But what if my future is with Adam, the two of us taking LA’s art world by storm?
We’re not even through Santa Barbara when Kevin pulls off so we can eat at a legendary taco stand. Either Kevin’s a really good actor, or he’s not as wounded as I thought, because he’s his usual famished self.
The place is tiny, whitewashed, with turquoise trim around the door and windows and zigzag roof, and the line of customers is out the door.
“Look, they make their tortillas fresh.” Kevin points through the window at the woman working the tortilla press.
“Do you eat tacos every day?” I ask.
“Almost. I have to make up for the eighteen years I lived in a place where guacamole comes in a squeeze bottle.”
“No, that’s just wrong.”
“Hence my quest to eat as many tacos as I can before I go back to Kansas, land of the squeeze bottle.”
I clamp my hands over my ears. “Stop saying ‘squeeze bottle.’ Don’t make me picture it.”
Kevin mouths the words in front of my face. Squeeze. Bottle.
I jab him with my elbow.
Our eyes connect, and we gaze at each other for an inexplicably long moment until Kev says, “Okay, okay, I’m done,” and we flip back to the menu board.
We order chorizo tacos for me and posole extra spicy for Kevin. A table opens right as our order comes up and I dive for it. Kevin digs into his posole while I assemble my tacos. When I look up, his face is red and he’s wiping his nose on a napkin.
“Hot enough for you?”
He nods, eyes closed, and I’m not sure if he’s happy or hurting.
“Real sexy,” I say. “The snot. It’s a big turn-on.”
Kevin mumbles something.
“Save it,” I tell him. “You should consider performance art. Watching you eat has changed my experience of Mexican food forever.”
He takes a last mouthful and drags his wrist over his sweaty forehead. “Man, that was good.”
The sleeve of his tee rides up, revealing the tattoo on his bicep. “Aw, you’ve got a tattoo of the BFG?”
Kevin hooks his sleeve with a finger and pulls it back. “Yeah, my sister Toby used to call me the Big Friendly Giant because I’d read her to sleep when we were little. Not gonna repeat what she calls me now.”
“How old is she?”
“Fifteen. Toby’s ‘testing boundaries.’”
I laugh. “Yeah, fifteen’s not pretty.”
“What about you? What’s the story behind your tattoos?”
“No tattoos,” I say. “My mom always joked that the wrong tattoo was like a bad relationship: easy to get into, and impossible to get out of. She made me promise I’d wait until I found a design that had real meaning for me, and now…”
I pick a slice of jalapeño off the table and drop it on my plate, not sure how the sentence ends.
Kevin smooths his sleeve back down. “Back at the grove, you said your mom would have loved it. Does that mean she…”
He leaves his question unfinished, but I nod, and my eyes fill. “Last February.”
“Jeez. I’m sorry.”
“Thanks, it’s been rough.”
He reaches over and squeezes my hand. My fingers wrap around his.
“Can I ask…?”
“How? Hit-and-run.”
I know Kevin’s thinking it’s horrifying what happened to her, to me. It’s all over his face and the way he’s taking me in, so I’m surprised when all he says is, “And your dad?”
“Not in the picture. Not now. Not ever.”
He pauses, weighing what I said. “I’ve never heard you mention any brothers or sisters.”
I shrug and give him a half smile, because I can’t say it aloud. I’m alone.
His eyes pinch as if he’s in pain. “How did you…did someone take you in?”
“Hayley, my best friend; her parents let me stay with them.” I stop there. Kevin doesn’t need to know what happened next.
He squeezes my hand one last time before he lets go. Then he takes a long drink of his soda, giving us both space to recover. The truth is heavy and now he’s carrying some of its weight.
When he’s done, he looks at me over his cup and his brown eyes are soft. “Tell me something about your mom.”
It’s an invitation I didn’t know I wanted. I dab the last traces of hot sauce off my mouth. “Her name was Crystal, but she went by Crys, and before she had me, she was a singer-songwriter. If she’d been at the grove with us today, I think she would’ve been inspired to write a song about it.”
“Yeah? What about?”
I mull over this for a moment before I answer. “About butterflies traveling thousands of miles to go home. About having the faith to start an impossible journey.”
“You really love her.”
My heart squeezes hearing him say “love” instead of “loved.” My love for Mom will never be past tense.
“Yeah, I do,” I manage to say, but I’m not sure he can hear me.
A helpless look comes over Kevin’s face. He doesn’t know how to make this better.
I have to turn things around, so I say, “I’m picking up her guitar tomorrow! This bachelorette party left me an outrageous tip last night, so I can finally ransom it.”
“Is it an acoustic?”
“Yeah, custom made.”
“Who do you have to ransom it from?”
I could kick myself for saying that. It’s embarrassing, being so desperate for money I had to pawn it. “A guy who does repairs. It was a small—The neck got chipped and I didn’t want it to get worse.”
“I’d love to see it once you get it back.”
Once again, I sense I’ve missed something. “Do you play guitar?”
“Guitar, mandolin, banjo, but I doubt I’m anywhere near as good as your mom.”
“Probably not,” I say, and toss him a grin, “but I’d like to hear you anyway.”
People crowd against our table, waiting for their orders. I sweep our crumpled napkins into a pile. “We should probably let someone else have the table.”
Kevin stacks our plates. “Yeah, I should get back. Physics test tomorrow.”
On the drive, wind whips through the car. Kevin listens to music, and I watch the ocean fly by the open window. The highway follows the rocky coastline, and my breath catches.
We’re not far from where I waded in to sprinkle Mom’s ashes, and I see it again, the trail of white ribboning away from me on the water.
My anger flares. Why did it have to be her, God? Why not somebody else?
“What are you thinking about?”
It’s the first thing Kev’s said in a half hour, so it’s a real question. “How angry I am at God.”
He looks from me to the road, before he says, “For what happened to your mom?”
“It isn’t fair. She’d made up for every bad thing she’d ever done. She lived clean, ate right, and never crossed a line…and a guy mowed her down with his car like a stray dog. He didn’t even stop.”
Everything I need Kevin to say is in the look on his face and the hand that reaches for mine. What happened is horrible, and unfair, and completely indefensible, and what he has to offer me is this: that I am not alone.