The Broken Hearts Marriage Pact

1. Miller

Miller

The sparkly purple van was going to plow right into me.

Eventually.

I was stopped at a light at the bottom of a steep hill.

There were cars on either side of me, and directly ahead of me was a huge SUV, so there was no chance of moving out of the way.

All I could do was stare into my rearview mirror as the huge van crept forward, gravity proving to be too much for its brakes.

A young guy with dark hair was behind the wheel. He looked panic-stricken as he leaned out of the window and called to me, “I’m trying to stop, I swear! I knew my brakes were a little funky, but these San Francisco hills are no joke!”

I rolled forward as much as I could, but the van kept coming, inch by inch. It was like one of those retro horror movies, where the victim was pinned down while the goo monster slowly oozed toward them.

Damn, how long was this red light?

A few seconds later, my little convertible rocked from the impact as the van’s bumper met mine. Even though I mashed down the brake pedal and set the parking brake, I began to slide forward under the weight of the van. The guy behind me shrieked.

I imagined my beautiful, fully restored Karmann Ghia folding up like an accordion as it got sandwiched between two big, heavy vehicles. Okay, so maybe I’d watched too many cartoons as a kid, but this was probably going to do some damage.

When I honked to alert the driver in front of me, he flipped me off. I muttered, “Awesome,” and braced myself for the next bump.

Half a second before I made contact with the SUV, the light changed and it drove away. I breathed a sigh of relief as I released the parking brake, threw my car into gear, and stepped on the gas. The engine revved and the tires screeched against the asphalt, while I stayed right where I was.

I took my foot off the accelerator and shifted around to look behind me.

“I think our bumpers are stuck together,” the guy in the van yelled, as he leaned out of the window again.

“We’d better get past the intersection and look for somewhere to pull over, before the light changes again and both of us roll into oncoming traffic! ” Now there was a scary thought.

The van shoved me forward with a jolt when he stepped on the gas.

It felt weird to have someone else controlling the speed while I steered, but at least he was being cautious.

He turned on his hazard lights and drove a lot slower than he probably needed to, while every other driver on the road passed us and stared.

The slope leveled off after a minute, which was definitely a good thing.

But both sides of the street were lined with parked cars, so there was no place to stop.

Finally, I spotted a bank up ahead and pointed to it as I glanced at the guy over my shoulder.

He gave me a thumbs up, and our weird little train managed to change lanes and pull into the parking lot.

We ended up stopping in the middle of the lot, which was busy on a Friday afternoon, and both of us jumped out of our vehicles.

The van’s driver was tiny, and he seemed vaguely goth, thanks to his pale skin, shoulder-length dark hair, and all-black ensemble.

This included jeans so shredded they were more thread than fabric, and a massively oversized T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Cat Mom.”

I tore my gaze from his fashion choices and took a look at how our vehicles were joined. His bumper was higher than mine, but only slightly. When we collided, its bottom edge had managed to slide up and over my bumper, then drop back down behind it, hooking us together.

“Oh man,” he said, “it’s like when two teens kiss and get their braces locked together. You know what I mean?” Somehow, he thought it would be helpful to illustrate this by using his hands as puppets, bumping his fingertips together as he made kissing sounds.

I told him, “I don’t think that really happens.”

“Our cars beg to differ.”

As much as I wanted to point out everything that was wrong with that statement, there was no time. We were blocking a bunch of parking spaces, and someone we’d boxed in had started to honk.

“I don’t know what to do,” I admitted. “I’d suggest driving to my mechanic’s garage, but it’s probably closed for the weekend.”

“Let’s see if I can unhook them.” With that, he climbed up onto the bumpers and tried bouncing up and down.

“That’s never going to work.”

“You don’t know that.” He tried bouncing again before saying, “I’m too light. Come up here and help me.”

By this point, three cars were honking, and we were gathering a crowd of onlookers. A couple of them were holding up their phones and filming us. The very last thing I wanted was to end up as a meme, so I said, “Let’s go to my house and try to figure this out from there. It’s not very far.”

“Okay.” He leapt off the bumper and took out his phone. “What’s your number?”

“Are you hitting on me?”

“No. I mean, I will later, because you’re smoking hot. You look like a big, buff version of that Korean guy from that cooking show.”

“What cooking show?”

“Dude, focus.” He was one to talk. “It’s too hard to yell back and forth, so I want to call you and put you on speaker. That way, you can tell me when to turn, or switch lanes, or whatever.”

He had a point. I recited my number, and he quickly typed it into his phone before saying, “Got it. What’s your name?”

“Miller.”

“Your first name.”

“That is my first name. My last name is Anderson.”

“Why did your parents give you two last names and no first names?”

A horn blasted, so I asked, “Can we go, before that huge guy in the truck beats us up?”

“Okay. And not that you asked, but I’m Collie Souza.”

“Like the dog?”

He shot me a look, but then he said, “Yes, exactly like the dog.”

I had to ask. “Why did your parents give you a dog name?”

“They didn’t. They named me Collin, but—” Another prolonged honk cut him off. He yelled over it, “I’ll tell you later,” and ran back to the van.

My phone rang a moment after we pulled out of the lot. When I answered, he said, “Hi, it’s Collie.”

“I figured.”

For the next fifteen minutes or so, we slowly and awkwardly made our way to my neighborhood. Finally, we pulled onto my street, and I said, “My house is halfway down the block, on the right.”

“There’s no parking. Like, literally none.”

“I know, but I think we’ll both fit into my garage. It’s made to hold two cars end-to-end, and mine’s on the small side. Just please don’t mash me into the wall.”

I hit the remote to open the garage door, and Collie asked, “How do you expect us to pull in there? We’re too long to make such a tight ninety-degree turn.”

We’d had to swing wide on every right turn we’d made on the way here, but my street was too narrow for that. I still thought it was possible though, so I said, “We’ll do a three-point turn. We might have to pull forward and back up a couple of times, but I’m sure we can make it.”

A couple of times turned into about a hundred attempts, back and forth, back and forth. Okay, so it wasn’t actually a hundred, but it sure felt like it. Each time, we got maybe an inch closer to lining up with the driveway.

I sighed and slumped in my seat while Collie kept up a running monologue.

“I’m pretty sure we’re going to get wedged in at an angle,” he said.

“It’ll be like that time a ship got stuck in the Suez Canal.

Remember that? I can’t recall why it happened.

Like, I’m pretty sure they weren’t trying to make a three-point turn, but that was a real shit show.

They were stuck for days, and no one could get through.

I’m glad your street’s not busier, but five cars have had to back up out of here so far, because they couldn’t get by. ”

I grunted a reply and moved my sunglasses to the top of my head, so I could scrub my hands over my face.

He was still talking. “If we really get stuck, do you think it’ll make the news? Or will the cops show up and give us a ticket for obstructing traffic? Maybe both of those things will happen.” He backed up, again, and I turned the wheel, again, and we moved forward and gained another inch.

“This definitely isn’t how I pictured my first day in San Francisco,” he said. “I was going to drive around for a bit and take in the sights before heading to the beach. I wanted to watch the sunset over the Pacific.”

I asked, “How long is your vacation?”

“It’s not a vacation. This is my new home.”

“Did you move here for a job?”

“No. I just always wanted to live here.”

“Why’s that?”

“Lots of reasons. But most of all, I wanted to live someplace where I wasn’t the entire gay community. To be fair, I probably wasn’t literally the only gay person in my hometown, but everyone else was deep in the closet, so it felt like it was just me.”

“I get that. So, why didn’t you move here sooner? Did you just graduate from high school or something?”

He snort-laughed at that and said, “Dude, I’m twenty-seven.

I would have loved to move here right after high school, but I stayed because my aunt needed me.

I mean, she wasn’t really my aunt. She was my mom’s best friend, but none of my relatives stepped up after my parents died, so she raised me.

I couldn’t just leave her when she got sick, but she passed away last month.

Right before she died, she made me promise to make this dream come true, so here I am. ”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Me, too. She was awesome.”

“Where’s your hometown?”

“It’s a little fly speck on the map, about seventy miles outside Boise in rural Idaho. Population eighteen hundred forty-six. Well, eighteen forty-five now, because I left.”

“Wow, and I thought I grew up in a small town.”

He asked, “Where was that?”

While we were talking, we kept up the same rhythm. Back up, crank the wheel, roll forward, gain an inch.

“I grew up in the Midwest, in a town of just over eight thousand people. I was the only out gay kid and the only Asian kid in my high school.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“How long have you been here?”