by Lisa Suzanne
“You sure?” he asks. “There’s an elephant at the Buffalo Zoo who can paint. I know how much you love elephants.”
I let out a small courtesy laugh, but I can’t bring myself to emote anything more than that.
He reaches over and squeezes my knee, and that oddly provides the exact comfort I need at the moment. His touch has the ability to calm me, despite everything.
This is the same idiot who accidentally breaks windows and gets arrested. He loses bets to his friends and has to run beer miles. He regularly gets so drunk he pukes even though he’s twenty-nine and should be well aware of his limits at this point. He’s basically a man-child and on paper he’s my exact opposite.
I’m a planner. He likes to live spontaneously.
But he’s gotten me to be more spontaneous. After all, I wouldn’t be on this trip with him if he didn’t have some effect on me.
I like to be in control. He’s a spectator in his own life.
But he’s taken control, too, and in the times he has, I’ve always emerged satisfied.
I’m brash and bold. He saves stray dogs and signs autographs for fans and puts other people first.
But he makes me want to find ways to be kind to others apart from when I’m at work.
Maybe most important of all, he puts up with me.
And despite all that, or maybe because of all that, I love him.
All it took was his hand on my knee to send an overwhelming surge of emotion through me. Oh my God, do I love him.
And I probably fucked it all up beyond repair.
All I can do is pray that somehow I can earn his trust back—that I can earn him back. I don’t know how yet, but at this point and with all these realizations, I’ll do anything.
“I love you.” My words come out in a whisper as we cruise down the 90 through just a little bit of the tip of Pennsylvania.
The GPS tells me we’ll only be in Pennsylvania forty minutes. The entire trip from San Diego to Wells Beach is nearly three thousand minutes not including our stops, and somehow the most important words I’ve ever spoken slip out in the forty minutes we’re in Pennsylvania.
He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t say the words back. He doesn’t say anything, actually, but his hand finds mine. His fingers lace through mine, and he squeezes, and for the rest of the ride through Pennsylvania, his hand stays right there, a connection that tells me he feels it, too, but he’s not ready to say it back.
Not until I can prove I really mean those words.
Not until I can show him that I want this, that I’m not going to blow up what we have and I’m ready to think about a future that includes the two of us together.
But his hand in mine gives me the hope I need to hold onto that maybe someday he’ll find that trust in me again and be ready to say it back.
The ride through New York is a long six hours. We were quiet after I said those words all the way until we had to stop for gas somewhere in the middle of New York. Once we got back in the truck, though, with fuel and caffeine, we turn on a podcast. This time I let him choose, and we listen to Steve Barker and James McKinney, respectively the lead guitarist and bassist of Vail, as they interview other musicians.
It’s actually quite fascinating listening to the life of rock stars. Will interjects when he finds things relatable, and I interject when I hear things that remind me of what Adam has told me.
It’s then that I begin to wonder if this could actually work out long term. Can an ER nurse find love with a rock star?
I’ve seen the life my brother leads. He’s on the road a lot. From what I understand, his life is what ultimately came between him and his ex, Bree, though we’re all glad they broke up in the long run.
I guess I’ve been questioning a lot about my own life lately when it comes to what I want to do long-term, but how would I even fit in with Will’s crew—a crew that happens to include my brother?
I daydream a bit about life on the road. We’re on the road now, yet it would be nothing like this. As I think about tour buses—a more comfortable ride than we have now, though Will’s truck isn’t un-comfortable—and assigned stops and wanting to see sites but not having the time and sound checks and fan meets and practices and band meetings and press responsibilities...
And me?
Could I be there as Will’s rock, the person he turns to after a long day, the confidant and best friend and lover all rolled into one?
What would my role even be apart from that? I can’t go from the fast-paced environment of an ER to a tour bus as the girl of one of the guys. I have too much ambition for that. I’d need something of my own.
But it might not even matter.
Because he didn’t say the words back to me.
CHAPTER 29: WILL
“I love you.” Her whispered confession is like a soundtrack on repeat in my head. I love you. I love you. I love you.
My head screamed the words back. I love you too!
But I couldn’t make my mouth form the sounds, and so I simply reached over and took her hand in mine. It wasn’t the best response, but it’s the one I was able to give in the moment.
She may have been the one afraid of what a future together would be like before, but now I’m the one running scared.
Wells Beach is a small town without a lot of hotel options. Boasting to be the friendliest town in Maine and a summer vacation destination, its population is just under ten thousand and it’s known as the antique capital of the state.
Okay, so maybe I did a little research even though she didn’t want to know anything ahead of time.
But I haven’t researched the address apart from typing it into my GPS. I haven’t searched the names or verified any of what that letter said. That’s something she should discover first.
We pull into a tiny lot behind a worn looking building that happens to be one of the highest rated motels in town, and I can’t help but make comparisons to our stay at the Ritz last night.
To be honest, this is more my speed.
This motel doesn’t have a restaurant, and it’s almost ten and we haven’t had dinner. “You want to go to the address tonight?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Let’s go in the morning.” Her voice is soft, and I’m not sure if she wants to wait because she’s scared or because it’s late.
I don’t ask. Maybe I should. “Are you hungry?” I ask instead.
She nods, and we get out of the truck and head to the check-in desk.
“Oh my God,” the clerk, a middle-aged woman, says when she sees me. “I saw a William Rascowicz on the reservation list but I never in a million years thought it would actually be MFB’s Rascal!” She’s gushing and clearly they don’t have a lot of celebrities roll through town.
Especially not hungry celebrities on the verge of getting angry from not eating since our gas station stop at two o’clock. I found some Munchos that brought me back to my childhood and a hot dog that brought me to the bathroom at our next stop.
“Surprise!” I say with a smile because even when you’re hangry, you smile for your fans.
She fans herself and then asks, “Can I take a selfie with you?”
“Want me to take it?” Amber asks, and the clerk’s eyes widen like she literally just saw Amber standing there.
“Oh yes, that would be wonderful!”
She hands her phone to Amber, who expertly snaps four or five photos, and then the clerk proceeds with the check-in, her fingers shaking as she types.
She hands me a key—yes, an actual metal key, not an electronic key card—and tells me our room number, and then I ask, “Where’s the best place around here to grab some dinner?”
She glances at the clock. “Just about everything is closed at this late hour, but there’s a pizza place that should still be open. Oh! And the pub.” She jots down the names of both places on a post-it note for me. “Anything else I can help you with?” She smiles all dreamily at me and it’s all I can do to keep a smile plastered on my f
ace.
“That’s all. Thank you for everything.”
“No, no. Thank you!” she says, gushing again. “And if you post to social media, don’t forget to use the hashtag #WellinWells!”
“Noted.” I flash her one last smile then usher Amber back out to the car before I pass out from starvation.
We settle on the pizza place, and it’s colder now than when we first rolled into town less than fifteen minutes ago. The temperature gauge in the car says it’s twenty-nine, a far cry from the weather we experienced in Cleveland, where it was forty degrees. We’ve both gone the majority of this trip without coats, but Amber pulls on a sweatshirt and then her coat as I drive toward the pizza place.
It’s open when we get there, and there’s one man sitting at the bar who looks like a regular, but otherwise the only people in the place appear to work there.
“How can I help you?” the hostess asks.
“Two for pizza,” I say, and she exhales with a bit of frustration like it’s a real pain in the ass that we walked in when we did.
I almost apologize, but I’m not the one who set the hours. They’re open until midnight. We still have ninety minutes.
Amber orders some rum and I get myself a beer, and when the waiter comes back to deliver our drinks, he decides now is a good time for a chat.
“Where y’all from?” he asks, leaning on the side of the booth by Amber.
“San Diego,” she says.
“Long way from home,” he says. “What brings you here?”
“Vacation.” I take a sip of beer. It’s the simplest answer, though Wells Beach might not have been my first thought when it came to vacation destinations. It seems like a nice enough place, but it’s hard to tell in the dark.
“Wrong time of year,” he says. “Our beaches are beautiful with snow, but they’re even better in the sunshine and warm weather.”
“I bet,” Amber says. “Is there snow on them now?”
He nods. “There’s a little left from our last storm, but the storm they’re predicting tonight will bring more.”
“They’re predicting a storm tonight?” I ask. As dumb as it sounds, I didn’t even think to check the weather.
He nods. “Oh, yeah. One of those late season storms that’s predicted to dump a whole lot of the white stuff everywhere.”
“Great,” I mutter. As a Californian, I’m not really used to driving in the snow. That’s not to say I’ve never done it, but it’s been a while.
“You ready to order?” he asks.
We put in our pizza order and both stare quietly out the window.
“You like the snow?” I ask.
She lifts a shoulder. “It’s pretty to look at, but no, not really.”
“How come?” I take another sip of beer.
“It’s cold, for one thing. I prefer the fairly consistent temps of southern California.” She takes a sip of her rum, and it strikes me that of the millions of things we could talk about right now, we’re discussing the weather.
The fucking weather.
“You?” she asks.
“Same as you. I like San Diego, humidity and all. I like the smell of salt from the ocean and the craft beer scene and the fact that my parents are there.”
“You’re pretty close with your parents,” she says, and it comes off sort of like a question even though it’s not.
“Yeah,” I murmur. “My mom knows me probably better than anyone else in the world.”
“Mama’s boy,” she says with a smirk.
“I take that as a compliment, not an insult.”
She laughs. “You would.”
I laugh, too. The conversation is light between us despite the heavy tension we both feel from what happened in the car earlier today and what’s weighing on our minds for tomorrow.
The pizza comes, and we eat, and we talk more about snow and weather and nothing important even though she said I love you to me today.
But the more I sit across the table from her and look at her gorgeous, vulnerable eyes as she thinks about what’s waiting for her tomorrow, the less I see her as the person who broke my heart.
The more I’m starting to see the person I love. The person I want a future with.
The person I want to hold in my arms and take to bed and make love to and all those other romantic clichés I’ve never even thought of before.
Now if I could just find a way to be sure she really wants that too, we’ll be all set.
CHAPTER 30: AMBER
The motel is adequate, though it’s certainly no Ritz or Four Seasons. This one doesn’t actually have any king beds, so we’re in a room with two queens. We each take one, which is probably better anyway since the tension was thick between us at dinner.
At least I thought it was.
Once our pizza came, he kept looking at me like he wanted me spread out across that table instead of the pizza.
But he didn’t spread me out. He didn’t kiss me, didn’t hold my hand on the way back to the motel, didn’t touch me.
A whispered good night from his bed across the room is the end of our conversation tonight.
I stare up at the ceiling a while as I try to get sleep to take me into its waiting arms, but its arms appear to be folded tonight.
I have too much on my mind to sleep.
Once I hear his breathing even out, I walk over to the window. I slip the curtain aside just a bit so I can see outside. It’s dark out there, clouds blocking the moonlight, but in the glow of lights from the motel I can see that the flurries have started. Soon they’ll turn into something heavier, and by morning they’re expecting six inches.
I shiver as I look out at the cold night, and then I grab a blanket, pull a chair over, and prop my feet up on the heater that sits just under the window.
I slip in my ear buds and start up a playlist full of slow, soft songs to try to help lull me to sleep.
I see mostly blackness as I look out at what will be a gorgeous view of the ocean come daylight, but I can see the gentle rolling of waves in and out of the shore. It reminds me a lot of home. When Adam bought my condo for me, he asked me where I wanted to live. “On the beach,” was my immediate answer—a dream I always shared with my best friend Emily.
But this is far from home.
The opposite coast and a different ocean.
This isn’t home, though I may have family here.
I guess I’ll find out tomorrow.
Between those thoughts and wondering what’s going on in Will’s head, it’s no wonder I can’t sleep.
I pull the blanket more tightly around my shoulders to warm up even though I have the heater blasting out at my feet. I try to give into the music, the snow flurries turning into thicker flakes right before my very eyes that are just starting to get a little heavier.
When I feel a hand on my shoulder, I nearly jump out of my skin. “Oh!” I gasp, startled. I slip out my earbuds when my eyes meet his. “You scared the hell out of me.”
His lips turn up just a bit. “Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to.”
I blow out a breath as I try to steady my frayed nerves.
“What’s wrong?” he asks softly.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
He sits on the edge of my bed just a few feet away. “How come?”
I lift a shoulder and stare out the window again. “Too much on my mind.”
“Like what?”
I sigh, and then all the thoughts that’ve been building in my head tumble out of my mouth. “Well, I find out tomorrow if I have some long-lost sister and whether I’ve been lied to my entire life by my parents. I’m taking this road trip to this very strange and scary destination with a person who might love me or might hate me and I think that changes from moment to moment, second to second. I admitted I loved him today and he didn’t say it back and I know I hurt him but not hearing it back and not knowing hurts too. I just feel so alone and I know it’s my own fault but I still feel that way.” By the time I’m don
e rambling, he has stood from his position on the bed.
He kneels down on the floor and pulls my feet off the heater. He splits my legs and moves so his torso comes to a stop right in the middle, my feet on the floor and his knees between them. He laces his arms around my waist, and I’m looking down into his eyes that gleam in the little bit of light coming in from outside.
“You are not alone,” he says, each word punctuated with emotion. “I’m here with you on this journey, Amber. Whatever you find out tomorrow, I’m right here. Wherever you want to take that information and however you want to handle it, it’ll be with my hand firmly holding yours.”
I relax a bit at his words, his soft voice lulling a tiny edge of the anxiety inside to rest.
“I don’t hate you,” he says, his voice raspy and soft. “I could never hate you. But you hurt me, too, and I’m scared you’re going to do it again. I don’t know how to move past what happened. And I can’t be with someone if I’m always going to wonder whether she’s moments away from dumping me again.”
Silence engulfs us, and then he tips his chin up and raises himself up enough so we’re eye level. “But I don’t know if I can be without you, either.” After he says those words, his lips collide into mine.
His mouth opens to mine and this kiss is deep and passionate and different.
He kissed me briefly at the airport but pushed me away. That was a mistake in a moment of unbridled passion after he couldn’t let me go. It was rough and fast. Too fast.
But this...this one is leading somewhere, and I don’t just mean toward the bed, though I wouldn’t complain if that was the case.
It’s leading us into a potential future where we’re both open and honest about our feelings and our fears and our reservations.
His arms tighten around me, and mine link around his neck and he kisses me slowly, like he’s savoring the feeling of our tongues brushing together as he luxuriates in how this feels to finally be kissing one another the way we should have been kissing this entire time.
