I smiled. “You weren’t so bad.”
He arched a brow at me like he knew better, but a smile settled onto his face, and he loosened his grip on the steering wheel just a touch.
I marked it as a win.
“I didn’t really realize it, not then. I couldn’t wrap my head around everything you were going through because I just had no idea of what it was like. But when you left,” he said, and he paused for a long time, letting those words hang between us. “I don’t know, I started thinking back a lot. And I thought about what I was going through, but even more, what you were going through.” He looked at me then. “You’re the strongest person I know, Jasmine. You’ve been through darkness most people never have to face, trudged through the mud, been hurt by the people you trusted most.”
Those words seemed to strike us both, and they lingered between us for a long time before he continued.
“And still, somehow, you persevere. You come out even better on the other side.” He smiled, but it slipped quickly. “You’re a warrior.”
I chuckled, glancing out the window as Boston faded away and we continued south. “I don’t feel like a warrior,” I confessed. “Most times, I feel like a lost little girl, like I’m trying to find my way home but keep coming up short.”
Tyler nodded when I looked at him. “I know that feeling,” he said softly.
I waited for him to continue, but he fell back into silence, and for some reason, I was desperate to hold onto this part of him that was opening up again. I didn’t want to fight, I didn’t want to have all this tension between us.
And I realized, distantly, that what I wanted, I couldn’t have.
But maybe there was something in the middle that I could.
“Where’s your favorite place that you’ve traveled?”
Tyler raised a brow at my question, but I didn’t miss the smirk that climbed along with it. “Iceland.”
“Really?”
He nodded, shifting hands on the steering wheel, and I thought I saw him relax marginally — which I took as a sign that I was breaking through the ice. “It’s beautiful there, and the people are so nice. I swear, it felt like coming back to a place I’d lived my whole life rather than visiting a country I’d never been to before.”
“That’s how I felt in Italy,” I said, thinking back to my solo trip there after college. I smiled. “I remember sitting outside at this quaint little restaurant in Florence, eating the best truffle ravioli I’d ever had in my life, drinking an entire bottle of red wine all by myself and just listening to people as they walked by. I had no idea what they were saying, obviously, but… I could imagine. You know? I could look at their smiles and hear their laughter and feel alive with them.”
“There’s nothing else that makes me feel the way traveling does,” Tyler added. “It’s magical.”
“Where do you want to go that you haven’t yet?”
Tyler scoffed. “Everywhere.”
“If you had to pick just one place.”
He paused, chewing the inside of his lip as he thought, and the way the sun came through the windows of the truck, the way his hair was disheveled and unruly, the way the Sagamore bridge sprawled before us, welcoming us to the Cape as it always did — it grounded me like nothing ever had before. My stomach tightened at the warmth of it, at being in a car with the boy I grew up with, heading back to a place where we had made so many memories.
“French Polynesia,” he said.
“Shut up.”
“What?”
I shook my head, smiling like a doofus. “Those islands have been number one on my bucket list since I watched a travel documentary on them in college.”
“No shit?” Tyler grinned, and the sight made my heart flutter. “Dad sailed there with one of his buddies when he was younger. He has a whole album of pictures, and an old VHS tape that he showed me when I was in middle school. The water…”
“Amazing, right? I have to see it in person.” I shrugged on a laugh. “Who knows. Maybe we could all go together one day, the whole Wagner family.”
The words were out of my mouth before I realized the implication behind them — that I was still a part of that family. And I knew that I was, in every way but blood, but the way I’d casually said let’s take a family trip! made it seem like I’d be back, like there was more of this in our future.
Like we could take a trip together — his parents, Morgan and Oliver, him and Azra, me and Jacob — and everything be just peachy.
Tyler’s grin faltered a little, but there was a dazzle of something in his eyes when he glanced at me. Hope, maybe? And he said, “That would be the trip of a lifetime.”
He smiled, and I smiled, and that hope I thought I’d seen in his eyes flittered through me, too.
Suddenly, my phone — which was tucked in the cup holder between us — shrilled and buzzed violently, vibrating the whole console.
The sound was so abrupt compared to how softly we’d been speaking that I jumped out of my skin trying to silence it, and when I did, I stared at Jacob’s face smiling at me from the screen.
I glanced at Tyler, who had his hands stiff on the steering wheel again, looking at the road with the same narrow-eyed focus as before.
“Hey, you,” I answered, shifting to the other side of the truck like if I spoke quietly and leaned away, I could keep from Tyler the fact that I was talking to my boyfriend.
Why?
“Hey, gorgeous. You on the road?”
I cleared my throat. “Yep, should be there in a couple hours.”
“Good,” he said, and a pause stretched between us. “I wish I could be there with you. I miss you so much.”
Why did it feel impossible to breathe, let alone say those words back? I felt Tyler like he was the air around me, pushing in, suffocating instead of offering oxygen.
“I miss you, too,” I managed.
And I did — I did miss Jacob. I missed our lazy Sunday mornings together in his apartment, missed the warm summer afternoons we spent riding bikes by the beach, missed the way he felt so right and so uncomplicated before I got on the plane that took me back to this place.
“I’ll see you in just a few days,” he reminded me. “And then we can explore the Cape and get all dressed up and celebrate Morgan and Oliver.” I could hear his smile through the phone. “And I’ll get to dance with my girl, and then take her home and do filthy things to her.”
Heat flushed my cheeks so fast and furious that I pressed my cold fingertips to the skin, glancing at Tyler like he could hear.
When I didn’t respond, Jacob laughed. “You’re in the car with other people, aren’t you?”
“Sure am,” I said, and this time a genuine smile found my lips, because I could picture Jacob’s grin, how devilish and seductive he could be when he teased me.
“Well, I’ll let you go, then. I just wanted to hear your voice. And make you blush in front of your friends.”
“You succeeded.”
He chuckled again, but then a longing sigh left him. “Alright, babe. I love you. Let me know when you make it.”
“I love you, too,” I whispered, and then we ended the call, and I held my phone with both hands in my lap, my eyes focused somewhere in the distance outside the passenger side window.