Page 77 of The Getaway List
I nod, feeling a new kind of pride in the decision now that I’m actually saying it out loud. After all the second-guessing about what on earth I could submit, it came together in my head so fast that there was no room for doubt anymore. Or maybe I was finally feeling brave enough to make room for the idea in the first place.
“I figure I’ve done a lot of scary things these past few weeks. What’s one more?”
“You’re going to knock it out of the park,” he says confidently. “What will it be about?”
It’s not really a matter of what it will be about so much as what it already is; I drafted it in a frenzy, first jotting down notes and errant dialogue with such fervor that I felt like I was briefly possessed by Vanessa. It was easy, once I started reading through all those stories of the “Dear, Love” Dispatch I’d collected over the years, the ones I’d coveted and lived through almost as if I could put myself in Tom’s shoes in New York and see it in real time. They weren’t just individual stories in my mind, but a larger, moving story that gives them all one important thing in common: the need to love and to be loved. The universality of it, and the beauty in all the different and wild and unexpected ways we express it.
So the story will start the way my time in New York did: with disjointed, separate journeys between the characters that all slowly, satisfyingly start to converge. It won’t end with four teenagers crammed into a beaten-up sedan littered with candy wrappers outside of a winery none of them can technically legally enter, but it will end in the same satisfying way: with love bringing everyone together, despite all the circumstances that keep them apart.
“How about this?” I say. “You can be the first to read it when it’s done.”
Tom smiles. “Sounds like a good deal to me.” Then he takes an abrupt step back. “You know what this reunion calls for?”
I grin, squaring my shoulders and planting my feet in preparation. “Let’s go.”
There’s that familiar Tom mischief in his eyes when they meet mine.
“Just a heads-up,” he says, “I might improvise a bit at the end.”
We haven’t even touched yet and I feel electric, that same current we’ve had since we were eight that’s taken on new rhythms with time. One we’ll always know the shape of as uniquely ours no matter how it changes over the years. Tom extends out his right and I clap it into mine and we’re off, clapping and spinning and snapping, pulling each other in and out, putting our thumbs to our noses, and just as we’re about to burst into our usual laughter Tom pulls me in firmly by the waist and presses his lips to mine.
I’m breathless, near boneless with the effect of it—this kiss that isn’t just a kiss, but the kind we get to keep. A kiss that doesn’t come with conditions or consequences. A kiss that’s sweet and slow and simmering, and distinctly our own.
We’re both flushed and grinning when we pull apart, taking a few beats to collect ourselves, staring into each other’s eyes.
“You should know that if you’re coming back with us to the city, I’m going to want to do that to your face a whole lot,” I tell him.
He reaches up and pushes a stray lock of hair behind my ear, this time his fingers lingering on the shell of it, sending another tingle up my spine.
“That’s exactly what my face was hoping for,” he says back. Then he extends his hand, wrapping it around mine so our fingers intertwine. “Let’s go home.”
By the time we reach the parking lot the rest of the gang has already spilled out of the car and managed to scam free cheese from Tom’s aunt, who is apparently not as much of an ornery bitch as she’d like her clientele to believe. They all spot us at the same time, but it’s Jesse who lets out a “Fuck yeah” before either of us has said a word, evidently reading it all over our faces. Luca lets out a cheer and Mariella rolls her eyes at the theatrics but noticeably swipes a tear with the heel of her hand.
We converge on Tom in a group hug that would bowl anyone else over if it weren’t for his height and sturdiness, and the rest of the night is a happy blur from there. We head to the little Airbnb with our Getaway List–themed treats and activities, reading through all the pages of the scrapbook one by one. We’re back in the winding paths of Central Park; in the pounding bass of Jesse’s shows; in the greasy, delicious heat of pizza between our teeth; in the fragile quiet of the sunrise from Tom’s roof. In the excitement and unpredictability and fear and doubt and hope. In the bond we’ve all formed together, and the bonds of the strangers whose stories are intertwined with ours through the app. In the stories that have yet to be told because now we have so much more time together to make them.
The next morning we pile into the car, me driving, Tom on the passenger side, Luca and Mariella and Jesse in the back. Tom, of course, has snacks. Jesse’s got the aux cord. Mariella’s got the map. Luca’s got road-trip games, each more ridiculous than the last. I’ve got the steering wheel in both hands and my heart all over the car. When we finally complete the last item on the Getaway List, there’s nothing but open road ahead.
Epilogue
“Laptop down, nerd.”
I blink away from my screen and up at Mariella, who is party-ready in a tasseled dress with glitter streaking her cheeks. Even with her crouching a few inches from my face it takes me a moment to recalibrate myself from the story I was working on back into the real world, or at least this cramped version of it in the back office of Brownie Bonanza.
Mariella leans over the desk where I’m perched. “Fic, fanfic, or fuck-for-all?”
Which is her way of asking if I’m working on original fiction, fanfiction, or am free-writing whatever comes into my head the way Vanessa encourages us to do. A fair question, because these days there are so many Google Docs tabs full of works in progress open on my laptop that my brain feels like it’s trying to access a fourth dimension.
“Fic,” I answer. “That short-story contest Luca and I entered last year is doing another round.”
A contest that we predictably lost, being two inexperienced newbies running mostly on enthusiasm and one writing class between us. But the rejection was almost too exciting to feel like one, because of the novelty of it all—it was our first experience with someone in the industry actually reading our work and giving us personalized feedback on it. And sure, while it wasn’t exactly a picnic to hear I had pacing problems and that I “overexplain” plot points, it ignited something in me that felt almost like the Getaway List. It gave me new challenges to meet. Ones that I could keep reaching for over and over again by writing and rewriting and improving a bit more every time.
Odds are despite all the workshops and classes I’ve taken since then, I’m going to lose this contest, too. But that’s more than all right. If the past year and the thousands of new words under my belt have taught me anything, it’s that writing is a marathon, not a sprint. I’m not in this to win anything, but because I love every second of it—the parts where I get to know myself and my abilities a little more with each draft, and the parts where I collect new friends along the way.
“Well, that explains why Luca put enough plotting index cards on the back of his bedroom door to look like a crime-scene investigation,” says Mariella. She waits for me to stand up from my perch and unceremoniously drops a gigantic pan of brownies into my hands. “But we’ve got to get a move on.”
I blink again and look at the clock by the door. As usual, time has just slipped out from under me. Thankfully I’m already in my nicest jeans and a flowy green top Mariella loaned me for the occasion, so I’m ready to go.
“Can you believe we fully launched an app together just so your boyfriend could drown himself in brownie batter tonight? We really went above and beyond for him, huh,” says Mariella once I’m on my feet.
