Nate’s eyes. I’ve seen bits of him all over this city for the past few months—hell, for most of the last two years—unsure every time whether the jolt of recognition I felt was excitement or dread.
Nate’s Vans and surf shop wardrobe in the line at Go Get Em Tiger for my weekly coffee treat, Nate’s sly mouth in a Santa Monica bar, Nate’s long, muscled swimmer’s arms on someone jogging in my neighborhood. Almost never actually Nate.
“Hey! It’s good to see you,” I say, managing to conjure the right words from somewhere inside me. If I were being completely honest, I’d say Seeing you makes me feel like someone’s carving out one of my organs with an ice cream scoop.
“You too,” he says, in a hasty, impersonal voice that should be reserved for, like, the time you run into your middle school frenemy at the airport Hudson News. It should not be a voice for me.
I swallow what feels like a sack of rocks.
He slides a cup out of the cardboard drink holder in his lap. “I, uh, brought you a smoothie. It has parsley in it.”
“Is that a selling point or a warning?”
Half a surprised laugh slips out of his mouth, which he stifles with his free hand before moving to put the drink in one of the car’s cupholders.
They’re both occupied, one by my water bottle and the other by the smoothie I brought myself.
“Ah. Never mind. I’ll just…” He reaches back to feel around for the cupholders between the back seats. “Maybe I should throw it out.”
“No, no,” I rush to say. “Thanks. I’ll drink it after this one.”
“It’s probably good,” he offers. “There’s banana in there. Ginger, carrot. I got it at this new place near my apartment everyone seems to love.”
“It must be good if you thought it was worth holding on to for an hour-long Uber ride.”
His brows furrow, and he fiddles with the drink holder. “It wasn’t that long. Maybe I didn’t tell you? I moved to Culver City in January.”
My stomach drops. “What?” I ask faintly.
Nate used to live in Silver Lake, on the east side, essentially another planet.
But Culver City is only ten minutes from me.
January was eight months ago. Before I saw him during Logan’s last visit, when we all went out for pizza and drinks in the Arts District and he neglected to tell me that we were practically neighbors. “Alone, or…?”
“No, with Ravi.” Ravi is the software engineer and dedicated gamer he’s lived with since he moved here, an amiable guy who didn’t complain when I crashed with them for my entire first month in L.A.
This is fine. It has to be fine. “I’m sure it’s a good smoothie.” I deposit it in the rear cupholder myself. “I love ginger.”
He drags a hand down his face. “This is awkward, right?”
Well, now it is. Jesus, Nate. My face heats, and I busy myself with my mirrors.
“I’m sorry,” he goes on. “It’s okay if you don’t want to do this. I know I invited myself.”
“Nate, it’s fine. Seriously.”
He looks at me, his face tight, his eyes careful. “You sure?”
I’m not a no person. I’m a yes person, and even though this isn’t what I wanted, I can find the upside.
Like this: Today will prove that spending a significant amount of time with Nate is no big deal, so I won’t have to worry about seeing him at Bailey’s party.
It’s an opportunity, really. Like exposure therapy.
If you can’t find a silver lining, you haven’t looked hard enough, Mom told me when I cried to her in the yogurt shop parking lot after making JV lacrosse instead of varsity.
She had no tolerance for moping. She repeated that line about the silver lining every time she lectured a hotel conference room full of Jolee consultants clutching tiny plastic cups of cheap wine.
It was supposed to motivate them, so they could go forth and motivate their downlines to sell more beauty products.
The search for silver linings is basically muscle memory for me at this point.
This shouldn’t be excruciating. Nate and I once successfully assembled an IKEA dresser in his old L.A.
apartment without arguing, and we had to do it twice because we put one side on backward.
He’s a competent driver. With him in the car, I’ll only have to drive four hours instead of eight, and we’ll be able to split the cost of gas.
What never quite happened between us shouldn’t be a big deal.
Maybe if things go especially well, when we get back to L.A. we can hang out like we used to, before the night we shared a bed and ruined our friendship.
I keep saying I want clarity. For the last two years, thinking about Nate has only made me confused. This is an opportunity.
“Don’t be silly,” I say. “This will be fun.”
His eyes narrow slightly and he angles his head, like he’s trying to locate a particular emotion on my face.
Anger, or frustration. Being the object of his attention always makes my blood fizz, and I hope he doesn’t pick up on that as he scrutinizes me, hunting for microexpressions that surely aren’t there. All I’m doing is smiling.
“I’ll be out of your hair once we get there,” Nate says, reading my worries in the position of my left eyebrow or something. “Logan and I have something to work on this week, so I asked him to pick me up at your rental around four.”
Weird. Nate, the manager of a children’s swim camp, and Logan, a reality star / brand ambassador for probiotic seltzer, working on something together ?
And since when does Nate use his time off to do something other than surf or lounge around reading or watching baseball? “We should get going, then.”
Nate’s seat belt clicks into place. “So what prompted this trip?”
I stare at him. Does he even know about the breakup? I guess I can’t assume he’s kept up with my life, given the way he disappeared from it like I didn’t matter to him.
“I haven’t used my PTO, so I decided it was time for an adventure,” I say.
“After Tahoe, I’m heading to Idaho, Wyoming, and South Dakota.
Stopping at Yellowstone and Mount Rushmore.
I’ll probably take my time out west since I’ve never visited before, then head to Seapoint so I can spend a few extra days with Bailey. I have flexibility, which is nice.”
That’s the beauty of this trip. Nothing is unchangeable; I can linger in the places that bring me peace, with no obligation to hang around the places that don’t. Like this parking lot.
“We should go.” I pull up Spotify on my phone. If I were alone, I’d kick things off with songs that remind me of Seapoint, but I’m not doing the nostalgia thing with Nate in the car. Instead, I press play on a boppy bubble-gum-pop mix and turn the key in the ignition.
“Ready?” I ask with as much enthusiasm as I can muster.
“Whenever you are,” Nate says with considerably less enthusiasm.
With that, we’re officially on the road, and it feels cosmically fitting.
The first time Nate and I met, I was behind the wheel of another car.
That day ten years ago, I was struggling to parallel park two blocks from Bailey’s parents’ house in Seapoint, shivering in my linen sundress as I stuck my head out the window into the unexpectedly chilly wind coming off the ocean.
Bailey was my new college bestie, whom I’d only met a few weeks prior during an orientation icebreaker game, and she’d invited me to her hometown to celebrate her birthday with her high school friends.
She’d cut class on Friday and come down early, so I drove down on my own that afternoon. There’d been a spot right outside the house, but there was no way I was going to let that freaking car dictate anyone’s impression of me. I hadn’t even let Bailey see it yet.
Right as I gave the steering wheel an aggressive turn to the left, a cyclist materialized out of my blind spot.
“Fuck!” I shrieked.