FINALLY, we’re in the car, headed for Chicago. It’s my rental, but Graham is driving. I’m staring out the window at the dirty snowbanks, feeling blue.
“It was nice of your dad to buy us breakfast,” Graham says quietly.
“Yeah,” I grunt. “I mean, no. Isn’t it the least he can do?” We’ve just left the cafe where he’d met us for eggs and conversation.
It was stilted, everyone trying too hard. I’d survived it, but I’m just done with this place. I want to reach over and press Graham’s leg down on the accelerator. The faster we leave town, the more normal I’ll feel.
“Your dad tried,” Graham says gently. “He was nice to me.”
“Yeah,” I admit with a sigh. “He was.”
The car eats up more highway toward Chicago. And even though I’m almost free of Michigan, it still hangs over me like a cloud. The place will never feel like home again. It will always make me feel like the penguin chick left to die in the ravine.
“Will it be weird to be at Skippy’s wedding?” Graham asks carefully, after another of my long silences.
“What?” I haven’t thought about Skippy for days. Even though he is my ex. “No. I mean—no weirder than any other wedding. Why?”
He shrugs. “The road not taken.”
“Oh, I drove that road all the way to its end. He’s Ross’s problem now.” I chuckle. “Will it be weird for you?”
“Nah,” he says easily. “No weirder than any other wedding.” He turns to give me a quick smile. “Remind me why it’s in Chicago?”
“Skippy has an older sister, and her husband owns the venue. Skippy is getting his wedding reception basically for free, because the hotel just got a big renovation and it hasn’t reopened all the way yet.”
“Handy,” Graham says.
“Yeah, if you’re into that kind of thing.” The idea of planning a wedding is so foreign to me. Spending my life with someone isn’t, though. And that reminds me of something else I’m grumpy about. “G, your mom said you got an interview in Washington, D.C.”
He nods quickly. “Right. I haven’t even set it up yet.”
“Were you going to tell me?”
“Yeah.” He sighs. “D.C. is still a long shot, though. And I was hoping to tell you I’d gotten a job offer close to Harkness.”
“You shouldn’t factor that in when you’re choosing a job.” I play that back in my head and wince. “I mean—I’m only in Connecticut for one more year. Nine months, really. It’s not enough time to plan your life around.”
“I like New York, though,” he says. “And the Rangers are looking at you.”
“We might as well buy a lottery ticket,” I grumble. “What are the odds of me playing for the Rangers?”
“Good, actually,” he says calmly. “Do you not want me in New York?”
“Of course I do.” But it comes out sounding angry. “I just wouldn’t want you to rein in your search. You should take the most amazing job you can find, no matter where.”
Now it’s Graham who goes silent. It’s so quiet in the car that the engine noise is all I hear. We roll forward for a few miles, and I wonder why I’m fucking everything up. “If you got a job in New York, that would be pretty cool,” I say. “But I’ll come see you wherever you are.”
I reach across the console and put my hand on his thigh. “You can count on that.”
“Can I?” he asks, voice strained. “You don’t really talk about life after graduation. But it’s all I can think about right now.”
“I don’t talk about it because we don’t know what it looks like yet. But I’ll still want to be with you, G.”
“You say that,” he says slowly. “But you’ve done long distance before, and I know you didn’t like it much.”
I prop my elbow against the window, and then put my forehead into my palm. I don’t even know why we’re having this depressing conversation right now. “It’s not easy, I’ll give you that. But it’s not impossible.”
There’s another strained silence that I fear might last forever. But then Graham puts on the turn signal and takes the next exit. He pulls into a truck-stop gas station, so I expect him to get out and take a pee break. But he just kills the engine and turns to me. “Listen,” he says. “I know the timing is terrible, and you’re kind of a mess today. But there’s something I have to say.”
“What is it?” I ask as ice slides into my gut, because I don’t like the sound of that.
“I’ve been trying to figure this job thing out without involving you. I wanted to have it all solved and bring you a plan. ‘Here’s where I’m working and here’s what we’ll do.’ Because I didn’t want to give you any reason to say, ‘You know, maybe it’s just better if we go our separate ways.’”
“But…”
He holds up a hand. “And I haven’t always found it easy to say how I feel, because I don’t want to be rejected. But here goes. I love you, and I’m never going to stop. Not even if the only job I find is in Alaska. I love you and I want to be with you, no matter how hard it is. And I will wait for you to sort out your own shit as long as it takes. Any questions?”
“No,” I croak, because there’s suddenly a giant lump in my throat. “Wait, I got one. How did you become the high-functioning person in this relationship?”
Graham lets out a burst of nervous laughter. “I know, right?” He turns toward me on the seat. “Come here.” I lean in, letting him wrap me into a hug. “Everything I know I learned from you.”
“Not true,” I say, trying to swallow. This has been the most emotionally overwrought week of my life.
“It is so. Now let’s go to Chicago so we can blow off some steam by doing a couple other things you taught me.”
“Now you’re talking.” I pat him on the back and take a deep breath. “Just in case it needs saying, I love you, and I want to make it work no matter what.”
He doesn’t let go yet. “Hang in there, Rik. Everything is just fine.”
“I know,” I promise him. And I even believe it. “Can I drive for a while? I need something to do besides brood.”
“Sure,” he says, unlatching his seatbelt. “But the reason I wanted to drive was so that I could speed. I have a serious need to get you into that hotel room ahead of schedule.”
“Do you, now?” I extract myself from the car, and we pass each other by the rear fender. It’s hard to miss the hungry look that Graham gives me.
“Drive hard,” he says, after we settle in and buckle up. “And then you can really drive hard.”
I pull out of there in a big hurry. Now I definitely have something better to do than brood.
