Anywhere With You (14 page)

She met my eye. “I should have told you the whole truth, Jack and I’m sorry.”

“I’m sure you are. But sometimes, Amelie, sorry isn’t enough.”

“I know,” she said, and then she hesitated and paused for a long time before she finally spoke again. “But if you think you know the whole truth—you don’t. And the thing is I’m not sure it even matters. In fact—I know it doesn’t matter. And yet every fiber of my being wants to tell you. You’re my best friend, Jack. I’m a mess. And if I can’t tell you, then I don’t know who I can tell. I don’t know what’s going to happen when I walk away from here.”

I looked at her sideways.

“I’m going to lose my job.” She swallowed.

“You’re an amazing photographer, Amelie. You can find another.”

“Just let me finish, Jack—I need to get this out. Before I decide against it.”

I waited.

She took a long, slow breath in and held it. With her exhale came the whole truth. She told me about Brazil. She told me about paying the girl for the photos and how once word got out, she’d be useless in the industry. She explained this was why she’d agreed to marry what’s-his-name and had followed him down the rabbit hole. She told me she was afraid of ending up, not only with nothing—but alone with nothing.

When she had finished baring her soul, as she put it, I decided to temporarily forgive her—at least long enough to finish up the trip. I don’t know why I suggested continuing on—with a road trip which, up to that point, had been nothing but ill-fated—other than the fact that she looked so down. Honestly, I was afraid of putting her on a plane and sending her back to a place where she likely had no job—and a man waiting in the wings to manipulate her some more. Maybe that was a part of it. Maybe it was because she’d finally opened up. And yet—it was that which she had left out that had ultimately threatened to do us in.

Amelie

Lies. And other half-truths.

I felt terrible for essentially getting Jack arrested. I fully understood as I watched him being carted off that this was all my fault. I should have been honest with everyone involved—most importantly, with myself.

I didn’t love Ian. In my own messed up way, sure, I cared for him. Probably, in the same way that he cared for me. Whatever it was, though—it certainly wasn’t love.

It was somewhere either right before or right after I caused Jack to get arrested that I realized it wasn’t going to work between us. Certainly not now, and likely, if I walked away again—not ever. I also realized that it would be best if we had the conversation sooner rather than later.

Being on the road, particularly when you’re in the passenger seat, the endless landscape set out before you, with nowhere to be and nothing to do, well, it gives you a lot of time to think.

And think I did. First, I emailed Ian and I apologized. Interestingly enough, his tone had completely changed when I refused to bend to his will and travel home with him. Not only did he agree to drop the charges against Jack, but also, he suddenly became a lot more forgiving than perhaps either of us had thought possible. He’d said that while he didn’t understand my behavior, he could at least forgive it. His explanation was that I’d simply had cold feet—which was completely understandable and that once he’d had a one-night stand of his own and had gotten it out of his system, he realized that I likely had done the same. He told me that he understood getting married in Hawaii wasn’t what I wanted—that I both needed and deserved a big wedding in the city. This was when I realized that he clearly didn’t know me at all. In addition, I knew my getting fired was inevitable—just as inevitable as our relationship coming to an end. Which is why I went above his head and requested a transfer—before he had the opportunity to set anything in motion.

Ironically, it was Jack’s mother’s letter that led me to question what another route might be. But it was Jack who taught me to play dirty in finding where the alternate route would take me. I knew he’d gotten me drunk so I wouldn’t leave. Somewhere just outside the Arizona state line, he’d admitted as much. What I didn’t know was why he thought a temporary solution was the fix to a permanent problem. But I didn’t ask as we’d agreed to spend the remainder of the trip on good terms. Jack had suggested that we continue on, driving to Flagstaff and then onto The Grand Canyon where we would stay in the vicinity for a couple of days. We would take in Sedona and then travel back down through New Mexico, hitting up Santa Fe, before making our way back to Texas where he’d drop me at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport so I could catch the flight I’d booked back to Boston. Once back in Boston, I would collect my things from the apartment that Ian and I shared and decide where to go from there. Whether it be back to Texas or somewhere else. The trouble was Jack didn’t know that somewhere else already had a name nor that I’d already set the wheels in motion.

It was Jack who’d offered me the exact plan of action I’d need to get out of the ‘Ian situation’ still employed. He told me to be honest with the management over Ian’s head and to request to change my employment to freelance status. He also suggested that I threaten to sue on the term of harassment and/or wrongful termination—if management didn’t comply. What Jack hadn’t realized then is that management might one up his little plan and likely make him regret having suggesting litigation altogether.

Telluride was particularly beautiful. There was so much to do and so many photographs to be taken that it didn’t leave much time for the examination about what we’d do once we reached our final destination.

Jack had grown quiet. Less argumentative, more loving. Telluride will always be a magical place for me, not simply for its beauty and charm—but because it’s where I fell back in love with Jack.

“Where do you want to go today?” he whispered quietly just after we’d finished making love. It was the kind of sex where you both check your ego and leave it out of it. The ‘what this might mean.’ ‘What happens next?’ ‘Where do we go from here?’ All of it. In those blissful moments, there were no unanswered questions—we were just two people with very basic desires. Nothing more, nothing less.

Sated, I placed my head on his chest, and as I listened to the drum of his heartbeat, I tried to time my breath to it.

“I asked you a question,” he said nudging the top of my head with his chin. “I asked if you had any idea of where you might want to go?”

“Anywhere with you,” I told him and he laughed.

“I meant is there anything on the agenda that we need to see before we head out?”

“We should stay another day. Why rush off?”

I couldn’t see his face, but I’m fairly sure I felt him smile. He squeezed me tighter. “That’s exactly what I’d hoped you’d say.”

Later, after we’d had breakfast as we stood waiting for the valet to bring Jack’s Jeep around, he squeezed my hand. “I could get used to this,” he said, without meeting my eye.

I cocked my head. “I assume you aren’t referring to the valet parking.”

“Here, this place. The weather. The view. You.” He met my gaze then.

“Yeah, it’s really beautiful,” I told him. And then I looked away.

“There’s nothing quite like the beauty of the Colorado sky,” I remarked, snapping another pic. Jack turned and he smiled then. I captured it on film. To this day, that remains one of my most treasured photographs. We were headed up Bridal Veil Falls. It was early in the day, not too hot and not too cool. Just right, which didn’t often happen. Jack had asked me about what I wanted to do with the future, and I’d dodged the question like a champ.

“I don’t know much about the future,” I insisted. “Other than that it’s promised to no one.” He looked over at me furtively. “I know you know that better than anyone,” I said, slightly out of breath. Ten steps later, I had to stop to let my breath catch up with me. Jack did the same. He never stopped first, but he always took advantage of my taking a break. “But you know what I love most about photography?” I asked without giving time for a response. “It’s the ability to capture the present moment. Because it’s all we really have, you know.”

“I do know,” he said.

And we both left it at that.

The following day, we left Telluride and headed to Arizona. This was where the road trip started to get fun. We played games, the way we had on that first road trip, way back when. Somewhere just past the Four Corners, where Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico intersect, I took out my phone and Googled ‘games to play on car trips.’

I found a list titled ‘the best questions to ask on a road trip.’

“How would you dispose of a dead body?” I asked Jack without telling him we were playing a game.

“That depends,” he said, glancing my way.

“On?”

He grinned. “On how I killed them.”

This led us to a whole other conversation on the best ways to murder someone. There’s a lot you can understand about a person, I realized—once you’ve seen them at their worst.

“I get to ask the next question,” Jack said.

We’d laughed so hard over the most inappropriate of subjects that my sides hurt. Each time I tried to recover, he’d tell me the next most inappropriate thing. Understanding someone’s mind in that way is incredibly intimate, and I’d started to feel uncomfortable. So I took the wheel and handed him the phone. He scrolled through a few, frowning until he’d come to one he deemed perfect.

“If you could marry anyone in the world, who would it be?”

I shot him a sideways glance as though to ask if he were joking. His expression told me he wasn’t. I inhaled and then let it out slowly. “I don’t know. I’ve never really wanted to get married.”

“Ever?”

I shook my head. “No.”

I considered how much to reveal. The truth was I really didn’t see marriage in my future. But it was more than that. Should I tell him that I didn’t want children—that I had no intention of having a family, of ever settling down the way most people do? Because the thing was, I knew Jack and I knew he loved me enough to say that he would be ok with that—when, at the very same time, I knew he wanted to be a father more than anything. How could I dash the hopes and dreams that he held for his own future—simply because mine weren’t the same? And inevitably, we’d come to a place, down the road, where he’d just resent me for it. More importantly, though, I knew myself. I knew that I could stand a lot of things—loss, grief, even hate. But resentment wasn’t something I could stomach. I didn’t have it in me. Especially not where Jack was concerned.

As I stared at the floorboard, he cleared his throat. “So your engagement to what’s-his-name then…it was all a lie?”

I didn’t look up. “I guess that’s one way to put it...”

“Why didn’t you tell me it was serious back at Thanksgiving? At the airport, when I asked you, you said he was a friend. You didn’t tell me I was flying to Boston to witness a marriage proposal. In a sense, it was like being ambushed.” He looked over at me then, and I met his gaze. “I don’t think I ever told you that.

I swallowed. “I know. I wasn’t certain he was going to propose although a part of me suspected. In any case, I fucked up,” I admitted. “And I’ll always regret that.”

He nodded just slightly and then remained quiet for a long while afterward. Finally, he exhaled. “Well, my answer would be you. It has always been you.”

I held my breath. I wanted to remind him, not always. Except, I thought better of it. Then, unable to take the intensity of his stare, I looked away.

“Next question,” he eventually spoke up, a little too jovially. I took the wheel once more, handed him my phone, and watched as he squinted trying to read from the screen. “What is the one thing you wanted when you were a kid that you didn’t have?”

“A mother and father,” I answered, without missing a beat.

Jack looked over at me. “Yeah, me too,” he said, his voice low.

I smiled ever so slightly as he reached for my hand, took it in his, and squeezed. “It’s good to know we agree on some things,” he remarked, raising the pitch of his voice. Only, when I looked over at him, his eyes were on the road, and he didn’t look happy at all.