Page 72 of Fun at Parties
“The dry cleaner? That makes no sense. There’s no place to sit. The ambiance is all wrong.”
“We should see if splurging on the Ultimate wash gets us free counseling. Maybe somebody pops out from behind those bushes and talks us through it. Who are, like, the celebrity relationship experts? Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson?”
“You,” he says. “Pretty sure that’s supposed to be you.”
I cross my arms.
He rubs his mouth, hiding a smile. “I want to give it my full attention, which I won’t be able to do on the road. And I don’t want to wait until Nashville.”
“Why are you so chill about this?”
“Trust me, I’m not.”
“You greeted me this morning with a perfectly garnished beverage and a bathroom fingerbang,” I counter.
He actually blushes, and my chest warms. “I’m not chill,” he grumbles reluctantly. “I just want to do this the right way for once.” He shakes his head. “Let’s do Super-Duper.”
He pulls into an empty bay, and a metal arm whirrs as it extends toward the car from its spot against the wall.
“It was good,” he starts. “Right?”
My mouth curves. “Yes. I meant it when I told Livvie I had a five-star experience.”
The arm circles the car, coating it in suds, covering the windows. For the next five and a half minutes, nothing exists except us in here, and I think Nate was right about this being the ideal spot for this conversation.
“So does that mean you want to…” He trails off and turns toward me. I mimic him. He continues, “Fuck it, I’m going to be completely honest. It was the best night ever. You—we—I like being with you, and I don’t want to stop.”
His voice is unsteady, and the hand he’s resting on his leg is balled into a fist. He’snervous.But he’s not shutting down, or cracking jokes. He’s telling me the truth, and that alone makes me feel as light and bubbly as the rainbow fluff peppering the car. “Great.” I clear my throat. “Yes. Let’s not stop.”
“And after Bailey’s party…”
“It ends,” I say. “If things were different, it wouldn’t have to. But we’re going to be living on opposite coasts. We can be mature about it, right? I’m just grateful we get this time together.”
A rumble sounds as a high-pressure stream of water clears away the soap, rivulets dripping down the windows as sunlight appears in the gaps. Nate looks outside, his eyes going distant. “I’m smart enough, I guess, to know that for me this is a bad idea, because it’s going to hurt in the end. But that’s not enough to stop me.”
His sad smile crushes me, but it’s not enough to stopme either. The sign in front of us that indicates when to stop and go lights up with a green arrow. “Proceed,” a robotic voice instructs. But the sign must be broken, because the red X is still there, telling us to stop at the same time.
Chapter 24
Five hours later, we’re stuckin traffic somewhere southeast of St. Louis. Construction workers in neon vests mill around next to the road, and the air smells like fresh asphalt. It’s stop-and-go, but according to the navigation, we’ll be rolling along again within a couple miles. While we wait, I play Florence + the Machine and sing along badly, and Nate seems content to indulge me.
He adjusts one of the air-conditioning vents. “You have a lot of energy for someone who took twenty-nine thousand steps yesterday.”
“I’m in a good mood.” I toss him a goofy wink. “I’m with you, after all.”
He tries to kiss the cheesy smile off my face, but it blooms again as soon as he pulls away. “I think it has more to do with the thirty-six ounces of soda you drank at the gas station.”
That’s partially true. I drink half-caff coffee, and I’ve mostly given up the Diet Coke habit I picked up years ago from my mom. A DC fetish was the norm for Jolee consultants—that or wine, or both. When they leveled upto Orchid, in fact, the company thanked them with a gift: their very own fountain soda machine. Of course, they had to pay for the installation, the CO2, and the syrup themselves, and the maintenance was a pain in the ass, which is why Mom took lots of photos of hers but still sat in the McDonald’s drive-thru twice a day to pick up a drink.
The caffeine and carbonation overload may partly explain why I’m bouncing off every surface of the car like a drunk Roomba, but there’s more to it than that. I also get to spend the day with Nate’s hand on my thigh, my fingers scratching the back of his neck while he drives.
When we stopped in St. Charles, Missouri, earlier, we browsed the antique shops and ate club sandwiches on a shady patio under a tree gnarled with character. The temperature was perfect, a lovely gray-haired woman was playing guitar, and Nate’s knee was touching mine under the table. If I made a deal with the devil to experience a perfect day, this would be it.
Before we left, Nate took photos of me on a quaint red-brick street in my favorite All & Every set. He didn’t make any snarky comments, but he did sneak in one zoomed-in shot of my nostrils and immediately sent it to himself so he could make it the background on his phone. I spent the next hour on the road working on the caption for a new post.
There are a lot of new faces around here, so I thought I’d reintroduce myself! My name is Quinn Ray, and I’m a pop music fanatic, an East Coast girl living the dream in Los Angeles, and an instructor for CycleLove—the greatest fitnesscommunity on the planet. I’ll be back on the bike soon, but right now I’m SO lucky to have time off to recharge my batteries on a cross-country adventure that will end in a birthday celebration for my very best friend.
You may have seen a video recently of me getting a little, uh, fired up about my personal life. Over the past couple weeks, I’ve heard from a lot of lovely people who’ve told me that video resonated with them, which is amazing. And one of the most common things they’ve opened up to me about—other than their romantic relationships—is their friendships. It warms my heart to know people are out there trying to do better with their friends, because that’s so important. We’re all busy, and when we juggle work, dating, health and fitness, hobbies, and friendship, we’re bound to neglect a few things, and so often friends are one of the first balls we drop. Maybe because we feel like our friends will always be there, so they don’t need as much attention. But even the most solid bond deserves to be nourished, and the fact that we trust our friends to show up for us (and vice versa) shouldn’t make them less of a priority. It should make them a bigger one.
