“But no one was at the house.” My voice sounds weird. “I just figured it’d be worth the trip just to check the place out, because that place obviously meant something to her, she definitely went there once…I mean, y’know, like the rest of the places we’ve been going.” I’m suddenly very confused.
Sean takes a deep breath. “Are you sure you want to? I mean are you sure you want to just keep going like this?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Just”—Sean breathes out through his nose—“well, I’ve been thinking about it, and I wonder if this”—he moves his hands back and forth between us—“is the reason you found that drawing of Nina’s. Not so you could find Nina, but so we could find each other.” He puts a warm hand on my arm, and looks me straight in the eye. I feel that flash again, the one I felt when I first met him. Only now for some reason it makes me nervous.
“But what about what we talked about?” I say. “About how it’s impossible to just get over a thing like this? About how…” I stop. He’s staring blankly at the wall. My face grows hot. What’s going on here? I turn away.
“Hey, heeeey.” Sean’s voice softens. “Oh shit! I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Ellie.” Sean sighs and shakes his head. “I’m not trying to keep you from searching for her. Forget what I said, okay? We’ll go to Big Sur and look for her.” He wraps his arms around my waist. “We’ll leave right now, okay?” He squeezes me tight. I can feel his heart pounding hard through his shirt. This is Sean, sweet, wonderful Sean.
I nod, and then I smile as relief washes over me. “You’ll love her,” I say. “When you meet her, you’ll really love her.”
Sean doesn’t even smile back this time. He just steadies my face with his hands and looks me straight in the eye. “I couldn’t love anyone else now,” Sean says. “Because I already love you.”
Thirty
According to the clock, we’ve been driving for an hour, but it feels like it could have been a minute or a week or a year. Time doesn’t matter anymore.
And for that matter, neither do words. We’re immersed in silence, not the cold jagged silence of yesterday, but a different kind, like warm liquid. Everything we need to say we communicate through our hands clasped together between the seats, through the tiny gentle motions of finger against finger, palm against palm.
And all I can think is This is it, this is what it’s like to be falling in love.
Sean pulls off at an exit for a rest stop. “We need snacks,” he says. “And gas, too.” He drives for another minute and then parks. He stares out at the parking lot, and I try to interpret the look on his face. He looks a little anxious. I squeeze his hand and smile. He smiles back. “I’m just going to run in here,” he says. He unplugs his phone from the car charger, squeezes my hand, and gets out of the car.
I lean back against the seat and watch him walk across the parking lot. I love the way he walks, shoulders squared, head hanging down ever so slightly. I put my bare feet up against the dash, the cool air blows against my legs. Over the soft hum of the air conditioner I can hear the muted blend of sounds from outside. Laughter and shouts and cries and car horns. Sean disappears into the rest stop.
I watch a couple in matching khaki shorts and matching white baseball hats walk toward their car, drinking sodas. A mother is walking in, carrying a screaming little boy who is tossing french fries onto the ground. A group of college-age girls stand near the trunk of an old Toyota while one of them changes into a pair of flip-flops. If it were a week ago I might have felt nothing for these random strangers. But now, in this moment, I love them all, and at the same time I feel sad for them, because none of them could possibly be feeling what I’m feeling now—the bliss that comes from being with someone who loves you, whom you are starting to love.
I always thought it was so silly the way Amanda’s friends were always meeting guys and then a week later claiming to looooove them. I always figured they were just caught up in the moment, being immature, and not understanding Real Life. But I realize now, Real Life is lots of things, not just the hard stuff but the wonderful stuff, too. I guess I was the one who really didn’t understand. And now, because of some sort of crazy miracle that I can only barely comprehend, I think I’m starting to.
A minute passes, and then another one. And I stare anxiously at the door. And I feel a gnawing in my stomach and I realize something so silly it makes me laugh out loud—I miss him. Sean has been in the rest stop for all of four minutes and I miss him. I laugh again. I will tell him this when he gets back. He will love this. He will laugh, too!