It makes me think of Amy. I’m not even sure why. Maybe because everything makes me think of Amy.
I walk back to my dad and nudge him awake. He groans and swats my hand away. I shove him. “Dad, you gotta sit up.”
Like me, my father is tall and thin, much too heavy for me to attempt to drag him back to the truck. I’d probably need a dolly for that. My father gets to his feet, but I have to throw one of his arms over my shoulders to get him to stagger his way to my truck, which is parked illegally against a curb. Almost as soon as I get him in the passenger seat, he falls asleep, and I strap him in like a two-year-old.
I make my way out of the city, stopping at a red light just as we pass from Kansas City into Independence. I sigh and set my head against the seat. The music coming through my speakers is enough to almost put me to sleep. It’s an album that I’m thinking about loaning to Amy, a Norwegian pop singer that she might love enough to give up the contest.
I glance out the passenger side window at an old church. I guess I’ve never noticed it before. The sign out front proclaims it’s a Catholic church. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the light turn green, but there’s no one behind me, so I stay where I am, trying to make out the images in the shadow-covered stained-glass windows.
“What is this shit?” I hear Dad grumble, and then I hear the sound of tires squealing behind me before something hits us.
MARCH
OLIVER
IT’S ALMOST ALL worth it when Amy sees my cast. Maybe that’s a horrible thing to think. After all, we did (ironically) get rear-ended by a drunk driver in the middle of the night, but I can’t help being mildly thankful when Amy walks into the shop that night, her eyes finding me like they always do when she comes to work, and then going wide when she sees the cast on my arm.
“What happened?” She takes my plastered arm in her hands gently, like she might injure it further with the slightest pressure. “Did you slip on the ice? How long have you lived here? Don’t you know how to maneuver a February snowstorm?” She isn’t even looking at me. She’s running the tip of her finger over the elephant and the kitten Brooke and Lauren drew on it while I was at their place last night.
“Not quite. Car accident.”
Her mouth opens in horror. She hasn’t let go of my arm, and I can feel my whole body starting to quiver slightly. She’s standing so close to me.
“A car accident? Oh my God.”
“Amy, I’m okay.”
When she looks at me, I feel my stomach flip. Even though Amy and I are friends, and even though I knew before now that she cares about me, I didn’t really get that she cares about me. That maybe if something happened to me, it might actually mean something to her.
I can smell the floral scent of her shampoo when she pushes up on her toes to hug me, and I can feel the warmth of her along my body. I wrap my good arm around her, pressing my fingertips into her spine, gently.
She finally lets me go, and we both look down at the cast on my arm. She doesn’t say anything, but I know she’s waiting for the explanation.
“I went to pick up my dad. He was sort of … passed out.” I leave it at that.
“Again?” she hisses.
Something inside me cracks open when she says that. I can’t even really say why. Maybe it’s because she was paying attention. When was the last time someone paid attention? And I don’t mean Brooke noticing that I have feelings for Amy. No, it’s more than that. I never told Amy specifically about my dad, but she gets it anyway. She saw him in the back seat that night. She figured out what was going on.
Because she cares.
“Do you want to go for a drive tonight?”
She sends me a wary look. “Is your car okay to drive?”
“Oh. Yeah. The bumper’s a little ugly, but it’s fine.”
She smiles and nods. “Okay. New music for the competition?”
“There’s something I want to show you.”
She blinks up at me, and something flashes across her face, something that makes me feel like maybe I’ve said something wrong. But then her smile comes back.
“Sounds great. I could use a stress reliever.”
I feel my good mood deflate slightly. “Everything okay?”
She looks away from me, and she doesn’t have to answer. I can see it, the way you can see the rain clouds coming from miles away to cover up what’s left of the sunshine.
“Your ex?”
A part of me is hoping she’ll say no, of course not, not her ex. It’s that damn calculus, it’s her family getting on her nerves, it’s the unbearable wait to hear from Stanford, anything but her ex, but when she looks up at me, I know I’ve guessed right.
“He’s seeing someone,” she says quietly.
I know the right things to say. Things like, Man that sucks or How does that make you feel? But instead, I say, “Amy, you deserve better.”
Her dark eyes meet mine, and I can see that they’re a little teary. I’m surprised at the way seeing her like this makes my chest ache, makes me want to hold her. Her chin starts to tremble, and I reach out and press my thumb there, feel her smooth skin under mine.
“Can someone tell me where the bathroom is?”
I pull my hand away from Amy’s face and we both look over to see a teenage girl leaning across the counter, wiggling madly.
“It’s in the back corner behind the posters,” Amy says, pointing in the direction of the large restroom sign hanging from the ceiling. When the girl is gone, Amy looks back at me. “I should clock in,” she says.
As soon as she’s gone, Brooke saunters over. I pretend to be recording damages. “I’m starting to think you broke that arm on purpose,” she says.
OLIVER
IN THE PASSENGER seat of my car, Amy uncaps a black Sharpie with a pop. “Okay, hand it over,” she says.
I roll my eyes but gladly set my arm on the console between our seats. Amy immediately bends over it with a smile. As she moves from one side of the cast to the other, her fingers brush the sensitive skin on the inside of my arm, and I hold in the gasp that rises up in my throat. She’s writing quickly and doesn’t notice what she’s doing to me.
I’ve got big, big plans but I can see them slipping through.
“‘Maps’?” I ask, recognizing the lyrics from one of the Front Bottoms’s more popular songs.
Amy shrugs. “I like it. Besides, the cast covers your tattoo.”
After a minute of listening to Walk the Moon (Amy says they’re fine, but definitely not worth admitting that I’m the greater musical genius) sing between us, she says, “So where are we going anyway?”
“Just something I saw the other day. Made me think of you.” I know that by saying this, I’m probably revealing too much.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see her look at me, but I keep my eyes on the road because if I look over at her now, I’m going to tell her that the moment I met her was the moment I came alive, and I think that just might ruin our night.
“Oli, what’s going on with your dad?”
Finally, she’s asking me. I don’t even hesitate. I’ve spent so many years trying to only share parts of myself with people, the parts I think they can handle, but I want Amy to know all my parts.