Again, that deep ache in my chest. “Oh you know, because it was the freedom of being a kid. Not a care in the world.”

I remembered how some nights in my room, when I could hear my parents arguing a floor below, I’d take out my sketch pad and get lost in the feeling of my fingers dragging across the page—I’d draw buildings, bridges, and other structures that interested me. I also had many pages of darkness—caves, pits, eclipses—so I’d be sure to sketch the pond and the sun, added light and balance to the black.

When she didn’t respond I continued, recalling how easy it was to walk out the front door into the sunshine and forget all of it, every single part, for the next few hours.

“When I was a kid, I didn’t care that my knees were scratched or my shins had an entire landscape of bruises across them. Or that I was completely filthy and my hair was matted to my head with sweat. I wasn’t even sure where in the hell my shoes were half the time,” I said, laughing and shaking my head. “All I knew was that sometimes I felt light as a balloon drifting off in the warm summer breeze and I wanted those days—those good days—to last as long as humanly possible.”

“Wow, Nate,” she said, the words floating from her mouth on a gust of air, her eyes round and wide. “Now you’ve made me feel nostalgic.”

“I want a redo of one of those carefree days. There weren’t many of them.” I gave her a quick sidelong glance, surprising even myself that I had admitted all of that. But it dislodged the rigidity in my chest, just a little. ”Before everything in the entire fucking universe went to shit and began to matter.”

“That’s about right,” she said, softly, her gaze focused on the road but really a whole world away.

“What makes you nostalgic?” I asked.

The bittersweet look in her eyes deepened and I figured she was thinking about her dad. She twisted her bottom lip with her fingers and glanced at me, almost hesitant. “There was this one time it was just my dad and me. He had taken me to the beach to shoot pictures of the waves.”

“Where was your mom?”

“At work. My parents always had odd jobs and work hours. My dad would go off on photography assignments because he worked freelance and then he’d come back with all kinds of stories.”

“That’s really cool.”

She nodded. “But this was just a quiet afternoon we shared and the water was so gray. There was no wind kicking off the lake and it was so peaceful.”

“Huh,” I said. “So you do have a water tale after all, Blue. This wasn’t some public pool with chlorine.”

“Got me there. He drove us up the freeway to Coe Lake,” she said, her lips curving at the memory. “Anyway, my father told me some things that day about life. He was such a brilliant and poetic man.”

Now my interest was piqued. I tried picturing this great man who probably walked along the beach holding his daughter’s hand. “Like what?”

“He would say all kinds of things, really. My parents were very spiritual, very connected with nature and inner beauty. But that one day really stuck with me,” she said. “Because he told me, ‘It’s important to spend time alone and get to know the whole of yourself.’”

My eyebrows creased together. “What did he mean?”

“I remember asking the same thing,” she said, smiling at me. “He said, ‘Jessie, promise me this: Explore all the different sides of you. We all have darkness and brightness inside of us. You won’t know exactly what you’re made of until you embrace all of it, feel it, live it. Only then will you be able to face all that life has to offer, head-on.’”

She turned and looked straight into my eyes and I felt sucker punched in the gut. My breaths were coming in short gasps and I tried disguising it by looking at the landscape out the window. What in the heck was that speech her father had given her?

“Well hell,” I mumbled. “The only advice my father ever gave was to stop letting people crap all over me. That was after I let two goals through in my one and only season of soccer.”

Just recounting some of those memories got me all fired up.

“And oh yeah, to stop crying and being such a pussy.”

That was in front of my teammates and the parents on the sidelines. But there were plenty of other times I didn’t feel like recounting.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Me, too,” I said. “Mostly that your dad is gone.”

Suddenly I felt the gentle pressure of Jessie’s slender fingers on my arm and my chest constricted excruciatingly tight.

I glanced down at her hand and next into her eyes. A silent connection had been solidified between us, of something shared and something lost.

I looked up and saw the sign that said, BRIDGEWAY, SIX MILES.

“Is this the exit, Nate?” Her voice was soft and tender.

“Yeah,” I said, sitting up and clearing my brain of all of those heavy thoughts.

Jessie took the exit ramp and followed the curve until it dumped us on onto a state route I was all too familiar with.

“Where to first?” she asked.

“I know just the place.”

Chapter Nine

Jessie

I’d admit it was way cool getting to know Nate better on our car trip. He had many more layers to him than I had ever given him credit for. I couldn’t believe I shared my favorite memory with him. But it didn’t make me sad like it normally would when I was alone with my thoughts of my dad. Nate’s response had been so organic, so consoling that I knew it had been the right thing to do.