Page 20 of Cruel Summer

TWELVE

Now

He didn’t wait for her to knock. He was the one who knocked.

She jerked the door open with her blanket wrapped tightly around her shoulders to preserve her modesty—and halfway over her head to conceal her bed head—and there he was, holding two coffee cups and a paper bag.

“It’s early,” she said.

“Yes, and we have a stop to make that I think you’re going to like, so let’s get a move on.”

“You said I could come wake you up.”

“But then you didn’t. And it’s time to go.”

“You said there was no time!” she protested.

“Yes, I lied.” He smiled.

“Feh,” she groused, shutting the door in his face and going back into the room. Most everything was packed away, and she had shorts and a tank top picked out for today and her most basic skin essentials out on the bathroom counter.

There was presumably no time to shower. Anyway, the idea of lingering beneath the hot water, naked, while he was just outside the door was a no for her.

She put her bra on, changed her underwear, stuffed her pj’s into her bag and then dressed the rest of the way, putting on some moisturizer and SPF, and putting her hair in the fastest of messy buns. Then she collected her bag and opened the door. She led with her outstretched hand.

“Coffee,” she demanded.

“Here you go.” He handed her the cup.

“What’s in the bag?”

“Breakfast burritos.”

“Yum.”

He turned and started walking toward the car.

“Hey! I want my burrito.”

“We need to get on the road.”

She moved faster, then stopped. “Are you…are you baiting me?”

He turned and looked at her over his shoulder. “Maybe.”

She didn’t know if he was playing with her or not. And after last night…

This was the problem with him. With them. They were uneven. Trying to have a relationship with Logan was like walking on a rocky trail. Smooth for a while, an uphill battle, a deadly pothole that might send her plummeting to her doom…

A nice view.

She coughed.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Just fine.”

He got into the driver’s seat, and she hopped into the passenger side. “Burrito,” she said.

He threw the bag into her lap, and she unrolled the top and peered inside. There were two foil-wrapped burritos in there. “Are they the same?”

“One is sausage, one is vegetarian.”

“Which one is mine?”

“Both. I ate one already.”

“Oh.” She turned them until she saw writing on the foil in black marker, and selected the sausage.

He backed out of the motel parking lot and they started down the road, going over a big, painted-on logo for Route 66. They’d passed a few of them, but she had noted them each time.

She’d always wanted to do this. How weird to be doing it with Logan. And breakfast burritos.

“So, where are we going?” she asked once she’d gotten through half of her coffee.

“You’ll see.”

She rolled her eyes. “Really?”

“It’s a surprise, Sam.”

She laughed. “Um. Well, Logan, I used to like surprises, but after the last one, I’m on the fence.”

He laughed, and she wondered if maybe today would be an easy section of the trail.

She tried not to think about last night. It had been weird and fraught, and she was sort of embarrassed about…all of it. Jonathan. Dancing with him. Dancing with Logan. Sniping at Logan about any of it.

Thinking too much about the heat and musculature of Logan’s body.

She attacked her burrito with relish, mostly because it was an exceptional distraction.

“So you always drive side roads when you take the cars to their buyers?” she asked.

He nodded. “Yes. Honestly, some of these cars aren’t up to speed for freeway travel.

They’re great, but I’m going to be in the slow lane the whole way with some of them.

Plus, I prefer it. It keeps it from being a grind and turns it into a job perk.

Like I said, I charge enough to build the extra time in. ”

“It’s a great idea.”

“It’s the point of working for yourself, right?”

“In theory,” she said.

That had never really worked for Will, who had seemed at the mercy of his clients and his schedule most of the time. But he was successful, and she wasn’t complaining. Even internally.

“Is that how it is for you?” he asked.

She looked out the window. “Oh, I wouldn’t go comparing me to what you do. I pitch articles when I need work or have an idea. I’m not running a full-time business.”

“Do you think you’ll make it one now?” he asked.

She blinked. “I don’t…know. I’m not really sure that I have enough to say.”

“I think you could write a book about managing a household. God knows I found it useful.”

She shifted in her seat. “It’s all stuff anyone can google. I don’t have any particular insight into anything.”

“Even if I believed that, you explain it in a way that’s interesting and easy to understand.”

“I don’t think I bring anything new to the conversation. Household and organization and meal planning stuff…it’s pretty saturated.”

“Well, not that then. Something else.”

She took another sip of coffee. “Nothing about me is interesting.”

“Seriously?”

She could feel him looking at her, and she was forced to turn her head and look at him right back. “Present moment excluded,” she said. “Even then, it could be argued my husband is out being a lot more interesting than I am.”

“He’s out there being a cliché. Don’t give him that much credit.”

“Ha ha,” she said rather than laughed. “Sometimes I really do like you, Logan.”

“Why don’t you think you’re interesting, Samantha?”

Okay, now she liked him less. “I just think…doesn’t everyone think that they have something interesting to say, and really they’re just like everyone else? Talk about being a cliché.”

“Why do you think that?”

“I… I don’t know, Logan. It’s just, not everyone thinks they can just be a classic car…restorationist, or whatever your official title is. A lot of people think they can write. Or think they have great ideas that need to be written about. I just… What separates me from them?”

He didn’t say anything for a minute. “Whether or not you do anything about it, I guess.”

She had nothing to say to that. All she could do was sit with it.

Talking to him was always sharp. She just never knew which way it would cut.

She didn’t have any other relationships like this.

Not that she really considered what they had a relationship.

It was a happenstance . Because she’d known him since high school, and he and her husband had been best friends since they were in their twenties.

But either way, she had nothing else like this in her life and never had.

She didn’t dislike parts of it. He challenged her, and she felt free to challenge him back in a way she never did with anyone else.

She’d been taught that it was better to make things smoother. Her mom had always told her that. Her mother had just been naturally kind. Sure in her opinions on how things were supposed to work, yes, but naturally kind.

You have a strong personality, Samantha. You have to make sure you don’t run your husband over. No man likes that.

Well, she never ran her husband over, thank you. She’d learned very young that she couldn’t have confrontations without wanting to get out the matchbook and set things on fire, so she’d learned to not have them.

But Logan made her feel confrontational. He also seemed to enable the resulting pyromania.

About ninety minutes out of Flagstaff, they arrived at Little Painted Desert County Park, so marked by a sign that had definitely seen better days. They turned onto a barren road and passed a few picnic tables and a building with graffiti on it.

“What are we here for?” she asked.

“Just about the best view you can imagine.”

They drove a short distance, and then the rim became visible.

It overlooked rolling, barren hills that looked like they’d been hand-colored by an artist’s brush.

Dramatic, bold strokes of red, ochre and faded purples.

He put the car in Park, and she got out, moving over to the edge and just standing there. Letting the vastness make her small.

This beautiful, brilliant thing she’d never even imagined she might see.

The world was so big, and she was so small in it.

She’d seen little tiny slices of the grandeur of it.

She’d seen little tiny slices of what living could be.

She’d lived one life. One experience.

She felt so hungry then. For all the great and wonderful things she would never see. It was an ache in her soul. An admiration for the immeasurable complexity of it all. Both grief-stricken and heartened that one person couldn’t see it all, do it all.

It made it all feel so big.

It made her and her problems feel smaller. More manageable.

Because what was her little tiny marital issue compared to mountains that had stood for untold amounts of time? Beautiful whether she was there to look at them or not.

Maybe this was what Will felt. This crushing awe for everything he couldn’t be or see or do.

Except of course that meant when he’d stared into this void, he’d thought the mysteries were contained between a stranger’s legs.

She thought maybe it was a little more spiritual than that.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

Logan hadn’t said anything. She hadn’t looked to see if he was standing near her, though she knew that he was.

“I knew you’d like it. It’s not crowded like a lot of the other viewpoints and national parks. It’s a good place to just sit with yourself.”

“Yeah. I love it.”

It wasn’t enough, but she didn’t want to explain to him that she’d just had a whole existential crisis in the space of a breath.

Or maybe it wasn’t a crisis. Maybe it was a calling.

To see more.

To be more.

Maybe that was why she’d danced with Jonathan last night. Not that he was comparable to the grandeur before her, but it was something she’d never done. A slice of a life she’d never lived.

Going out, saying yes to sitting and sharing a drink with a stranger.

Maybe that was the value in all of this. She could live different lives for a moment, imagine what it was like to live in the desert instead of the lush, green Pacific Northwest.

Imagine what it would be like if she was the sort of woman who went out dancing.

Or didn’t take her morning shower, but just loaded up the car and ate breakfast burritos on her way to stunning natural vistas.

They left, and she realized she hadn’t taken a picture. But she knew a photo could never capture that. The colors, the scale.

It wasn’t so much about what she’d seen. It was about what being there made her feel. That would stay with her whether she took a picture or not.

They rolled into the Silver Saddle Motel in Santa Fe in the early evening.

The building was a bright yellow, the doors painted turquoise, the office denoted by a big wooden sign and a very large wagon wheel out front. On the side of the big pueblo-style building was a bull and a big bucking bronco. It was truly the stuff of her kitschy dreams.

She followed Logan inside while he booked two rooms for them. This time, instead of being at the opposite end of the building from each other, they were side by side.

She let herself into her room and looked around. There was a cinder block wall, painted white. A patchwork quilt was on the king-sized bed, and there was an oversized painting of a horse, and a cowgirl hat hanging on the wall over said bed.

She realized she really hadn’t looked at her phone all day, and when she did, she had about fifty messages from Elysia and Whitney, who had clearly spent a good portion of the day concocting very strange scenarios to explain her silence.

She decided to video call them both without warning as revenge.

“You’re alive!” Elysia shrieked.

“Yes, yes,” she said. “I was communing with nature. Now I’m communing with this awesome motel room.” She turned the camera around and showed the room.

“How is it going?” Whitney said.

“Great, honestly. The sightseeing is amazing, and we’re in Santa Fe now, and I can’t wait to look around. So I’m thinking dinner out and then time exploring tomorrow.”

“Sounds amazing.”

“Here’s hoping.” They chatted for a while longer before hanging up.

Sam did not surprise video call her kids, because she was nice like that. Instead she gave a text check-in to each of them, and they responded at varying times, in accordance with their personalities.

Her oldest responding first, in spite of the fact that he was probably busy with his girlfriend and his adult life.

Then her youngest, who gave her a half-hearted thumbs-up emoji, though in fairness to him, it was late in Madrid.

Then finally her middle, who responded to her I’m safely in Santa Fe with: k

So of course she responded to Aiden with: Thank you, my love, your verbose appreciation of me is always the highlight of my evening.

Lol

Little asshole.

Love you tooooooo xoxox

That earned her a skull emoji, and she considered that a win.

She also considered it a goal to keep moving. Her realizations earlier had felt like they might swallow her whole. That moment had been enough for now.

She had felt it. That yawning divide between what she was, and what existed.

Between Samantha Parker and possibility.

She didn’t need to exist in the void. She’d looked at it. She’d acknowledged it.

But tonight she was in Santa Fe. So she would be Sam in Santa Fe, and not Sam in existential dread.

There was no reason for dread, anyway.

This was the perfect opportunity to address some of those regrets. Those feelings of lives unlived, without committing to anything permanent.

Because in the end, they would meet back at the beginning.

She was sure of that.

She texted Logan and told him she was going to find food. Then, without waiting for him, she took the short walk to historic Santa Fe, and left her problems back at the Silver Saddle.