Page 8 of Fun at Parties
Well,nowit is. Jesus, Nate. My face heats, and I busy myself with my mirrors.
“I’m sorry,” he goes on. “It’s okay if you don’t want to do this. I know I invited myself.”
“Nate, it’s fine. Seriously.”
He looks at me, his face tight, his eyes careful. “You sure?”
I’m not anoperson. I’m ayesperson, and even though this isn’t what I wanted, I can find the upside. Like this: Today will prove that spending a significant amount of time with Nate is no big deal, so I won’t have to worry about seeing him at Bailey’s party. It’s an opportunity, really. Like exposure therapy.
If you can’t find a silver lining, you haven’t looked hard enough,Mom told me when I cried to her in the yogurtshop parking lot after making JV lacrosse instead of varsity. She had no tolerance for moping. She repeated that line about the silver lining every time she lectured a hotel conference room full of Jolee consultants clutching tiny plastic cups of cheap wine. It was supposed to motivate them, so they could go forth and motivate their downlines to sell more beauty products.
The search for silver linings is basically muscle memory for me at this point.
This shouldn’t be excruciating. Nate and I once successfully assembled an IKEA dresser in his old L.A. apartment without arguing, and we had to do ittwicebecause we put one side on backward. He’s a competent driver. With him in the car, I’ll only have to drive four hours instead of eight, and we’ll be able to split the cost of gas. What never quite happened between us shouldn’t be a big deal.
Maybe if things go especially well, when we get back to L.A. we can hang out like we used to, before the night we shared a bed and ruined our friendship.
I keep saying I want clarity. For the last two years, thinking about Nate has only made me confused. This is an opportunity.
“Don’t be silly,” I say. “This will be fun.”
His eyes narrow slightly and he angles his head, like he’s trying to locate a particular emotion on my face. Anger, or frustration. Being the object of his attention always makes my blood fizz, and I hope he doesn’t pick up on that as he scrutinizes me, hunting for microexpressions that surely aren’t there. All I’m doing is smiling.
“I’ll be out of your hair once we get there,” Nate says,reading my worries in the position of my left eyebrow or something. “Logan and I have something to work on this week, so I asked him to pick me up at your rental around four.”
Weird. Nate, the manager of a children’s swim camp, and Logan, a reality star / brand ambassador for probiotic seltzer, working on somethingtogether? And since when does Nate use his time off to do something other than surf or lounge around reading or watching baseball? “We should get going, then.”
Nate’s seat belt clicks into place. “So what prompted this trip?”
I stare at him. Does he even know about the breakup? I guess I can’t assume he’s kept up with my life, given the way he disappeared from it like I didn’t matter to him.
“I haven’t used my PTO, so I decided it was time for an adventure,” I say. “After Tahoe, I’m heading to Idaho, Wyoming, and South Dakota. Stopping at Yellowstone and Mount Rushmore. I’ll probably take my time out west since I’ve never visited before, then head to Seapoint so I can spend a few extra days with Bailey. I have flexibility, which is nice.”
That’s the beauty of this trip. Nothing is unchangeable; I can linger in the places that bring me peace, with no obligation to hang around the places that don’t. Like this parking lot.
“We should go.” I pull up Spotify on my phone. If I were alone, I’d kick things off with songs that remind me of Seapoint, but I’m not doing the nostalgia thing with Nate in the car. Instead, I press play on a boppy bubble-gum-pop mix and turn the key in the ignition.
“Ready?” I ask with as much enthusiasm as I can muster.
“Whenever you are,” Nate says with considerably less enthusiasm.
With that, we’re officially on the road, and it feels cosmically fitting.
The first time Nate and I met, I was behind the wheel of another car. That day ten years ago, I was struggling to parallel park two blocks from Bailey’s parents’ house in Seapoint, shivering in my linen sundress as I stuck my head out the window into the unexpectedly chilly wind coming off the ocean. Bailey was my new college bestie, whom I’d only met a few weeks prior during an orientation icebreaker game, and she’d invited me to her hometown to celebrate her birthday with her high school friends.
She’d cut class on Friday and come down early, so I drove down on my own that afternoon. There’d been a spot right outside the house, but there was no way I was going to let that freaking car dictate anyone’s impression of me. I hadn’t even let Bailey see it yet.
Right as I gave the steering wheel an aggressive turn to the left, a cyclist materialized out of my blind spot.
“Fuck!” I shrieked.
He braked hard, his flip-flops thwacking on the pavement as he skidded to a stop. His mouth was set in a hard, pissy line, but his blue-gray eyes didn’t hide a thing. I had scared him shitless.
I squeezed the steering wheel. “I’msosorry!”
He shook his head. “I can’t believe I almost got killed by a purple Range Rover.”
“That would’ve been awful for so many reasons.”I exhaled. That weekend in Seapoint, solidifying my new friendship with Bailey, was supposed to be part of my fresh start. It could not begin with vehicular manslaughter.
