Fix You (9 page)

“Where are we going?” He’s curious. He smells a little of smoke. He must have had a cigarette while I was getting ready. I appreciate that he hasn’t smoked in front of the kids. I understand addiction, so I know he’s making an effort there.

“I’m showing you Boise, the West. And distracting you. I’m totally doing that.”

I shift into fifth and hit the highway on-ramp. We’re headed east, out into the middle of nowhere.

He looks out the window, watching the sagebrush and the wide sky. We see an antelope when we’re about fifteen minutes out of town. He looks through my iPod, picks out a few songs. One is Coldplay.

“I like this.” He sits back. He seems at peace, content. I wonder if he means the song or being here. I don’t ask.

“I love Coldplay,” I tell him. “I really love eighties music, though. It’s the onset of middle age. I can’t help but like cheesy music.”

“Middle age?”

Uh-oh. We haven’t done the full disclosure thing on age. Now the cougar will be out of the bag. He’s hanging out with a fossil.

“Um, I’m thirty-six.”

He scoffs. “That’s being cynical, isn’t it? You’re planning to die before you turn eighty?”

I roll my eyes. “Come on, you know what I mean. I’m not young. Not like you, for instance. How old are you?”

“I’m twenty-nine.”

“For the love of Mike. You’re a babe in the woods.” I’m a little nauseated.

“It’s not young.”

“I was a total dumbass until my thirties. Twenty-nine is young.”

He narrows his eyes. “Are you calling me a dumbass?” I’m about to protest/apologize when he laughs, hard. “Listen, it all depends on the amount of living you’ve done with your years. Now, you might have been a choir girl, but I got an early start on everything, trust me.”

“You weren’t a choir girl?”

“Not even close. Don’t dig too deep on the interwebz. I’ve done some dumb, dumb stuff.”

“So you
were
a dumbass, then.”

“Touché. I like to think I’m a work in progress. I’ve learned a tremendous amount from my mistakes. I’d venture to say I’m quite wise, even.”

I like the verbal repartee. “Am I blessed by the presence of an old soul, then?”

“Ancient. Like Yoda, I am.”

“Were you alive when they made that movie?”

He punches me in the shoulder.

And no, he wasn’t alive when they made that movie.

We’re way out of town now. It doesn’t take long. I pull off the highway and drive toward the fringe of hills in the distance. There’s nothing but sagebrush. I know what I’m looking for…When I see the turnout, I guide the car off the road and stop. Dust swirls up around us. Andrew swings his door open, gets out.

“It’s so quiet.” He stands still, breathes in. “I’d give my firstborn for this kind of peace on a regular basis. In LA, sometimes I can’t even think straight.”

But he doesn’t fully get it yet.

“Walk with me a little. I’ll show you why we’re out here.” I find the narrow path between the sagebrush.

He comes up behind me. We walk silently for a bit. The highway whispers in the distance. The wind blows over the desert scrub, and we are utterly alone.

“Out here reminds me of the earth and how big it is and how tiny I am. Everyday life is too noisy for me to remember that.” I wonder if he understands me. He nods.

I go on. “But here’s the really awesome part.” The path has just widened. We stand in front of two ruts in the desert floor. Running parallel with the highway, they stretch in both directions as far as I can see. To the east, the land slopes up gently and the ruts meet with the horizon. To the west, the trail seems to curve to the left and thins into a point in the distance.

He’s perplexed. “What’s this? A jeep trail?”

Here’s the part where I feel cool. “These aren’t tire tracks. They’re ruts from wagon wheels. It’s the Oregon Trail.”

“Really?” He looks at me.

“Really.”

He stands for a minute, then walks forward, faces west, and puts one foot in each wheel rut. He is still for a minute. Then he steps forward a few feet, bends down, and picks up a little of the dust, smoothing it between his fingers.

He stays crouched. He’s looking for something. Then he stands up.

“What’d you find?” I come over to look.

He opens his palm—it’s a smooth black rock. “I want to take this back.”

I smile. I think I did good.

After a bit more exploring, we head back into town. I’m still nervous about public outings with him, but I’ve figured out lunch. We hit the Basque Block, walk around and look at the old sheepherder’s boarding house, the wagon parked out front, the handball court.

We sit on the patio at a Basque grill for lunch. His sunglasses never even have to come off. The waitress is so distracted, she never looks either of us in the eye, anyway. No one else is outside, even though the day is what I expected it to be: unseasonably warm and bright.

I’m almost through my lamb sandwich when he pushes back from his burger and sighs, contented. “That was good.”

“I still say you should’ve had the beef tongue. If you were a risk taker, you would have.” I smile at him and take another bite.

He steals a French fry out of my basket. “I’m not good at risk taking.”

“Really? I would’ve taken you for a daredevil.”

He exhales loudly, takes another drink of his Coke. “I’m not afraid of risk. It’s just better for me to be conservative. There’s some switch missing in me. I tend to have a hard time finding a balance.”

“I don’t understand.”

“All things in moderation, right?”

I’m not following. “Yeah. So?”

“So, very often I can’t do that. I don’t know how to do that. Some things I can’t do at all. Some risks I can’t back away from once I jump in. It’s complicated.”

“What kind of risks?”

“Let’s just say I’m at my best when I’m working. If I’m not busy I tend to brood.”

“Really?”

“I’ve been known to blow off steam in not-so-healthy ways.” He eats another fry off my plate.

My stomach knots up. This new information doesn’t feel good. I fight off the urge to worry by looking for something to distract me, a way to escape this conversation.

A large group of women are coming down the sidewalk in our direction. They’re loud, laughing. “We should go before those girls walk by. If anyone’s going to spot you, a herd of single women will.”

He smiles, scoops up his Coke, and waits for me to walk with him down the street. “Lead on, tour director.”

“Our next stop took me a while to choose. If it were summer, we’d go fly-fishing. But the river’s frigid now. They release trout this time of year, but I don’t like suffering. Plus I never catch anything, anyway. We could go up to Sun Valley like you were supposed to and see Hemingway’s grave, fly fish in Silver Creek. But it’s too snowy up there now. In Boise, if it were full-on winter, we’d go skiing. Do you ski?”

He shakes his head. “This weekend was supposed to have been my first time—though I was going to snowboard.”

“Well, skiing takes a while to get into, from my experience. I did
not
have fun the first couple times.” We’re at the car. “Plus, I would hate it if you got hurt or anything. Someone would probably sue me. And skiing’s hard to love after you get hurt, take my word for it. It took me more than a few seasons after I broke my leg to get back into it. And it’s never been quite the same, to be honest.”

We’re in the car now. He raises his eyebrows at me. “You still ski?”

“Well, the boys like it. It’s a good family thing to do. And Peter was amazing, so it was fun to ski with him.”

He looks at me closely. It feels like he’s trying to put something together. “Do you sometimes feel like you do a lot of stuff you don’t really want to do?”

I don’t know where he’s going with this. “Sure. Having a family is about that sometimes.”

He sits back. “Huh.”

I start the car. “Huh, what?”

“Well, I just wonder if I’d be good at that.” He smiles at me.

I shake my head. “You don’t have to be good at it. It just happens. It’s called compromise.”

His phone vibrates, and he jumps a little. He pulls it out of his coat pocket in surprise. He stares at the screen for a second before silencing it.

My heart sinks. “Was that important?” I can’t help but think it’s the real world calling—they want their movie star back.

He sighs. “Naw. It’s my agent. He’s probably put two and two together about me not being in Sun Valley. He worries a lot.”

“Do you need to call him? Should you call him?”

He stares down at the phone. I can’t read the expression on his face. I have this weird feeling he’s in trouble, that we’re in trouble—like ditching-class trouble or something. “Did you have to do something this weekend?”

“No. I don’t need to call. I’ll text and tell him I’m visiting a friend. That’s all he needs to know. And no, I wasn’t contractually obligated to appear in Sun Valley.” There’s a bitterness to his voice in that last sentence.

I shrink a little. I hope I haven’t upset him. “Sorry. Sorry I brought it up.”

He shakes himself out of it, tucks the phone back in his coat pocket. “No. It’s no big deal. I promise. Now, tell me what’s next.”

I bring a little pep to the whole tour director shtick. “Like I said, it was hard to decide. But we’ve got a little while before the boys come home. You’ve seen the wagon trail; you’ve done the Basque thing. Next is a sacred spot for a lot of Idahoans.”

He adjusts his ball cap like he’s readying for battle. His smile returns, and he looks at me mischievously. “Okay. Take me there.”

I cross my fingers that my friend Barb got my text this morning. We pull into the east end of campus at Boise State. I park in the lot facing the river.

“I thought you said the river was too cold to do anything.”

We’re out of the car. “Oh, we aren’t going there.” I take him by the elbows and turn him to face the other way. “We’re going there.” Boise State University’s stadium looms large above us.

“What?” He looks confused.

“The blue turf is hallowed ground around here. But even if you don’t follow football, it’s cool. You’ll see.” I walk with him toward a gray service door on the backside of the end-zone bleachers.

Now he just kind of looks nervous. “Is there something going on today?”

I wonder if he thinks I’m selling him out—using him for something.

The door swings open right about then. Barb pokes her head out, blinking a little in the sunshine.

She spots me and calls, “Hey, girl! Come on in!”

Andrew and I go inside, and the gray door swings shut behind us. Barb gives me a huge hug. She’s in her best Boise State blue and orange.

“Barb, this is my friend Andrew.” Barb shakes his hand. “Barb’s the Director of Development for the Athletic Association. Andrew’s my friend from Indio. He’s in town for the weekend. He’s never been to Boise.”

Barb nods and smiles her big, wide smile. She’s sixty-five and, bless her heart, has no idea who this man across from her is. She’s not his target demographic.

She puts out her hand. “Pleased to meet you. Kelly brought you to the right place if you’ve never been to Boise. No trip to the Treasure Valley is complete without a walk on the Smurf turf. But we’ll go up into the Sky Club too. Kelly hasn’t even gotten a chance to see that.”

He looks at me. She turns around and heads toward another door. She swings a big set of keys around on a bright orange lanyard. She’s chatting away now.

Andrew whispers to me. “She has no clue who I am.”

I nod. “True.”

He smiles. “That hasn’t happened in a while.”

Barb has opened the door and ushers us through it. We emerge on the north side of the end zone. The whole stadium of forty thousand seats towers above. We are the only three people in it. The blue field stretches out before us.

Barb is done with the official tour talk. She smiles encouragingly at Andrew. “Go ahead, hon. You can walk on out.”

He takes my hand and walks out on the turf. It makes me grin uncontrollably to have his hand on mine. I am apparently ten years old.

“I feel like someone should be cheering for us right now.” He smiles. I think he’s getting a kick out of this.

“I like how springy it is.” I show him what I mean: I let go of his hand and do a couple high skips down the field.

He follows me at a dead run. I take off even faster, running hard now. I may be giggling as he pursues me. I’m too fast, though, and am able to loop around to meet Barb back at the sidelines.

He gives up and walks back to us, laughing. He’s still some distance off when Barb elbows me in the side.

“You’ve been holding out on me, Miss Kelly. You have a new flame.”

I grimace. “Oh, Barb, he’s just in town for the weekend. We’ve only met one other time. He never comes to Boise. It’s nothing.”