“Mr. Homeowner,” I say, trying to sound playful. Turns out I too am deeply grumpy and that’s how my voice portrays me. Alex ignores the comment and gets out of the car.
“Do you need help?” I ask.
“Might need you to shine a light,” he says. “It’s starting to get dark.”
I follow him to the back of the car. He pops the hatch door, moves some of the mats around, and swears. “No spare.”
“This car aspires to destroy our lives,” I say, and kick the side of the car. “Shit, I’m going to have to buy this girl a new tire, aren’t I?”
Alex sighs and rubs the bridge of his nose. “We’ll split it.”
“No, that’s not what I was . . . I wasn’t saying that.”
“I know,” Alex says, irritated. “But I’m not letting you pay for the whole thing.”
“What do we even do?”
“We call a towing company,” he says. “We Uber home, and we mess with it tomorrow.”
So that’s what we do: We call the towing company. Sit in silence on the tailgate while we wait for them to come. Ride back to the shop in the front of the tow truck with a man named Stan who has a naked lady tattooed on each arm. Sign some papers, call an Uber. Stand outside while we wait for the Uber to come.
Get into a car with a lady named Marla who Alex whispers under his breath “looks exactly like Delallo,” and at least that’s something to laugh about.
And then Marla’s app messes up and she gets lost.
And our seventeen-minute drive becomes a twenty-nine-minute drive before our eyes. And neither of us is laughing. Neither of us is saying anything, making any sound.
Finally, we’re almost to the Desert Rose. It’s pretty much pitch-black outside, and I’m sure the stars overhead would be amazing if we weren’t trapped in the back of Marla’s Kia Rio inhaling lungful after lungful of the sugar cookie Bath & Body Works spray she seems to have doused the entire car in.
When traffic suddenly stops half a mile from the Desert Rose, I almost cry.
“Must be an accident blocking the road,” Marla says. “No reason on heaven or earth traffic should be this backed up.”
“Do you want to walk?” Alex asks me.
“Why the hell not,” I say, and we get out of Marla’s car, watch her turn the Kia around in a fifteen-point turn, and start down the dark shoulder of the road toward home.
“I’m getting in that pool tonight,” Alex says.
“It’s probably closed,” I grunt.
“I’ll climb the fence,” Alex says.
A fizzy, tired chuckle moves through my chest. “Okay, I’m in.”
23
Five Summers Ago
OUR LAST NIGHT on Sanibel Island, I lie awake, listening to the rain thrum against the roof, replaying the week as if watching through a sheen that’s thick and hazy and ever rippling, trying to capture this one split second that seems to wink out of view every time I reach for it.
I see the stormy beaches. The Twilight Zone marathon Alex and I snooze through on the couch. The seafood place where he’d finally given me the grisly details of his and Sarah’s breakup—that she’d told him their relationship was about as exciting as the library where they’d met, before dumping him and leaving for a three-week yoga retreat. If she wants excitement, I’d said, I’m happy to key her car. My memory skips forward, to the bar called BAR, with its sticky floors and thatched fans, where I step out of the bathroom and see him at the bar, reading a book, and feel so much love I could split open, and how after I tried to jar him from his post-Sarah sadness with an over-the-top “Hey, tiger!”
Then there comes the moment that we ran through the downpour from BAR to our car, the ones spent listening to the windshield wipers squeak across the glass as we sliced through the torrential rain back to our rain-soaked bungalow.
I’m getting closer to that moment, that one I keep reaching for and coming up empty-handed, as if it were nothing but a bit of reflected light, dancing on the floor.
I see Alex asking to take a picture together, surprising me with the flash on the count of two instead of three. The both of us choking over laughter, moaning at the heinousness of our picture, arguing whether to delete it, Alex promising I don’t look anything like that, me telling him the same.
Then he says, “Next year let’s go somewhere cold.”
I say okay, that we will.
And here it comes, the moment that keeps slipping through my fingers, like it’s the game-changing detail in an instant replay I can’t seem to pause or slow down.
We are just looking at each other. There are no hard edges to grab hold of, no distinct markers on this moment’s beginning or end, nothing to separate it from the millions just like it.
But this, this is the moment I first think it.
I am in love with you.
The thought is terrifying, probably not even true. A dangerous idea to entertain. I release my hold on it, watch it slip away.
But there are points in the center of my palms that burn, scorched, proof I once held it there.