Page 7 of Anywhere with You

Friday at five a.m., my phone vibrated with a text.

I fumbled my phone off the nightstand and had to hang half my body off the bed to see the screen.

The text said, Alicia Keys .

I smiled. I fell back asleep without looking at the wedding picture on my bedside table. But I was thinking about it. I seemed to always be thinking about it.

Four hours later, I was awake and caffeinated. I stopped by the shop to give Florence and Doug last-minute instructions that they did not need. Florence hugged me, and I patted her back.

What would happen if I couldn’t keep the store afloat? Now, without Bridget’s salary as a life preserver, I could already feel myself sinking, and it was terrifying to imagine pulling Florence and Doug down with me.

But I tried to shake it off as I left. I couldn’t solve it all today, and today was the last day I would think about it. I was going on vacation.

I picked up ice for the back-seat cooler full of drinks because according to Cara, “Convenience stores are the biggest scam ever.”

I argued that they were, instead, convenient but was ignored.

Another text came through: Florence and the Machine .

I texted back, I’m impressed. Now, get back to work. What are your students doing while you’re texting?

Oh, they’re texting, too. Nobody smiles as much at their own crotch as a teenager hiding a phone in class. I hope.

I laughed so hard that strangers at the supermarket stared at me.

I went home again long enough to pick up Badger, who was always hesitant about a ride in the car, but willing to go if it meant he didn’t get left behind. I didn’t tell him about the trip, only that he was going to see his other favorite people.

Before we got to the end of the block, he’d jumped all over me and the dash, then got his head stuck between the middle console and the passenger seat. He yipped pathetically until I stopped the car to free him. Then I turned the car around and went back home to get his carrier.

Mom met me at the front door with several packages of homemade monster cookies, putting them into my hands and going to take Badger out of the carrier.

Dad came out and scratched Badger’s head, then unloaded the bags of toys and food, the leash, the name and phone number for Badger’s vet, and twenty other things I was sure he absolutely needed.

Badger wiggled in my mother’s grip like his lifelong dream had just come true.

“Traitor,” I said. He looked at me with his uneven face and yipped.

“I know you’ve been through a lot, Honey, but I can’t see that running away is a good choice,” Dad said, herding us toward the house with his arms full.

“And with… her ?” Mom said. “Aren’t you worried that you’re just going to be in an echo chamber of anger the whole time? You need a healing environment. Why don’t you just tell her you’ve changed your mind and come relax here with us for a few days?”

“I’ll be fine. Cara and I aren’t wallowing anymore. It’s been almost two months. We’ve both been through the five stages of grief, or whatever. Is it only five? It seems like it should be more. And one of them should definitely be vacuuming. That would be handy.”

“Just a few days,” Mom wheedled. “A week at most. I’ll cook whatever you want.”

“That’s very much not going to happen,” I said, “but I appreciate your concern. Actually, that’s a lie. I don’t. But I do love you both, and I’ll take lots of pictures.”

They looked at me and sighed simultaneously, which made all three of us laugh.

Mom made me come in and have a cup of coffee before I left. It had never in my life bothered me to scoop sugar out of a Tupperware container, but today it occurred to me that Mom would adore a little sugar bowl and pitcher like Cara’s. And she had a birthday coming up.

“Where are you planning on sleeping?” Dad asked.

“Underpasses, park benches, the usual.”

Dad stared at me, waiting for a serious answer.

“Well, we realized that we’re not backpacking college students. We’re adults, so we’re going to stay in semi-nice hotels. But we’re also broke adults, so we’re sharing a room. We actually found a little cabin to rent once we get there, so we’ll wake up to the redwoods.”

“Oh,” Mom said a little wistfully.

“Want to come along?” I asked, grinning. I knew she’d say no, but I also knew that Mom had always loved traveling. In between college and my birth, she and Dad had been to three continents and over a dozen countries.

After that, money got tight. In part it was the expense of a difficult pregnancy and delivery, plus a year of unemployment after Dad was laid off when I was eight, plus my grandfather’s long illness, plus house repairs when the pipes—designed for Houston weather and not real winters—burst during a freak ice storm that lasted days and left most of the city without power, plus saving to help me pay for college, and to top it off, an economic system designed to make sure that we all struggle as much as we can until we’re dead.

“I wish I could go,” Mom said. “But it’s planting season, and there’s just too much to do here. God knows what the garden would look like if I left for a week. Everything would be dead.”

Dad took her hand. “We’ve never seen the redwoods. What about in the fall? We won’t drive. It takes too long. We’ll fly.”

She smiled at him. “It’s a date.”

They kissed.

“Ugh, you guys are the worst,” I said and stood to leave.

“Honey,” Dad said, his voice cajoling me not to run off.

“I’m kidding. You’re adorable. I do need to go, though.”

I hugged them both, hugged Badger an extra-long time, sniffing his warm puppy fur, and headed to Cara’s apartment.

Was this a terrible idea? Or was I only wondering now because I was sad about leaving my dog? I couldn’t decide. But it was only nine days. How big a mistake could it be when it would be finished before the milk in my fridge expired? Wouldn’t it? I probably should’ve checked the date.

But I was already parking and walking to Cara’s door, so it seemed too late, both to check the milk and to change my mind.

And the idea of leaving my wedding picture behind, neither looking at it nor being tempted to look at it when I was trying not to look at it, was already making me think maybe I’d made the right choice.

“You’re here!” Cara said, wheeling out a suitcase. “Grab your bags. You can move them right from your car to mine.”

Cara pressed the remote key in her other hand, and a tiny hatchback across from us opened.

“Your car is very orange,” I said.

“Yes. You’ve seen it before, haven’t you?”

“No, I definitely would’ve remembered. It’s like an Orangesicle.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“It’s like a traffic cone. It’s actually not much bigger than a traffic cone, either. Is it a traffic cone pretending to be a car?”

She sighed.

I grinned, unable to stop now that she’d shown she was irritated. I tilted my head, eyeing the car and thinking. “You should put a stem on it for Halloween.”

She rolled her eyes. “You know what? I like it. And I never have trouble finding it in the parking lot.”

“I bet you don’t.”

Cara helped me with the cooler, the bag of snacks with Mom’s cookies balanced on top, a bag that was mostly charging cords and headphones, and another that was entirely full of books.

When we were finished, I brought out my guitar case.

“I’m not sure there’s room,” I said, hearing and hating the tentative note in my voice.

“We can make it work,” Cara said without hesitation.

She shifted the cooler. I wedged a snack bag against the other door, and somehow, the guitar case fit.

“It is a guitar in there, right? Not like drugs or guns or—”

I had to laugh. “I think it’s supposed to be a violin case, if it’s a gun.

And for drugs, something less conspicuous, like a thousand rubber ducks.

” I unlocked the case and showed her. “Just a guitar, a strap, a tuner, a Glock, a capo, and an alarming amount of my hair.” I picked out a purple strand and shook it off my fingers into the parking lot.

“Not even an amp because I figured we definitely wouldn’t have room for that. ”

“What a pity,” Cara said sarcastically, and I remembered her Led Zeppelin comment and grinned.

“I tried to play the guitar,” she added, “but I couldn’t figure out where my elbows were supposed to be.

It felt awkward as hell. Probably looked awkward, too.

” She closed the hatchback. There was a faded Houston Audubon sticker on the back with a picture of a black and yellow songbird.

I had the sudden mental image of standing in the same spot while Cara watched a rare red-butted canary for two hours.

“You don’t have a fancy camera with a giant lens in there, do you?” I asked. Even I could hear the suspicion in my voice. I sounded like Cara had, asking if there were drugs in my guitar case.

“Nope,” she said. “No cameras at all but this one.” She held up her phone.

“Good,” I said.

We took last-minute bathroom breaks, then we were on the road.