Page 4 of Exit Lane
“And that was when I knew I would grow old with her.” Exhausted, she leans back into her seat, doing the hair-behind-her-ears thing again.
“How romantic.” I laugh, noticing a sign for a motel in four miles. I hadn’t wanted to interrupt her to make a plan, but the piecey sunset has given way to darkness. We have to sleep somewhere.
III
Marin
The warm air is getting to me. Or maybe it’s the darkness. There’s an explanation for the sudden urge I feel to share with Teddy all sorts of things I usually don’t or won’t—I’m just not sure what it is. My usual instinct, especially with new people, is to say less, knowing that control comes from restraint. But I feel an impulse, one generally reserved for flirtation, to see what happens if I give him a little more.
“Maybe Sloane and Carter are the best parts of Iowa, and now that we have them, we’ll never have to come back again.”
I smooth my pant leg and try not to make it obvious that I’m watching for how he responds. He’s less rigid now than he was when we merged onto the interstate four hours ago. His perfect posture has relaxed a little, and the lack of music feels less glaring, by some miracle. I feel tender toward him, which is unnerving—tender is not a feeling I experience, except toward my sister and Sloane. This near stranger has unexpectedly and abruptly transitioned from being someone I planned to ditch as soon as we crossed into Manhattan to one of the few people I’ll know there.Exit signs for Chicago and our first patches of traffic make me wonder when we’ll pull over for the night, but I realize I’m not actually ready for our back-and-forth to end.
“‘Never have to come back’ seems extreme,” Teddy starts, curious and compassionate at once. “Can I ask why? Why do you want that? And if it’s too much to share with your chauffeur, I get it.”
My usual instinct would be to slam the conversational door and get to our destination having exposed as little of myself as possible. But something prods, telling me that it’s safe to share, that this is the kind of person who can carry the grief and the sadness, even for a few minutes on the interstate. I don’t think twice.
“There’s nothing left for me there. After my dad died, it was all people saw when they looked at me—at us. So I’m going to get my sister out, too, when it’s time. Then we’ll get to be more than kids without a parent. She deserves the space to be more than that.”
“Marin, so do you, obviously. That’s so much pressure.” He glances down before looking at me, and his eyes look watery. “I said this before, but...” He tugs on his earlobe a little hard. “Your dad would be proud of you. Any dad would be. You’ve done a lot, and you’re only at the beginning.”
My breath catches. This was not my idea of Teddy or my idea of this road trip. Conversations about my dad usually feel like something to power through. My role is to say “I’m OK, I’m OK, I’m OK” or to answer the dreaded “What happened?” questions from people too fixated on their own potential future pain to grasp mine.Teddy’s ability to just sit with it and with me is not a level of empathy I’m accustomed to.
“Well, also, I have a hard time believing I’m going to find a great love story in Iowa,” I say, surprising myself.A great love story? Am I even looking for that?“Which makes another strong case for getting out into the world.” The comment lands somewhere between us, like a challenge or an omen. Teddy stares straight ahead. His jaw opens, closes, and opens again. I try to ignore the way his sunglasses dangle from the bright-white placket of his shirt and tug down the neck. My cheeks warm, and I consciously break the spell, forcing out a laugh before he can respond. “And there’s a good chance that, at the very least, the lay of my life is in New York, right?”
Teddy
I notice her short, neat nails; how her watch rolls on her wrist; and the way she lands her pointer finger on her lip in conversation without thinking. My eyes on the road, I grin every time I make her laugh, and I wonder what other objectives I had before I knew I could get my fix just from seeing her light up.
I am so fixated on memorizing what I can see from my peripheral vision that I almost don’t hear her when she instructs me to take the next exit into Joliet. I sit up straighter, check my mirrors, and remind myself that this is a rideshare, a favor to a woman who I’ve pined after for years.
I pull off the road as Marin directs me and take a deep breath as she climbs out of the car. Unfurling into a stretch, she reaches for the starry sky, revealing a sliver of stomach under her button-down. The parking lot lights catch her skin, and the sign for Envy’s Pub feels like it’s trying to tell me something. I take another long inhale and open my door.
Walking in together, I’m struck by our almost identical heights, and that I can be differently close to her now that there’s not a twelve-inch center console between us. It’s 9p.m. at a sticky dive four minutes off the highway with tater tots and chicken fingers on the menu. “We could have gone somewhere with, uh, a little less character,” I offer, clocking a man with an eye patch in the corner throwing darts with impressive accuracy.
“This is on-theme, Teddy,” Marin says, lighting a cigarette indoors, which feels apropos. Outside of the Buick, I can take her in the way I might at Donnelly’s. Marin’s not like any other twenty-two-year-old I’ve encountered. When she orders us Jamesons on the rocks, I note the certainty in her voice. There’s no inflection at the end that makes it sound like a question. There are no filler words. She knows what she wants, and that crystallizes what I want, too. Pushing the sleeves of her blazer up, she spins on her stool to face me—that sliver of a black lace bra peeking through, her legs open in my direction before she crosses them. Every move she makes enhances my regret that we spent the past four years on the same campus but never together.
“Tell me about your watch.”
She looks down, spinning the blue-faced Rolex. “It wasmy dad’s. After he died, I started wearing it around the house. Not exactly a popular look for a teen girl. But when I left for Iowa, I started wearing it every day.” She pauses and sips her drink. “I don’t usually talk about him so much. I’m sorry.”
“I like when you talk about him,” I say. I reach for a bar napkin and clear my throat. “My dad cheated on my mom in high school.” It comes out before I have a chance to consider that I’ve never told anyone that before. Carter knows—obviously, given the circumstances. We’ve talked around it. But I’ve never actually said that sentence aloud.
She winces. “And they stayed together? Your parents?”
I nod and fold the napkin on the diagonal, once, then twice.
She reaches for a napkin of her own. “Everyone has their shit.”
I take in Marin’s unfixed gaze, and the space between our barstools suddenly feels like a canyon. “Careful.” I pull my seat closer to hers so our legs have no choice but to touch. “You might not know me as well as you think you do, boss.”
We clink glasses as a plate of onion rings and an entire bottle of Ranch dressing land in front of us.
“Here’s to finding out.” Marin takes another sip, her eyes never leaving mine.
For an excruciatingly long moment, I don’t know what to say, what to do. I’m saved by Marin rolling her eyes. “Oh god,” she says. “This song.”
“‘Hotel California’? What’s wrong with it?”
