I didn’t have the same hair color or length anymore, but they would know who I was.
I could do this. I would do it. It was only a couple of hours.
I needed to get it together before he figured out just how much I didn’t want this to happen. So I said the first words that came to mind as I sat there. “You look dapper.” Which was an understatement, but I didn’t need to cake it on.
How did he respond? By reaching up to pull at the collar of his shirt, digging beneath the scarf he had on, tugging at it and muttering, “I feel like a dumbass.”
I surprised myself when I laughed. “You don’t look like one.” My smile wasn’t forced or fake either. “You look great,” I told him.
What did he do? He rolled his eyes, but I didn’t miss the way his cheeks seemed to get a little pink. I didn’t know somebody was bashful.
“So, GQ? Need me to navigate us or do you know how to get into the city?”
He rolled his eyes again as he put the truck into drive. “I know how to get there.” And if I thought he muttered, “Unfortunately,” then I would have been right.
* * *
Neither one ofus talked much over the next three hours.
Rip had put the radio on the oldies station, which had made me smile while I looked out the window because that was the last thing I would have figured he’d listen to. I’d caught him humming along to a few songs, and that had made me smile even more. He wasn’t exactly trying to hide it. I played solitaire on my phone until I got nauseous, then played it again once the worst of it had passed.
But as the minutes went by, and then an hour, then another hour and another hour…
My nausea got worse for reasons that had nothing to do with looking at a tiny screen in a moving car; all the breathing exercises in the world didn’t do anything. Neither did closing my eyes and telling myself that I needed to buck up and that I could handle whatever happened. All the optimism I’d felt that morning had slowly melted away as the reality of where I was going became more and more present.
The truck wasn’t going to break down and end up making me miss the funeral.
I was going and it was happening.
But I was going to survive it, and that was the most important part.
We drove further along into the city and slowly I took in a lot of things that were familiar from when I had lived in San Antonio. The city had changed a lot over the last almost ten years but not enough to be completely different from where I had grown up.
I hadn’t planned on ever coming back.
I turned on the navigation app on my phone and put in the address that the lawyer had sent me. The app said we had twelve minutes left to travel. The service was supposed to start in twenty, so the arrival couldn’t have been any better.
I laced my fingers together and stuck them in between my thighs. I kind of wished I had paid more attention to Mr. Cooper when he recited an Our Father when he was riled up and needed to calm down.
“You gonna be all right?” Rip finally spoke up after hours of near silence.
I glanced at his profile for what might have been the twentieth time—maybe the fiftieth time—since we’d gotten into the car. The tightness at his jaw had only gotten more pronounced mile after mile. The lines at his eyes had deepened. His coloring was different. More flushed.
I wasn’t imagining the fact that he honestly looked like he was dreading this as much as I was.
But was it because he was with me and he didn’t want to be?
“Yeah, sure,” I told him honestly but watched him even closer. “Are you?”
His fingers flexed on the steering wheel and his voice was rough when he answered simply, “Yeah.”
He was full of it. He really was dreading this.
Just like that, guilt made my stomach feel off all over again, for a reason that had nothing to do with me and what I wanted.
Maybe he didn’t handle funerals well. Maybe they made him feel terrible. How was I supposed to know? I’d worked surrounded by men for almost the last decade, and over that time, I’d learned that even if they didn’t want to do something—and I mean theyreallydidn’t want to do something—they would if it involved or compromised their pride.
I wouldn’t force someone to do something they didn’t want to for my sake.
