“Good morning.” He looks so unbearably cheerful. Meanwhile, I’m prepared to spend the day working hard to look apathetic. I start to wonder about his grasp of reality. Or mine, for that matter.
“Hi.” One of my plans for self-preservation that I came up with overnight is to stick with one-syllable answers. Off to a solid start.
“We’re starting with the John Muir Ranch—they’ll serve us breakfast—and then we’ll have lunch over at the Grady ballroom.”
“Great.”
Just in case playing it low-key doesn’t work, I’m ready with a backup plan. I consider it the nuclear option. Sometime around three in the morning, when I couldn’t sleep, I wrote Josh a letter with everything I was worried about and much of what I had been feeling. I wrote it on the motel’s stationery and have it folded up in an envelope that’s at the bottom of my purse.
“Okay. Let’s go.” Josh hits a playlist on his phone, and Weezer starts playing. Is he trying to say something with the choice? I can’t tell from my sideways glances at his expression, but a small smile involuntarily appears on my face as the music brings back memories.
Like everything in and around Estes Park, it takes us just a few minutes to get where we are going. We pull into the ranch driveway, and Josh follows the signs to the office. When he parks the car, I turn to him, having made a decision.
“Here,” I say, stuffing the envelope into his chest and hopping out of the vehicle. “Later. Read it later.” I clarify, realizing one-word statements are not always going to work if I want to make sense. To my horror, Josh steps out of the car and starts to open it.
“No!” I move around the car toward him to take it back, but he quickly puts the letter into his jacket pocket. Before he can speak, someone else interrupts me from behind.
“You must be the happy couple!” A cheerful woman with a pink knit cap over blonde curls is leaning out of the office door. “I’m Mary. Come on in out of the cold.”
After we join her inside, she looks at us with surprise when we disavow her of the notion that Josh and I are a couple.
“Oh. I’m sorry. I just assumed.” Mary looks between us. Josh explained to her our role and relationship to the busy surgeons back east. At the end of is, she is looking between us. “You seem to have a vibe.”
“No. No vibe,” I say, lowering my gaze as I start to take off my sunglasses before I change my mind and leave them on.
After we tour the grounds, we’re seated for breakfast. The morning passed pleasantly enough as Mary did most of the talking, which worked for me.
At the end of the visit, we arrive back into the car to head off to the Grady Hotel. Whatever Mary had felt Josh and I had between us seems to have been replaced by tension. The silence in the car feels leaden. I stare out the window, looking for a distraction from my anxiety when he speaks.
“Lily.”
“Joshua.”
“What is going on with you? You don’t seem like you’re okay.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t sleep well and…” I look over at him and realize we are already nearing our destination. He follows the signs to the parking lot closest to the entrance. When he pulls into a spot he turns to me, looking frustrated, and leaves the car running.
Taking the bit in the teeth, I face him.
“Lily, are you going to respond to my letter? Is this you not forgiving me?”
“Wait, what? Josh, no of course I forgive you. I mean, I already have. I sent you that text—I thought we’d skip talking about it. I’m sorry. I should have been clearer.” I put my hand over his on the center console and stare at our hands like I am watching something happening outside of myself.
I start to pull my hand back but he flips his hand under my own, clasping his fingers between mine and holding on.
“Lily.” Whatever else he was going to say, he didn’t. I continue staring at our hands. I can’t recall the last time I maintained contact with someone’s hand, leaving my patients aside, with intention. Meeting his gaze, I find him looking at me as if he hadn’t realized I was right there in front of him.
Now, he is looking down at our hands as if they’ve had a mind of their own. In the quietest voice, probably afraid he will scare me off he asks, “Is this, okay?”
“Yes,” I whisper back. I don’t want whatever spell this is between us to be broken.
“Surprisingly, it feels… better than okay.” I look up at him again and take off my sunglasses, resolved to see my backup plan through. I’m simultaneously afraid he will accept me and reject me—both outcomes are equally terrifying. “It’s in the letter. What I wanted to say. What I haven’t said out loud.”
And that does it, the ultimate fear that I’ve put a proposal into the universe that could tear me apart no matter what the outcome. My words break the mood. I pull my hand back, my anxiety palpable, as it so often is.
“I’m sorry. I mean, I’m sorry that I’m such a freak and I can’t just say what I mean. Not sorry that we held hands.” With that, I threw open the door and lunged out of the car.
For some reason, Josh waits behind the wheel before he steps out of his car and joins me.
