Out of the Woods

“This is my worst nightmare.”

“This cannot possibly be your worst nightmare.”

“I promise you, it is.” I turn in my seat and face Seth head on. He’s looking at the road in front of us, but when he feels my eyes burning holes into his cheek, he spares me a quick glance.

He does not look impressed.

“Your worst nightmare is a wrong turn?” He sounds skeptical.

“No, my worst nightmare is a wrong turn with no service in the backwoods of northern Michigan with you.” My voice raises with my eyebrows on the last syllable. I knew it was a bad idea to carpool with Seth, even though I don’t have a car and he’s the only other person I know attending this wedding besides the bride.

I go back to staring at his profile while he drives, presumably in the wrong direction, leading us deeper and deeper into God knows where.

“It’s not that bad, Meredith,” he replies. He, unlike me, is unconcerned. While I bounce a knee and shift in my seat, he’s the picture of calm, left wrist draped lazily over the wheel while his right arm rests on the console between us.

“You’re literally my ex,” I argue. “This is the stuff of bad romance movies, Seth. We are trapped in a car, utterly lost in the middle of nowhere, and we have a complicated romantic history.” I turn to face the road again. “The script practically writes itself.”

He laughs, his chin and shoulders rising a little bit, and looks at me again. “High school ex,” he reasons. “Not really the stuff of Hollywood grandeur.”

I’m back to looking at him, this time incredulously. “Are you kidding me? Have you ever seen a movie, Seth? This is exactly the stuff of Hollywood grandeur. Any second now this car’s going to break down or run out of gas or pop a tire.”

“And then what?”

“What do you mean?”

“What happens after we’re stuck on the side of the road?” He asks.

“Well, we have some outlandish and ultimately improbable journey to whatever destination we were headed, running into a colorful cast of characters that teach us little lessons about ourselves that we never would’ve learned on our own, all the while gaining respect and a new perspective of each other,” I say, all in one breath.

Then, “And we fall in love. Obviously.”

The corners of his mouth lift, one, then the other. “Obviously,” he repeats.

I will myself not to blush because I do not like Seth Sonders and this is not a poorly scripted rom-com.

“Well, luckily for you - or maybe unluckily - we still have three quarters of a tank of gas and I just got her out of the shop." He pats the steering wheel affectionately for emphasis. “So you’ll have to come up with a new story.”

I huff and cross my arms, annoyed at his affability and charm that still somehow works, ten years later.

“Just get us out of here,” is my only reply.

***

I met Seth Sonders in the winter of my sophomore year, when he began parking his mom’s old station wagon in the spot directly to the left of mine. Since we both had early birthdays, November, we got our licenses before most of our class and, consequently, our parking spaces - two cramped spots in the upper right lot by the dumpsters.

For the rest of that year, we’d see each other nearly every day, acknowledging each other but never really speaking, rather opting for a nod hello or a salute goodbye.

Sometimes, when a day was particularly stressful, I’d catch him with his head tipped back against the headrest, eyes closed and car off. He’d lift his gaze, no doubt feeling mine heavy on him, and meet my eyes with a shake of his head, like can you believe this shit? before dropping his forehead dramatically to the steering wheel.

Once, he caught me maniacally laughing in the driver’s seat, tears leaking from my eyes as I clutched a paper in front of me. At his questioning glance, I slapped the test against the window between us so that he could see the large red A+ scribbled at the top, a truly miraculous occurrence given my less than stellar performance in math thus far, and gave him my own can you believe this shit? look.

He’d smiled and laughed with me, giving me two thumbs up, a nod, and a salute before backing up and pulling out.

I drove home with inexplicable butterflies that had nothing to do with the grade.

Finally, when classes let out for the year and the parking lot filled with kids eager to begin their summer break, I got into my car and saw Seth already waiting in his. At my glance, he lifted a paper torn from his notebook and held it so I could see his chicken scratch, boyish handwriting.

Saturday, 5pm, Diner on Main.

And written below it, like an afterthought, Smile if yes.

I’d beamed at him through the window.

***

I turn my scowl towards the passing trees, watching the lush landscape blur by as we continue to barrel down the road. Seth is quiet next to me, but my leg continues to bounce an erratic rhythm against the seat.

I feel the car begin to slow as Seth veers us to the shoulder, and immediately my mind goes to the potential reasons he might be stopping, none of them good, all of them convenient to the rom-com plot that I am trying my hardest to subvert.

Seth can still read my mind all these years later, or else the panic on my face, because before I can question what’s happening he says, “Relax, nothing’s wrong with the car. I’m just thinking.”

“About what? How to build a fire? A shelter? Maybe a new civilization since you’ve apparently driven us off the face of the earth?” My answer is haughty, indignant, and not entirely fair, since I was the one in charge of navigation.

“My my, you’ve gotten snarky in the last decade.” Seth turns to face me, leaning an arm on the steering wheel so that he can prop his head up and study me further.

I stare back at him. It’s like sophomore year all over again, seeing him leaned against the wheel like that, witnessing me.

“Yeah, well, the city’ll do that to a girl,” I say flippantly, not really eager to address the elephant in the car.

Seth, apparently, is very eager to address the elephant, because he asks, “And how is Chicago? Still busy? Loud? Windy?”

I nod my affirmative. It is busy, loud, and windy, especially compared to quiet, rural Michigan where we grew up and where we’re currently lost.

“It’s glamorous and hectic and towering,” I tell him, resigned now to talking about it but wanting him to see it the way I do. In the handful of times we’ve spoken since high school, we’ve skirted talk about the city, and for good reason.

“So basically my worst nightmare,” he places a hand on his chest to gesture to himself, but it lingers there over his heart, like the words, though said in jest, are hitting a deeper spot inside of him. For me, it’s like he found the crack in my heart he carved all those years before and is digging his fingers in, trying to pry it open when I’d spent so long stitching it closed.

Suddenly, this little road trip of ours seems less like merely a bad idea and more like a catastrophic mistake. I thought I would be fine bumming a ride off of Seth, thought we could make the four hour trip with a little bit of small talk and a healthy dose of awkward silence. I figured it had been enough time and I was desperate for a ride and low on funds and Seth was driving up anyway, so it just made sense.

Obviously, I’d severely miscalculated, because nothing between Seth and I has ever made sense. Case in point the way he’s looking at me now, like even though we’re discussing our mutual heartbreak, he still cares to know about the place that broke us up.

“It’s home,” I say quietly. I’ve gone still, no longer restless in my seat. Whether it’s the effect of talking about the city or Seth, I’m not sure. Both have always had the ability to settle me, like my body and mind have always known where they belong, and it’s with one of them.

Seth stares at me for a few seconds longer before looking away and nodding silently. He turns back to sit properly and puts the car in drive again.

After a few minutes of driving in silence, he takes a right and I ask, “Do you know where you’re going?”

“I can always find my way,” is all he says, but I hear the unspoken here at the end of his sentence. While I may have had to leave to find my home, Seth has never left his. This is where he belongs, unquestionably. I should have seen it sooner.

***

We started dating that summer. That felt like a rom-com; a movie montage of hot, endlessly long days spent in and out of the bookstore, the ice cream parlor, the diner and the movie theater and the outdated arcade that used to be so boring but somehow was always fun when Seth was there.

We’d spend hours lazing by the river, letting the sun bake into our skin until it caramelized the tops of our shoulders and burned our noses. When it got too hot, we’d race into the frigid water in our underwear, trying not to look too closely at each other's bodies, because it was still new, but ultimately failing miserably, because we were obsessed.

In the dark, when the mosquitos started biting, I’d trace his outline - first with my eyes, then my hands, and later, but not much later, with my mouth.

I’d thought he was perfect for me. Even though we were opposites. Even though we disagreed about nearly everything, big and small. Somehow, despite all that, we worked. He calmed the restlessness that buzzed inside me, an unnamable, frenetic force that was always pushing me somewhere.

He was solid, stable, sure. I’d never met anyone who was so comfortable where they were, who was so settled. His steadiness was the antithesis of my unrest, and I yearned for that stability the same way I pined for him.

For the rest of high school, he was a constant fixture in my life, a source of gravity. He was my somewhere, and I was in love.

***

We are definitely nowhere, but due to the tension filled silence I’m too nervous to break, I refrain from saying anything. Instead I begin drumming my fingers against my thighs, my listlessness returning, until Seth asks, “Would you like to listen to some music?”

We’d turned the radio off when it became too staticky to bear fifty miles back, but now I’d listen to cats dying if it’d drown out the awkward quiet.

“Please,” I say as I go to adjust the volume. An old eighties love ballad comes buffering through the speakers, synth and crooning confessions filling the car like smoke. It brings a smile to my face and a memory to the surface, even though I’m pretty confident the only words I remember are the bridge, and that’s being generous.

“Do you remember dancing to this at the prom?” I look at Seth to see him already nodding along.

“I remember swaying off beat and stepping on your feet,” he offers sheepishly. “I’m not much of a dancer.”

This, I can confirm, is very true, but in the spirit of not making things worse I say, “You weren’t that bad.” And then I amend my statement with, “You tried.”

“Tried being the operative word.” He glances at me sidelong. “I knocked over a table, Meredith.”

“Happens to everyone,” I insist.

“The beverage table.” I throw my head back and laugh at this, picturing the cups and the punch that was definitely spiked crashing to the ground, a young mortified Seth standing above the wreckage. He’s looking at me and laughing a little now too, though I think it’s more at my reaction than the memory itself.

“Prom was fun,” I muse, basking in this moment of shared fondness with him, a break at last from the earlier strain. Seth only hums in response, a noncommittal noise that has me furrowing my eyebrows and studying him further. “Wait a second.” I watch him bite his lip to hide a smile. “Seth Sonders, did you not like the prom?” His bottom lip slips from between his teeth and a grin begins to take shape.

He looks at me dead on, completely ignoring the road in front of us, and whispers, “Meredith. I hated prom.”

He begins to laugh at his confession, like he’s suddenly been freed of a terrible secret. I can only stare in shock, utterly dumbfounded that he had such a different experience from me. My jaw drops. He’s really laughing now.

“You never told me!” I can’t believe I didn’t know this. Literally had no idea.

He eyes me again and confesses, “Of course I never told. You would’ve been heartbroken, and I wanted to make you happy.” There’s a pause and he clears his throat. “I always wanted to make you happy.”

Neither of us is laughing anymore.

***

I applied to a school in Chicago on a whim. I’d never been out of Michigan before, but I’d gotten a brochure and the application was free, so I didn’t think much of it. My acceptance came in December, and Seth and I visited that February. It was bitterly cold and windy, very crowded, and completely perfect.

I’d known what it was to fall in love, and suddenly it was happening again. The buildings, the people, the energy. My restlessness finally had a place, and it was among the hustle and bustle of the city.

Seth hated it.

He chafed against the commotion, unsteady for the first time and unhappy. We fought about it constantly, him pushing me to remain in Michigan and me begging him to move to Illinois. We danced around saying it explicitly until one night, our last night, we finally told the truth.

“You don’t love me enough to come with me!” I’d accused.

“You don’t love me enough to stay!” He’d argued.

And that was it. Two truths that were suddenly undeniable, and only one obvious solution.

We broke up the next day.

***

“Are you?”

“What?” I ask, startled by Seth’s question and not following the conversation. In the time since our wrong turn, he’s somehow managed to maneuver us back onto the main road, and I watch as we pass a mile marker I recognize.

“Are you happy?” Seth looks at me with such earnestness that I’m momentarily speechless, staring at him like it’s sophomore year all over again.

There’s so much I want to say to him, so much we left unsaid ten years ago. I want to tell him that I’ve found my someplace, that for the first time I’ve found steadiness within myself, a calm assuredness that I’d lacked throughout our entire relationship. I’m settled. I have a sense of contentment that I never had here, the kind I always envied Seth for. The kind I couldn’t only rely on him to give me.

“I’m happy,” I tell him simply. “Really, genuinely happy.”

His smile is pointed at the road, but it’s all for me. “Good,” he replies. “That’s all I ever wanted, you know.”

“I know,” I say quietly. And I do, now at least. If either of us had moved, we’d never have found our place. I would resent Seth if he made me stay, and he would become unmoored in the city.

A decade has given me perspective - I loved Seth in the way most young romances love: wholly, wildly, heartbreakingly, and temporarily. While there was a time I couldn’t imagine my life without him, now I can’t even begin to picture him in it. And I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I would never give up what I have to be with him. There’s a certain peace to that thought, like maybe I needed this ride to confirm that I made the right choice back when I was eighteen. A sense of closure passes over me.

“You’re happy, right,” I ask. It’s the one last thing I need for confirmation, the one last bit of unresolved baggage we have.

“Very,” is all he says. But it’s enough. I can see it in the relaxed set of his shoulders, the smoothness of his brow. This has always been his someplace, his home. We were good for each other for a time. We had real love, and I’ll leave this car knowing there’s no love lost now.

I sigh and say, “This would make for a terrible movie.”

Seth laughs. “Why, because we just had a mature, productive conversation?”

“Exactly,” I say. “Terrible cinema. And it would be very short.” There would be no misadventure for us or great love story. It’s not even the stuff of nightmares anymore. Just an overdue conversation between first loves no longer lost in the woods.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t deliver on the Hollywood magic,” Seth says through a smile. We catch eyes for one second, two.

“It’s okay,” I tell him. “This is way better anyways.”