Page 52 of Fun at Parties
“That’s…wow.” Nate looks stunned.
“I deleted it as soon as I saw it, so maybe—hopefully—the woman didn’t see it. It’s such an awful thing to say. Being supportive is one thing. But spinning something like this into a positive is a slap in the face. It makes mesick to think I’m responsible for making someone in that situation feel worse. Some things just suck.”
“Some things just suck,” he repeats. His eyebrows are raised meaningfully. It’s not the kind of thing I usually say out loud, but I’m at my limit here.
Every day, my work situation feels like it’s spinning out of control faster and faster. By now, a week into this trip, I shouldn’t feel like this. I need to be on my way back to the place, mentally, where I skip into the studio every day. But I’m only getting further away, and this talking-to-Tracy game isn’t helping. It’s just dredging up things I don’t know how to fix.
I try to breathe through the heavy weight on my chest. And then I see him.
“Religious billboard,” I say.
“Are you—”
“Religious billboard,” I repeat.
Jesus is here to save me.
No, seriously. It’s a square on my bingo sheet: religious billboards. This one is a painting of Jesus in a wheat field, surrounded by crops up to his chin so only his face is visible. There’s a rest stop just past it, so we pull in.
Nate puts the car in park. “Why is he lurking like that? It looks like the opening of a scary movie. ‘In a world…where more and more Americans are developing gluten intolerance…one man, his father, and the Holy Spirit will do anything to save the wheat industry.’ ”
I slap a hand over my mouth. And then a joke comes to mind—a horrible, evil joke, that I can’t possibly say out loud, except to him. “Wow,” I say. “Both of the ingredients in Communion wafers in one picture.”
“Holy shit.” He ducks his chin and shields his face, sure signs that he’s laughing. His shoulders shake, which is confirmation, but that’s not enough for me. I want to see it all, so I pull his hand away, revealing the full expanse of his smile. “No,” he moans, trying to yank his hand back, but I cling to it.
“Show me,” I demand in an exaggerated growl, sounding more like Cookie Monster than any sort of intimidating horror movie deity. That only makes him laugh harder, and now his eyelashes are wet with tears.That.That’s what I want, that’s my brief moment of joy in the slog.
Nate pops into the travel center after we use the restrooms, while I head back to the car. When he returns, I’m waiting in the driver’s seat. He hands me a Diet Coke and shoves whatever else he bought in the backseat, next to his duffel bag. We’re back on the road with empty bladders and Jesus in our rearview, and it’s time for a vibe shift. I’m not going to let him revive the CycleLove conversation.
“Okay, new music,” I announce.
Nate frowns. “What’s wrong with my music? That was boygenius.”
“Everything you listen to sounds like sad people crying on the beach,” I say. “No offense.”
“Wow.” He severs the Bluetooth connection. “Have you ever had someone say something about you, and it’s something you’ve never noticed, but you realize it’s accurate as soon as you hear it?”
I grin and hand him my phone. “You can pick. My playlists are all amazing.”
He grumbles, but scrutinizes the options carefully ashe scrolls along “Oh, definitely this one. ‘Seapoint Nostalgia.’ ”
My stomach flips. I’m not sure a trip down memory lane is the best idea, but before I can figure out a tactful way to tell him to choose something else, the first track comes on. Thankfully, it’s one that contains zero emotional baggage. It’s not even technically a song. It’s the audio from the “I shipped my pants” Kmart commercial we used to quote endlessly, for reasons I was not sober enough to commit to long-term memory. I crank the volume up and shoot him a look, daring him to complain.
“A classic,” he says. It switches to a Pitbull song Logan and Bailey used to sing as an operatic duet the year after we graduated college. “You’ve been holding out on me. I can’t believe this is the first time I’m hearing this playlist.”
“I was going to play it on the way from L.A. to Tahoe. But…” We’re veering toward the emotional baggage. “When I saw you, I wasn’t in the mood for reminiscing. I was breathing red that whole drive.”
“Breathing red? Like seeing red?”
Oops. I didn’t mean to say it that way. “No. It’s this thing I do. Or picture in my head. I don’t know, I’ve never explained it to anyone before. It’s going to make me sound nuts.”
He turns the volume down a smidge. “Well, now I have to know, or I’m going to assume you’re secretly a dragon.”
I smile. “Senior year of high school I took a psychology class. One day, my teacher turned out the lights, had us lie on the floor, and played a guided meditation. The voice said to imagine that every tense muscle in your body was red, and then visualize it turning green as youbreathed in and out. I was super tense—that was when Jolee was falling apart.”
“Okay,” he says slowly. “And this meditation thing helped?”
“No. I don’t know. But it stuck with me. When I’m feeling something bad, I imagine it as a red cloud inside me.”
