Page 14 of Anywhere with You

I sighed, leaning my head against the passenger window. “Not now. In the seventies. Young Hawkeye.”

“So your only exception is a time-travel romance with a fictional Korean War doctor?”

“Can I have my fucking trophy back?”

“No.”

I blew a raspberry, and she laughed at me.

I’d met Bridget after college, at a club that was frequented by large numbers of senior citizens.

At first, I’d been sure that I was at the wrong place.

I was meeting up with friends from work, fellow accountants.

I spotted only one of them, right in the middle of the dance floor in a plaid shirt and jeans, line dancing with the best of them.

It’s not that I was opposed to line dancing.

On the contrary, it looked like fun and not too difficult for a newbie.

But I had twisted my ankle in Mom’s garden a few days before and had only agreed to a night out because I was craving a real martini and because several people from work had planned to meet here and hang out.

No one but Line Dancing Larry showed up.

I ended up at a table near a woman in a sunflower-print dress, her hair hanging loose past her waist. I’d never forget that. Bridget had cut it soon after, and it was beautiful then, too, but that day, she was like a real-life Rapunzel, without the creepy recluse vibes.

I’d been eyeing her when a tall, skinny, dark-haired guy in a cowboy hat came over and pulled her toward the dance floor. She had grinned at him, but when her eyes caught mine, they stayed there for a moment, time stretching out impossibly, until Lorenzo pulled her a second time.

Bridget stayed with him for one dance, and when she went to sit down again, someone else had taken her table. So she sat at mine.

Even then, it was clear how much she loved Lorenzo.

I told myself that it was a sibling-type love, and Bridget told me the same.

Still, sometimes they would laugh together at their own jokes, hands held and arms entangled, and I had to remind myself.

After all, there had been no reason they shouldn’t be together then, if they’d wanted to be.

They were both single. They’d been friends their whole lives.

Part of me, when I was being very, very generous, could sympathize with what they both must have gone through over the years, realizing that they had either been lying to themselves or each other, or maybe just changing as the years passed, as they recognized the future they had given up by marrying other people.

Lorenzo and Cara moved in together weeks after Bridget and I got married, and after that, everything was different. We had dinner at their house every few months, and they came to ours, but their friendship was an ember of what it had been in college.

Until it wasn’t anymore.

I told Cara the story now as we drove through a small town square, every building straight out of a 1950s movie set. I left out my observations on their difficult friends-to-lovers journey because I didn’t want to seem sympathetic to the lying, cheating trash bastards.

“Do you ever…” Cara said, then stopped, not taking her eyes from the traffic light ahead. “Never mind.”

“No, what?”

“No, really. It was a horrible question.”

“I won’t judge you. I promise. Keep in mind that I’m the person who just asked if you were L , G , B , T , or plus.”

Cara grinned, but it didn’t last. “Bridget,” she said. “Do you think that’s part of why…?”

“No,” I said, but I said it gently. “I don’t get to blame her cheating on her sexuality. We’re all real people. Real choices, real mistakes—”

“Real assholes. I know,” she said.

“Yes,” I confirmed. “Real assholes, both of them.”

Cara nodded, but she still looked sad.

“You can have the trophy for Best Bi if you want it.” I handed her an imaginary trophy.

Eyes never leaving the road, she took it with an emotional gasp and held it to her chest. “I’d like to thank the cast of the 1990s movie The Mummy …”

“Hilarious,” I deadpanned. “Okay, back to your education-and-whatever degree. Did you always want to teach?”

“I always…didn’t know what I wanted to do. I figured if I could teach, that would at least be a clear career path. Mostly my goal was to not have to move back in with my parents.”

I nodded, sure that she was watching me in her peripheral vision, even if she was focused on the road. “Same. So, do you like teaching?”

Cara shrugged. “It’s mostly fine. The testing requirements are ridiculous.

The state uses a huge portion of our pathetically small budget to contract with this company to do these statewide standardized tests, and everyone agrees that it doesn’t improve learning, only stresses out the kids, and basically wastes everyone’s time. ”

“I wonder how much the testing company contributes to the governor’s campaign.”

“Plenty. Are you into politics?”

I shook my head. “I vote, and I even donate and write letters when there’s an issue I’m passionate about. But I’m always torn between staying informed and staying mentally healthy, you know?”

“Definitely,” Cara said. “I never watch cable news, and I try to focus on local elections so I don’t feel so powerless. So yeah. I feel the same.”

“Back to teaching…again. What do you like about it?”

“I get to make a bunch of high schoolers dissect frogs. That’s always fun.”

“Watching people vomit is fun?” I asked, shuddering at my own memories.

“They rarely vomit,” she said, as though it was an absurd idea. “They mostly just complain. But there’s a few who understand that it’s a learning opportunity they haven’t had before. I mean, provided they aren’t filleting squirrels in their backyard.”

“Ugh, gross.”

“Yup.”

“Want a drink?” I asked, and she nodded. We’d finally maneuvered the cooler into a position where we could open it from the front seat.

I pulled out two sparkling waters, cold from the ice refill at the hotel that morning, and handed her one. Cara believes in refilling jugs and reducing waste, but she also loves her bubbles.

“So,” she went on, “those rare kids end up bent over the animal on their table, forgetting the formaldehyde stench, forgetting that their peers are watching, and exploring their world in a way a lot of them haven’t done since they were little kids and gathering up handfuls of roly-polys.”

I looked over at her, not wanting to miss the full import of what she was saying.

I wanted to listen to her as well as she’d listened to me, and for the first time, I realized that our conversations weren’t just killing time.

At least, they weren’t for me. I wanted to get to know Cara.

I was enjoying getting to know her and realizing that she was someone worth knowing.

Maybe I’d failed to notice that before, but I knew it now.

I also suspected that she didn’t have an abundance of friends, that like me, she worked a lot and that most of her friendships had been couple friendships, tenuous relationships that probably wouldn’t survive their divorce.

“That’s a good reason to teach,” I said, refocusing, “to give them that experience. Do you ever keep track of your old students?”

“Do I stalk them on social media, you mean?” she asked, glancing at me.

“Totally. I found a few sad stories, but a few good ones. One Olympic athlete, a foster parent, a kid who invented some kind of special shoe? More than one in prison. Some of my favorite kids grew up and got science degrees of their own. It’s nice to feel like I might’ve inspired that a little. ”

“You definitely did. Do you know why I ended up with an accounting major?”

“Hot professor?” she guessed.

I half turned in my seat to look at her. “How did you know?”

She laughed. “Are you serious?”

“Half serious.” I grinned at the memories.

Much better than frog dissection. “My parents had been going on and on for years about making sure that I had a plan after graduation. I always wanted to study music, but I didn’t want to get a teaching certification, and jobs in music outside of teaching are rare.

I didn’t want to try for a record deal. I just… ”

“You just wanted to enjoy music,” Cara said. “I just wanted to look for bugs in the dirt. It’s a shame that it’s so hard to find a place in the world when you don’t fit into the top one hundred careers.”

“Exactly.” I was a little startled that she’d understood so quickly. “So I tried a few different classes.”

“And you had a hot accounting professor.”

“And I had a hot accounting professor. And it was easy for me. I understand spreadsheets. And musical notation. It’s everything else in the world that’s difficult.”

“Did you like being an accountant?” she asked.

I laughed. “Of course not. But I hated it less than most things, and that makes me luckier than most people. Plus, it paid well enough that I could save up for the store, and if it turns out…If it turns out that I can’t keep the store open, it’s a good backup plan.”

Cara nodded slowly. “I hope you never need a backup plan.”

I looked at her, surprised again. She kept doing that.

“Thank you,” I said. “What about you? Any secret aspirations for the future? Is there an opera singer or a bank executive or college professor hidden somewhere in there?” I pretended to try to peer inside her ear without distracting her driving too much.

It made me sad when she seemed to deflate a little, her thoughtful expression turning sad. “I want a lot of things,” she said, “but none of them are career related.”

And as hard as I pestered, miles of road passing underneath us, she wouldn’t tell me a single one.