Page 60 of Over the Edge

I do my best impression of a statue as I watch them leave. The hand on my back pulls away and Garrett steps around to face me. To my relief there’s no pity in his eyes. He’s his same sturdy self, and I really need to lean on someone right now.

“Let’s go somewhere you don’t have to pretend to be okay,” he says, low and reassuring.

“I’m great.” The lie comes easily.

“You don’t have to be with me.”

“So, you have a time machine we can hop in and go back to yesterday?” I choke out.

“Fresh out of time machines.”

“Damn, then why do I keep you around?”

Garrett pulls into the same overlook he took me during our tour. Wordlessly, he turns off the engine of his truck and hops out. It’s oddly more intimate to be in the old Ford than Alina’s convertible. There are traces of him all over even though it’s pristine. The fresh, expensive smell of bergamot that clings to the air and the faded leather seats. How the gear shift has been rubbed smooth with a lasting impression of his steady grip.

My phone comes to life from where it’s resting on my lap, lighting up the cab.

Quinn

Sorry for the ambush. We were planning on getting a hold of you after we settled in.

Though the text is from Quinn it distinctly sounds like Oliver with the amount of tentative concern strung through the message. No doubt she handed him her phone.

Evelyn

All fine. Talk to you tomorrow.

I tuck the phone in my pocket then exit the truck, the door creaking as I push it open. When I find Garrett lowering the tailgate, he offers me his hand and helps me up. His hand feels like the only real thing, rough, warm, and familiar. Then he’s gone again, and I feel like I’m floating. A moment later he joins me, the vehicle dipping under his weight.

The night sky sprawls overhead, a sea of stars with the occasional island of a cloud. I want to get lost in all of it, swim away in the cosmos. I want to feel as insignificant as I do when I’m people watching. I want to feel like a speck of dust and that my problems can be carried away in the wind.

Garrett’s low measured voice breaks through the night. “You know, I’m fucking terrified of the day this truck stops working. Fletcher's dad was the one who gave it to me when I was sixteen. It’s like this deal with the universe. If I keep fixing the truck and if I keep coming back to help Alina with her house and play music for her, then I can still belong here. I can still keep coming back even though I promised I’d get the hell out and make a good life for myself,” he says. His words loop around me like we’re two rock climbers tethered on a mountain and he’s the only thing keeping me from hitting rock bottom. “When I came back for my first winter break, I was scared that people would just forget me. It sounds so dumb but I was fourteen and I didn’t have a househere anymore. My mother had moved to Florida on a whim, and I hadn’t heard from her for months. I told you I have a tough time with this place, that’s true. But I’ll never be able to let go of it because it’s proof that I’m worth something.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I ask, awestruck by his rare moment of vulnerability.

“Because I want you to know that if you have things you feel like you can’t tell anyone else…you can tell them to me. You don’t have to, but you can.”

It’s like all the conversations I’ve never had rattle on the shelves where I store them in the back of my mind.

I try to return his leap of faith with the truth. “I just want them to be happy. I know that sounds like a cop out, but that’s all I’ve ever wanted for them. I think it was just the shock that rattled me. Like I was really coming to terms with all the distance between us.” For so long, not responding, not talking, has allowed me to pretend that the three of us were frozen in time. But that’s just a pretty lie. Of course, life kept going. Going without me. “We used to do everything together. Now, I guess, they’re doing everything without me. I should have known that already. I needed to see it.”

“I’m sorry.”

Guilt lances through me. I chose this. No matter how lonely I feel, I don’t get to feel sorry for myself. There’s an ache in me in the chamber of my heart I carved out for Oliver and Quinn. A monument. Over the last week, I started to forget it.

“It’s not like it’s your fault.” I nudge Garrett with my knee. “You didn’t have to do that in the bar. Pretend to be with me. Thank you, though.”

“I didn’t want you to deal with that alone,” he says. “And I’m pretty sure they thought we were together before they stepped foot into the place. You know me, I like to exceed expectations.”

“I swear, if I told people how funny you can be they’d never believe me.”

“Maybe that’s on purpose,” he says, looking at me in that secret way. No one would believe me because to them this man didn’t grow up here, getting his hands dirty as he learned how to fix trucks and coming up on weekends to help his neighbor. They only get the smallest possible piece of him.

But I get this, however much that amounts to.

“Still, you didn’t have to do any of that. I can figure it out.”

“I owe you for the Barlowes.”

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