Page 28 of Cruel Summer

SIXTEEN

She woke up the next morning with what felt like a hangover. Or maybe she was punch-drunk from the bull riding.

It was hard to say.

Perhaps it was the altercation and surprisingly gentle aftermath that had occurred in the parking lot.

She pondered it over coffee and biscuits and gravy at a greasy spoon on their way to the highway that would take them to Oklahoma. By design they were taking this part of the trip a little bit quicker, and she could honestly say that she was grateful for that.

It had been good. She had decided that. It had been good to have the exchange with Logan that she had. But now she wanted a little bit of time away, a little bit of time to herself to reflect on it.

Or hide. In a burrow of blankets. With slippers and a fluffy robe. One or the other. She didn’t think that she could be too strongly judged for that.

“You’re quiet,” Logan said, leaning back on the red vinyl bench, lifting his coffee cup to his lips.

“I haven’t had enough caffeine,” she said.

“Right.”

“Also, you’ve given me too much think about.”

“Not a frequent accusation that I get.”

“Somehow I don’t believe that. You are…you’re not what you appear to be.”

“And what do I appear to be, Sam?”

She was suddenly exhausted, because she realized how much time they spent talking about her. She was grateful for the opportunity to talk about him.

“Well. You are a grease monkey. A car guy. And you were a jock. Way too good-looking for your own good. You created waves of teenage longing throughout the high school.”

He looked too satisfied by that. “Did I?”

“Logan. You were a one-man wrecking crew for a good quarter of the hearts at our school. And I think you know that.”

“Nice to hear either way.”

“ And, ” she continued, “you never seemed to care all that much. You had that rebel life. You could have been the all-American. That kind of jock. But you weren’t. It was like you were getting aggression out on the field or something, not looking for glory.”

“Are you a psychiatrist?” he asked, echoing the question she asked him last night.

“No. But I spent a lot of time thinking about people.” Other people. And making up stories about myself.

“Yeah. Well. You’re not wrong. So, what about that makes me unexpected?”

“Well, for one, you used the phrase intellectually bankrupt last night.”

“My vocabulary is unexpected?”

“You’re a deeper thinker than it appears on the surface. Or rather, than stereotypes would suggest.”

“You like a stereotype, don’t you, Sam?” His mouth worked into a half smile, and her stomach went tight.

Whether it was discomfort brought about by the facial expression or from the observation, she wasn’t certain. But she was going to go ahead and let it be about the observation. “Why do you say that?”

“Because it allows you to make sense of things. You really want things to make sense.”

“Who doesn’t?”

“Me. I don’t give a shit. Here’s the thing. When you go through something in life that doesn’t make any sense, that has no meaning, you either go insane, or you stop expecting life to be what you ask it to.”

“See, this is what I never expect from you. The philosophy.”

“I have a lot of time to think. Thankfully, my job means that I talk to people in a limited capacity. The rest of the time I spend in my head or…”

“If you say ‘listening to podcasts’ then you’re going to move yourself back into stereotype territory.”

“Audiobooks.” He grinned.

“Just barely dodged the stereotype,” she said.

“Are you going to eat the rest of your biscuit?” He gestured to the half a biscuit that was still swimming in creamy gravy on her plate.

“No. But I would like to take some coffee to go.”

He polished off the biscuit while she got a to-go cup, and then they were back on the road.

They made empty conversation through Oklahoma, stopping at a hotel in Springfield, Missouri, that was affiliated with Bass Pro Shop. “Because you have to stay at the Angler’s Lodge,” Logan had explained.

“I don’t know that you do,” she said, wandering through the lobby, which was antler-heavy as far as the decor went.

When she got to her room, she found no different.

Though she appreciated that one of the throw pillows had antlers printed on it, just the right size for her to lay her head down and give herself the appearance that she herself had antlers. She took a selfie, sent it to her friends and her kids.

Her oldest son sent back a skull.

The other kids didn’t answer.

Her friends gave appropriate acknowledgment LOL’s and ha’s.

Fine.

She thought she was cute and funny.

The next morning, they drove through Missouri, up into Illinois, making the final push to Chicago in a particularly long and torturous day.

The city was a stark contrast to anywhere else they’d been on the trip.

The hotel they stayed in even more so.

The high-rise with a view of the river, close to the Magnificent Mile. While Logan made his exchange with the car’s owner the next day, she shopped, and wandered along the edge of Lake Erie. She had never seen one of the Great Lakes before. It was like standing on the edge of the ocean.

She walked along the harbor there, and stopped when she heard Frank Sinatra. She smiled, listening to the music filtering from one of the boats tethered there.

It was one of those strange, surreal experiences that she knew she would always remember. It was funny. Those moments in life.

That were just a little too perfect. Almost as if they were scripted.

Maybe it was strange to ponder the appearance of background music at an opportune moment on quite that level, but nothing in her life had felt scripted for the last few weeks.

So it was just sort of nice to rest in the softness of the moment.

The romanticism of it. That made her smile too.

That she could feel a sense of romanticism, walking by herself.

She took selfies in front of the big bean at the park, and wandered through the Art Institute. She particularly loved the display of Western art, and for the first time in a while found herself reflexively thinking that she should text Will.

Because he probably would’ve liked the bronze statue of the cowboy on a horse, and she would’ve texted him and said it was an art museum he would probably enjoy.

Except she didn’t. Because they weren’t speaking.

Being away from home made it a little bit easier. Being outside of her experience. Her normal life. But it didn’t erase those well-worn pathways, those habits that were more a part of herself, her subconscious, than she’d realized.

She met with Logan again at dinnertime, and they had deep-dish pizza, and she felt wistful at having the new experience without anyone in her family here, and she didn’t know why she was feeling quite so melancholy.

She missed her kids. She missed a life she didn’t think she could ever go back to. She wasn’t sure why it was so harsh right now. Maybe because she should have been on a family vacation this time of year.

But she wouldn’t have been anyway since her kids were off having lives.

“You seem like you’re already across the country,” Logan said.

“No,” she responded. “I’m just marinating in parental guilt.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m a parent and it’s what we do?”

“Fair. But you shouldn’t feel guilty.”

“I think you and I both know I actually have a lot of things to feel guilty about.”

“I thought temptation wasn’t sin?”

“Yeah. Well. Sorry. It’s not that simple for me. I feel guilty about it. That’s why I didn’t want to acknowledge it.”

“I don’t think that’s true. I think you didn’t want to acknowledge it because then it would be an action item. You really didn’t want to do anything about the issues in your marriage.”

“Stop it. You don’t have an insider’s perspective on my marriage. Quit acting like you do.”

“Would you say that to Elysia? Or Whitney?”

“No,” she said. She took another bite of pizza. “I also have never even nearly kissed one of them.”

“I see. So I don’t get to say anything because I’m a man.”

“A man that I almost kissed. Yes.”

“Just casually using that in conversation now?”

“You wanted honesty, Logan. Here it is.”

“Yet somehow not.”

She rolled her eyes. “Well, it’s all about right now .”

“Fair enough.”

She had trouble sleeping that night. She sat in a chair by her sixteenth-floor window, looking out at the river below.

At the boats gliding across the water, and all the lights shimmering across the surface.

It was a beautiful city, and she wished that she had built more time into this portion of the trip.

She didn’t have to leave for the West Coast at the same time Logan did.

But they had booked flights on the same plane.

She was grumpy and underslept by the time they arrived at O’Hare, which was an absolute zoo. The TSA lines were unreal, and she was beginning to get worried they would miss their plane by the time they finally got to the front of the line.

When they got to their gate, they sat in the uncomfortable black chairs closest to the podium.

“What group are you in?”

“Four,” he said.

“Four? You’re flying economy?”

The amusement that pulled at the corner of his mouth was distracting. “Yes, Sam.”

“Like, not to be gauche or anything, but you’re kind of rich.”

“I don’t see the point of spending my riches on what is essentially a chair hovering 36,000 feet above the ground. I’m 36,000 feet above the ground whether I’m in a fancy chair or not.”

“You get to board first. And they give you champagne.”

“Are you in boarding group one?”

“Yes, I am,” she said. “Because the whole rest of this road trip was paid for, plus part of this ticket as well. Also, it’s fancy. So.”

Now she felt the need to justify it.

“Right. Well, enjoy.”

She got up when her group was called and sat happily in her seat. She lifted her glass of champagne when Logan walked by ten minutes later. He gave her that same half smile he’d given her at the diner a few days ago, and her stomach did the exact same thing.

Maybe that was why when she got served ice cream for dessert after what was a very lovely meal, she bought Wi-Fi for the sole purpose of texting him a picture. He sent back a middle finger emoji.

She smiled, and leaned back in her seat, closing her eyes.

The first journey was done. She would get a break now.

Yes, some of that involved facing parts of her life she didn’t especially want to face. But she could handle it. She had to.

She had felt, often, that she was more grown-up than most women her age. Than most people her age. After all, she had thrown herself into adulthood as a teenager. Right then, she felt like this was maybe her first step into something even more grown-up. She couldn’t explain it.

Bringing up the past with Logan made the future feel a lot more precarious than she’d imagined it could feel.

She’d been totally certain of where she wanted to end up at the end of the summer.

Why did one memory have the power to change that?