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And I can’t forget about the ticking time bomb in my bladder.
“Don’t tell me your mom drove all the way to Memphis, took a picture, then left. I call bullshit on that.” Dash reaches for Mom’s diary. “May I?”
I hand over the journal, knowing exactly what he’ll find.
He wipes the fog from his glasses and then slips them on, holding Mom’s diary open like story time at the library.
“I knew it! They hit Beale Street . . . Sun Studio. Skipped Graceland because your grandma said it was a giant tourist trap—she wasn’t wrong about that. And look . . .” He taps the page. “They ate barbecue and deep-fried Oreos.”
“Okay, I get it.” My chest tightens as all the reasons for staying add up, making the reasons for leaving seem ridiculous in comparison. “That’s not nothing.”
“Got drunk at Jerry Lee’s,” he continues.
“Okay, stop right there.” I reach for Mom’s diary with a nervous chuckle. “I’m not getting drunk at Jerry Lee’s . . .”
Or anywhere else in a strange city with a guy I just met.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he says with boyish innocence. “I wasn’t planning on drinking, let alone getting drunk. I’m driving, remember?”
I raise an eyebrow and fold my arms over my chest. “And if you weren’t driving?”
“Well, I seriously doubt I’d be drinking if you were driving, either, after the whole armadillo incident.” His innocent facade slips, the gears in his head turning as he holds my gaze. “You could, though, right? Without breaking any laws?”
“Of course.” I shift my attention to the swirling script on the page and mutter, “In Europe.”
He laughs. “But not here?”
His glasses fog again, saving me from his penetrating gaze.
“If you must know, I’ll be twenty-one in three months.”
He nods and releases a breath. “Good to know.”
With that subject firmly behind us, I stow Mom’s ashes and her diary in my tote, still torn about what to do next. Dash is right, I should stay and do all the things Mom did—and not out of some sense of duty, but because I want to do all those things . . . with him. But I also don’t want to get caught with my pants literally around my ankles when I need to pee and can’t get G-Lo’s personal protection undies back on in the damn Memphis heat. Thanks to countless hours of binge-watching Friends with Mom, visions of Ross and the leather pants plague my thoughts.
Dash bumps my shoulder with his. “Maybe you didn’t get to re-create the picture at the old auditorium, but you’re here. In Memphis. Breathing the same air your mom breathed, however long ago. You can’t really want to leave already. Let’s . . . I don’t know. Let’s go to Sun Studio and Beale Street. We’re in the home of the blues. We didn’t drive all this way to turn right around and go back, did we?”
“No.” My willpower deflates like a sad party balloon. “We didn’t.”
Excited, he dials up his smile. “Then let’s do this . . . Listen to good music. Eat good food. And experience what your mom did when she was here. What else do we have to do? Your car won’t be ready until Tuesday.”
“You can stop selling me on the idea.” Laughing, I nudge him and he slips right off the bench.
He’s right, and he knows it as well as I do. I can’t dump a handful of ashes and go home. Mom was alive when she came here, and I have a chance to truly follow her footsteps. I can’t turn my back on that.
“Hey, that’s fine.” Grinning, he stands. “If you want to camp out in the diner for the weekend, or waste half your budget on the Hicksville Inn where you can search for patterns in the carpet stains and watch The Bachelor reruns all weekend, I won’t—”
“Dash!” I drag my bottom lip through my teeth as an army of butterflies takes over my insides.
“What?”
A grin explodes across my face. “Let’s do it.”
His eyes widen. “Really?”
“Come on, before I change my mind.” I hook my arm through his.
He does a quick fist pump before towing me back toward the footbridge and the nearest trolley. “You won’t regret this.”
