Thirteen #2
Blue Harbor, nestled against Lake Superior, is bigger than Irontown, so we come here to do most of our shopping.
Where Irontown is run-down and tired, Blue Harbor is bustling and quaint.
It has more going for it: the regional hospital, the college, art studios, breweries instead of bars, boutique shops instead of thrift stores.
I find a spot to park, and we step out of the truck. An angry wind blows up from the lake under a steel sky. We walk into an outdoor clothing store, and I lead Garrett to the winter jackets, showing him how to find the cold tolerance of each one.
“Why would I need a jacket that can handle negative forty degrees?” he asks, holding up a puffy black one with a faux-fur hood.
I look at him.
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “I’m out. I signed up for the Tuscan sun. Not this.”
“Why would you want Tuscany when you can have six hours of daylight and five months of snow?”
He grins, and his dimple punches me in the gut. “You’re right. Italy is overrated. I bet none of the food is even local. They probably import the pasta from China.”
“I hear the art’s shitty, too.”
He tries on a coat and examines himself in a mirror. “How do I look?”
“You look great.” The blue-gray of the material matches his eyes and warms his hair into an August sunset.
He pays for it with his parents’ credit card and pulls it on before we leave the store. We step out onto the street. Instead of returning to the car, we walk down to the lake.
We hit a stretch of beach and follow it until it rounds a curve, and then Blue Harbor is hidden from sight and we are alone with nothing but pine forest and lake.
Waves pummel the shore as we walk, whitecaps crashing down on millions of small stones.
This has always been my favorite version of Lake Superior.
I feel so alive walking next to a force of nature that could swallow me up and never notice.
I like that there are still things on this planet that have that kind of power.
We walk in silence for a bit, and I begin to feel awkward.
Last Friday night hangs between us like a strange secret we both hold but refuse to mention.
I’ve run through what happened countless times: the way his hand clasped my wrist, pulling me toward him, the way his eyes found mine, the way his lips opened.
And the way he shut down, closing the possibility of anything further.
“Turns out it doesn’t suck to be outside when you have a real jacket,” Garrett observes, pulling me back to reality.
“Just wait until January.”
He looks at me sideways. “Seriously. I need you to be honest with me: Are we all going to die? Because y’all talk about winter like it’s a six-month-long horror movie.”
Y’all. It’s the first time I’ve heard him use that word since Evan was an asshole about it at the party.
“It’s not that bad.”
“You’re lying.”
“No I’m not.”
He nudges me playfully with his shoulder, hands stuffed in his pockets. “Absolutely. Your eyes did that thing where they narrow, and then your lips…” He stops himself, swallows. Then, “They complain about the weather all the time in Georgia, too. But it’s the heat that’ll get to you.”
“And you like it hot?” I realize the double meaning as soon as the words are out of my mouth, and immediately pray that Lake Superior will take me, that it will sweep me out to sea with a merciful riptide.
“I love it hot.” He gives me a smirk.
“Well, lucky for you, climate change is making most of the United States hotter. They say that by mid-century, some places might be unlivable.” I close my eyes. I consider ending this conversation by walking straight into the lake.
He watches me with a small smile on his face. “You stress about the environment a lot?”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“No. Not really.”
“But you do, right?” It sounds more like an accusation than a question, and now I’ve become his sustainability manager.
“I don’t get that stressed about most things.”
The waves crash ashore with increasing intensity, and each time they withdraw, they pull thousands of the coastline’s small rocks with them, creating a tumbling percussive cascade.
The gray of the water and the gray of the sky feel endless and pressing, like the entirety of winter is bearing down on us from the north.
He lets out a deep breath. “I get it,” he says. “Why you love it here.”
I do love it. I love the cold sky and the dark water and the stark shoreline with an ache that makes the possibility of leaving this place feel like the end of everything I care about.
“I guess the future is out there, though,” I say.
“Because you,” he agrees, “are going to attend a kick-ass music school and become the next John Williams.”
He tells me this with the same certainty he describes his own future, as if aspirations and reality are the same thing to him.
He only believes in me this much because he doesn’t understand the world of music, how cutthroat it is, how painful.
But no one has ever sounded this confident in my ability to do what I want with my future, so I tell him.
I tell him about Burton-Clark and its amazing composition program, how it’s almost impossible to get in and unimaginably expensive.
How, more than anything, I want to write scores for film soundtracks, give wings to the stories crafted by actors and writers and directors.
How lately, at night, the music has become unstoppable, and I need to write, need to let it out, even if it’s not polished or original or melodic.
It’s only a dream, but speaking the words—especially to someone who sees dreams as road maps and not impossibilities—makes it tangible, like I could reach out and touch it.
As we wander along the beach, he listens, nodding, asking questions, taking me seriously.
And when all of these words are out, I can’t take them back, like I’ve set something in motion, like I could speak this possible future into existence.
For once, I’m not fixated on the roadblocks or the cost.
When I finish, he looks at me thoughtfully. His cheeks are flushed, and his eyes match the expansive gray of the sky behind him. “Well, when can I hear your music?”
The thought of him listening to something I’ve written is scarier than a panel of faceless admissions counselors at an elite conservatory doing so. “You already have. At Casino Night.”
He shakes his head. “You told me those were arrangements of other people’s music. I want to hear yours.”
“Soon,” I say noncommittally.
We’ve reached the end of the stretch of beach. A cliff looms before us, solid and immobile against the crashing waves. In summer, people try to swim out to the caves dotting that wall of rock. Some of them die. I decide not to share this with Garrett.
We turn and begin walking back the way we came. “What about you?” I ask. “Are you still thinking of doing pre-law at Ellison?”
“Definitely,” he says. “You were wrong about that, by the way, when you said I don’t want to be a lawyer.
I really do. Maybe not a corporate one like my dad, but I love the idea of thinking hard and preparing cases and arguing them in court.
I like reading and writing and talking, and getting people to believe me. ”
“You’ll be good at it,” I say. “You’re smart. Persuasive.”
“Thanks,” he says. “And if everything goes according to plan, I should be playing football when I’m not hitting the books.
Ellison is a D2 school, and one of their scouts was checking me out last year.
My brothers both got football scholarships.
So did my dad back in the day. It’s pretty much part of the family DNA. ”
“Do you like it?” I ask. “Playing football?”
He pauses and looks at me. “No one has ever asked me that before. Why wouldn’t I?”
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
“I like it.”
It takes me a second to figure out why I don’t believe him, and I realize it’s because I’ve seen his face light up when he’s photographing something or playing a board game; I’ve heard his voice grow excited when he talks about sci-fi novels or his pre-law plans.
This three-word answer doesn’t seem like the response of someone describing something they’re passionate about.
“How did you get into football?”
“When I was in fifth grade,” he says as we continue moving down the beach, “my parents enrolled me in my first tackle league. My dad was our coach, and he took his job seriously. It was just this youth league, but he wanted our team to be the best. We’d have these crazy-long practices, and he would force us to do laps and push-ups until we couldn’t anymore.
He’d use me as an example. He’d have me show off a play or demonstrate the right form for passing, and I would feel so proud. ”
It feels like there is more to the story, so I don’t say anything.