Ruby: Yes, but it’s all good, Mom. We’re friends. We’ve been through a lot together.
* * *
Mom: Of course you have. So be careful. This is a tender time for you, honey, just finishing therapy and all. Be careful with yourself.
* * *
Twice.
She said be careful twice.
But I am careful.
Friends with benefits is a smart strategy. It protects the heart. We’ve laid out the rules. And we won’t break them.
* * *
Ruby: I will be. Love you.
Later that night, Jesse and I eat pizza and play our own version of Pictionary, challenging each other to see who can draw a pig faster, a llama funnier, an anteater faster and funnier.
By the time I finish my Chardonnay and another slice of cheese and pepper yumminess, claiming sketching victory with a spectacular giraffe with a neck long enough to fill an eighteen-by-twenty-four-inch page of sketch paper, I’m too happy to think about how not carefully I behaved tonight.
Tonight, it felt like we were together.
The kind of together that doesn’t have an expiration date.
The kind we can’t have.
20
Jesse
This is the good life.
Blasting the Rumours album by Fleetwood Mac . . . Cruising in the 1972 Datsun Z-series I couldn’t bring myself to part with before selling the shop down a two-lane highway . . . Road-tripping with my woman.
If this is a dream, I don’t want to wake up.
Right here, right now, I have all I want.
If I had to be stuck in a Groundhog Day-type scenario, I’d pick this one. I’d live this twenty-four-hours over and over, because I know—I fucking know—the day’s only going to get better.
On the way out of the city, we made a quick pit stop at the bulk store, a not-so-quick detour at a roadside diner, and now we’re almost there, winding under a canopy of tall trees, traveling past lush summer hills.
The smoothly robotic voice of the GPS bleats out, “In five miles, Camp Knick Knack Paddywhack is on your right.”
“Five miles till Ruby smothers me in kisses for taking her to camp.”
The brunette beauty in the passenger seat shoots me a naughty look. “Yes, and then I’ll have to write a letter home too, keeping my folks abreast of all my fabulous summer camp experiences.”
I grin. “Give me a preview of what you’ll say.”
She mimes putting a pen to paper. “Dear Mom and Dad. Today I won the canoe race, made a lovely rope bracelet, and banged Jesse senseless in a bunk bed.”
Laughing, I stretch my arm across her seat, giving her shoulder a squeeze. “Presumptuous, but I like it.”
I return my hands to the steering wheel.