CHAPTER 25
Debra
“What’s your dream vacation?” Carrie asked and looked up from the first card of their mandatory thirty minutes.
“Oh, that’s easy,” she said and sat up a little on the bed. “Somewhere in the English countryside. Just a rustic little cottage, some tea by the fire, a good book and I’m all set.”
“Really? What would you do? Besides drinking tea and reading, I mean.”
“That’s about it. It’s a vacation,” she stated. “I suppose I would love someone there to share it with me, so we could go on walks and talk, share a crossword or two, and well, then there’s the obvious.”
“Sex?” Carrie asked.
“Yes.” Debra chuckled. “My wife and I always meant to go on vacations together, but we were always just so busy. All those years together, and we only went on a few. I regret that. I lost her young, and we spent so much of our time working. We were supposed to grow old, retire, and have that dream vacation.”
“I’m sorry,” Carrie said.
“Me too. My vacation sounds boring to you, huh?”
“Not boring, exactly.” Carrie smiled at her. “Just not my thing.”
“What’s your thing?”
“I like to do things; see things.”
“Not the inside of a rustic cottage, then?”
“I think that would be nice for a day or two; maybe at the end of a vacation, just to relax a little before I flew back home, but I’d like to do something else, too.
Museums, maybe. Beaches would be great. I love the ocean, so I could take surfing lessons or snorkel.
I’m not great just sitting around. I get bored pretty easily.
I can read and listen to music or play around on social media for a while, but I’d want to be out of the cottage and seeing the world.
I had this dream of backpacking around for a while after college.
Like, with an actual backpack, going from country to country wherever I could. ”
“You didn’t do it?”
“No. It can be done cheaply, but I still would’ve needed money for it, and I didn’t have any at twenty-two.”
“What about now?”
“I just spent a bunch of money on this thing,” Carrie replied with a little laugh.
“So, I would have to save up, but it’s more possible now, I guess, than it was before.
I have a job now, for one, so I’m actually making money.
With what I do, I can do it from anywhere, but I wouldn’t be able to do it as often or make as much money, that kind of thing.
I’d want to be gone for months; you know? ”
“Months? Really?”
“Ideally.” Carrie shrugged a shoulder. “But it’s a dream vacation, right? I would want to make it count, go to as many places as I could and see the world as much as I could. I want to go to Brazil, Peru, New Zealand, South Africa, Greece, and a million other places.”
“That’s a lot of traveling. I don’t think I could keep up with you.” Debra laughed.
“I could go alone, but it would be nice to have someone to be on that journey with. It could be a friend, and that might be good, but I’m thirty years old, and I’m ready to find someone I’d want to be with. I’d like to travel with them.”
“I think finding a good travel companion is important.”
“Me too,” Carrie said and picked up the next card. “So, do you believe in the afterlife?”
“Oh, wow…” Debra said, and the image of her wife entered her mind.
Not when she was in the hospital the day she died, but an image from when they were seventeen. Another one came in right after that from when they were in their twenties, and then another from their thirties. Her wife was smiling in all of them.
“I have to.”
“Oh, sorry,” Carrie said and put the card at the bottom of the stack. “That question probably shouldn’t be here, huh?”
“No, it’s okay. I’m sure she put it in there on purpose.”
“Really?”
Debra nodded and said, “And I do believe in it. I’m not sure what I would’ve said before she died, but I have to believe that I’ll see her again when I go.”
“How does that work?” Carrie asked. “She was the love of your life, right?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re here hoping to find love again because you lost her?”
“Yes,” she repeated. “I always believed I had one love, but I’ve had to open myself up to the idea that I can find another and that she can also be the love of my life. I come with baggage. There’s no denying that.”
“I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just complicated, isn’t it? You’d absolutely want to see your wife again and share that afterlife with her, which makes total sense, but if you meet someone else, and you’re up there in heaven or wherever it is, you’d have her up there with you, too.”
Debra laughed and replied, “Yes, that’s true. I’d hope we could all be friends, I guess.”
Carrie laughed and said, “Me too.”
“Let’s try another one,” Debra suggested and pulled the next card from the stack. “What’s a romantic fantasy of yours? It can include sex, but it doesn’t have to.” She set that card down next to the stack. “You go first this time.”
“Um… Well, I’d be on a date with a woman, for once.”
“I don’t–”
“I just came out,” Carrie interjected. “I have never been out with a woman before. Well, if you count last night, I guess I have, but that didn’t go well for reasons outside of my control. Becky’s great; just not for me.”
“I see. And you’ve never…”
“No, I have never had sex with a woman,” Carrie confirmed the unasked question.