𝐈 𝐰𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐰𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐛𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐬

𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐞𝐧

bad luck to talk on these rides,
mind on the road,
your dilated eyes
-Frank Ocean

⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙

I toss my suitcase into the trunk of my car. Tenny stands to my left, bag in hand. There's an awkwardness in the morning air, like we're both too nervous to break first. But then he speaks. "You got a new car."

"Uh, yeah." I close the trunk. "The Corolla, it wasn't making it to Florida." It was my uncle's idea, the new car. He and Aunt Kali were worried with me being so far away. You need a reliable car, at least, he said. I think it made him feel like he was doing something—like at least he could fix something for me, for Aunt Kali.

"Right," Tenny says, and we pile into the front seat.

I'm punching buttons, turning down the radio, turning up the heat. Anything to make myself look busy. I'm not sure why things feel so uncomfortable. I'm with Tenny. In my car. Like we've been a thousand times before.

Before. That's the thing. That was before.

I pull out of the lot, and then onto the highway. It's sunny out, and it hardly looks like Christmas (what they show in the movies, at least). I pull down my visor to block the sun, and glance at Tenny. He's pressed against the door, watching the road markers pass by in a blur. He looks tired, or maybe just deep in thought.

I suck in a breath, tighten my hands on the wheel. "So, where am I taking you, exactly?"

Tenny picks his head up from the window. "Oh-uh, Pip's—she's been wanting to come up here to visit, but it just wasn't working out. So, when she heard I was coming back, she insisted that I stay with her."

"I didn't know you two still talked," I say, smiling. "I always liked Pip. How is she?"

Tenny runs a hand through his hair. "Good, I guess. She's working at a retirement home—lives with her boyfriend. I think she's mostly happy."

"She still at the same house?"

"Oh, no," he says. "The bank took that. She's in the apartments on Franklin."

I nod, but my smile falters. Franklin is a rough part of town, and I worry about her. Pip was so tiny and so warm to everyone. The kind of person you want to put in your pocket and protect from everything—she was like Tenny, in that way. I hope she's alright, really. Happy, because she deserves to be.

"So, you still aren't speaking with your mom, then?"

Tenny straightens in his seat, and I worry I've overstepped. We aren't close like that, anymore. We never really were close, at least not in that way. Not enough to ask about family. It was our unspoken rule—we didn't ask about family. And now I've broken that.

"Uh, no—still no," he says. "She's still in the house, the same house by the river. Last I heard, anyway." I nod. "Red's there too, I imagine. He's left a few times, over the years, but he always comes back. No where else to go, I guess."

I'm not sure what to say about that. I never liked to talk about Red. For some reason, I can't bring myself to look at Tenny while he talks about him, so I stare out at the road before us. White dotted lines, running beneath the tires in a blur.

"I was surprised you wanted to come back, with me," I say and he nods. "I didn't think you came back to River Bend much, not after..." I didn't know how to say the rest.

"After you left?" he finishes for me. "Yeah, I didn't for a while. Well, I tried to, but I just kept fucking everything up. And so, I got sent to this school in the Ozarks." He kind of laughs. "It was supposed to straighten me out, or something—I don't know."