Page 25 of Anywhere with You

After Cara explained Mesmio to Mildred and Jeffrey, much more patiently than I would’ve managed, they were excited to be a part of our road trip video blog, as Cara generously described it.

I tended to think of it as proof of life for family members and random crap for our few dozen other followers.

I recorded Cara from my seat as she talked, then recorded Mildred’s reaction, some travel tips from Jeffrey, and ended with a few anecdotes from Mildred.

“I almost got eaten by a moose!” she exclaimed. “But that’s nothing. Jeffrey saw a Bigfoot.”

“It was not Bigfoot,” Jeffrey protested.

“You thought it was.”

“Momentarily.”

“What was it?” Cara asked, fascination in her voice. I glanced at her. No to aliens but yes to Bigfoot? What kind of sense did that make?

Mildred chortled. “A woman with curly hair in a fur coat. Jeffrey was hiding behind a bush taking her picture, and she was trying to relieve herself in privacy.”

Cara and I were both laughing, and poor Jeffrey had the kind of translucent skin that couldn’t conceal a blush.

Mildred started in on a new story before we’d gotten control of our laughter.

I was starting to worry that they would never stop talking when we, Cara’s car included, slowed to a stop outside a shady-looking repair shop in a town whose name I didn’t catch.

I offered to talk to the mechanic because Mildred wanted help putting the videotape app on her phone.

Cara agreed quickly enough that I suspected she, too, thought she was getting the better end of the deal.

* * *

When I got back to the RV, Cara looked somber, though I was the one with the bad news.

“They said they won’t even be able to take a look at it until tomorrow,” I said. “But there’s a motel and a diner across the street, so we won’t have to sleep on the street or starve.”

“I don’t want to abandon you here,” Mildred said.

“Mildred, we can’t—”

“Shut your face, Jeffrey. I can do whatever I want.”

“We’ll be fine,” Cara said hurriedly. “Really. You’ve helped us far more than we could’ve hoped, and I’m sure the car will be a quick fix.” She glanced at me, then away, as though she didn’t want to know if I disagreed.

Between my wet clothes and the RV’s very effective air conditioning, I was visibly shivering by that point and unable to stop. Still, I tried to reassure Mildred and drag Cara away across the gravel parking lot at the same time.

The rain had stopped, at last, and the air felt marginally warmer.

“I’ll send you a videotape on the phone as soon as I figure out how to make one,” Mildred promised through her open window.

“She’ll have it figured out in no time,” Jeffrey said. “She’s already a whiz at the Candy Crush .”

Cara and I waved good-bye and went to unload our suitcases from her broken car.

“I’m sorry,” I said, patting the hood.

“Are you talking to the car or to me?” Cara asked, grinning.

“Uh, you,” I said quickly. “Normal people like me don’t talk to cars, especially weird orange ones.” I leaned down and said in a mock whisper, “I don’t mean it. You’re beautiful.”

Cara rolled her eyes and led the way to the motel.

“What?” I said. “I’m allowed to change my mind. Bessie’s a good car.”

“Don’t name her. And Bessie ? Really?”

We were both ravenous, but too cold to consider sitting in a chilly diner until we both had a shower and put on dry clothes.

We got checked into the motel, which—surprise!—had an abundance of vacant rooms. By the time we lugged our suitcases inside, I was hungry enough to snack on one of Cara’s peanut butter granola bar bricks.

We both groaned with relief when we got our wet shoes off, and we laughed at the synchronicity.

Cara said it was my turn to shower first, and I selfishly didn’t argue.

I was pretty sure the tile in the bathroom was older than me, and the carpet around the beds was worn flat and slightly sticky.

After my shower, I dressed in jeans and the only long-sleeved shirt I’d brought, then immediately put my shoes back on.

I couldn’t tell if the carpet had a pattern somewhere under the grime or just stains.

The room had a painfully loud window unit with a protruding fringe of mold, a beat-up mini fridge, a microwave that looked like it hadn’t been safety tested since the 1960s, and no TV. Also no coffeepot, not even the crappy little single serving ones that weighed less than a banana.

And like a rom-com gone awry, there was one queen bed. And the bathroom didn’t lock.

I recorded some sarcastic comments while Cara showered, leaving out the name of the poor motel that probably didn’t see many visitors here in the middle of nowhere. But their disturbing holographic wall art demanded criticism.

I dried my hair with Cara’s dryer, something I rarely bothered to do with my long, thick mess, but after spending the last several hours with wet hair, I was more than tired of the feeling. I closed my eyes as the heat took away the last of the chill from the rain.

When Cara still hadn’t emerged, I dug out one of my Mary Oliver collections and read, but I was still too hungry to focus.

I patiently waited an entire thirty seconds after Cara was out of the bathroom before asking, “Ready for food?”

“I need like five minutes for makeup,” she said, digging in her suitcase. She was wearing jeans with embroidered flowers at the hem and a tight yellow shirt that brought out the gold in her eyes.

“You’re beautiful just as you are.”

“You’re starving, I know. Just mascara. I promise.”

“ Soooo beautiful.”

She rolled her eyes, and I watched her brush her wet hair and darken her eyelashes, which seemed to make absolutely no difference. I made a little dancing movement toward her with the red lipstick I’d bought in New Mexico, and she rolled her eyes at me again. But she put it on.

“Oh my God, can I have your autograph?” I breathed.

She laughed, a shockingly lovely sight with her bright red lips. “You’re so weird.”

We ordered far too much food at the diner.

Cara, too, must have noticed the dented mini fridge in the motel room.

Our young waiter— Lane (they/them) , according to the words in thick black marker under the diner logo—wore a blue and white checkered diner dress, complete with a lace-edged apron.

They were probably in their early twenties, with sparkly blue eyeshadow and neatly combed goatee.

They looked from Cara to me and then at the long list on their order pad and just shook their head.

“I think Lane doubts our hunger,” I said.

“I think they doubt our stomach capacity, and they may have a point. What do you think, Lane? Did we overdo it?”

Lane looked at us both again, the goatee not quite disguising their smile. “I have faith in you,” they said, then took our order to the kitchen.

When I turned back to Cara, she was looking at me.

“What?”

“Do you always learn everyone’s name?”

I shrugged. “It’s a good business practice, when you can learn your regulars. Makes them feel special.”

“Hmm,” she said, still looking at me.

I took my phone out of my pocket and snapped her picture.

“Stop. I look like a wet rat.”

I snapped one of her with an angry face and turned my phone around so she could see.

“This is perfect,” I said. “It’s quintessential Cara, mad at me for being so charming. That’s what the description will say.”

“I do rock the lipstick,” she said, examining the photo.

“You do. Now tell me what Mildred did to freak you out.”

“What?”

“After I talked to the mechanic—Bill, by the way—I came back to the RV, and you looked like you’d seen a ghost. Not just a ghost, the ghost of a tax auditor asking to see your last five years’ returns.”

“Hah, accountant joke,” she said, then grew serious. “It wasn’t Mildred.” Cara looked at her phone, and at first I thought she was ignoring me, but then she turned it so I could see.

It was our Mesmio profile. In our profile picture, we are in bright sunlight. I’m laughing with my mouth wide open, and Cara is rolling her eyes at me. There is a glimpse of shining white behind us, and I realized we were at White Sands National Park.

Right then, I thought: That’s the picture I’ll get printed from this trip. We look happy and carefree, and God, I’d love to have a picture beside my bed that doesn’t have Bridget in it.

I shook my head. “What am I…?”

But then I saw it. We had passed one hundred thousand followers and half a million likes.

“Whoa,” I said, feeling the same nausea that Cara must have felt when she first saw those numbers. I read them again, counting the individual digits to be sure. But there it was. Not a thousand, not ten thousand, one hundred thousand.

“It’s a good thing,” Cara said, her voice a little high.

“Sure,” I said. “But…why, exactly?”

Cara met my eyes across the table. “I don’t know.”

I thought about it until Lane brought our food, and then I focused on my French toast and hash browns because I have my priorities straight in life.

“It doesn’t change anything,” I said, once we had finished our first platefuls. “The numbers, I mean,” I said.

“Right.” Cara stabbed a sausage. “We just keep recording for the sake of the trip. Then we’re done.”

For the sake of the trip. For our show the world we’re fine plan. For our exes.

It was funny how quickly they’d ceased to be the point.

Honestly, the only reason I could come up with for continuing to record at all was that I wanted these memories of our trip.

I wanted to thumb through them when we got home, and again in a year, and in five years.

I wanted to remember the amazing time when I got to see a little more of the world and got to know Cara better.

I didn’t want to forget a single moment.

Except for the terrifying jackrabbits. I would happily forget them.

Too soon, we’d be home. It was probably too late to see Muir Woods. We’d be back in Houston in a few days, back to real life.

I pictured the envelope on my desk and the alternate reality of this week, the one where Cara never walked through the door of Strings & Things. The one where I spent a week trying not to fall apart, desperate to keep my business and my home, sleeplessly holding all the what-ifs in my hands.

What if I’d loved Bridget better?

What if she’d loved me, too?

In this reality, those weren’t the important questions.

These were: What if I’d never gotten to spend this time with Cara?

What if I’d never heard her laugh or sing or snore?

I couldn’t stand the thought. I wasn’t perhaps on the vacation of my dreams, stuck here in a town from a Stephen King novel, but I was undeniably better off than I would’ve been at home, actually dealing with my problems like a boring, responsible adult.

After we were both full of greasy food, we took our doggie bags and walked slowly back to the motel.

The night was cool, nice in comparison to the heavily air-conditioned diner.

I wondered if Cara still felt the chill of being out in the rain and if there were extra blankets hidden somewhere in the motel room.

It was fully dark now and more evident than ever that we were in the smallest of small towns.

There were four streetlights, the motel light, and the restaurant light, which switched off a few minutes after we left.

The auto repair shop was dark, and the few houses we could see had nothing more than a lamp or two shining through the windows.

I looked up and stopped completely, gasping out loud. I reached out for Cara’s arm to stop her, too. She looked at me, then followed my gaze.

I could see maybe ten stars from my house in the Houston suburbs.

Here, there were billions. They shone in faint colors, not uniform in size or shade as I’d always assumed before. Here, I could see that they were rich in variety, merging in a bright path across the middle of the sky.

“There’s no moon tonight,” Cara whispered.

She hadn’t pulled away from my hand, and I was glad because nothing else rooted me under that vast wonder.

She was so close that I could smell her shampoo, not whatever miniature bottles the motel offered, but her own, a fruity smell with a hint of coconut.

I took a deep breath, moving an inch closer.

I would swear that I could feel the heat of her body from where I stood. We were only ever a couple of feet apart in her tiny car, but it was nothing like this, standing so close to her, aware of exactly where her body would touch mine if she would take one more step.

“I don’t want to be weird,” I whispered back, still looking straight up at those incredible stars, “but I’d like to kiss you right now.”

Instantly, my heart started pounding like I’d just finished running from a javelina.

Had I actually just said that? The impulse to do something or say something, to touch her and kiss her and pull her against me, had been strong and growing.

I just hadn’t realized that the impulse was about to jump out of my mouth and possibly make the rest of this trip extraordinarily awkward.

Cara looked at me, but she didn’t seem startled. She didn’t move away. Her eyes moved from my eyes to my mouth and back again, and I felt her gaze like a touch. I shivered.

“Our room has one bed,” she said.

“Yes,” I said, my thumping heart suddenly very much liking where this conversation was going.

“Like a bad rom-com setup.”

“Yes?” I asked, like maybe that was a good thing?

“Then, no. At least,” Cara said, sounding thoughtful, “at least, not today. Ask me again tomorrow?”

Then she kept walking toward the motel as though that was a normal request.

“Okay,” I said and followed her, my attention still torn between the sky and Cara.