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When I arrive back at the ranch, the van with the new group is pulling down the long driveway. Wyatt and Emma wave me over, and I get off of Jasper and hold his reins as we wait. This is always the exciting part. The group gets out of the van and is a mixture of both men and women. Then, I see a petite brunette, hair down past her chin, and I grow excited.
Her eyes shoot in my direction, and a smile extends across her face, but my stomach drops. It’s not Jack. Of course it isn’t. She made her need for her career a top priority. As much as I hope, we just aren’t written in the stars.
Late that night, I am in bed, head resting on my arms, when there’s a knock at the door.
“Hey,” Wyatt says and pokes his head in the door. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.” He takes a seat near my corner table.
I sit up in bed. “Not at all. What’s going on?”
Wyatt looks at me, concern all over his face. “You’re not yourself, Luca. Are you okay?
If you can’t say it to your best friend, who can you say it to?”
“I have no clue what Jack did to me in such a short period of time, but I’m in love with her, Wyatt.”
He nods like I said the most obvious thing in the world.
“Did you tell her?” he asks.
“Well, no,” I respond. “I didn’t want to scare her.”
“So, instead, you let her go?” Wyatt stands up and leans back against the table.
“I didn’t let her do anything. Jack chose to leave. I asked her to stay. Her life is there. Mine is here. End of story.”
Wyatt takes a deep breath and holds it. He always does this before he’s going to say something important. “Emma and I love having you here. We know your new home is nearly complete. But all of that stuff can be figured out. Home is wherever you make it, Luca, and whoever you choose to make it with.”
“I’ve made my home here. For good reason.”
Wyatt shrugs and stands up straight. “To be in love with someone who doesn’t know you feel that way, well,” he walks to the door and pauses, “that sounds like pure torture to me.”
I stare at the door for a long time after he leaves, thinking about his words and why he’d come all the way to my room to tell me such things. Then I groan and flop over on the empty bed.
Sounds like torture—ha! Itfeelslike torture to me.
Jack
Driving is always a strangefeeling to me, but I do own a car. It normally remains parked and charging in the underground garage at my condo building, but today, it’s a necessity for the hour and a half drive south. I need someone to objectively ground me. Eddie was too close to the situation, and Mari is definitely the fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants kinda friend. So, this is a first and strange, even to me, that I’m turning to Mom and Dad for advice.
But here I go.
Before backing out of the parking spot, I connect my phone to the car stereo system and search through the streaming app. I’m in a mood, so my fingers hesitate over the keys before I give in and type “country” into the search bar. Another first.
Before, that was the only station that would tune in near the trading post and Thoroughgood, but this is a choice. Knowing nothing about the music genre, I select the first station that appears.
As I pull onto Highway 101, the list is on the third song, and I’m a bit curious why all of them so far comes with mixed-up warm and fuzzy feelings. Are there any country songs about something other than love?
About the time I make it to Palo Alto on my way to San Jose, a duet comes on, and I tap along on the steering wheel. About halfway through the song, I’m getting choked up, because every word seems to narrate the way I felt about Luca. It talks about choices and them not wanting to live without the other. There’s one line that keeps repeating, so it must be the title: “Nobody but you.”
When it starts talking about going down separate roads, I reach over and punch the power button. I can’t. I... just... can’t. Different roads are the right answer. Right?
Mom and Dad will set me straight. They have always been the most practical voices in my life. They tried desperately to steer me back toward the medical path, which would likely have been an easier road to success for a woman. I wouldn’t listen then, but today, I need their logic and reason to reassure me I made the right decision.
I exit 101 onto the south loop around San Jose, deep in the heart of Silicon Valley now. And I can’t handle the silence anymore, so I turn the radio back on and flip through my playlists on the screen until I find my girl power play list. A little P!NK, some Lizzo, and Beyonce. Turning it up, I sing along and feel immediately more like myself.
Pretty soon, I turn south and pass the hospital complex where both my parents have worked ever since I can remember. This whole area is familiar, down to the turn I took every day for four years before I left this snooty, rich-kid area and went to Berkley. There was money there too, but I found a great group of girlfriends there, and those years defined me.
I suck in a long breath and sigh. Memory lane at its finest.
