“Well… yes, that’s why I asked.”
He looks to me and I laugh, then he follows. “Well, it’s a secret. So you’ll just have to accept that, okay?”
I nod, then turn my head to watch the road. He drives the car onto the freeway and I see the large green sign that says we’re headed towards downtown Los Angeles. Being without a car, it’s quite a treat to get out of Glendale. I love the area, and in just the few weeks I’ve been here, I’ve found Glendale to be incredibly charming, with lots of little boutique shops. And the Glendale Galleria is so amazing that I’ve been there four times already. Always to browse, never to buy. But it’s almost just as fun.
“So, what made you want to be a nurse?” Jeremy asks, clicking buttons on the radio until he’s satisfied with the music that sits on low.
I smile something wistful and think about the reasons, trying to sort it out in a way that’s brief but comprehensive. “I have an amazing grandmother. My Nan was a huge influence in my life, and when she got on in years, my parents put her in a home because they didn’t want to deal with her. I was so mad when they chose to not only put her in a home, but also send her away from Nebraska. We visited Nan one time when I was 16, and I was so angry when I saw how little the nursing staff cared about their patients.”
I turn in my seat, leaning my shoulder and head against the back, looking at Jeremy. “Can you imagine? Getting to an age where you can’t really take care of yourself anymore, and you get shipped off to somewhere far from everything you know, where you don’t know anyone, and the people treat you like shit?” I shake my head. “I promised myself I would be someone who made sure as many people as possible got to live out their last years in a positive environment.”
“Your Nan, she still in that place that treated her bad?” he asks, one eyebrow up, eyes still on the road.
“No, thank god,” I say on an exhale. “I pitched a huge fit and my parents agreed to move her. They’ve got plenty of money, and I told them it was the least they could do to make sure she was in a good place. So they moved her to the Pasadena Village, which is much swankier. They have beauty pageants and yearbooks and take them on trips to museums and stuff.”
Jeremy smiles. “Lemme guess… does that have something to do with you picking Glendale for college?”
I smile back, then tap my nose and point a finger at him. “Look atyouwith your illustrious powers of deduction. Color me impressed, sir.”
He laughs. “Ass.”
I shrug. “Yeah, pretty much.”
Jeremy clicks his blinker again and shifts over to the right so we can hop onto a new freeway.
“The driving in California kills me,” I say, resting my head on the headrest. “I don’t know how you do it.” When he laughs I slap his arm playfully. “Don’t laugh, it’s ridiculous. I mean… look, this freeway hasten lanesall the way across. That isinsane.”
He laughs again. “Well, when you grow up with it, you don’t know any different. I visited a friend of mine in Indiana once and the road from his town into Indianapolis was two lanes, one on each side. He said I drive like an asshole, and I said everyone there drives like their car tops out at 50.”
“Nebraska’s the same, although you definitely get the people on the roads in more rural parts who think it’s cool to drag race down both sides of the highway. Nowthat’sasshole.”
“You miss it?” he asks, and I can tell he really means it, so I need to really mean what I say back.
I pause, mulling it over, really thinking about the family I left behind. The house that felt like a stuffy museum, the rules that made me want to crawl out of my skin, the constant battle of not wanting to disappoint my family while still wanting to be true to myself.
“Sometimes I do,” I finally respond. Then he looks over at me and I’m hit with the full force of Jeremy Jameson, his face just slightly concerned but open, his hand resting casually on the wheel at the wrist like men do when they feel comfortable.
“But not today,” I add. “Today, I don’t miss it at all.”
* * * * *
I love the smell of the ocean. I’ve only seen it one time, and that was back when we visited Nan when I was 16. I’d had to beg my parents to take us, and they’d acted so put-out about it, like seeing the ocean was some small thing that could happen any day of the week.
Not when you live in fuckingNebraska, mom and dad.
They took us to Venice Beach because it was close to the airport, and we got a total of 15 minutes out on the sand, just staring at the water, before they grabbed my siblings and I, shoved us back into our chauffeured car and directed the driver to take us to LAX.
It should have been the first thing I did when I got here for college, but with the full-on week of orientation events, followed immediately by the first week of classes and the fact I’m carless, I’ve unfortunately only been able to see the ocean from the plane when I landed at LAX back in August.
So when Jeremy pulls off the freeway at a sign that indicates we’re headed towards Venice beach, I nearly shoot out of my seat with excitement. And the smile on his face, that wavers somewhere between smug and honestly pleased, only grows the closer we get.
“Now, I know Venice Beach is kind of touristy. But Rachel mentioned at lunch last week that you’d been wanting to go to the beach,” he says as he parallel parks on a residential street a few blocks from the water.
My face is nearly breaking off of my body with how huge my smile is, and I hop out of the Bronco as Jeremy just laughs and puts the car in park. I inhale deeply, loving that beach smell and soaking it in, memories rushing back of me with my sister and brother standing side-by-side, just staring at the ocean.
My sister, Isobel, two years older than me, holding my hand. My sweet brother, Grey, a year younger than me, trying to act cool but vibrating with as much excitement as his growing body was willing to allow, tucked in under my arm and holding on tight. We’d been close as long as I could remember, me and Grey. Irish twins is the term, when you’re less than a year apart from a sibling. Issy and I were as close as she was willing to allow, considering the distance she always seemed to place in between herself and the rest of the family.
But that day at the beach? That 15 minutes when we stood together and stared in awe at the mass of blue that made the air feel sticky and sweet at the same time? That was a perfect memory that I keep close to my heart.
