Love Is Hell

Garrett.

February had flown by in a hurry. March had quickly approached and was now staring me in the face. The guys and I were all counting down the days until spring break, when we were driving up to Lake Havasu and camping out for a few days. The best part: no parents. It had taken a lot of convincing, but eventually our nagging paid off.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I pulled it out and saw I had another reminder. “24 days,” it read, meaning twenty-four days until spring break. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little overexcited. I mean, hanging out and partying all day with your best friends... that was what we lived for.

I stared at my phone for a little too long, wishing a certain someone’s name would pop up. My internal dialogue debated with itself for a few minutes until I finally gave in and dialed a number, except it wasn’t the girl I had been thinking of.

“Hello?” Trey’s voice said. I was at home, but he’d finally gotten his ass around to buying his own apartment.

“Hey, it’s me. Um, Trey? Can you help me?”

His voice perked up. “What’s up, little bro?”

“Well...”

He laughed. “Girls problems?”

“Uh, yeah. Lina and I haven’t even hung out since my birthday, and that was like, a month ago. Would it be weird if I called her and asked to hang out?”

“Of course not, Gare! I mean, you guys are friends at least, right?”

I bit my lip. We were friends, right? “Yeah, we are. So you think I should call her?” It was a Saturday, after all.

“You totally should call her, man. Go see a movie or something.” Trey laughed again. “Nice to see my little brother growing some balls.”

I rolled my eyes. “Bye, Trey.”

“Good luck!” he said before I ended the call. I closed my eyes. What if I was just deluding myself, and she really hates my guts?

But then I remembered how she’s kissed my cheek on two occasions. “To hell with it,” I thought as I dialed her cell phone number. After a few rings, she picked up.

“Hello?”

God, even the sound of her voice made me nervous.

“Hey, Lina. It’s me, Garrett,” I said, trying to keep cool.

She laughed a little. “I know. I do have caller ID, Garrett. But what’s up?”

“Right. Sorry,” I said, chuckling too. “But, uh, I was wondering if you wanted to, uh, maybe hang out today? If you aren’t busy...”

“Mm. Surprisingly, I’m not busy at all today. My mom had work off so I don’t need to babysit. Right now, I’m at the cafe close to my house. You could meet me here?”

I was both thrilled and terrified of her answer. Pushing those thoughts aside, I said, “Sure, I’ll be there in ten minutes, okay?”

***

I pulled up at the cafe and hopped out of the car, immediately spotting Lina sitting at a table next to the window. I smiled, seeing her buried deep in a book.

I pushed open the door and walked over to her. When I got close, she looked up and smiled at me.

“Hi,” she said softly.

“Hey, Lina,” I said, sitting down across from her. She had black rimmed glasses on, and, god, she looked so cute. Though her eyes were bloodshot and her hair was pulled into a messy bun, I still thought she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen, but she looked so tired.

I gave her a wry smile back. “I didn’t know you wore glasses.” I didn’t know if I should ask her how she was doing or not. I definitely didn’t want to piss her off.

She scrunched her nose and smiled. “Only when I’m reading.”

“You look cute with them,” I said, wondering where the hell my confidence had came from.

She rolled her eyes. “Thanks, Nickelsen.” She sighed, looking at her half-empty plastic cup, which I assumed was full of coffee. “Do you want the rest of this?” she asked, holding it up. “I don’t want it.”

“Are you sure?”

She nodded. “I’m not going to drink it, but I don’t want it to go to waste.”

“Thanks,” I said, taking the cup from her and sipping on the straw. I felt butterflies burst in my stomach as I realized I was drinking out of the same cup as the girl I’d had a crush on for years.

“So how has your weekend been so far, Nickelsen?”

“Pretty mediocre, Carolina. Yours?”

“Pretty shitty. Though, Joey finally got over his little grudge against me. But today’s my free day, so here I am,” she said, gesturing to the room around us, made up of mostly unoccupied tables and a bar where I assumed they sold coffee and such. “The world’s coziest cafe around.”

“You come here a lot?”

She nodded. “Joey and I used to come here everyday after school, until Danny was born. But whenever I have free time, I come here.”

“Yeah, she comes here because she can’t resist seeing me!” said a boy who looked about fifteen, appearing out of nowhere but grinning.

Lina rolled her eyes. “Only because you make the best smoothies, Billy.”

He laughed and returned back to the bar, hopping over the counter and disappearing.

“That’s the owner’s son,” Lina explained. “He’s great kid.”

I nodded, smiling. I watched as Lina moved her book around on the table, fussing with it.

“Lina, are you okay?”

She sighed. “What do you mean?”

“Your eyes are bloodshot. And you look really tired. Is everything alright?”

She looked at me for a second, biting her lip. “I’ve just had a lot to do, lately. I mean, I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night but I’m okay. I was trying to take advantage of my free time by reading, but it makes me tired.”

I nodded. “Wanna go do something?”

I watched as a smile slowly pulled up the corners of her lips. “Like what?”

“We could... just, you know...drive?”

“Sounds perfect,” she said, standing up. I stood too, following her out the door. We’d almost reached my tacky yellow car when she spun around abruptly.

“Garrett, what about my car?”

I shrugged. “We can come back and get it later, Lina. Come on,” I nodded towards my car. I bit back a smile as she scrunched her nose at me and pulled open the passenger door of my car.

Normally, I’d be surprised that she’d said yes when I asked her to do something with me. Now, it was almost too easy to accept, like going on pointless drives to nowhere was something we did together all the time.

As Lina situated herself on the passenger seat of my car, I pushed the CD I’d bought last week into the slot.

“Death Cab?” she asked.

I nodded. “I’ve never listened to this record before, but it was cheap so I bought it.”

She smiled. “You do that too? When I see old or cheap CD’s that look promising, I feel bad for them because no one’s bought them, so I buy them. Sometimes they’re actually pretty good.”

She sighed contently as we got on the highway, rolling our windows down and letting the Arizona air fly over our heads.

“Wait...Is this ‘The Open Door’ EP?” she asked.

I nodded.

“I love this one!” she laughed and reached for the dial to turn the volume up. “So where are we headed, Nickelsen?”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Hmm. Anywhere.”

I nodded. “To Anywhere we go, then,” I said as pushed my foot down on the pedal even harder, taking us away from Tempe.

***

We’d been driving for nearly four hours. I had no idea where we were, but neither of us cared. It wasn’t even uncomfortable; the two of us, sitting there, listening to music and talking. I hadn’t known exactly what to say at first, but Lina had effectively broken the ice by saying, “Damn it Garrett don’t you clean your car? There’s an old bag of Chipotle in the backseat,” and then bursted out laughing. I laughed too, even though she made me stop the car so she could throw the bag away.

So here we were, talking about nothing and everything. Basically, Lina was asking me every question in the book. Our Anywhere drive had turned into a game of twenty questions (though I was pretty sure we’d both asked more than twenty) and I was perfectly okay with that.

“So what is your favorite color, Nickelsen?”

I laughed. “Such a deep question, Lina. But I think I’m going to have to say green.”

She nodded. “That’s mine, too.”

I glanced over at her as I drove. Her hair was being tossed lightly by the wind of our windows, and it let me clearly see her face. Her lashes were long and dark, her cheeks were so rosy, and, of course, she was biting her lip. Watching her do that only made me want to kiss her, so badly.

Shit.

As if sensing someone was looking at her, she turned her head towards me and smiled wryly. “Take a picture, Gare. It lasts longer.”

I laughed. “I don’t have my camera.”

I was able to her rolling her eyes. “Your turn to ask a question.”

“Okay, where’s one place you want to go, that you’ve never been?”

She looked over at me, tilting her head. “The ocean.”

My eyes went wide. “Seriously? We live one state away from the coast and you’ve never been there?”

Lina shook her head. “My dad was supposed to take us,” she said quietly, and I knew that I’d moved into uncharted territory. It was a place I didn’t know if I was allowed or not.

Thinking I might as well try, I said, “Lina, what happened to your dad?”

She scoffed. “You know what happened, Garrett,” she said, staring out the window. “You saw me that day, remember?”

“But... why’d he leave?”

“It’s not your turn to ask a question,” she said matter-of-factly, but there was an uncertainty in her voice that hadn’t been there before. “Any pets?”

I sighed. “Two cats and two dogs.”

She nodded.

“So?” I said lightly. “You can trust me, Lina.”

She turned, her hazel eyes staring at me. “You might want to pull over for this one, Gare.”

***

The sun had been bright overhead during our car ride, but when I’d driven to find a place to park off the freeway, it had started pouring as Lina began launching into her story. It was like the weather had changed according to the weight of our conversation. I don’t know exactly why she agreed to tell me, but I was sure, somehow, that she wasn’t messing around. She was being serious and she was telling me the full story.

“So my mom has Parkinson’s Disease,” she said finally, the rain pounding on my windshield. “It’s not too bad now, but it’s gotten worse over the years. And it’s only going to get worse.” She sucked in a long breath and took her time letting it out. “So for the first thirteen years of my life everything was perfect. I had my mom, and I’ve always known she was sick, but she was just always... okay, you know? Dad was there, and he took care of us. He did what Mom couldn’t and we were all happy. Then Mom got pregnant with a baby that my dad didn’t even want. At first I understood, a little. I mean, he was forty-five years old and already had a set of teenage twins. It’d be hard, especially for my mom, to take care of a newborn. But my parents worked it out... and I thought everything was okay. All I cared about was that I was getting a new baby brother or sister,” she continued quietly. She closed her eyes for a minute, and without thinking, I reached over and took ahold of her hand.

She looked up and gave me a small smile. “So my mom was nine months pregnant and we all thought my dad had gotten over it; that he’d accepted it. But then my mom went into labor, and after I watched Danny being born, I followed my dad out of the delivery room. You know what he said to me?” She let out a bitter laugh. “He said, ‘Carolina, I’m sorry, but all of this is too much for me to handle. It was hard enough taking care of you, Joey, and your mother, but -a baby is too much for me now.’ And then he left.”

The car rang with her last sentence as I took in all that she’d told me. “He just left you guys? Just like that?”

She nodded once, slowly. “Haven’t heard from him since.”

I was in shock. I never would have guessed. I shook my head, saying, “He’s an idiot.”

Lina didn’t say anything, just leaned her head against the window. My hand was still holding hers, but it felt right. It felt like I could feel how sad she was through the pulse of her palm.

I don’t know how long we sat like that, listening to the radio and the sound of the rain, our fingers clutching each other’s tightly. It felt different and exciting and new. But at the same time, it felt so comfortable.

Finally, Lina said something. “I just don’t understand... how he thought he had too much to handle. It was his family... and that’s what you do for family. You stick around no matter what.”

She was falling asleep. Actually, I almost felt like I could fall asleep too, but the fact that Lina was in my car holding my hand was still giving me a buzz.

“Garrett?” she whispered.

“Yeah, Lina?”

“Now that I’ve told you all this... you’re going to stick around, right?”

God, this was a side of her I’d never seen before, just glimpses of it. Rebellious, fearless Carolina Hawkins was sad.

“Of course I’m sticking around, Lina. You can’t get rid of me that easily, you know.”