Ride With Me

When your shift ends, you find her outside on the back steps by the dumpsters drinking coffee from her to-go cup, the blue one with the preppy green whales on it. You throw bags of trash into the dumpster, click the padlock shackle into place. You look at her because you can't not look at her. She is the moon to your tide, the last line of a sonnet, the hypnotist's watch.

"Hey," you say. "Do you need a ride home?"

In your car--a ten-year-old Impala that belonged to your mother's friend who bought a Jeep and drove to Montana to find a cowboy to love "because life's too short," she said, staring off into the distance as if she could already see the Rockies--you say, "What's the one place you've never been but desperately want to go?"

"I've never seen the ocean." She puts her feet up on your dash, scrunches her face. "Too far to drive, my mom says."

"It's not so far." You think about the tips rolled up in your jeans pocket. "Want to go? I mean, tonight?"

Her brown eyes widen. "Yes."

You buy burgers and fries at an all-night truck stop just north of Bangor. The waitress is nice, says she's been to Old Orchard Beach. "There's a pier and an amusement park," the waitress says. "And a place to get fake tattoos."

When we pass Lewiston, she rolls her window down, sticks her hand into the warm, June air.

"Do you remember the first day of kindergarten?" she says.

"We sat together on the bus and held hands," you say and you turn up the radio and you both sing so loud your voices crack.

It's still dark when you park along a street in Old Orchard Beach. The town is still in the royal-blue wash of pre-dawn. It's quiet. Only a few cars. You walk toward the ocean carrying paper cups of coffee and jelly donuts from a drive-through on Rt. 1.

You reach the sand. There's briney ocean smell and crash of surf. She squeals, hands you her cup, and runs. She's dancing in the ocean as the first faint light appears in the east.

Life's too short.

You sit together on the blanket. You reach over like you know what you're doing, like you've done this a hundred times. You run your finger down her jawline, cup her chin in your hand. You kiss her and taste the sugar on her lips, feel the intake of her breath. Heart pounding, you smile against her lips.

But then you lean too close. The cup tips in your hand. Coffee spills and she gasps and pulls away. She looks down at the stain and waves her hands a bit and yelps and you think, I've ruined everything.

But you haven't because she looks up from beneath her lashes and sticks out her tongue, and she laughs like you have all the time in the world.