Car overheatsI couldn't pretend that I had never read his letter. And I still find it funny to this day that no one ever said a thing or rang any alarms after seeing a seventeen-year-old boy dragging around a crying twelve-year-old girl by the hand but I'm guessing we look like brother and sister thanks to our hair, even though Lochlan's blonde is strawberries and mine is ashes.
Jump out of my seat
On the side of the highway baby
Our road is long
Your hold is strong
Please don't ever let go
He pushes my plate toward me.
Eat, Bridget. Come on, we can't stay here forever.
I'm not hungry.
I only said those things so that you would hate me and not want to come with me when I left and then I realized if I left you there you wouldn't be safe. Jesus. I'm seventeen. I'm supposed to be studying math and playing guitar and saving for a new car, not this.
You wanted this.
I'm saying I don't know everything and maybe I screwed up and I'm not going to screw up your life too.
So what now?
We drop it and go home. We go to school. Right through college. We do summer work on the midway but otherwise whatever romantic dream you have of staying on the road with the carnival has to end. Bridget, it isn't safe. He can get to you there.
He can get to me anywhere. He told me. Will we be together? You and I, I mean?
Of course. After college we can get married.
Can we buy a camper?
Sure.
* * * *
I'm standing outside the gates, digging in my bag for my watch. He's got to be late by now. The lineup is so long already and I don't know if I'm supposed to be in it or not. I walked from my job at the shopping center and Lochlan was driving back from a shift at the restaurant where he slings wine and fancy vertical appetizers to people who tip poorly. We are starving again. I always think I can fill the void with cotton candy but it doesn't work. It doesn't expand to fill me with sugary satisfaction, it contracts into a hard rock that gives me a belly ache.
I have lengthened out a little at fourteen. Lost a lot of baby fat. I'm lightly tanned and my hair is so long it regularly gets caught in the doors of the boy's trucks and in their watches. I have developed an affinity for short skirts and halter tops and flip-flops if I have to wear shoes. Every ride I go on is in bare feet because they make you take off slip-on shoes. I do this on purpose because it feels so good. I have developed a sick affinity for lip gloss. By the bucketful. I can charm almost anyone into anything and I'm aware of that in the way that you're aware that it's raining when you step outside into a monsoon.
A kiss lands on the back of my neck.
Let's go back to the truck.
Huh?
I need to talk to you.
People are going in, can't it wait?
The fair is all week, Bridget.
And we're...here, right? We had plans to go, that's why we're both here. What's going on?
Just come with me.
We go and sit in the truck and I have a sinking feeling I won't get to ride the ferris wheel after dark.
* * * * *
I knock on the door of the apartment hesitantly. Lochlan opens it, sees me and heads back to his computer. He is finishing up some work. Twenty-four and bearded now. The apartment is a mess and I start loading dishes into the sink from all over the place. I chastise him for not keeping it clean. He would be calmer if his living space were organized.
You didn't come here to do my housekeeping.
I stare at the framed photograph on his desk. It's me at seventeen, sitting in the ferris wheel alone and smiling. Waiting for him. Two summers ago. The fair is our thing, we still go to it together in spite of the fact that I have now been dating Cole for five years. Lochlan and Cole are friends so we're together all of the time. The more things change, the more things stay the same.
No, I came here to tell you I'm getting married.
Silence descends like a fog over the room and I'm acutely aware that this hurts. I don't want to look at him but he hasn't said anything.
He stands up, grabs his keys and brushes past me, walking out his front door and slamming it hard. After a minute I hear his truck start in the parking lot and he drives away.
* * * *
I knock softly on his door, and he calls out for me to come in. I open the door carefully and walk down the hall until I reach the sunny window nook where he has his desk. He is doing freelance work today. I pass him the steaming mug of coffee and he thanks me and smiles, his beard spreading out when his mouth turns up. He has lines around his eyes, now at forty-four and I can't help but be grateful that he has kept his promises to me in spite of the fact that three times now I have sprung engagements on him and once I have turned him down.
My eyes fall on the picture of me, still on his desk forever frozen in 1988. I wonder how long his promise will hold. I can see in his eyes the things he has been through and the one attempt to go away from me and make his own life that ended in disaster and brought him back for something over nothing at all. I worry that I have ruined him in a way that only we can understand and at the same time I will forever punish him for forcing me to grow up before I was capable of being the girl he wanted me to be, and for not stepping in and being the man that he promised he would be when it mattered most.
When Jacob flew I went to Lochlan and I asked him for help and he refused. I asked him to take his place in front of me and keep my children safe and I was going to go curl up into a ball and block everything out for a very long time and he said no because he was reeling and he couldn't help me, no one could, and that's your forty-eight hour gap between when they told me Jacob was gone and when I knocked on Caleb's door in hopes that death would take me quickly. Cole and Jacob were dead and Lochlan no longer wanted what was left of me so please, here, just make it quick.
Sadly, it didn't happen. Hi, I'm still here.
We exist in an awkward space, tied together with heavy ropes and then for good measure he has jammed a ruler down between us to always keep us a foot apart. For good measure Ben jammed another one down there and it hurts but I'll get used to it, just like I've grown used to the first one, my skin fused around it in a reluctant sort of acceptance. I think at this point we've had thirty years of stubbornness that has become too thick to swim through and that somehow retains the shape of our history despite our efforts to make it into something new. Once again the chance has passed, and frankly I don't think there will be another.
Then again, I didn't expect to have this sort of history in my life so I never say never any more. I'm not yet forty years old and yet I feel as if I have already lived a hundred lives, all different and varied and unpredictable and full, all compelling and eventual and complicated to a fault.
Lochlan realized the error of his ways very quickly after that first winter without Jake and I was gifted with the best revenge ever. Lochlan finally asked me to marry him so he could fulfill the dream of the twelve-year-old Bridget who would grow up to be his unintentional anchor, his focus, his muse.
And I said no.
Partly because I wanted to pay him back for being too late for pretty much everything I've ever been through, and partly because my focus is now on Ben and I think a lot of the time Lochlan's jealousy leads him to do and say things he doesn't want to follow through with. Lochlan has led a privileged life. Hungry by choice, vagrant by design, alone by one single hesitation that lasted an exhale too long and put me in the path of someone I have tried to outrun for most of my life as a result. Forgive? Sure. Forget? Never.
* * * *
Last night Lochlan brought home a camper, and I'm not sure if he's trying to fulfill my wildest dreams or finish me off. You'll have to ask the girl in the picture. She is life before death, and I am life after it.