I stare ahead at the road. Stupid, Chrissie. Stupid. Neil loves you. That is the only thing about your life that’s totally clear and why you left Berkeley with him. You may not know what you feel. You may not know what you are doing here. But you do know, it is a fact, that Neil loves you. No guy would go through the shit he went through with you if he didn’t.
I ease out of the passenger seat. “I’m going to grab a soda from the cooler. Do you want one?”
“No. I’m good, Chrissie.”
As an afterthought, I drop a kiss on his cheek before I make my way to the back of the van. I sink onto my knees on the mattress that covers the floor, close to Josh, and I reach into the ice chest.
I pop open a diet coke, and sit with my back against the van wall. “What are you working on?”
Josh looks at me, impatient and irritated by the interruption. “Not shit now.”
My cheeks cover with a burn. “Sorry. I’ll get out of your way.”
He runs a hand through his black hair. “No. Don’t bother. I could use a break. I think I’ll sit up front with Neil for a while.”
I don’t really want to sit on the floor in the back of the van, surrounded by luggage, boxes, instruments and surfboards, but I nod in an it’s OK with me kind of way. Josh crawls past me and up to the front and I remain alone in the back, wondering what I’m supposed to do here. I can’t even see the scenery since there aren’t any windows, pitiful diversion though it was.
I zip open my black case, pull out a journal, then settle on my stomach, tapping the pen against my lip. I scrawl across the top of a fresh page the date and a notation—Day One on the Road—but when the words start to flow out of me, I’m not really writing about the road.
I’m writing about things dark and heavy in my heart, a forgotten snippet from another journal from years ago—parts of me have been quieted, new parts of me stirred awake, parts of me I leave behind, and parts of me I take. A part of me I don’t want anymore. A part of me I’d hoped to leave behind in Berkeley.
~~~
I open my eyes and sit up in alarm. The van is still and empty and morning sunlight is streaming through the windshield. My journal and pen lie beside my pillow and someone, most probably Neil, pulled an unzipped sleeping bag over me.
Where the heck are we? Why is it so quiet? And how long have I been asleep in here?
I brush the tangled hair from my face and scooch on my knees to the door and slide it open. I stare. I’m surrounded by trees, dirt and nothing. A sound makes me lean out of the van.
“Morning,” says Josh.
I frown. He’s sitting on a redwood picnic table beside a small portable stove of some kind, with a pot I can only assume is coffee sitting on the flame.
I climb out of the van. “Where are we?”
“Harris Beach State Park, Oregon.” Something on my face makes him laugh. “Haven’t you ever been camping before?”
I shrug. “Nope. Haven’t been to Oregon either.”
He takes a sip of his coffee. “Get used to both. Neil loves camping and Neil loves the beach here. Decided last night not to push through to Seattle and cut over to the coast while I was asleep. I was as surprised as you when I woke up here.”
I laugh and Josh gives a smile, albeit a small sort of reluctant one, but it’s a smile. A definite improvement over yesterday.
I sink down to sit on the table next to him, and settle my feet on the bench. Through the thicket of trees encircling what I can now tell is a campsite, I can see the beach ahead.
He reaches for the pot on the stove. “Do you want some coffee?”
“I’d love some.” After he hands me a cup I take in more details of my surroundings. Jeez, I’ve never been camping before. There has got to be a bathroom somewhere.
I feel the pressure of eyes on me and turn to find Josh studying me. Something in how he is looking at me makes my fingers tighten around my cup and my cheeks flush.
He says, “You fucked with my boy’s head pretty good. He was a mess when he came back to Seattle in December. Did you know that? A fucking mess in Seattle. A fucking mess on the road. If all you’re going to do is give him more shit why don’t you bail on the tour before we head out on the road in Seattle?”
The color on my face turns into a burn. He looks away, staring out at the ocean, his jaw tense. I don’t know what to say to that. A part of me is humiliated, a part of me pissed off because Josh has gotten more than a few things wrong, and a part sort of respects what a loyal friend he is to Neil—but it leaves me not knowing what to say, so I say nothing.
His eyes lock on me again. “Neil isn’t like the rest of us assholes. He’s a good guy. He never screwed around on you once. Not once in four years and I’d know it. Pussy gets shoved in his face 24/7 while we’re on the road, and he doesn’t fuck around. And then you mess with his head. You dump him just to prove you can or some other shitty rich-girl mind-fuck game. Then when he’s got it together again, you take him back so you can fuck with his head again. Don’t fucking do it. Leave him alone if that’s your game here.”
I’m breathing so heavily I’m nearly hyperventilating. I want to run as quickly and as far from Josh as I can, but that definitely deserves a response, and if I don’t respond Josh is going to think he’s right about everything and treat me worse on from here.
I stand up, meeting Josh’s hostile, waiting gaze directly. “I didn’t fuck with his head. We had problems. We fixed them. It’s none of your business what we do. Stay out of it.”
I meet him stare for stare.
Josh breaks off first, tossing his coffee onto the ground. “No problem. I just wanted to make sure you know where I stand here. The band is finally going somewhere. I don’t want you to fuck up everything for everyone by fucking with him again.”
I lift my chin. “That’s not going to happen, Josh. Neil wants me here and I’m going on the road with him, whether you like it or not.”
He shakes his head and looks away.
“Do you know where Neil is?”
He points at a path. “Down there you’ll find Neil on the beach.”
I toss Josh a stiff smile and head down the path toward the beach. I cut through brush and trees and then realize I could have taken the road here. It hugs the edge of the forest I’m cutting through. Jeez, what a prick Josh can be, sending me this way.
I walk down the road, into the parking lot that hugs the beach. The view is gorgeous, an unspoiled expanse of sand and an relenting, roiling current as the waves hit the shore and the giant rocks that rear from the water. The shoreline is practically deserted.
Shading my eyes with my hand, I search the beach for Neil. He is sitting in the sand, legs bent and arms around them, staring at the water. The image he makes is peaceful and intense at once, and brings sharply to my mind the way Jack sits and stares at the ocean, a quietness and a troubled air covering their flesh simultaneously.
I feel a sharp prick in my heart. Why do all the men in my life—Alan, Jack, Neil—have a deeply buried troubled soul that they will not share with me? What I am seeing is familiar to me, eerily so, and a touch disturbing.
For some reason, I hold back and simply watch Neil for a while. He tosses a rock to skim across water, then he stills and stares. He is simmering with something internally, though the picture he makes to a casual observer would be one of contentment. But I can feel it and I am suddenly alarmed by it. Maybe he is regretting bringing me along with him to Seattle?
I plod through the sand until I’m near him and he gives me a smile over his shoulder. It’s a lazy and content kind of look, deliberately so, and I’m not fooled by any of it.