Page 8 of Into the Deep Blue

Grace blindsided the shit out of me. Yeah, I write, but she’s talking about real writing for really smart people, and I don’t know if I’m the guy for the job.

And let’s be honest, happy endings are bullshit. Nothing makes me want to throw a book at a screen more than a couple that walks into the sunset together. I mean, come on. Equally as offensive are champagne glasses clinking, making rain romantic, running through airports—all the tropes. Happily ever after is boring. It’s a complete waste of a movie except when it isn’t. I’ll make an exception fo.

“Romancing the Stone.”

It was Mom’s favorite comfort movie, and she watched it more weekends than I can count, which meant Alex and I watched it, too. When that sailboat rolls down Fifth Avenue, I mean, it doesn’t get any cooler than that. Plus, Michael Douglas is kind of a legend. That ending alone made me rethink my position on happy endings. Maybe there could be this whole gray area . . . like they don’t all have to be sunsets and sap by the sea, so that’s what I try to lean into.

After Mom died, I tested that theory. I imagined happily ever afters for strangers. It was an experiment that turned into a habit. Fiona was the only one who knew, and she joined in and started pointing out people for me to give a happy ending to. There’s no shortage of jokes in there.

My only rule is not to imagine an ending for the people closest to me. It isn’t even a rule so much as a roadblock. When it comes to Alex, Fi, and myself, my mind goes blank when I think about our future. It’s like we’ve been tossed into the air and are all floating around up there, and I don’t know where or when we’re going to land.

I did Zombie Bob, but I didn’t tell Fi. He finds love again in my story. He finally has enough of this homebody bullshit and chooses life. He’s on a charter yacht with his crew, deep-sea fishing in the Pacific. He’s got on a bright floral shirt, a straw hat, and an endless sun shines down on him. A pretty lady smiles at him from across the deck, and a swordfish is about to bite his line. I’m not sure Fiona would want to hear it, but in my ending, Zombie Bob gets his shit together. He’s a really good guy, so I hope he does.

Mom doesn’t get one. Death is the ultimate spoiler. Sometimes, I try to turn her accident into something else, but it’s a tough sell, even for me.

Fiona leans over the steering wheel, wiping the condensation from the windshield with her sleeve. We still haven’t left the parking lot. I press the defrost button, and air blasts out of the vents into her face. She jolts her head back and eyes me. Maybe it wasn’t the right thing to do. I’m ninety-nine percent sure Fiona does think I’m an asshole.

She turns on the wipers, which shockingly do nothing to lift the white blanket of fog outside, and finally backs out of the spot. I’m a little concerned for us.

“So? Are you going to write the piece?”

she finally asks.

I’m definitely not going to write the piece, but her voice has a hitch of hope, and I don’t want to disappoint her.

“I dunno. Why am I always being asked to write about things I don’t want to write about?”

“What do you want to write about?”

I don’t know that either. My writing is mostly a hobby. I haven’t even decided if this is it for me.

“Robots and space wars and fish that electrocute people.”

She smiles, but I’m pretty sure it’s her you’re-such-an-asshole smile.

“Stealing from Max’s playbook?”

“His ideas are way better than mine.”

The fog isn’t any better on the main road. The world is cloaked in a thick haze. Staring into it kind of freaks me out, because I’m expecting some craz.

“Doctor Who”

shit to pop out on the other side. We’re moving, but I can barely see any proof. The car feels like it’s floating.

Fi squints at the windshield, which is all kinds of ridiculous. It’s not like that’s going to clear things up.

“Do you want me to drive?”

She doesn’t take her eyes off the road.

“You don’t even have a license.”

“I could drive this road blindfolded. In fact, I’m pretty sure I have.”

“On a bicycle!”

“Semantics,”

I reply with a shrug.

Her grip on the wheel is so tight her knuckles are white, so I try to distract her from stressing over the fog.

“What are you going to do with the camera?”

Okay, that might have made things worse. Except she relaxes her death grip on the wheel.

“I don’t know? Maybe take it to Monterey?”

“And look at the pictures there?”

She turns off the cool air blasting through the vents, and the car goes quiet.

“We’ll see. It’s not like the bucket list.”

She slides her hand down the side of the steering wheel and turns on the high beams, which only amplifies the fog outside. I open my mouth to say something before shutting it just as quickly. The further we get from town, the darker the road becomes. This feels like a metaphor for my life somehow.

I turn on the radio because in my head emergency alerts are being broadcast, saying you definitely shouldn’t drive on side road five tonight, but all that comes out on every saved station is static, and that ups the creep factor by five hundred percent.

Fi glances from the radio to me. The car steadily accelerates like it has its own heartbeat and is screaming Get me the hell out of here. I lean closer to the radio because there has to be a logical reason for the static. This car is so old, maybe a fuse blew. Coincidentally, tonight. There has to be a station on here that works.

WHOMP.

My face smashes into the dashboard, and my body snaps back, flinging my head into the seat. It’s like a brick wall grew from the pavement. We’re stopped on the road. Pain radiates from behind my eyes through my cheeks, and it’s the law of the universe that a car will hit something the exact moment your face is positioned to receive the maximum damage.

“Holy shit!”

Fiona pulls onto the gravel shoulder and puts on the hazards.

“Oh my god, !”

She’s staring at me as if I took an arrow to the chest or something. I feel my chest. No arrow or other protruding objects.

“You okay?” I groan.

She touches her face and pats herself down.

“Yeah, yes, but your face.”

I pull down the vanity mirror. Blood gushes from my nose. It ain’t pretty, but I’ve had worse.

“I think we hit something,”

she says in a panic, scanning the road.

“Thank god. I thought it was a force field from the underworld.”

My sleeve is already saturated with blood. I dig around for tissues before the entire car looks like it’s been through a horror-movie car wash. Fi reaches into the back and pulls McDonald’s napkins from the floor. She starts piling them on my lap. I could literally bleed out, and we’d have enough McDonald’s napkins to cover it. The bleeding slows to a trickle.

“Did you see anything?” she asks.

These questions, honestly. I smile. I can’t help myself.

“I did. I just didn’t say anything. Thought this would be more fun.”

Fiona does not smile.

“What if it was a person?”

She unbuckles her seatbelt and gets out of the car, which means I have to unbuckle mine and go after her.

“This isn’t ‘Silent Hill,’ Fi. It wasn’t a person.”

She scans the roadside and walks deeper into the endless fog behind us. I go to the front to check out the car. The headlights shine bright in my eyes. There’s a small dent in the fender. And blood. When I look up, I can’t see Fiona, and what could possibly be more dangerous than driving in fog?

“Fiona!”

I jog until she comes into view. “This,”

I call out.

“This is how people get killed!”

She stops, and her whole body stiffens.

Something’s wrong.

Soft, raspy breaths float through the darkness and grow louder the closer I get. The fog unfurls itself from a fur-covered mass in the middle of the road—definitely not a person.

“I think it’s a dog. Or a wolf,” she says.

“Right now, it’s not much of anything.”

She elbows me in the ribs.

“Don’t say that.”

Against my better judgment, I take a few steps closer, wishing I had a bat or a pipe. What if it’s faking it, waiting for us to get close enough for one last hurrah? When I’m about three feet away, it growls.

“Definitely not a dog.”

I glance back at Fi. There’s nothing we can do. Its stomach rises and falls with a stutter. Fi doesn’t move, so I give her arm a soft tug.

“This happens all the time. It’s not your fault.”

Like plane crashes and explosions.

“We’re just going to leave it?”

There’s sadness in her voice and a hint of anger. And I get it. The urge to do something. The need to make this better. The refusal to accept this helplessness. I get all of it. There are a thousand things I can say to her. He’s gone, Fi. This is dangerous. I would do anything for you except drag a wolf to the edge of the road. We can’t even end its suffering and even if we could, neither of us would.

But all I say is.

“Yeah, we are.”

She follows me back to the car, turning back one last time.

We drive in silence. The fog is finally lifting, and a soft rain rattles against the roof. The radio works now, but I flick it off. A few miles down the road, a recycling truck roars from behind us and passes in the oncoming lane. If the wolf wasn’t dead when we left it, there’s no doubt about its fate now. I don’t look at Fi. Don’t have to, I know what she’s thinking. None of this feels real.

An endless blur of trees fills my view.

“Maybe the pack leader came out of the forest and pulled it to safety. Maybe there’s like a wolf shaman who will heal his wounds overnight.”

She lets my words sink in and faces me.

“Did you just happy ending the wolf?”

I meet her eyes for a fleeting second.

“Yeah. I think I did.”