“Stop laughing,” He grumbles.
“It’s funny when you curse,” I smile, hoping he sees it, lit up by the dim car stereo.
“You should rest,” Dean’s voice returns to a normal level, without grumbling. “It’s going to be a long night.”
“I’ll try,” I close my eyes for a beat. “I can’t sleep. I’m too wired.”
“Just try. You didn’t even give it a real try,” Dean reaches over the center console to put a hand on my leg. He squeezes gently, and I feel electrified, reminded of my thoughts from earlier. Now, I really can’t sleep.
“What’s with all the touching today? I ask defensively, as if I wasn’t daydreaming about gobbling him down like a sex-crazed animal.
“What touching?” Dean removes his hand from my knee, and places it back on the steering wheel.
“The leg squeeze just now…and at the concert.”
Dean clears his throat, trying to buy himself some time. “I’m sorry,” He apologizes.
Ah, fuck. I didn’t want him to apologize. “It’s okay,” I hesitate. “I liked it.”
“Go to sleep,” Dean whispers, and I can’t get a good read on his reaction. I pretend to try for a few minutes, closing my eyes, and sitting still, but I feel too restless. I fuss with my coat, and I crumple my tote bag.
“I can’t,” I announce to no one in particular.
“You never answered my question from earlier,” Dean whispers.
“What question?” I ask, only vaguely knowing what he’s talking about. It’s tempting to fidget and change the topic to something else, but I don’t interrupt his train of thought.
“Do you think there’s someone else out there for you?” He asks. Our eyes meet across the center console, and his are soft and warm, lit up by the light of the GPS. He quickly turns his head back to the road, and I want to say no in response because that’s the easy answer, but I don’t give in. Does he think it could be him?
“I don’t know,” I whisper back. “I want to hope there is.”
“Hope can be a powerful thing.” He responds, his grip on the steering wheel tightening, his eyes focusing on the yellow lines and tire marks ahead of us.
“Sometimes it’s the only thing that kept me going,” I admit.
From the hope that I wasn’t rotten to the core with a mental illness that controlled my waking minutes to the hope that I’d one day recover from the loss of Andy and love again, hope fueled my every move.
“I…” Dean starts, but nothing else comes out of his mouth. His brow is furrowed, his concentration seemingly on the road, but there must be a million things going through his head. “I don’t know how you made it to the other side of this.”
“Have you ever swam across a pond?” I ask him.
“No. Have you?”
“I did once. The summer after Andy died. I was practically an antisocial hermit at that point, and I wasn’t feeling human, and I was desperate to feel something, anything.” I look out the window, towards the darkness. Thin, bone-like trees barrel past us at 70 miles per hour. “I don’t know why I chose the pond. It was so cold, for late June. It was frigid, even.”
“Yeah?”
“I was floating on my back, in the middle of the water, surrounded only by water for a mile. And when it’s lapping at your face, it feels like you’ll never get across,” I take a breath. I’ve never told this to anyone. “I wished the pond would’ve just swallowed me whole. This was even before I knew what was wrong with me. I wished that the water would just envelop me and take me away to somewhere I’d never have to deal with the perpetuity of loss. The endlessness of losing someone again. I wished it was me who died.”
Dean nods his head.
“I was getting tired. And I wish I could say I saw, like, a dragonfly or a butterfly or some other symbolic bullshit that letme know Andy was still with me. But I didn’t. I was out there for hours, and it never came. The waves just kept coming. They didn’t care,” I sigh. “I swam the rest of the way to shore, anyway. Because I needed to see what was on the other side. Feel the rocks on the shore and the sun on my face.”
Dean doesn’t say anything, but I know he’s listening.
“That’s how I kept going. Today might be bad, and tomorrow too. But at least tomorrow is not today. Because I deserve to see what’s coming next.”
“And here you are,” He says quietly.
