The limo drops us off at Patti's house, where Moth's parents are waiting to take him home, and the porch light waits illuminated for Patti. My mom is at home, expecting me at 11:00pm, and probably the only thing that's waiting for Thatcher is his jalopy.
"Would you like a ride home, Janie?" Moth's mom asks.
"We live in the same neighborhood," Thatcher answers, "so I can take her."
"Oh, great. How convenient. Okay, well, be safe kids," Moth's mom says as Moth winks at me before stepping into his car.
Patti must be exhausted, because she's already halfway up the walk to her house; and Thatcher and I are left alone to walk to his car. My hair is falling, so I start working on pulling out all of the bobby pins as I make my way into the front seat, careful not to accidentally break anything, since his car is essentially a moving assortment of scrap metals.
When he turns the key in the ignition, the clock displays the time: 10:16pm. We have fourty-four minutes to kill. I should be excited, but for some reason, I'm even more nervous about being alone with Thatcher now than I've ever been before. Probably because we've kissed now, so the secret is out. Before, we were each wearing masks, hiding all the vulnerable, scared parts of ourselves, but now there's nothing to shield us from each other. My heart's an open wound, and Thatcher has the power to heal it or make it worse. And that's scary.
I've never really had any close relationships with boys before. I never had a friend who was a boy before Thatcher and Moth. I've certainly never had a boyfriend. No brother. Not an uncle in the family. Grandpa died of an aneurism before I was born. I don't even have a father figure in my life. My dad walked out on us when I was six months old and never came back. I once asked my mom about him, and she told me that they had been dating for months when she found out she was pregnant. That's when she also found out that he already had a family and a wife in the next town over. Apparently, he left them, and came to live with Mom and take care of me. But it all got to be too much, my mom said, and she figured out that he was sneaking off to reunite with his other family. She gave him an ultimatum, and he gave her back his keys.
I don't ask about them anymore, though when I was younger I used to fantasize about having siblings. I don't care now. They aren't family. My "dad" chose not to be in my life, and from the sound of it, I'm better without him. According to Mom, he moved out of state with his family—away from any temptations of coming back to my mom—a few months after he left. At least, that's the reason he gave for not sending a check to help with me. "I'm in the middle of moving, but I'll reach out with a check once we're settled," he apparently texted my mom. Moving must take a long time, because Mom has yet to see any help from him.
Without a dad around, I don't know what this is supposed to look like. What is it like when two people care about each other? Knowing Thatcher's background, he probably doesn't know either, but he must have a better idea than me, because he reaches over to hold my hand.
The uncertainty melts away. Who cares what love looks like on other people, we will create our own image of love as we build up to it. And for us, it starts with theater scenes and kissing on the dance floor and holding hands.
"Is this okay?" he asks, squeezing my hand. He doesn't take his eyes off the road.
I laugh. "We've kissed, so holding hands is totally fine. I like it."
He smiles, and moves his thumb over my hand. That must be his move, because he's done it a few times now. But I like it. It's comforting, sweet, and simple. Like the boy himself.
We head back over the bridge to our part of town, crossing above the river that divides us from Moth and Patti, and I lean back to look up at the sky. It's clear, and the moon is halfway between new and full. My breath fogs the glass, so I roll my head on the rest to face Thatcher. There's nothing particularly special about the moment on its own, but all the parts of it—Thatcher's hand, the clear moon, his funny car, my post-dance glow—bring such a huge smile to my face that I barely even notice that he isn't heading directly to our little neighborhood.
"Where are we going?" I ask him after he turns right where he should have turned left.
"Callahan Park."
I nod. Callahan Park is on our side of town, but a little further north, up the river. I think people go there to walk their dogs and run and stuff, it's not a park for kids, so I don't think I've ever spent any time there. Maybe when I was a baby, but knowing my mom's exercise regimen, that's doubtful. Mostly the park is a big cluster of woods protected by the town, which offers pavilions and hiking. There's a man-made lake there, entirely separate from the river, and when I've driven past before with Mom or Gina, I've noticed a little white gazebo on the far side of the lake. It's definitely a cute place, and when Thatcher slows down to pull his car into the lake parking lot, I see that it all looks so much cuter with a light, white layer of snow.
He pulls his hand away to shift his car into park, moves the key to turn off the car, and then just sits there, staring blankly ahead of us at the lake and the gazebo. It would be difficult to see anything if it weren't for the clear night's glow reflecting off the snow, because there aren't any artificial lights anywhere.
"Are you okay?" I ask him after about thirty seconds of unmoved silence.
He blinks hard and turns to look at me. "Yeah." He laughs at himself. "I don't know why I brought you here."
I smirk. "I don't know either."
"I love it here, maybe that's why. I love this park. I come here a lot when it isn't freezing cold and pitch dark out. To think. To read sometimes. Sometimes just to have a destination when I need to get out of the house. I always thought that one day I'd bring a girl to the gazebo here, so I think my mind just went on autopilot."
He scoffs. He still hasn't looked away from the lake in front of him. I wonder thoughts about being here with me. I shift in my seat. He must notice, because he finally turns to look at me.
"I ignored the fact that it would be really cold and dark right now, and that you would be wearing a dress. I want to bring you to the gazebo one day. I want to make it special for you. But not tonight."
I breathe a sigh of relief, and shrug. "We can just hang out here until we have to leave."
The clock reads 10:25pm. We have a while to go before we'll have to get going, especially since Callahan Park isn't very far from our neighborhood.
He scoffs again. "What are we going to do here?"
"Do you have your phone?"
"Yeah?"
"Pull up that movie you love."
"Starship Troopers?"
"Yeah. We can put these seats back and watch it."
He makes a sarcastic ha sound. "My seats don't go back anymore, unless you'd like to keep them back for good. But we can move into the back seat and prop the phone up on the arm rests."
"Okay, that's fine with me."
Thatcher and I open our doors and hurry into the backseat.
"Crap," he says under his breath as soon as he shuts his side door.
"What?"
He holds up his keys in his hand. "We're going to start freezing without the car on. Maybe if I can lean far enough—"
"—Wait," I interrupt. There's an old blanket on the floor of his car along with a bunch of other random things. It's covered in trash and dirt, but it's a blanket nonetheless. I pull it up and shake it off before draping it over us. "This will keep our legs warm, and we will just have to stay close together for warmth."
He smiles with a quick shrug and sets his phone up, precariously balanced between the two raised arm rests. He fiddles with it until the movie is up and ready.
"When did we leave off?"
I try to answer, but no words come out. I shake my head. "I don't remember at all."
"Did we get to the part where Buenos Aires is destroyed?"
"That had just happened," I reply, surprised that I remember that at all.
"Got it." He moves his finger along the screen to fast forward until around the place we left off, and then presses play. He leans back. At first, he tries putting his arm in between us, then sort of draped over my lap, and finally, he decides to wrap it around me. We exchange looks as he does.
"Sorry," he whispers. "Arms are weird." We smile at each other, and I think back to the last time he said that to me, back when we were still just friends. So much has changed since then, I think, but the one thing that hasn't is our playfulness with each other.
He settles into the seat, and I settle into the space beneath his arm, savoring the warmth. At one point, he leans down to kiss the top of my head. "Thanks for watching this with me. I know it's not really a girl movie," he says.
"It's not so bad," I whisper in reply.
The movie plays on, but I'm honestly too distracted by the happiness I feel sitting with Thatcher, my feelings out in the open but guarded by his kindness. He accepts me wholly, and I don't think I've ever experienced this. My dad didn't stay. My mom doesn't trust me. Gina always judged me. But Thatcher is happy simply in my presence.
As the minutes turn to segments of an hour and the time creeps toward 11:00, the windows of the car fog with our breath. In a particularly slow part of the movie, I get distracted by the foggy windows, and press my finger to the glass.
"JM," I write in one heart on the glass. "TG," I write in an adjacent heart. I nudge Thatcher to see my creation, but when I lift my finger to admit the writing in the moonlight, different lights shine through: the red and blue lights of a cop car. One loud pitched wail sounds as a cop pulls into the parking lot beside us.
My mom is literally going to kill me.
~Continue in the next part~