Let go of this anger toward your father. Let go of the guilt about your mother. Let go of the fear of the unknown, because the known can be so much scarier.
Sylvie. The song. Even the band, if it comes to that.
It’s okay to let go…
Avi burst to the surface, drawing in cool, sharp breath and letting it out in a ragged rush. His gasp woke up Leah beside him. She was snuggled against his chest, her damp hair now in wild curls as his fingers tangled through it.
He reached for Leah, but she was sliding out of his grasp, out of the bed.
“Oh my God. No alarm. We overslept!” Her fingers were frantic on her phone. “My phone died.”
The bedside digital clock read 3:18.
His stomach lurched. His idea of a little detour this morning, now a huge problem. They were still two hours away from Manhattan as the crow flies.
Crows didn’t have to deal with Friday traffic, bridges or parking. Or getting dressed and making beds and resetting burglar alarms.
“Go, go, go!” She shooed him up so she could smooth the bedding as he yanked on those teen jeans they had been laughing about earlier and his new T. He balled up the pants and hoodie he had been wearing, wishing he could just burn them out back. Leah grabbed them out of his hands and stashed them into her crossbody bag. He raced down the stairs with her on his heels, hitting light switches as he went.
They shoved feet into shoes and grabbed coats. “Let me drive,” he said, as he armed the door and put the house key back where he’d found it. Leah handed over Bertha’s keys without a word.
“We’ll be okay,” he repeated, like a mantra.
But when he turned on the car, fresh panic zipped through him. How on earth was it already 3:47? He tried not to glance down at Bertha’s dashboard every ten seconds, with her precarious oil light and clock telling him they had less than fifteen minutes of slack on either side of their two-hour commute to make the ship’s six o’clock launch.
Being left behind by the tour bus had been bad enough. He refused to be “diesel-spotted” in the middle of New York Harbor.
Leah was counting on him.
Sylvie was waiting to talk to him.
And Jay was going to murder him.
It’s not like his friend could hold up the boat and three hundred people on board just because Avi was getting laid.
Things had gotten way more complicated than a lift to Erie. But his brain couldn’t even mull that over now as he rocketed down Route 17 toward the Palisades Parkway.
“Do you need me to set the GPS?”
“Not yet, I know the way.”
Next to him, for the first time in the trip, Leah was miles away.
Leah knew the way too; because it was the route she had carefully mapped out in advance. Tuesday night, while her midnight batch of rugelach had been cooling, she’d memorized the directions. Nervous for so many unknowns on her trip, but confident in knowing that at least the path there was a given.
As her father would say,man plans and God laughs.
She plugged her dead phone in. Texts rose to the surface like bubbles.
Jasmine
WTF where are you?
Please tell me you are about to board the boat.
And don’t have a crisis of confidence – your art is good, people will want this!
Don’t throw it all away because of some guy.
