How We Became Us

I called him that night, Friday.

The cold gray walls of my dorm were easy to resist, and when I asked him if he wanted to hang out, he did.

We hopped into his red Nissan pick-up, and over the radio, he asked me if I wanted to drive. I lurched and stalled it so many times that we traded seats. He may have laughed at me—yes, I am sure he did. My lack of experience was a novelty.

We went up the hills overlooking the City of Trees. The air was cold and crisp, and lighted by Christmas. When we reached the top of the highest hill, the frosted, twinkling city so far below, we teetered there at the edge. Lying before us was some semblance of a road. Darkness on the backside of the hill swallowed up the Nissan’s narrow headlight beams.

"Let's go for it.” He stepped on the gas and together we slipped down into the night and the mud, away from the city, from finals, cardboard pizza, stale coffee, and the quiet of an all-girls dorm. The engine called it quits when we plunged to a stop at the dark bottom of, what? We couldn't discern anything. The road was not a road at all, but a trap. Other auto-victims had been here before. Striking a flare and circling around, we spied underbrush for miles upon miles. Deep scars of tire tread were etched into the ground around us. An abandoned car. A side view mirror, broken and half-buried. He fumbled with the winch, but sagebrush offers no leverage and when I pointed the flare to the ground, it licked my palm and singed my sleeve and I dropped it with a yelp.

We grasped shovels and flung mud until exhaustion formed blisters and then collapsed into the bed of his truck, tracing constellations in the sky and laughing at the mud smeared on our temples. Giving in, we planned our escape route on foot.

We were crushed by darkness and lost feeling in our toes but we were kids with no weight on our shoulders, and getting stranded in the hills was no big thing. Especially when it meant wearing a warm coat that smelled like him, holding hands, and catching the glint of that first-love spark.

But like I said, it was no big thing. Even when the tow truck gave up and the tractor said, "No way." To the tune of $400 —all his measly college savings—the Nissan was set free by a CAT. Nothing M&W powdered donuts and orange juice couldn't fix.

What I recall most is that we drove up the hill as friends, and came down as a glimmer of something more. And three years later, on bended knee, a promise was made on the same nameless road. But this time, instead of foolishness, a proclamation of devotion and friendship.

And yes, love.

It’s been twenty-five years and I can say that I still like the way his jacket smells.

(Published in Stonecrop Literary Magazine, 2018)