He looked at me full in the face and waited for my response.
It would be easy to say I was sick. So easy to leave it at that. Sick was straightforward. Medical. Simple.
Sad, however, was complicated and messy. Too messy to get someone else involved in. But I was sad. And angry and frustrated and humiliated and a billion other things I had neither the inclination nor the strength to delve into. But at the base of it all, I was sad. So sad I ached from it.
And besides, I’d never liked orange soda.
“Sad,” I told him. “And also hungry.”
—
STANDING IN FRONT OF THE vending machine, I had a hard time deciding whether I wanted a Snickers or a Twix. Nick ended up getting both, claiming he’d eat whichever one I didn’t want, and then he got himself a can of diet soda.
“I thought you went for Big Gulps,” I said, watching as he fished it out of the machine.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” he said. “Besides, I’m trying not to indulge too much before the big game next week. You know, not too much sugar.”
Then we both looked at the candy bars in his hand.
“This is an important exception,” he said.
—
AT THE PARKING LOT, WE looked out at the cars. “Where to?” he asked. “I drove today, so I can take you anywhere you’d like.”
A beautiful boy was asking me where I wanted to go. The right answer, I knew, would be somewhere fun or interesting. Even romantic, if such a place existed in Birdton. I knew that was what I should suggest.
Then a breeze brushed my face and I heard the faint sound of a far-off generator roaring to life. The sound of wind and metal.
And I knew somewhere romantic, somewhere fun, wasn’t what I needed today. Today I needed to go somewhere else, somewhere I hadn’t been in a long time. Somewhere I didn’t want to go alone.
“I think I know where,” I said.
—
I WASN’T SURE I’D REMEMBER how to get there. But soon enough there were signs. Little wooden ones, not big glossy ones. WINDMILL MUSEUM, they said. Which made it sound very different from what it was, raising the expectation that there would, for example, be an actual museum.
“Is that where we’re headed?” Nick asked. “The Windmill Museum?”
I nodded.
“Sounds cool,” he said. “I’ve never gone.”
“I went once,” I said. “A couple years ago.”
The last leg of the trip was up a dirt road, and the car bumped along over the uneven ground. And then there it was, looming in front of us. A beautiful old windmill. There was no other building, no “museum,” only an old wooden box where you could contribute to the preservation of the windmill. And then there were stairs that went almost to the top and a small platform where you could sit.
“That’s great,” he said. “It’s…” He took one hand off the wheel and made a gesture up and down; then he was quiet.
“Yes,” I said. “It really is.”
He parked the car in the patch of dirt that served as the parking lot and we got out of the car and stood together, looking up at the windmill. The paint was starting to peel, and in patches the wood was visible underneath, yet the structure itself conveyed the same sense of solidity it must have when it was built more than a hundred years earlier.
“Do you want to go up?” he asked.
“Yes.”
I went first, climbing the steps slowly, then lowered myself to the platform, my knees up and my back against the heavy wood. Nick sat beside me. We looked out over the surrounding fields. The sun was still high above the horizon, and there were farms in all directions and mountains in the far distance.
“I came here once with my family. Anna loved the view,” I said. “And I loved the sound the blades made, like we might become airborne at any second. We didn’t even want to come and then the two of us ended up sitting here for over an hour until our parents made us come down.”
I turned around and searched along the wood behind me. At first I couldn’t find them, and then there they were: Our initials. Mine and hers, next to each other, tiny but unmistakable. I turned back, keeping my hand pressed over the spot.
“We meant to come back. It’s one of those places you always mean to come back to, you know? It’s not that far. We could have gotten our parents to take us anytime, and we never did. It seems so stupid that we didn’t.”
My throat started to close up.
“You thought you had plenty of time,” Nick said quietly.
“We should have. We should have had so much more time.”
He nodded and said nothing.
Which was perfect, actually. Saying nothing was the perfect thing to say.
I closed my eyes and imagined Anna sitting next to me, smiling, even as our parents paced impatiently below. Imagined the air warmer, the end of a long, hot summer. Imagined us when we’d spent every moment together, when it hadn’t mattered if we’d worn the same things or not, when there hadn’t been a question of Anna having to either hold herself back or cut me loose.
I knew that our relationship hadn’t been as simple, as easy as I’d once thought; I knew that even now I was probably glossing over things, making that memory more sun-soaked than it had actually been. I was okay with that. Because I had to believe it hadn’t all been me pushing her away or her striding off. That there had been times when we really were on the same page.
Eventually, the silence was broken by the distinct sound of my stomach rumbling. I coughed.
“I think I’m ready for my candy bar.”
“Of course,” Nick said, digging through his jacket pocket. He pulled out the two bars and presented them to me with a flourish. “Take your pick.”
I took the
