41
I fall asleep that night at nine o’clock, still in my clothes, and when I wake up at five the next morning, Tricia is asleep at the kitchen table. I touch her lightly on the wrist.
“Did you just get home?” I ask.
She shrugs, all bleary-eyed and fuzzy.
“Were you waiting up for me?”
She shrugs again. “Sort of.”
“You can go to bed now. I’m fine.”
“You are?” She yawns. “How’d it go with Joe and Sue?”
“Good. I’ll tell you about it later, when you’re semiconscious.”
“Semiconscious,” she repeats. But then she gets serious. “But you’re okay?”
I nod. “I am okay.” I’ve been saying that for a long time, but now I understand that it’s true.
“We’ll go to breakfast in a few hours. Diner?” she says.
“Sounds like a plan.”
Tricia trudges to bed. I unpack my bag and put all my filthy stuff in a pile. I’m going to have to take a trip to the Laundromat today, or maybe I can ask Mrs. Chandler if I can do a load at her place when I’m there next. People have been pretty generous when I’ve asked for help. I put on a pot of coffee and go out to the front porch while the coffee brews.
Dawn is breaking. The hills are pink with the first blushes of morning light, though a layer of mist still covers the ground. There’s almost no one out on the street at this hour, no cars, save for the paperboy’s pickup truck.
In the distance, I hear another car, the tick of its engine familiar, though it’s not the Garcias’ Explorer, and Tricia’s ancient Camry is parked in the driveway. It blurs down the next block, and I do a double take. No. It’s not possible.
But then it loops around and comes back down the next block, going slowly, like it’s lost. I stand up from the porch and walk toward the street. The car stops suddenly. Then it just sits there in the middle of the street, engine idling, before reversing up the block and turning onto my street, stopping right next to the curb where I’m standing.
He looks like hell. A day’s worth of beard on his face and who knows how many months of sleeplessness purpling his eyes. Maybe he got this bad on the trip and I didn’t notice because it happened by degrees, but the Ben who steps out of that car is almost unrecognizable from that pretty, snarling boy I saw onstage a few months ago.
“What are you doing here?” I ask him.
“What do you think I’m doing here?” And he sounds so wrecked, it kills me. “Have a good life?”
“How are you here? It’s, like, a twenty-four-hour drive.” I calculate how long it’s been since I left him in Vegas yesterday: a little more than seventeen hours.
“It’s twenty-four hours if you stop.”
That explains it. Driving all night alone can age you a year in a day.
“How did you know where to find me?”
He rubs his eyes with the heel of his hands. “Meg told me where she lived. It’s a pretty small town.” He pauses. “I’ve always known where to find you, Cody.”
“Oh.”
He looks so exhausted. I want to take him into my house, lay him down on my bed, pull up the sheets, and touch his eyelids before they flutter to sleep.
“Why’d you run off like that?”
I don’t know what to tell him. I got happy. I got scared. I got overwhelmed. I put my hands over my heart, hoping that explains it.
We stand there for a moment. “I saw Meg’s parents,” I say at last. “I told them about Bradford. Apparently, the police had already told them about Meg’s involvement with the Final Solution people.”
Ben’s drooping eyes widen in surprise.
“They also told me that Meg was depressed. She’d had a bad episode in tenth grade that I didn’t recognize even though I was right there and even though I was her best friend. And she had another after she moved to Tacoma. Before she met you.” I look at him. His eyes, like the skin under them, seem bruised. “So, apparently, it’s not your fault. Or mine.” I try to say this last part flippantly, but my voice hitches.
“I never thought it was your fault,” Ben says softly. “But I figured out that it wasn’t mine, either.”
“But you said that her death was on your conscience.”
“It is. It always will be. But I don’t think I ranked enough to have caused it. And besides . . .” he trails off.
“What?”
“I keep thinking, if it were my fault, it wouldn’t have brought you into my life.”
My eyes fill with tears.
“I’m in love with you, Cody. And I know that this is all complicated and confused in a wholly fucked-up way. Meg’s death was a tragedy and the worst kind of waste, but I don’t want to lose you because of the fucked-up way I found you.”
And now I’m weeping. “Fucking Ben McCallister. You make me cry more than almost any person I’ve ever met,” I say. But I step toward him.
“I shed a few tears myself last night.” He steps toward me.
“I’ll bet. A thousand miles is a long way with no iPod.”
“Yeah. The music was what was missing.” He takes another step toward me. “I shouldn’t have let you go. I should’ve said something yesterday, but it was intense for me, too, and you scared me, Cody. You scare me a lot.”
“That’s because you’re a city dick,” I reply. “City dicks are always scared.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Well, you scare me, too,” I say.
I open my arms for him. And as it always is when I let myself be with Ben McCallister, scared is the opposite of what I feel.
We stand there, holding each other in the waking morning. He brushes a lock of hair out of my eyes, kisses me on the temple.
“I’m pretty fragile right now,” I warn him. “Everything’s sort of coming down all at once.”
He nods. For him, too.
“And this could be tricky. ‘Complicated and confused in a wholly fucked-up way,’ as you put it.”
“I know,” he says. “We’ll just have to ride it out, cowgirl.”
“Ride it out,” I repeat. I lean my head against him. His whole body heaves.
“Do you want to come inside?” I ask. “Sleep for a while?”
He shakes his head. “Maybe later.”
The sun is up, and the early morning mist has burned off. I reach for his hand. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“For a walk. I want to show you around. There’s a crazy rocket ship at the park where the view goes on forever.”
I interlace my fingers with his, and we take off walking. Toward my past. Into my future.