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“Yep. Relationships really can change the course of your life. And sometimes that’s fine, but I think more people should stay single longer to really figure themselves out first before bringing someone else into the picture.”
Suddenly all the different choices I would have made if it hadn’t been for a relationship rushed into my mind. Without a doubt, I would have attended a different school. I would have gone to Paris for the semester abroad my sophomore year in college, but I stayed behind for Mark. In high school, Rick and I had both wanted to be class president, but I hadn’t wanted to compete against him, so I’d walked away and let him run unopposed. Moving away from home to Chicago had happened because I’d been running away from a boy. My now toxic work environment was because of a man-child. Over and over, flashes of my decisions in life kept coming back to one thing.
Anything with a Y chromosome.
“Damn. You aren’t kidding,” I said as a song finished on the stereo. “Wow. Maybe I need to do the whole single thing for a while too.”
“It’s never a bad idea to date yourself until you’ve figured out who you are without a partner. My mom has this saying she likes to use. “You never want to look back and say, ‘I wish I woulda,’” and she’s right. So, I made it my goal to live without regrets. When I get old, I want to look back on my life and see that I spent it doing exactly what I wanted. I live free and simple, so I can just up and go wherever I want, whenever I want. I want to experience everything and get to the end of my days all battered and beat up with a life full of excitement and mistakes, but also filled with incredible stories.”
His words hit me hard. As I sat pondering exactly what I would do with my life if I had absolutely no one to account for other than myself, the next song started on the radio.
“Yes!” Ethan reached over to turn it up.
“Oh, no way!” I laughed, bobbing my head to the opening sounds ofDon’t Stop Believing.“I love this one!”
“Same,” he grinned back at me, then started singing the lyrics in surprising tune.
“On my twenty-first birthday, Iris dragged me on stage at a karaoke bar, and we sang this song together. It was the craziest thing I’ve ever done in my life!”
Ethan spun to look at me. “Singing karaoke was the craziest thing you’ve ever done?”
I slunk down a little. “Uh, yeah. Other than this road trip with a complete stranger.”
Or going home last night with a stranger,I realized but didn’t want to bring up that mortification again.
“Damn, girl. We need to get you out on some adventures. You only live once, you know.”
“And you? What is the craziest thing you’ve done?”
He blew out a long whistle. “Oof. That’s a long list to sort through.”
“Top of your head.”
“Top of my head? Uh, I guess getting drunk one night and buying my brother, Ian, and me tickets to Vegas. Then once we got there, I won ten grand, so we went back to the airport, and I booked us tickets on the first flight out. Ended up in Thailand, where we had this incredible experience, and eventually, I finally sobered up and woke up on a beach sleeping next to a tortoise. Top of my head, that’s one of them.”
My jaw dropped. “Oneof them? You mean it can get crazier than ending up in Thailand with a tortoise? Holy shit. You must have lived a wild life.”
The perfect dimples in his cheeks deepened with his smile. “Yep. And that’s just the way I like it. Free to live. Free to travel. Just free.” He turned up the radio a little more as the chorus grew closer.
When the chorus hit, he didn’t hold back, and I couldn’t contain myself either. Ethan and I belted out the song as we barreled down the interstate, heading onto a road trip I still couldn’t believe I’d agreed to. I felt free for the first time in a long time ... maybe ever. The possibility of a real adventure—especially for a girl like me—sent wave after wave of exhilaration through me. I knew I was in the middle of creating one of those stories I would someday look back on when I was a little old lady thinking back on the best moments of my life.
In all honesty, until now, I didn’t really have many treasured memories. If our plane had crashed, I would have died having never really experienced anything. Up until yesterday, my life had been one carefully plotted step after another. I didn’t drink much. I didn’t sleep around. I didn’t go to wild parties or travel. I studied through school to get an education. Then I took that education and got a job. After work, I went home most nights to binge movies or shows with my boyfriend or, for the short single periods, myself. As I thought harder about it, most days in my life differentiated little from any other. Just one humdrum day after another.
I glanced over at Ethan as he tapped out a beat on the steering wheel. Nowheknew how to live. He did more exciting things in a week than I’d done in my whole life, like Iris. For a moment, I considered how the two of them would be perfect together, but then the thought of him and my sister caused my stomach to hollow out to make room for the jealous rage that quickly filled it. Iris and I had never fought over a boy, and we’d vowed we never would. Yet the more I thought of him and her laughing and carefree together made me want to pull her hair like I’d done when she’d stolen my Barbie when I was six.
But Ethan didn’t belong to me. In fact, by tomorrow, I’d likely never see him again. He’d go off onto his next exhilarating adventure, and I’d go back to my monotonous life. The excitement I’d gained while we were singing started to peter out when I admitted my boring reality, but thenSweet Carolinecame on, and Ethan got me singing once again.
After many rounds of more catchy songs and a few hours of interesting conversation about our fears, our dreams, and our lives, I stretched my arms wide and yawned.
“You tired?” he asked, yawning as well.
“Yeah. I suppose I am. I’m hungover, our plane almost crashed, and now I’m on a road trip from New York to Chicago. It’s been a hell of a day.”
“Yeah. It has.” He chuckled. “Go ahead and get some shuteye. I’m golden.”
I peeked over at him, worry screwing my face up tight. “You sure you’re okay to drive without me staying up? You just yawned.”
“I yawned because I’m an empathetic person. It’s natural to yawn after someone else yawns. In fact, only sociopaths don’t yawn in response to another yawn, so you can feel a little safer I’m not a sociopath.”
