“Stelle, I don’t feel great. You know about my tummy,” Mikey croaked.
“Obi, will you trade him seats?” Guy asked. “It’s easier if you sit in the front.”
“My legs are longer!” I objected.
Guy flicked his eyebrows up at me. “Do you want to smell Mikey’s puke for the next hour and a half?”
“Might be both ends,” Mikey said. “Once you rock the boat, the whole system goes haywire.”
“Fine, I get it,” I groaned, unbuckling my seatbelt and lunging for the backseat.
“Why are you guys getting married in Bumfuck Wherever anyway?” Mikey grumbled as he shifted into the front seat.
“It’s not Bumfuck,” Guy said. “It’s a historical landmark.”
“So Jessie told me on the whole ride here. What is with these West Virginians and their obsessive fact-giving?” Mikey asked.
Guy laughed. “Kitty does that too. It’s a great place to be from. You’re just jealous.”
“You lived here for a year,” Mikey scoffed.
“It was a good year. I met my future wife here,” Guy said. “And wait till it’s your turn to get married, Mike. Jessie’s from here too.”
That was news to me. “You putting a ring on it, Mikey?”
“I ask her every single day,” he said. “One of these days, she’s going to say yes.”
“So you’re annoying her into a commitment?” I asked.
“I’m being persistent and showing her that I love her enough to marry her every single day.”
Guy sighed wistfully. “Never would have imagined you’d be such a romantic.”
“Pot, kettle,” I said.
“Excuse me, I’ve always been a romantic,” Guy said. “You should take lessons from me, young Obi.”
I chuckled. “What do I need to know?”
“He’s just a baby, Stelle. Let him sow his wild oats,” Mikey said, acting like he was also some sort of authority on the topic. “Not like you didn’t sow yours.”
“Pot, kettle,” I said again. Mikey’s penchant for getting around before Jessie came along was well-known.
“I never said I didn’t!” Mikey whined.
“Look, I tried to marry Kitty when I was Obi’s age. It just wasn’t the right time. I did what I had to do to get by,” Guy said.
“So, Obi, Stelle’s advice is to get your heart set on one person, pine for them for years, sleep with other people, stalk the person you love, and then wear them down,” Mikey explained.
“Isn’t that exactly what you’re doing to Jessie?” I asked.
“Yeah, see? Good playbook,” Guy said.
“I’m not stalking Jessie. And I didn’t pine for her for years. I just wished for someone like her. It’s different. Plus, we live together. She loves me. She’s going to say yes one of these days.”
As Guy launched into a counter-argument to provoke Mikey, I drifted off in the backseat, my attention captured by the mountains growing denser out the window. It was as if the earth itself was embracing us from all directions as we navigated the winding passes.
Those two droned on about relationships and whatever dumbshit they’d gotten into in college. I’d gotten into my own dumb shit for the one year that I went to college, and it left me battered and bruised. That whole affair was why I wasn’t rushing into the dating scene.
