Alone Together

When I woke up the next morning, my immediate instinct was to hit the fridge. I’d slept lousy. Between nightmares about Sarah’s road trip and the recurring dream in which the hockey gods laughed in my face and told me I’d never win a Stanley Cup, it felt like I was up every hour. That was probably true, if the bags under my eyes had anything to say about it.

My apartment wasn’t huge. It was plenty space to live in alone and two people fit comfortably, even if one of them had a bad habit of hoarding things like I did. Compared to some of my teammates, I lived well below my means, but that was okay. My car was flashy enough, and even that felt like too much sometimes.

“So I was thinking—”

I let out a freakish scream and sent the jug of orange juice toppling to the floor. Sarah stared at me silently, probably wondering what on earth was wrong with me, and I immediately diverted my gaze to the gallon’s worth of juice spilled all over the tile to avoid any further embarrassment.

Her blonde hair was tied in a bun at the top of her head but she was still in yesterday’s clothes, meaning she hadn’t slept either, but the bags under her eyes didn’t give her away like mine did. It was only because I knew Sarah would never, ever sleep in her clothes that I was able to come to that conclusion.

“Okay, one, did you think that maybe it wouldn’t be the best thing in the world for me to die of a heart attack?” She scoffed. “Two, have you been sitting there all night?”

“I started in the living room if you’re legitimately concerned.”

I ignored her. “Three, a simple ‘good morning’ would’ve sufficed.” She began to speak, most likely to tell me good morning, but I held my hand up to stop her. “Don’t. It’s too late now. Finally, where did you find a map?”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “It’s a good thing you play hockey because I’m almost positive you have the IQ of a sack of potatoes. You live in Washington, D.C., Mike. There’s maps all over the city. They even sell them in stores.”

“Where did you get a map in the middle of the night, then?” I argued.

“The convenience store a few blocks that way—” She jabbed her thumb eastward, I think. “—is open 24/7. For your convenience, because that’s what convenience stores do.”

I stayed cemented to my spot in front of the refrigerator for my convenience. Maybe if I ignored the juice spill it’d go away, like evaporation or if the tiles needed sustenance in the form of acidic juice with probably more concentrate than anyone actually needed. Sarah didn’t bother waiting for a reply (arguing with me was less fun than arguing with Bryan because he was used to it, whereas I wasn’t as quick on my feet because I couldn’t chirp Sarah like I did my teammates because she’d murder me) and went back to her map, drawing lines and making notes and doodling things I couldn’t see because I was too far away.

With a groan I dug the last roll of paper towels from under the sink and cleaned up the mess as best I could. I even got the Swiffer from the hallway closet and semi-mopped so the floor wouldn’t be sticky in a few hours. My mother would’ve been beaming with pride, but Sarah didn’t even notice.

“I mopped the floor.” Nothing. “There was a pretty big juice spill, but I mopped it up so you don’t have to worry about it.” Still nothing. “Fuck it, I’m going back to bed.”

And that’s what I did, hoping that when I woke up for the second time that morning someone would jump out from behind the curtains and tell me my entire life had been a big, fat joke and I could go back to being normal, whatever that was.

But even the nap didn’t solve my issues. The nightmares were worse the second time around: running out of gas in the middle of a deserted highway in the middle of the night, blowing a tire in the sketchiest part of town a la Children of the Corn, unknowingly stepping into Children of the Corn, anything having to do with Children of the Corn…

It was nonsense, really. I had no reason to be this bent out of shape about a road trip, and even if things went south, it wasn’t like I didn’t have the means to reroute Sarah and myself to the nearest airport and go home. Every problem I imagined us having had an obtainable solution, so what was the problem?

Sarah was gone and so was the map, prompting me to immediately assume the worst. Maybe I shouldn’t have cared so much about mopping the floor. Was it pompous of me to put so much stress on it, as if I deserved some kind of medal? If I can’t win a goddamn Stanley Cup, might as well take whatever I can get.

There was a note taped to the refrigerator:

Mike,

Went to get lunch and didn’t want to wake you. I’ll be back soon.

P.S. the floor looks great!

Sarah

I crumpled it and tossed it in the trash. Technically speaking it was the first day of summer and all I’d done was mop the floor and sleep until two-o’clock. Surely my teammates were off doing much cooler things, like taking vacations or spending the next 14 hours on a flight back to their native country, and I was still stuck in the same crummy apartment.

Life was cruel. It couldn’t deal you small blows over time because that’d be too easy, it wouldn’t hurt as much, so just when you’re feeling on top of the world it knocks you out with one punch. It’s not enough to get eliminated from the playoffs, your girlfriend also has to break up with you and leave you absolutely miserable. Why?

My best friend came bustling through the door in the midst of my pity party, arms full of brown paper bags. I took two from her and set them on the kitchen counter, making myself useful by grabbing plates and utensils and napkins while she sorted out the food and grabbed glasses.

“These are yours,” she said, sliding a sandwich and soup container in my direction. “Did you know there’s one take-out place in this whole city that sells turkey chili with avocado?”

“No,” I responded, mostly because I didn’t know how to properly formulate what I was actually thinking, and that was how she remembered turkey chili with avocado was my favorite and how she managed to find the only place in D.C. that sold it.

“I was going to make some myself but the avocados at the market didn’t look very good,” she admitted, and it seemed like it was causing her physical pain to have to tell me I was getting store-bought instead of homemade. “Sorry.”

“This is great, Sarah, thank you.”

She smiled and starting putting the food on real plates. The first time she ever visited me was way back when Brooks and I were sharing an apartment and she berated us for two days straight because all we had were paper plates. I tried smoothing things over by telling her they were Dixie — real flashy stuff when it comes to recyclable dishware — but she was having none of it and actually made us go to Bed, Bath and Beyond to buy real plates. I never made that mistake again.

She started chatting about the city once we sat down. It always amazed me that Sarah could go out for ten minutes and become a D.C. aficionado and I’d been playing hockey here for the past six years and couldn’t tell you jack shit except for the best steakhouse. Today she was going on about some organic market she’d found on Capitol Hill.

“The cashier there is a huge Caps fan, though I think he might be into the Nationals a little more,” she said, digging around in whatever it was she’d gotten to eat with a spoon. “He’s a nice kid, though, so you should stop in sometime.”

There was no way in hell I was ever stepping foot in an organic market, but I kept my mouth shut all the same.

“Where’d the map go?”

“It’s in my bag. I picked up a few tourism guides while I was out, too.”

I got a migraine immediately. “Where are we going first?”

Sarah looked at me in that way only she could, like I was the dumbest person alive — basically the same way she looked at me when I asked her about the map earlier in the morning.

“We don’t just pick up and go, Mike. We have to buy supplies and figure out where we’re staying and all that.”

I grunted over a mouthful of whatever sandwich she’d given me. “I thought road trips were a spontaneous thing.”

“They are.”

“Then why are we planning things out?”

“You just want to pack our shit and go? No hotel reservations or anything?” I nodded. Hockey dictated my life, made sure I was prepped and primed and ready to go at all times. There were rules. I was done with rules. “What if the hotels are all booked up?”

“We can’t stay in hotels, Sarah. Road trips are about camping and sleeping in parking lots. What’s the fun in staying in the same places I do on the road?”

If I thought the paper plates a few years back were going to kill her, the word camping was what finally pushed her over the edge. She was never a camper. Actually, she wasn’t much for wilderness and nature at all, preferring the soft mattress of a king-sized bed in a Ritz-Carlton over an inflatable bed in a tent in the middle of a state park.

“I’m not camping.”

“Then I’m not going.” Her eyes doubled in size. “You said it yourself: All I see when I’m on the road are hotels and arenas, and I’m sick of sleeping in hotels.”

“But there’s bugs. What if we get eaten by mountain lions or coyotes or something? What then?”

“I’ve done a lot of charity work, Sarah. My conscience is clean. But we can stop at a church before we leave if you want to hit a confessional.”

She glared at me as she got up to put her plate in the dishwasher. “I circled the places I want to go,” she said, dropping the map on the table in front of me. “You look at it and do the same and we can figure out—”

“Big Mike’s Mystery House.”

“What?”

“That’s where I want to go.”

“What the hell is Big Mike’s Mystery House?” she asked, but very quickly followed it up with, “Never mind, I don’t want to know. Where is it?”

“Cave City, Kentucky.”

She just stared at me. “Kentucky?”

I shrugged. “It’s only a dollar per person, but if you print a coupon from the Internet it’s free. We can go anywhere you want as long as I get to go to Big Mike’s,” I said. “Oh, and I want to go to the Space Museum in Missouri.”

The color returned to Sarah’s face at the mention of space. She taught astronomy, after all, and was constantly telling me true facts about space that not a lot of people knew, like how Saturn could float in water because of it’s density.

“Where in Missouri?”

“Bonne Terre,” I answered, helping her find it on the map so it could be circled. She wrote space museum! next to it and started looking for Cave City, though clearly the thought of being within 50 miles of Big Mike’s Mystery Spot was on par with camping.

“You’re sure that’s where you want to go?”

I nodded. “Should we end the trip here or home?”

“I guess it depends on how long it takes us. You’ll have to allot some time for working out, right?” I nodded again, knowing no one would be happy if I showed up to training camp either grossly overweight with zero muscle mass or grossly underweight with zero muscle mass.

“We can go to Muscle Beach.”

Sarah grinned for the first time all day. “I’m always down for a trip to California.”

“Where do we start?”

“Kentucky’s close, so we can start there,” she said, dragging her finger from D.C. to Cave City, “then we can go to Missouri since they’re neighbors. Then we can pick states from a hat or keep heading west to California for all I care.”

“How are we gonna do this?” I asked. “Whose car are we taking?”

I was praying she wouldn’t say mine. I loved Sarah and I’d warmed up considerably to the whole road trip thing, but we weren’t taking my car. There was absolutely no way and I wasn’t budging on that whatsoever.

Sarah nodded toward the window and I sent her a questioning look. “I bought it before I came down.”

“But you flew here,” I said. I’d picked her up from the airport, so it wasn’t like I could be imagining things or was dehydrated or had a concussion.

“Bryan drove it.”

There was a brand new Jeep Liberty sitting in the parking lot of the building, looking incredibly out of place between the BMWs and Audis. Then it hit me: Bryan drove it all the way from Calgary, meaning she’d had this planned from the beginning. There was no chance of me turning down her offer or spending the summer back home eating boiled chicken and spending hours in the gym.

“You tricked me,” I accused.

“I did not!”

“Then what were you going to do if I said no?”

“Tell you not to book a flight back home because I’d drive you,” she answered, narrowing her eyes as if I’d insulted her and she had no idea how she could ever recover. “Seriously, Mike, I was ready to call the whole thing off when I found out we’d be camping. Do you honestly think if I’d tricked you I’d be that easy to dissuade?”

“Reverse psychology.”

“Grow up!” she scolded, snatching the map from the table and folding it back into a small rectangle before stashing it in her purse again. “Pack whatever you’re planning on bringing. We’ll leave in the morning.”

How was I supposed to explain this to my family? Sorry, guys, can’t come home and spend any time with you this summer because I’m going to Big Mike’s Mystery House and the Space Museum with Sarah. Oh, and so I don’t get kicked off the team for lack of conditioning, we’re also going to Muscle Beach. Don’t worry, I’ll send you a postcard!

Maybe Sarah had already roped them in, too. They loved her, probably more than they did me, so it’s not like it’d be hard to get them on board. They probably had weekly meetings back in Calgary over how lousy I was doing mentally and emotionally and came to the consensus that a road trip was exactly what I needed. That’s when Sarah would volunteer to be my tour guide because she always mopped up my messes whether she volunteered or I forced them upon her.

As soon as she disappeared into the guest room to take a nap, I grabbed my keys from the bowl next to the door and headed to the closest Dick’s. If this was actually going to be my summer, I needed a tent.