“Thank you.” I said it out loud. He pulled me in closer to his side, and we both watched the water move along.
◈ ◈ ◈
I started spending more time at my parents’ house. The days that I worked, I stayed in Freya and spent my spare time with Cambria, who had a lighter ambience about her since finishing Summer Term and leaving college behind. I could see it in the way she walked, hear it in the way she spoke and laughed.
On my weekly stretch of three days off, I would drive to Rockwood on Day Off #1 and usually stay there with my parents all the way through to Day Off #3. There was something about being in my childhood home and being with my parents that I needed after breaking things off with David for good. Having to return a diamond ring was a painful enough task, but even after that was completed, it felt as though a bandage were being slowly torn from my skin.
The simple things made me feel better, little by little. Drinking tea with my mom on the front porch. Emptying the dishwasher with my dad when he got home from work. Lying in my bed at night, remembering those days when I was a care-free child.
I wrote while I was there, too. I wrote about everything that had happened with David. It helped me to make sense of it, to understand what I had done to get myself into the situation of rejecting a marriage proposal. David had charmed me—twice. It was his specialty. But there was more than the charm that had drawn me to him.
He had given me structure. Structure was one of my primary strengths as a person, but it also had a way of being one of my primary weaknesses. With David, I could feel myself settling into a rhythm. I could feel myself fixating onto a set of railroad tracks that wouldn’t—couldn’t—waver.
But structure can go too far. Too much structure can be stifling. Too much rigidity can force you into a box and trap you there for good. After ending things with David and giving the ring back to him, I felt the rigidity dissolve. I thought about the future, and there was that blurry haze again, but I realized I was okay with it. It was okay not to know the future—it was good. I was confused about the future, but at the same time, I had peace about it. Is it possible to be peacefully confused? For the first time in my life, I felt that it was.
Two weeks went by, and Riley’s wedding was now just a matter of days away. Her wedding day fell on a Saturday, which would normally be my first day of work for the week. I had used some of my vacation time to get that day, along with the day after, off. That way, I would have enough time for traveling home from Portland. The result of this was a beautiful stretch of five days off from work.
I had planned the whole thing out. The first three days of this stretch were the ones I would usually have off anyway, Wednesday through Friday. I would spend that Wednesday at the Freya apartment with Cambria, having her teach me how to do bridesmaid makeup. On Thursday, I would stay with my parents, hanging out with them, and writing. That Friday, I planned to drive down to Portland. Saturday was the wedding day itself, and on Sunday, I would drive back home.
Friday had arrived, my day of departure. I woke up early at my parents’ house, ate my Honeycombs, and took a quick shower. I gave Riley a call to let her know I would soon be on my way. She sounded more emotional than I was accustomed to, but it seemed like a good sort of emotional.
I double checked that I had everything packed for the trip. My bridesmaid dress was red. I had accused Riley of purposefully and evilly making me relive my Prom experience, but she had only laughed and denied the allegation. As she correctly pointed out, this dress was not nearly as tight, and it did not have a slit in the skirt.
My parents had already left for work after my mom hugged me and my dad reminded me that he had changed the oil in my car yesterday. Everything was in order. It was time to get going.
I rolled my suitcase across the wood floor and set it down by the front door. I looked around the house, almost feeling like I was saying goodbye to the place forever. It had been my place of healing for the last two weeks. It had been my shelter from the rest of the world. I was feeling uneasy about leaving it and driving six hours away.
It had to be done, though. Besides the wedding that I was supposed to appear in the next day, I needed to move on from this stage of life. I needed to get back to the rest of the world.
I grabbed the handle of my suitcase and reminded myself to breathe. I was just about to grab the door handle when suddenly, three strong knocks issued from the other side.
The hard sounds made my muscles flinch and take a step back from the door. Maybe it was a solicitor, or Mormons, or maybe my parents had ordered something online that was being delivered. I opened the door hesitantly, hoping I wouldn’t have to explain to a young man in a suit that I didn’t have time to discuss religion.
There he was. Not dressed in a suit, but a pair of jeans and a blue T-shirt. Not holding a Bible, but a duffel bag on the ground, resting by his feet. His sandy brown hair. His earthy eyes. I had seen him here before, right in this very spot.
“River.”
“Hey, Drew. Any chance you’re going to a wedding in Portland, too?”
I launched myself into his arms. He caught me like I was a wild bird trying to take flight from its nest. He held me there, and he was real, just like in Seattle. But he was here, in Rockwood, on my parents’ porch, back where we started.
“You’ve got to stop surprising me like this,” I said into his T-shirt.
“It’s too much fun.”
I kept my arms around him but tilted my head up so I could see his face. He was looking down at me.
“You came back?” It was obvious that he had returned to Rockwood, but the words nonetheless came out of my mouth like a question.
“I thought it was about time,” he answered. I could feel his voice vibrate into me. “I wanted to see my mom. I wanted to see you. And it was on the way to Portland. Every now and then, you get on my path, Drew.”
I stared up at him and just beamed, not knowing what to say, but not feeling the need to say anything.
“So,” River said. “You want to carpool? Go together to see Riley get hitched?”
Somehow, my smile grew bigger. “More than anything.”
◈ ◈ ◈
“How’d you know I would be at my parents’ house?”
We were driving south on the freeway in a rental car River had picked up in Idaho. He had apparently driven all around North America in the old Toyota he had purchased back in high school. Finally, its transmission had gone out when he’d reached Coeur d’Alene—almost making it all the way back to his starting point of little Rockwood, Washington.
“I didn’t.” He drove with one hand on the steering wheel, the other one resting close to mine near the cupholders. “But I figured I might as well check, since I was so close by. I’m glad I did.”
“Me too.”
“You’re pretty easy to find.”
“I can’t say the same about you.”
What was originally going to be a long and tedious six-hour drive by myself had turned into an invigorating, joy-filled journey with my best friend. I couldn’t stop looking at him. It had been a year and a half since we’d last seen each other, in Seattle. He was just a few months older than me, which meant he was twenty-three now. He looked even more adult to me now than when I’d seen him at Riley’s second-story home. I wondered if he thought the same about me.