Page 10 of Anywhere with You

White Sands National Park had made both of our lists.

Cara and I picked up some tacos in Alamogordo, and I ate while I drove, despite Cara’s repeated reminder that I could just pull over.

“If it was a better taco, it would be worth my concentration,” I said. “As it is, the road is more interesting than what’s happening in my mouth.”

The road was completely straight and empty. Maybe New Mexico didn’t have spring break this week.

Cara and I had exhausted our chitchat, but she had, true to her word, made a list of conversation topics to keep us occupied on the drive.

“I’m sorry,” I said to Beyoncé as I turned down “Texas Hold ’Em.”

Cara ignored me. “What are your favorite things about yourself?”

“Skip.”

“I am not a CD player, and that’s not how this works.”

I pouted.

“Come on,” she said. “This isn’t even a hard one.

I’ll go first. I like that I’m curious.” She stared at me as I drove, as though expecting me to roll my eyes.

When I didn’t, she went on, “I think it’s something most people have, but most people lose as they grow up.

All those questions—why is the sky blue, what happened to the dinosaurs, how much salt is in the ocean? ”

“Nerd questions,” I pointed out.

“Exactly,” Cara said. “I want the facts. I want the answers. Some people say they were born in the wrong era. Not me. I need to google.”

I laughed. “Okay, I can understand that. But that’s really what you like most? Not your intelligence or your humor or…I don’t know, your curls? I don’t want to be shallow, but you have some pretty amazing curls.”

Her cheeks reddened, just a smidge. “I like those things, too, but if I had to pick one…”

“Curiosity.”

“Curiosity,” she confirmed. “Okay, now you.”

I could tell she was eager to get the focus off her, so I played along. “There are so many options.”

Cara shook her head in sympathy. “How will you ever choose?”

“You picked something all deep and thoughtful. I can’t just say I like my purple hair.”

“I mean, you can. I will judge you, though.”

I laughed. “I like…music.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Let me finish, Impatient McJudgy. It’s maybe not a surprise that music is a big part of my life. I can still remember…Never mind, that’s a long story. I don’t have to tell it. The answer is that my connection to music—”

“Tell it,” Cara interrupted again.

“What?”

“Oh no, wait. I do have a meeting I need to get to.” She looked pointedly at the miles of empty road ahead of us, then back at me, blandly demanding, “Tell the story.”

For a moment, I stared at the road, wondering when was the last time I’d been invited to talk about myself, my life, with someone who actually wanted to listen.

As if to make a point, Cara stopped talking altogether and waited.

“Okay,” I started, then kept looking ahead, thinking. “Okay,” I tried again. “When I was in middle school, I had a Savage Garden CD.”

Cara squeaked. Literally squeaked, then went quiet again.

“I assume that the mouse in the passenger’s seat also had a Savage Garden CD?”

She nodded with enough enthusiasm that I knew she would understand the rest of the story as well as anyone else could.

“So, I had been singing ‘Truly Madly Deeply’ along with all my preteen friends for weeks. I finally talked Mom into buying me the CD, which she did only because I swore I’d use the headphones I hated.

I preferred to loudly share my music with the whole household, and Mom’s never been a nineties pop fan.

And to be fair, it’s not the most musically or lyrically sophisticated song, right? ”

Cara nodded.

“Right after the last verse, one of the vocalists whispers—and it was hardly noticeable when I played it through the speakers, but unmistakable through the headphones—a breathy, quickly whispered I love you .”

Cara put her hands over her mouth, and I knew that she knew exactly what I was talking about.

“It gave me fucking chills. Not metaphorically. I had a physical reaction. Not my last, when it comes to love songs. And like I said, this isn’t a masterpiece.

But I caught a glimpse of what music could do, and I was awestruck.

Right then, I started begging for piano lessons, and I was very, very lucky to have parents who…

well, for all that they were brass players, they understood the feeling. ”

Cara didn’t rush to fill the silence after my words, but after a minute, she said, not in a critical tone, but just as though she wanted to be sure she understood, “That’s what you like most about yourself? Your love of music?”

“I think…I like that I’m a part of it. Like, as a woman, I’m a part of the history of womanness, in my own small way. It’s something I understand and belong to and also get to be a part of making and telling that story. I also understand and belong to and create music.”

After a moment, Cara let out a breath that sounded a little like, “Wow.”

Then she was quiet again for a long time, as though thinking about what I’d said, and I wanted to interrupt, to make a joke, but also, I wanted to keep the silence, to think about what she and I had both said, and about how and why I felt so breathless.

What did it say about my marriage that this was the first moment in years when I felt heard? There was something about the opened-up feeling that stripped away some of the loneliness I’d hardly noticed building up inside me.

We kept driving.

We were quiet, with the music still playing softly in the background, but it wasn’t Beyoncé anymore, and as the first rap song on my list started, Cara looked at the stereo with a dubious expression.

It was close enough to our usual time to switch drivers, so I told her to pull over.

“Are you kicking me out?” she asked. “I didn’t say a word about your music.”

“It’s your car, you…very nice person,” I said.

“You were just about to insult me, weren’t you? It’s okay. I can take it.”

I looked right into her eyes. “Your taste in music isn’t optimal. But you’re still very pretty. Now listen.”

While she pulled us back onto the road, I scrolled to a rap song I was sure she’d like. Dessa’s familiar voice filled the car. I turned up the volume.

We listened to “Fighting Fish” on repeat until we could get through the whole thing, Cara singing the chorus, and me rapping the verses.

We were loud and terrible, and it reminded me of high school lunches after the latest Britney Spears album dropped. Our table kept the whole cafeteria entertained, and I’d adored every moment. Maybe I needed to start up a Strings & Things choir club.

“I really admire that she can rhyme bitch and fish and pull it off,” Cara said. “That’s a rare talent.”

“She has kind of an obsession with dice and luck, too. Listen to this one.” I started “5 Out of 6,” which Cara liked even more, and followed that with every other Dessa song I’d downloaded, including her song on The Hamilton Mixtape .

“Oh, oh, oh,” Cara said. We had to listen to that one several times. “This song always makes me wish I had a sister.”

“Same,” I said. “Though I don’t think I’m enough like Angelica to be so devoted or enough like Eliza to deserve it.”

Cara glanced at me. “I don’t know about that. I saw you with Bridget. You were very Angelica. And I definitely think you deserve Eliza-level devotion.”

Her voice had that tone to it that women in my life always seemed to take when they were encouraging each other, the Girl Power or Womanly Solidarity tone, the no bullshit quirky friend teaching the main character to respect herself tone.

“You underappreciate yourself,” she said. “You deserve every good thing, Honey.”

“A billion dollars?”

Cara sighed and said, “Yeah,” but it was the yeah of the defeated. She knew I was being an ass.

“Cake?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“What about one of those T. rex skulls for decoration, the kind they put glass on so it also works as a side table?”

“God, no. I take it back.”

I laughed, then played “Fighting Fish” again. We sang until we reached White Sands.

* * *

We parked at the visitors’ center for maps, restroom breaks, and a sled that Cara took one look at and said, “Nope.”

“Come on,” I said. “It’s bright orange. You love bright orange.”

“I also like my bones unbroken.”

I ignored her. The sled, more of a shallow bowl in shape than what I’d normally call a sled, barely fit on top of our luggage and my guitar case in the back seat.

There was one other car in the parking area near the dunes, a minivan with sunburned, windswept children piling inside to leave.

We really did have the place to ourselves.

I changed into shorts that showed off my awesome guitar tattoo with watercolor-style rainbow strings and an olive green T-shirt.

It clashed with my purple hair, but I loved the fit.

I’d been wearing my hair loose, but now I braided it tightly.

Cara was flipping through a brochure. She was wearing a cream sundress with a lacy belt. It was definitely going to fly over her head in this wind, but since there was no one around but me, I didn’t bother pointing it out.

“Did you know that the sand is gypsum?” she asked, pointing at a line in the brochure. “That’s why it’s cool to the touch even when it’s hot outside.”

“Mm-hmm,” I said and unloaded the sled.

“Wow, there are forty-five species that only live within the national park.”

“Really?” The place seemed huge, but not big enough for that.

“Most of them are moths.”

“Ugh, okay. Let’s go.”

Cara was still straightening a wide-brimmed hat that she’d somehow located in the back seat when I started climbing the nearest dune.

My feet sank into the powdery sand, and I immediately kicked my shoes in the general direction of the car. Badger would’ve been rolling all over, getting sandy and matted and having a blast.

“I apologize,” I said to the dunes. “You are so much more than a sealess beach.”

The dune was easily taller than a two-story building. I hopped on the sled at the top with anticipation in my stomach and held on tight.

I slid. Slowly.