“How do you know how to use portrait (a painting of a person) mode? Did your grandson teach you that when he was home for Thanksgiving?”
“Wow,” he deadpans(expressionless). “I’ve missed this so much.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m impressed. You’ve changed.” I hurry to add, “Not in a bad way! I just mean, you are not a person who relishes(enjoy greatly) change.”
“Maybe I am now,” he says.
I cross my arms. “Do you still get up at five thirty to exercise every day?”
He shrugs. “That’s discipline, not fear of change.”
“At the same gym?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“The one that raises its prices every six months? And plays the same New Age meditation CD on repeat at all times? The gym you were already complaining about two years ago?”
“I wasn’t complaining,” he says. “I just don’t understand how that’s supposed to motivate you on a treadmill.
I was pondering (think carefully). Contemplating(look thoughtfully for a long time).”
“You take your own playlist with you—what does it matter what they play over the speakers?”
He shrugs and takes the car keys from my hands, rounding the Aspire to open its rear door. “It’s a matter of principle.” He tosses(throw) our bags into the back and slams (shut loudly) it shut.
I thought we were joking, but now I’m not so sure.
“Hey.” I reach for his elbow as he’s walking past. He stills, eyebrows lifting.
There’s a knot of pride caught in my throat, stopping up the words that want to come out.
But it was pride that tore (pull apart) our friendship up the first time, and I’m not going to make that mistake again.
I’m not going to not say things that need to be said, just because I want him to say them first.
“What?” Alex says.
I swallow the knot down. “I’m glad you didn’t change too much.”
He stares at me for a beat and then—is it my imagination, or does he swallow too? “You too,” he says, and touches the end of a wave that’s come loose from my ponytail to fall along my cheek, touches it so lightly I can barely feel it at the scalp and the delicate motion sends a tingle down my neck. “And I like the haircut.”
My cheeks warm. My belly too. Even my legs seem to heat a couple degrees.
“You learned how to use a new feature on your phone, and I got a haircut,” I say. “Watch out for us now, world.”
“Radical transformation,” Alex agrees.
“A true glow-up.”
“The question is, have you gotten any better at driving?”
I arch an eyebrow and cross my arms. “Have you?”
* * *
• • •
“IT ASPIRES TO have working air-conditioning,” Alex says.
“It aspires (eager) to not smell like a butthole that’s smoking a blunt,” I say.
We’ve been playing this game since we got on the highway heading into the desert.
Sasha the Ceramicist had mentioned in her post about the car that its air-conditioning came and went at random, but she’d left out the fact that she’d evidently been using it to hotbox for five years straight.
“It aspires to live long enough to see the end of all human suffering,” I add.
“This car,” Alex says, “isn’t going to live long enough to see the end of the Star Wars franchise.”
“But who among us will?” I say.
Alex wound up driving by virtue of the fact that my driving makes him carsick. And terrified. Truthfully, I don’t like driving anyway, so I usually defer the position to him.
Los Angeles traffic proved challenging for someone as cautious as him: we sat at a stop sign waiting to turn right onto a busy road for, like, ten minutes, until three cars behind us were holding down their horns.
Now that we’re out of the city, though, he’s doing great. Not even the lack of AC seems like a big deal with the windows down and sweetly flowery wind rushing over us.
The bigger issue is the lack of an aux input, which has us relying on the radio.
“Has there always been this much Billy Joel traveling over the airwaves?” Alex asks the third time we switch channels midcommercial only to plunge back into the middle of “Piano Man.”
“Since the dawn of time, I think. When the cavemen built the first radio, this was already playing.”
“I didn’t know you were a historian,” he deadpans. “You should come talk to my class.”
I snort. “You could not drag me into the halls of East Linfield High with the combined force of every tractor in a five-mile radius of that building, Alex.”
“You know,” he says, “your bullies have likely graduated by now.”
“We really can’t be sure,” I say.
He looks over, face sober, mouth pressed small. “Do you want me to kick their asses?”
I sigh. “No, it’s too late. Like, all of them have kids now with those cute oversized baby glasses and most have found the Lord or started one of those weird pyramid-scheme businesses selling lip gloss.”
He looks at me, his face pink from the sun. “If you change your mind, just say the word.”
《People We Meet on Vacation》
by Emily Henry 从朋友到恋人
只是搬运工加个人笔记。
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