She waved away the question, giving me a frank look instead. “The timing just wasn’t right. We’d be making big decisions we shouldn’t actually be making yet.”
Disagree. “It’s my senior year. You could do the long-distance thing for a while and then figure it out.”
Joanne leaned against her car, taking a moment to think about her next words. Perhaps she thought being calm in the face of Ryan would make the situation or the Ryan calm too, but Dad could have told her that didn’t work. All it achieved was not bringing anymore anxiety or crazy to the party, but I brought plenty on my own.
The less worked up she got, the more keyed up I was. Come on, react! Or that was how it would usually go. But she watched me evenly and I stopped twitching impatiently.
“Yeah, I was hoping for a different outcome here,” she told me eventually. “I did wish it could work. But I don’t anymore.” There was the sad smile again. “This just wasn’t meant to be.”
“I don’t believe in meant to be.” There was a whole freaking lesson I learned about it over the summer.
“Wasn’t sure I did either.” The smile now was small but warm, happy and hopeful just for a moment. “My oldest wasn’t even supposed to be able to have kids. They were working on adopting, so who knows, maybe I’ll be getting two grandkids soon.” She laughed a little. “I might believe in fate now, like it’s all happening at the right time. Or close enough that this isn’t too messy.”
Petty, uselessly angry Ryan hoped she forgot that she had food on the roof of her car, so she got in and drove off and ruined her dinner. That would serve her right. Even though she didn’t really do anything wrong. Wasn’t like she ghosted Dad, wasn’t like she planned on this. She even mentioned her mighty need for the offspring of offspring.
Wasting good food sucked. And what if she was diabetic? Nobody mentioned that, but if she was, then she needed to eat regularly. Either way, she needed to eat. That was a thing humans did.
I sighed. “That’s just it, then?”
“I thought this was where my life was heading, this place.” She shrugged. “I was wrong. The best way to live life is probably in the moment, but then the moment ends, and you see that things you thought were important at the time weren’t actually or weren’t what you thought they were.” She took a step closer to me, looking me in the eye. “There’s something better waiting out there for you and your dad, I know it.”
Joanne gave me another sad, gentle smile and left.
She wasn’t totally wrong. I didn’t know her that well. True. That wasn’t the bad part, losing her.
Losing the possibility of her, someone I actually liked who made my dad happy? Yeah. That sucked. But still, it wasn’t even that.
It’s the hope, the feeling that maybe it isn’t too good to be true, maybe it can just work out. That I didn’t know her well, but I would get to. And it would be okay because she was cool, and it would be way better than okay because Dad liked her. Dad deserved good things. Dad deserved to be happy.
That was what sucked. He deserved good things. Why did he keep not getting them? Or only having someone good in his life for a little while and then they were taken away.
* * *
The time for feeling all the feelings would happen after this. Luke and I had an activity planned and dammit, I wanted to enjoy it. Yes, this exact strategy had been employed before. Yes, it hadn’t worked. We won’t speak about it. Add it to the other things we weren’t speaking about.
And it worked for Luke, and sometimes he got even more stuck in a rut than me. I could do this. The definition of insanity was to repeat the same actions and expect different results but also Vegas. Or, uh, what?
Oh, odds. The more the same thing happened, the greater the odds got that the next time would be different.
Yeah. Let’s go with that.
Ryan the rebel without a cause or career was at it again. Up to his no good tricks but with less anxiety this time. Well, less heist related anxiety. On the agenda today was a prank and theft all in one! And I didn’t even feel bad about stealing a car.
Yeah, we were going to steal a car!
Though that sounds less prank and more… grand larceny. We would borrow, commander, or something that means steal but nicer. We were going to do that to a car.
Zach’s car.
Luke said Zach enjoyed pranks, even when they were on him. I guessed that was because it gave him a chance to retaliate. My boo confirmed that my guess was totally right.
We were going to temporarily misplace Zach’s car and then in return he was probably going to do something that straddled the line between a prank, harmless fun, and intolerable cruelty, the stuff that gives people nightmares.
It was gonna be awesome.
…
Okay, whatever Zach did as retribution was probably going to be terrible. I would lovingly use Luke as a human shield, but it was really cool that I had friends who I could prank and be pranked by.
