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It’s so easy to pretend out here. To pretend like everything is okay and we’re just two people on an adventure. Two people who will eventually return to their normal, everyday lives. Only I don’t have a life to return to. Not really. Because I’m on borrowed time, something Abel has chosen not to bring up once since we left Chicago. He said he didn’t want this trip to be about me dying. He wants it to be about me living.
In truth, there are moments when I forget. Moments when it feels like we have forever. And it’s during those times that I feel more perfect than I ever have before. But eventually reality sinks back in and I’m forced to face the truth. This trip may be about me living, but the fact still remains that Iamdying. Other than a few minor headaches and a couple bouts of dizziness, I feel totally normal. I guess that’s why cancer can progress so far before you realize you have it. Sometimes symptoms don’t show up until the later stages, by which point it’s too late.
“There.” I jump, pointing at a road sign for Barrett’s Bistro. “See! I told you we’d find something that starts with a B.” I smack his thigh lightly.
“Hopefully it’s open. I’m starving.”
“How can you be starving? You had a huge cup of coffee and three donuts from the gas station less than an hour ago.” I laugh.
“Which is precisely why I typically don’t eat stuff like that. It’s full of sugar and doesn’t keep you satisfied for long.”
“This is true. But damn are they good in the moment.”
“As are most things that are bad for you.” He grins, turning left as we enter the main center of town.
“Where are we anyway?” I look for a sign or something to tell me what town we’re in.
“Walden I think.” He glances at his phone that’s mounted to the dash, the GPS pulled up on the screen.
“It’s cute,” I observe, thinking this is exactly how I would have pictured a small town in Colorado. “And look, they’re open.” I smile as he pulls into Barrett’s Bistro–the open sign lit up in the window.
“Now let’s hope it’s good.” He parks the van, killing the engine moments later.
“As long as it’s not Korean food I think we’ll be good.” I wrinkle my nose.
——
After lunch we spendthe next four hours driving to Colorado Springs, one of the top stops on my ever growing list of things I want to see.
When this trip started I only wanted to explore but the further out we go, the more places I realize I actually want to visit. So much so that after the second day of our trip I started making a list so I wouldn’t forget.
“This is it,” I say as we make our way through beautiful Colorado Springs. “This is where Jaxon and Mia fell in love.” I look out the window, able to picture them walking down the sidewalk holding hands as if it was something that actually happened in real life. “I wonder if Tam Thompson spent a lot of time here before she wroteIt Begins Here. She described the city so well that I feel like in a way I’ve already been here.” I turn, smiling at the sweet way Abel looks at me.
“If she were alive today, what’s the one thing you would ask her?” Abel asks, turning his gaze back to the road.
“God, I wouldn’t even know where to begin. I guess I’d want to know more about her personal life. It had to be incredible. There’s no way someone can write a love story like that and not have experienced it first-hand.”
“I think you’d be surprised. Maybe she was a lonely woman who used her imagination to create the world she wished she was living in.”
“I refuse to believe that.” I turn my nose up at the thought. “She was beautiful and talented and there had to have been a very special man in her life.”
“What happened to her?” he asks after a long moment of silence passes between us.
“She died of an autoimmune disease a few years ago. She was only forty-two.”
“I had no idea you knew so much about her.”
“She’s my favorite author. I make it a point to know things about people that impact me the way her books have. She was a literary genius.” My heart picks up speed when I see the sign forCircus Ink–the tattoo shop where Jaxon had Mia’s name tattooed on his chest. “Pull over.” I bounce excitedly in my seat.
“What?” Abel throws me a questioning glance.
“Pull over.” I point to the tattoo shop. “I want to go in there.”
“Into the tattoo shop?” he questions.
“It’s where one of the characters in the book got a tattoo.” I bite my bottom lip to contain my excitement.
Abel smiles and shakes his head, having learned at this point to roll with it. He knows how crazy I am about my books.
