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I raise my fist, like I’m about to smash it down on his dick. “I know how invisible ink works. Try again.”
“I never know when I might need a flashlight?”
I lower my fist. “Better.”
He smiles and I catch myself smiling too in the mirror.
Without warning, Jackson pulls over on the highway, an intersection running alongside a cliff, and switches off the ignition. I don’t know why my mind jumps to the worst thing possible without any substantial evidence to support it, but I turn around expecting to find a cop car behind us even though Jackson’s driving is perfectly fine, if you ignore all the times he closes his eyes to sing or takes his hands off the wheel. The severity on Jackson’s face would suggest as much, but he snaps off his seatbelt, turns to me, and says, “This is roughly the spot where I met Theo.”
I have no words. I’m numb.
I get out of the car, and Jackson does the same. I feel really out of it until I step on something metallic, the crunch knocking me out of my daze, and I see it’s just a Pepsi can someone likely threw out a car window. The ground is beautiful; it’s this mixture of dirt and sand, and if I had to describe it for someone back home, I
’d say it’s like the baseball field in Central Park. But when you met Jackson, it would’ve been dark and wet, maybe even muddy. It’s weird, but I somehow wish your footsteps survived untouched, like in cement, so I could step where you stepped. But I don’t need it. I no longer need to study every inch of your path that led you to climbing into his car on that rainy day—I finally see what you saw in him.
“Did you guys ever come back here?” Maybe that’s too intimate to ask, but it’s safe to assume. You and I loved riding the L train together, always wondering if whatever car we were in was the exact car where our own history began, the prologue to what should’ve been an epic love story.
“Once a month,” Jackson says.
“Why only once?”
“We’d save it for anniversaries,” Jackson says. “I know celebrating every month is stupid, but it really meant a lot to me. Theo was my first serious relationship, and I wanted everything to have meaning, especially after how worthless I felt with my ex. I definitely had to be the one to remind him of the date, but he was always happy to entertain me.”
You and I celebrated anniversaries too. They were also my idea, but that faded after seven months—at least until our first year, and even then we didn’t really do anything special. We would acknowledge it, take a moment to jokingly appreciate surviving each other, and move on. I thought everything we did was special, even something as simple as an afternoon with an adult coloring book.
“Theo was accommodating that way,” I say.
I can picture it, you and Jackson sitting on one of these boulders watching traffic, or even just standing and holding each other. I really wish I knew how to be truly happy for you when you were alive. When you brought Jackson to New York, I should’ve been more open to meeting him.
“You drive by here a lot, right? Do you think you’re going to pull over all the time? Save it for anniversary days? Or change your route completely?”
“I’m sure I’ll come on random days too.”
“Even when you’re dating someone new?”
Jackson’s face scrunches up and his hands raise, like he’s carrying sand and letting it slip between his fingers, and ultimately shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m not thinking about dating anyone else right now. Are you?”
“Hell no. But I haven’t been thinking about that for a while now. I know everyone keeps reminding us that we’re young and we have the rest of our lives ahead of us, which I always thought was stupid. Someone could drop an anchor off this cliff and kill us right now.”
“Maybe if we were living in a cartoon,” Jackson says.
“I’m seventeen and you’re nineteen. I’m not saying we have to go on dates right now, but we should be open to someone new eventually, right? Theo is gone and more than anything, I want someone to tell me when it’s okay for us to let someone else in.”
Jackson shakes his head. “I’m not thinking about moving on right now,” he says. There’s something in his voice that I can’t interpret, but both guesses make me feel shitty. The first is that he’s judging me for throwing this out there, for trying to have this conversation. The last is he believes I should’ve moved on a while ago because you and I weren’t even dating when you died. I hope that’s not what he’s thinking. Love doesn’t begin and end with some online status.
I drop it.
I let him know I’ll wait for him in the car so he can have a minute alone out here in the space you shared. In the backseat, I rest my arm on one of your boxes and observe Jackson from the window. He’s not crying, and, what’s more notable to me, he’s not talking to himself, which means he’s not talking to you, either. I wonder when that will start.
Jackson returns to the car after a few minutes. “I’m ready to head back. You cool with that?”
“Yeah.”
We drive in an awkward silence. I know I should fill these silences with explanations instead of letting them drag on, but I don’t have the energy to explain where I was coming from when I said we’d eventually have to move on. All I know is you wouldn’t want us crying over you forever. Right?
I hang up with my mom just as we pull into Jackson’s garage. I assure her for the fourth time that once I get home, I’ll honor my promise and go to therapy.
I gained three hours today—I wish it were four, of course—but it’s been so draining that I’m paying the price for it now. I’m exhausted. But I have no regrets, other than wishing I’d documented our day on Instagram or Facebook. I haven’t touched those accounts since a couple of days after you died.
