Chapter 29
On the drive to the flea market, we lay out specifics for two more months of our public marriage, consisting of public appearances once a week and a slow decline of our interactions, including a couple of arguments.
It will make perfect sense to the world.
A whirlwind romance, gone viral online, would rise and fall quickly as real life caught up to the wave of manufactured feeling.
What the world saw will be mostly the truth.
Our relationship is petering out in reality in exactly the same way we want to display.
It’s fine.
We were probably doomed to fail from the beginning.
After all, lasting love doesn’t happen that way. It’s not crafted out of nothing to put on a show.
So for the next week, I try to talk myself into believing it’s for the best and that soon I’ll forget all the time I spent with Wes, how close I got to him, how he made me feel.
All of it will fade into a faint, conflicted memory, and I can go back to the life I’ve made for myself.
It will be perfectly fine.
Maybe it will actually be fine if I keep telling myself it is.
I don’t see much of Wes the next week, but it’s a relief as much as anything else. If I had to face him, I might have trouble believing I’m better off without him in my life.
On Saturday night, a week after we went to the flea market, we scheduled to drive to Baltimore for the concert of a folk-rock musician who is one of Wes’s favorites.
I like the singer too, so I’ve been looking forward to it despite my confusion around my feelings for Wes.
To get there, we take several county roads before we turn onto one large state road that leads to the outskirts of Baltimore.
The county roads aren’t heavily trafficked, so it’s not a stressful drive.
For more than thirty minutes, we’re driving a comfortable distance behind the same Buick sedan, which is holding the exact same speed as Wes.
We listen to music, which frees us from the pressure of deep conversation. And I’m sinking into an achy resignation about our fake marriage and the man beside me when something happens.
It’s so unexpected it’s almost surreal. Like a vision from a dream or nightmare where the world doesn’t function in normal ways.
The Buick, which has been driving with steady speed and consistent steering, veers onto the shoulder without slowing down and then keeps driving right off the pavement.
There’s no ditch and no guardrail. Just a gently sloped hillside of grass leading to some trees.
The car barely slows down even when it hits the grass, and the angle of the slope must be too much for the Buick’s stability. It flips, but it hits the trees before it gets all the way over, so it ends up crashed and propped on its side.
“Oh my God!” I’ve watched the whole thing like it’s a movie or a dream, but it’s neither of those things. It’s real, and the sight of the mangled car in such a precarious position makes my stomach heave.
Wes started slowing down as soon as the car veered off the road, and now he pulls to a stop on the shoulder.
“Wait here, baby, and call 911,” he rasps as he jumps out of the SUV and goes to open the back hatch.
I’m stunned and nauseated, so I can only watch as he grabs what looks like a crowbar from the back and runs toward the crashed car.
What the hell is he doing?
I fumble with my phone until I can dial 911 and share the situation and our location with the operator as I stare out the window at Wes.
He’s used the crowbar to clear broken glass from the windshield, and it looks like he’s talking to whoever is inside.
Thank goodness.
Maybe they aren’t dead.
I wait in the passenger seat when I finish with 911 because Wes told me to. I’m not good in an emergency, so it makes sense to do what I was told.
But then the Buick catches on fire. I see the flames from the front end where the engine is.
And Wes isn’t getting away from it.
He’s trying to pull someone out.
Terrified that the car might actually explode and take Wes with it, I clamber out of the SUV and run down to where the car is, almost falling when my shoes slide in some mud. “Wes! Wes, be careful!”
“I need to get her out,” he calls, glancing over as I approach. “She’s trapped, and she’ll be burned to death before help comes.”
He’s right. Even a quick glance tells me he’s right. The car might not explode like I feared—maybe that mostly happens in movies—but that fire is strong and getting stronger. The air is already filled with smoke. “What can I do?”
“Stay back, baby. I’m not letting you get hurt.”
I might have objected had I not seen just then that he’s pried more space in the opening and now has a good hold on an older woman. He pulls her out with surprising strength (likely fueled by adrenaline) and then carries her a safe distance from the burning car.
I stay with him as he lays the woman down on the grass, and then I kneel down beside her body. “Are you okay? What hurts?”
The woman coughs and keeps coughing. “I don’t know. I don’t know what happened. I blacked out and my car crashed into a tree.”
That would definitely explain what we saw. The woman looks like she’s in her eighties. The cause of her blackout could be anything.
I reach for her hand and hold it as she coughs. She’s bleeding in several places, but it looks mostly superficial. She’s breathing, and her heart is beating, so there’s no CPR that needs doing. For anything else, we need to wait for the ambulance.
I can hear a siren in the distance.
“Thank you, dear,” the woman rasps. “You’re so pretty, and you have a very brave and kind young man.”
Wes is standing over us, looking toward the road and the approaching EMT truck. But he hears what the woman said. He turns to look down at us, slightly startled.
I swallow hard. “Yes, I do.”