Page 55 of Anywhere with You

“You’re beautiful just as you are.”

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

“Soooobeautiful.”

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.