Page 8 of Before We Say Goodbye
Otis crossed his arms and looked down at his lap.
“What?” she asked.
“This is not the pep talk I need a month before I start school.”
“Sorry, should I go sit somewhere else?” She started to get up.
He grabbed her arm, almost too desperately. “Are you kidding me? If you get out of this seat, I’ll jump out the window.”
She smiled and sat back down. A welcome moment of levity descended. “If you jump, then I’m going to feel bad the rest of the trip, and then I won’t be able to enjoy the music.”
“Oh, dear. I wouldn’t want to spoil your trip.”
“Not to mention, who’s going to shovel you off the pavement? How about the traffic pileup you’d cause? The emotional damage to all involved. And if I miss Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, I’ll come find you in the afterlife and throw you out another window.”
“You’re right. It would be terribly selfish of me.”
They looked at each other with subtle smiles that threatened to crack the bus wide open.
“It would be nice for the vultures,” Rebecca added, not breaking eye contact. “They probably haven’t eaten all day.”
“Fair point. I do love animals.” Otis nearly broke his jaw smiling so hard. “Besides, does the world really need another writer?”
She let her smile fade. “I don’t know about another writer, but something tells me we do need you.”
Otis retreated into his bashful self and looked away. “You just haven’t gotten to know me well enough.”
Rebecca slipped her arm around him, like the way a boy might do to his pal. “Sounds to me like you’re as lost as I am. Maybe we can be lost together, Otis Till.”
That moment may have been the first time in his life that he hadn’t felt lost.
“It is nice to think about dreams,” she mused, half to herself. “Maybe they do come true from time to time.”
“And the light doth shine,” Otis said. “What would yours be then? Not to stand in the way of your father’s murky take, but let’s assume achieving our dreams is possible, a notion to which I do subscribe.”
“Listen to you, Dream Seeker.” She pulled one leg up and folded her arms around it. Her gaze went toward the windshield. “I have noidea, but I’d like to think that I could make a difference, you know. Do something to make the world a little better.”
Her simple words shattered him. Perhaps his writing could do something good for the world, but he’d never once considered how what he did could impact others.
He pulled off his hat and held it on his lap. “It’s people like you who should be in control. We’d be far better off.”
“Who are people like me?”
He met her eyes and patted his chest. “The ones with big hearts.”
“My big heart and your big dreams. We make a pair, don’t we?”
Utah. Wyoming. Nebraska. Iowa. Otis wished they were going to Mars, because all he wanted to do was keep talking to her, keep exploring her mind, soaking up this feeling bubbling inside.
Rebecca had a side that he had yet to unearth, a room with a locked door. Never had he met a cheerier person, but every once in a while, she would retreat into herself. They sat next to each other every day, chatting some with others, but mostly the two of them, an attraction so intense that Otis would look out the window and realize he’d missed an entire state’s worth of the drive. Of course, Otis worried that the attraction was quite possibly and most surely one-sided, but he tried not to dwell on that part.
At night, everyone slept in tents or stretched out on the floor of the bus. Perhaps any other man would have made his move by then, but Otis slept out under the stars by himself, bidding good night to Rebecca after dinner. Each night he would walk away, wondering what she was thinking. Was she sad that he left her or was she grateful that he’d understood his place in her world, namely, as a friend? He hated himself for his lack of courage, but he thought her potential rejection would cut so deep that he would never recover.
It was in a campground somewhere east of Chicago when Rebecca came to him at night. Scents of dwindling fires and charcoal grills lingered in the warm Midwest air. Near the bus, the guitarist strummed folk songs.
She appeared, standing between him and the moon.
A skinny band held her hair back over her ears, showing half-moon earrings. Glitter sparkled under her eyes. A floral kimono hung loosely from her shoulders, revealing a crochet bikini top and ample bare skin. An oversize belt held up a pair of corduroy trousers.
