Good-bye, so long, farewell …

—Paul Tiernan

Twenty miles outside of Philadelphia, I began to break down. It seemed that all too soon, there were signs every few feet, telling me just how close Philadelphia was. Roger was holding my hand between our seats, but I was having trouble even looking at him, choosing instead to stare out the window, and not able to think about anything except how in a very few minutes, he’d be gone.

“You okay?” Roger asked, as he turned down a residential street.

“I don’t think so,” I said, still looking out my window.

“Well, I think we’re almost there,” he said, slowing down and squinting at the numbers on his side.

“That’s not really helping,” I said, trying to keep my voice light and utterly failing. Roger looked over at me for a moment, then pulled to the side of the road. I looked around—we were between two houses. “Are we here?” I asked, confused.

“I think it’s up there,” he said, looking from the address in his phone to a driveway a few feet away. “I just wanted a little privacy.” He killed the engine, left the keys in the ignition, and turned to me, unbuckling his seat belt and then mine.

“What now?” I asked, hoping that he had some sort of a plan.

“Well,” he said, sliding to the edge of his seat, “I’m going to go in and you’re going to drive to Connecticut. And then I’m going to call you later tonight and we’ll talk.”

“No,” I said. “I mean, what’s going to happen? With us?” I asked, heart hammering.

He smiled at me. “You’re the navigator,” he said. “You want to know where we’re going, and the exact route.”

“Well, yes,” I said. “I mean …”

“But what if we hadn’t taken the detour?” he asked. “We’d have been back a long time ago. And we would only have seen Tulsa.”

“I know,” I said, thinking about the trip my mother had wanted me to take, and the trip we’d ended up taking, and how much better ours had been.

“So I think we have to be open to what happens,” he said. “We can’t know exactly what’s coming.”

“But I just want to know if …” I stopped when I realized I couldn’t finish the sentence. What I wanted was some kind of guarantee, and he couldn’t give that to me. Nobody could.

“Amy,” Roger said. I looked at him, hearing just how he’d said my name. Like it contained only the good letters. “I didn’t expect this to happen. Did you?”

“Well, of course not.”

“Exactly. So I’m just trying to figure it out myself. We can’t know what’s going to happen. We can just try to figure it out as we go along. Right?”

“Right,” I said slowly. “But …”

“I mean, I should have known,” he said, leaning back a little and smiling at me. “It always happens this way.”

“What does?”

“The best discoveries always happened to the people who weren’t looking for them. Columbus and America. Pinzón, who stumbled on Brazil while looking for the West Indies. Stanley happening on Victoria Falls. And you. Amy Curry, when I was least expecting her.”

I smiled back at him, while feeling sharply just how much I was going to miss him. It was almost a physical pain. “I’m on that list?”

“You’re at the top of that list.” He leaned over and kissed me, and I kissed back, and we stayed that way until we switched to just holding each other. He pulled away after a long moment, and I nodded. We both got out of the car, and I walked around to the driver’s side as Roger grabbed his backpack and duffel.

“Okay,” I said. We kissed again, and he hugged me so tightly that my feet lifted off the ground.

“I’m calling you tonight,” he whispered into my ear. “And we’ll figure it out. I promise.” I nodded again, and Roger set me down, and I felt him slip something into the front pocket of my jeans. “Don’t open it until you get to Connecticut, okay?” He stepped back, smiling at me sadly. “We’re not going to say good-bye.”

“Of course not,” I said, trying my best to smile back at him.

“I’m just going to say … see you around,” he said, taking a few steps toward his dad’s house.

“Don’t be a stranger,” I said.

“Take care,” he said, stepping away.

“So long,” I said.

“Talk to you later,” he said, walking away, still facing me.

“See you soon,” I called.

He was now at the base of his driveway, and he raised a hand in a wave to me. I raised a hand back. And then he shouldered his duffel and headed up the driveway, leaving me standing by the car, alone.

* Amy Playlist #3 *

“The End of the Road” or “The Beginning”