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‘Shit.’
I don’t regret anything, especially as my tiredness fades and all I can think about is that goddamned book. I want to gush about it to Chase, but I worry it’ll make him uncomfortable, knowing I’m finally reading it and seeing everything he’s annotated.
He’s right: it really does make you want to fall in love, but if this book has taught me anything, it’s that what Archer and I had wasn’t love. I always thought it was impossible to know what love is, that you know what it isn’t, but it’s unique to everyone. It’s also simple, perhaps the simplest of all things: it’s stolen glances and brief touches,have you eaten yetandhow was your day, picking up that forty percent when someone isn’t feeling one-hundred, doing things without having been asked, loving someone’s company just as much as you love them beneath the covers. It’s everything and nothing, in everything we do.
Love isn’t complicated. I think we just make it seem like it is because we want for something extraordinary without ever realising we already have it.
The next day, I close the book and run my fingers over the cover, and then I hold it to my chest, and then I rest my head against my headboard and smile.
Maybe you just haven’t found the right book.
He was right. Of course he was. Maybe I’d been reading too much fantasy, drowning in it, and I just needed something different.
I’d been feeling ashamed for wanting change for so long that I didn’t realise change is good, isnecessary. How can we evolve into the person we wish to become if we’re afraid to move forward?
It’s like every nerve in my body is aflame. I feel the warmth of the sun on my skin and the cool kiss of grass stems against my bare feet and the slight breeze ruffle my hair and the press of the wicker chair against my thighs. I hear the bees buzz around the blooms of wildflowers and the distant laughter of children, and I smell a barbeque carried on the wind and the book open in my lap.
It’s Tuesday afternoon after school. Chase works on the Stagg, his overalls tied around his waist, but he’s quiet. Focused. And even though we don’t talk to each other, it feels nice to have him here. I smile at him, and he smiles back, and my heart does a crazy happy dance, but I look beyond him to the porch, and my chest tightens.
He’s soaked; rain flattens his hair and drips over his face and makes his eyes impossibly blue and my God he’s beautiful.
‘Are you hungry?’ is all he says.
I can almost smell the rain, see the vulnerable glint in his eyes, feel my heart lurch when my phone nearly falls to the floor as I bolt up. I won’t ever forget that moment. I was so present in it I remember everything about it. Why does my mind recall the good parts of whatever the hell we were? Why does my heart lie and tell me that moment was worth every bad one?
I see small pieces of Archer throughout my day, on that porch and in my kitchen and against that lamppost. And every time my fingers itch for my phone—
‘YES! GET IN!’ Chase exclaims.
My highlighters fly across the garden and the book falls to the grass as my soul leaves my body. Chase’s hands are pressed to the back of his head and his grin lights up his face, his eyes. Because the Stagg…
I bolt from my seat. ‘Is it—?’
‘Working?’ he finishes breathlessly. ‘Yeah. Yeah, she is. Not that she wouldn’t start, anyway, but she’s not misfiring anymore. I’ll have to test drive her, but…’ His gaze meets mine. ‘Wanna tell him?’
I’m already streaking across the lawn. My dad went to see a urologist last week, and he’s still staring at the phone like he can make it ring out of sheer will, so he needs this.
I careen around the corner and nearly slam into the massive plant beside the living room door. ‘Isfxed,’ I pant.
Jesus, no wonder I can’t climb that bloody mountain.
Kevin jerks up in his armchair, leaning forward on his stick so he can twist to look at me. I choose not to see his weathered face, his sunken cheeks, the dressing gown hanging from his thin frame.
‘It’s fixed!’ I try again. ‘The Stagg. Chase’s fixed it.’
I almost cry from seeing the hope flood his eyes. ‘You’re joking.’
But then he’s outside and he listens to the engine roar and he lets out the loudestwoop!I’ve ever heard. He raises his stick like he’s just won a war and Chase tips his head back and laughs and my dad practically runs to hug him and I fall back to my chair as they discuss how Chase did it and all I can think is how fleeting happiness is.
I pray the hospital doesn’t call the days leading up to the classic car run, and they don’t. I make a last minute decision to go with Chase and my dad—one, because I don’t want to be left in the house by myself, and two, because I want to spend as much time as possible with my dad. I can’t bring myself to say the words—I love you, thank you for giving me the best life, you’re my best friend—without them sounding like goodbyes. Without choking on tears. But I can do this—I can be with him and share his joy and laugh with him.
I cast back to a conversation with Kai, about how humans are the only species who know they’re going to die. And what a blessed torture, to want to live each day like it’s your last but being too afraid of death to live it at all.
My dad sits in the front, and Chase drives, and the windows are down, letting the wind ruffle my hair, and"Back Down South"by Kings of Leon blares through the tinny speakers, and the ocean spreads to my right, vast and endless, and I sing, and Chase’s eyes meet mine in the rear-view mirror, and then he sings, too, andthis is it, I think.
This is what it feels like to be present.
Pwllheli Classic Car Run is held across three adjacent fields. They slope downward, which gives us a perfect view of the beach and the ocean beyond. So many classics are parked up on the grass, and people just walk around them, talking with each other. My dad delves into deep conversation with a man standing before an army truck, and I gather he’s going to be here for a while.
