Page 12 of Before We Say Goodbye
Bec returned the egg roll back to her own lips. “That would be unlike any fortune I’ve ever read, but I can dig it. This is Rebecca Bradshaw, live in San Francisco, reporting for CBS News.” With that, she took a big bite of her egg roll and sat back with a smile.
Otis wished he could laugh at her exquisite absurdity. He tried his best to hide the wheelbarrow full of strife that came rushing through him as he pondered the fact that he had no idea what fortune or future he desired. Sure, he wanted to be with Bec, but there had to be more. Journalist or not, he needed to dosomethinggreat, to besomeonegreat. The hell if he was going to live anything less than an extraordinary life.
“Okay,” she said, “out with it. Why the sudden dark cloud over your head?”
“No, no, no, I’m not dragging you down with me.”
“Please, drag away. That’s what I’m here for.”
“That’s not true. Please let me deal with whatever this is on my own, and you be here waiting on the other side if I make it back.”
“Fine, then, I’ll move on to the fried rice and wait for you to poke your head back out, Turtle Boy. Don’t mind me.” She picked up her chopsticks and went about eating while looking out the window at a few straggling protesters.
“It really must be nice,” Otis said, “to not have a worry in the world. Let’s float through life and make jewelry and ceramic weed pipes fora living. We can raise our kids on a commune and teach them how to grow organic zucchini and bathe themselves in a lake.”
She dropped her chopsticks back into the bowl. “Does this mean I’m no longer waiting on you? Are you back already?”
Yes, dammit, he wanted to chat. She was the only one who could make him feel better when he felt like this, but he was also self-aware enough to know that he’d drive her mad if he couldn’t take a break from his worries from time to time.
Turned out she already knew what was on his mind—maybe because he’d nearly drowned her in his worries earlier that morning. “Otis, you’re seventeen. You have all the time in the world. We’re supposed to be having fun right now.”
He crossed his arms, wondering how she could be so easygoing about it. “I just ... I want to do something that matters. I know you’re tired of hearing about it—I’m certainly tired of talking about it—but I can’t let it go.”
“I adore your hopeful vision, handsome. You’re a windup doll with all this incredible energy, waiting to be pointed in the right direction, waiting to pick up the scent. Maybe it’s like love, Otis. Soon as you stop looking so hard, it might find you. In the meantime, let’s be teenagers. I don’t want to be an adult yet.”
He sighed out the whole world of his plagued confusion. “We’re not exactly kids. We’ll be married soon and have kids of our own.”
Her cheeks swelled. “All ten of them, right? In our palace on a cliff overlooking the ocean.”
“I was exaggerating. I’m okay with the two like we talked about. Still, we must figure out how to feed them, to clothe them. To send them to university. There’s no time for fun right now,” he insisted. “We must start making plans.”
Rebecca reached across the table to take his hand. “One day you’ll look back to this moment—you’ll taste the soy sauce and egg and green onion on your tongue—and you’ll see me over here wearing this dress that I made—and you’ll wish that you had fully immersed yourselfinto this moment and all the other moments that led to you finding what you’re—”
Otis hit the table, causing the glasses and bowls to rattle. He wasn’t exactly angry, simply bewildered. “I find it extraordinary that you can have such faith.”
Her lips straightened. “What gave you that impression? I barely have any faith at all. I don’t have big dreams; I don’t expect anything. I’m happy where we are, just the two of us, that’s all.”
“Would you be happy with me scrubbing sweet-and-sour chicken off the plates back there for the rest of my life?”
“Would that mean we get free duck sauce?”
Otis didn’t flinch. “You’re not nice. That’s all there is to it. I will dump duck sauce on your—”
“Otis, any faith that I have ... is in you. You make me a believer.”
He couldn’t have loved her any more in that moment. “I don’t know what I did to—”
“No way,” said a voice from behind Otis.
Rebecca let out a big grin. “Hunter!”
“The one and only.” A surfer type approached them and pulled Rebecca into a bear hug. He had a head full of curly hair and caterpillar eyebrows.
“What are you doing here?” Hunter asked, his chest nearly bursting out of his tight white shirt. He looked like he regularly paddled to Hawaii on his longboard.
“Finding my way, you know. Meet Otis, my fiancé.”
Otis rose. “How do you do?”
