Chapter Nine
Nine
CONEY ISLAND, NY
It took approximately one mile for my insides to riot.
I’d never been the most impulsive person.
Where my dad and Phoebe bounced around wherever their hearts desired, I preferred to mosey down a certain path, time, plan.
Not so much that I was incapable of straying for fun, but enough that I took time to weigh the options before moving forward.
The first time I ever careened off-path was nine months ago in a hospital hallway, a strenuous and isolating decision that wasn’t really a choice at all.
Phoebe was mine from the moment my dad told me I’d have a sister—I raised her alongside him, watched that tiny bundle of energy grow into a beautiful, hilarious human I would’ve done anything for even before our world fell apart.
When I agreed to take in Phoebe, I knew I was dismantling the rest of it.
I lost Shawn, I lost stability, and for a long time, it felt like I lost my sister.
And here she was, orchestrating perhaps the most significant mistake of my life with a smile.
I cut Dex a wary glance. He seemed cool, calm, like a bored cabdriver, and it made me more insecure about everything.
How was he so aggressively fine with this?
Strangers on an almost three-thousand-mile journey across the country in a car—it would take at least a week to get there, and Phoebe had a list of stops she was campaigning for, and good lord, what were we doing.
Oh, this was bad. In my desperation to cheer up my sister, I let her steer us right off the ledge of a cliff. I would die in a crumpled heap before breaking Phoebe’s heart. That didn’t make me a decent guardian—it made me a coward.
“So, I have this idea,” Phoebe said, popping up between the center console. I gasped out loud, my heart making a decent attempt to separate from my chest. Dex glanced at me, brows knitting together.
“You good?” he said. I rubbed my chest.
“What kind of idea?”
“Weeell,” Phoebe said, dragging the word out long enough for Dex’s fingers to tighten against the wheel, “I think by the time we’ve been on the road a couple hours, we’re gonna need a break, right?
And what better way to take a break than with cotton candy and roller coasters?
” Dex was already shaking his head, but Phoebe remained unruffled.
“Coney Island is basically on our route! I’ve always wanted to go! It’s literally my dream.”
“We’re not stopping four hours into the drive,” Dex deadpanned. “Especially for Coney Island.”
“Excuse you, Coney Island is amazing.”
“You just said you’ve never been.”
“My dad went all the time when he was a kid,” she said, narrowing her eyes at him. “He used to tell us stories about cutting school to go to Coney Island with his friends. He was supposed to take me someday.”
My heavy heart could’ve crashed right through the bottom of Dex’s car. “Bee—”
“Don’t,” she snapped. I dropped my gaze to my lap, stung.
“This isn’t a pity thing. I’m not trying to manipulate him into stopping.
I’m being opportunistic. We’re driving right through New York, right?
So, this is my chance to go to Coney Island.
” She drew back into her seat, folding her arms over her chest. “Please.”
My hands were bloody from Phoebe’s barbed wire attitude, yet her suggestion of Coney Island sang to me.
For our dad, sure, but also the fact that a four-hour trip was considerably more palatable than a week; I could survive four hours to Brooklyn and make the decision to turn around, or keep going for the next four hours.
A coping mechanism from those first days after losing my dad, repurposed for a new mountain to climb.
Back then, I’d lie in bed and think, I just have to make it until morning.
I took a steadier breath. Four hours.
“Coney Island’s a good idea,” I said to Dex. Phoebe scoffed, mistaking this as ass-kissing. “I think you’re the kind of guy who could use a corn dog.”
“I’d prefer if you didn’t think about what kind of guy I am.”
“How am I not supposed to think about you? You’re five inches away from me.”
“Do you think about the people around you in the grocery store?”
“Yeah? All the time.”
Phoebe popped up between us again. “Sometimes we come up with bizarro backstories for them,” she said, grinning. Immediately, the air didn’t seem so stifling. “We made our dad pee his pants once.”
“See?” I tossed Dex a victorious smile. “It’s normal.”
“This doesn’t have to be a bonding moment,” he replied, keeping his eyes locked on the road. “We can be three people traveling together. End of.”
I studied his profile for a moment, taking in the way his dark hair curled over his ear and his stubble snaked down his throat.
A profile worthy of being sculpted by Michelangelo himself.
I knew so little about this man, but I knew he was once sick with love and it had nowhere to go, literally stamped and returned.
I felt that so hard. All the love I had for my dad swirling around like storm clouds without rain.
All the love I had for my sister, thrown back in my face.
I had that feeling, an inkling we were the same somehow. He must’ve felt it, too. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have offered a bit of comfort when I fell apart in front of him; not after what brought us together.
“But we’re not,” I said. His hands flexed against the wheel.
“We’re friends,” Phoebe piped up, punching his shoulder for emphasis.
“We’re not friends.”
“Why would you invite us on a road trip if we’re not friends?”
“You invited yourself.” His phone buzzed in the cupholder, the screen flashing with a call from Mom. He ignored the call and flipped it over, screen facing down. “If we were on a plane, you wouldn’t make small talk with the other passengers.”
“Yes, I would. That’s so normal,” I interjected. “But we’re not on a plane. We’re traveling across the country together in a car and you’re telling me we shouldn’t get to know each other even a little?”
“It would be better if we didn’t,” he replied. I shifted to face him, crossing my arms.
“Sounds like something a murderer would say.”
“I just think it would be easier on everyone if we kept it simple.”
“No offense, but that’s stupid,” Phoebe said. “Nothing about this is simple.”
“It could be, if we let it.”
“What’s so complicated about family history and favorite foods?”
Dex bristled, his shoulders nearly reaching his ears. “I don’t see the point in small talk.”
“The point is we’re here, together, and we shouldn’t be strangers,” I said, wondering what it would take to pry open his head and take a look inside.
No one was this closed off. Especially not someone who wrote a letter like the one that put us on this journey in the first place.
“We know nothing about you, other than your name and that you work for a sketchy nonprofit—”
He scowled. “Sketchy?”
“—and you were on board to let me and my fourteen-year-old sister tag along on this trip. That’s weird. You’re weird.”
“As opposed to you, the normal woman who reads strangers’ mail and stalks them.”
I glared at the side of his face until he sent a fleeting glance my way, our eyes meeting for a fraction of a second before he turned back to the road. His jaw ticked.
“This is fun,” Phoebe said, grinning. “Also, I have to pee.”
Dex swiveled to look at her. “We haven’t even made it to the highway.”
She shrugged. “I had a lot of coffee.”
He sighed, looking as if he regretted every decision he’d made that led to this moment, the first hint that we were on the same side. Part of me wanted to reach for him, commiserate somehow. But maybe the act of merely existing beside him in the absurdity was enough. Maybe it had to be, for now.
Coney Island turned out to be the sort of place that looked, in real life, like it had popped out of my head.
I’d never been, only heard stories from my dad, but as we made our way down the boardwalk with the scent of fried dough and salt in the air, the rush of rides overhead, overflowing garbage cans, throngs of people with huge smiles on their faces—it was exactly right.
And from the grin on Phoebe’s face, she thought so too.
She talked the whole way there. Yammering about everything from the cows in a pasture on the side of the highway to her reasoning for including a Carly Rae Jepson song on her road trip playlist. It was the most I’d heard my sister’s voice in so long.
Every once in a while, she’d look at me, eyes alight, and it would transport me to a time before our world shattered, when she adored me and confided in me and our dad would’ve been the one in the driver’s seat.
“Oh my god,” Phoebe repeated for the twentieth time in as many seconds.
She clapped her hands to her cheeks, eyes wide as she took it all in.
Sand crunched underfoot, the quiet rush of rides and patrons’ squeals filling the air.
“What do we do first? I want a corn dog. But I want to ride something. I want to win a Squirtle, one of the big ones. Oh my god, do you smell that?”
“Take a breath, Bee,” I said, stifling a laugh. She inhaled sharply, and then took a deeper, slower breath. “We’ll do it all.”
Her face split into a bright smile. She was happy, overflowing with it. I couldn’t break down in the middle of the boardwalk, so I’d hold it in until later, when I could lock myself away in a bathroom and cry in the shower like normal. Only this time, the tears would be joyful. Mostly.
“What first?” She spun to Dex, whose expression remained stony and distant, making no secret of his disapproval. “Rides? Food? Games?”
“This is your stop, not mine.”
“But you’re here.”
“So is she.” He jerked his chin in my direction.
“I’m not asking Vi because I know what she’ll say.” She put on a mildly insulting Valley Girl accent: “ ‘Rides first, otherwise you’ll throw up.’ She always says things like ‘otherwise.’ ”