The Rom-Commers(56)

“How to … grieve?”

“How to let go.”

“That’s not easy.”

“No. And it takes a long time. My dad kept promising that grieving was a natural process—part of being human—and that we’d be okay in the end. I didn’t believe him at first. But he was right. It’s okay now. It doesn’t make me sad to remember her now. I miss her, but in a way that doesn’t hurt. You do get there, eventually.”

“Your dad sounds very wise.”

I nodded—just barely. “I won the dad lottery, for sure.” Then I added something that I’d never said out loud before—something that was so scary to verbalize that it made my feelings about the situation we were currently in—teetering above a vast valley below us, held only by a ribbon of guardrail metal—seem almost cute. “The camping trip was my choice,” I confessed to Charlie then. “Everybody else, my mom included, voted to go to the beach.”





Nineteen

IT FELT LIKE ten hours before the first fire engine got there—but it was only ten minutes.

Nothing like perching above your imminent death to bend the space-time continuum.

Once the firefighters arrived, they talked to us through our open windows, explaining that they were going to stabilize the Blazer by running cables around the axle at each back wheel and winching it to the engine. Once it was stable, they promised, they’d get us harnessed and help us climb out.

All in all, once the professionals took over—things got pretty easy. We didn’t have to make any decisions after that. We just had to follow instructions.

Which we did. Gratefully.

Minutes later, we were out of the car, safe and sound.

The Blazer was pretty unscathed, considering—but a wrecker still hauled it off to a body shop to get checked out. The cops gave us a ride back to their station, where we could call a ride to pick us up.

Once we were officially not dead, I felt a gale-force euphoria that had me thanking everyone, and shaking hands, and giving hugs.

It happened. We lived. And now we had a story to tell.

But Charlie didn’t bounce back so fast.

He’d been so personable in the car trying to keep me calm. But once we were rescued, he got all quiet and frowny and didn’t want to talk. He stayed like that all afternoon, and after we got home, and all during dinner.

He kept coughing after that, too—like it was his new thing.

Which felt a bit stubborn.

All I wanted was to feel better—and all Charlie wanted, apparently, was to feel worse.

I kept trying to talk and joke around and just kind of celebrate the fact that we hadn’t died.

It was a safe bet that he’d forgotten we had signed up to do research at a line-dancing class across town tonight, and in his current mood, I wasn’t sure how to remind him.

Finally, I just decided to pretend we were all on board.

“Come on,” I said to Charlie after dinner.

Charlie was clearing plates from the table. He read my body language. “Come on where?”

“It’s line-dancing class tonight,” I said.

“Line-dancing class?”

“For the script.”

But Charlie shook his head. “Nope,” he said.

“Yep,” I countered. “I put it on the digital calendar.”

“We are not going to line-dancing class tonight,” Charlie said.

“Why not?”

“Because we almost died today!”

“Yeah, okay,” I said. “But we didn’t. And it’s not as easy to find line-dancing classes around here as it should be.”

I waited for Charlie to capitulate. But he didn’t.

So I added, “And it starts in an hour, so we probably should have left already.”

I tapped my wrist to emphasize the time pressure.

But Charlie didn’t get swept up in my momentum. He gave me a look. “I’m not going to line-dancing class,” Charlie said.

Dammit.

“Why not?” I asked. Classic tactical mistake: giving him a chance to solidify his objection.

But he didn’t take it. “Because.”

“Why are you so mad right now?”

“Because I almost killed you today!”

“That’s not my fault!”

“You’re not the person I’m mad at!”

“Look,” I said. “It’s over. We lived. Let’s celebrate and go dancing.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“What? Ever again?”

“I mean—give me a day or two.”

“But the class is tonight.”

“I don’t care.”

“You have to go!”

“I don’t have to do anything.”

“But that line-dancing scene sucks.”

“You’re forgetting that this project is never going to go.”

“You’re forgetting that you promised you’d make it good, anyway.”

“It’s good enough.”

Was he really going to refuse?

I pointed at him. “Are you a—” I couldn’t find the term I needed, so I had to make one up: “A promise breaker? Is that what you are? You said you would do research.”