The Scenic Route (6 page)

They were late getting to the post-wedding brunch. Naomi accused Austin of dawdling as she briskly traversed the Crystal Cove main lobby to the terraced dining room. He had to hustle to keep up with her.

There was a lavish buffet in the coral-colored room, and a couple dozen people milling about. By this point Austin was inured to the scrutiny his clothing inspired, but this time around people seemed mostly amused by the return engagement of his one and only outfit. Naomi hugged two women who looked vaguely familiar from the night before. But Austin hadn't paid much attention to anyone besides Naomi. He waited for her to introduce him, but she didn't.

She was standing just out of his arm's reach. He'd been dreading this moment, this inevitable feeling of “separating,” of becoming two individuals again after having felt briefly melded together as one. He wanted to go back. He wanted to cling to the memory of their last
embrace in the steaming shower and would have happily skipped the brunch, but Naomi had stymied his effort to stall their arrival.

As it turned out, they had made it down before Steffi, who was giving a new meaning (or possibly an old one) to wedding crashing. The bride had imbibed more than was wise and was having trouble staying vertical. However, Stu was having no trouble piling up a buffet plate with a lofty mound of waffles, eggs, bacon and corned beef hash.

“I think they'll let you come back for seconds,” Austin joked as he and Naomi made their way over.

“This is seconds,” Stu said. “I didn't eat anything last night other than the chocolate volcano. I'm starved.”

“I don't think I have time to eat,” Naomi said, looking at her watch, which made Austin gaze at her slender wrist, which made him yearn to be touching it.

“The car service isn't picking you up for another half hour,” Stu told Naomi.

“I thought it was earlier.”

Austin did a double take. “You didn't rent a car?” he asked.

“Steffi picked me up at the airport.”

“I can give you a ride!” He realized he had spoken much louder than he had intended when several guests looked up from their meals.

“They already hired the car service,” Naomi said in a hushed voice.

“We can cancel it,” Stu offered.

“You can't cancel this late,” she said.

“What's a few more dollars at this point?” Stu said as he moseyed over to the omelette station.

“I can take you,” Austin told Naomi. “I'd like to take you.”

“You don't have to do this,” she said, lowering her voice again.

“Do what?” he asked, not sure what they were keeping secret.

“The whole polite morning-after thing.”

He was being many things, but polite wasn't one of them. “I'm going to the airport. You're going to the airport. I'm not being polite. I'm being practical.”
Practical?
Could he be less romantic? “And environmentally friendly,” he added, which had a distinctly more flirtatious intonation in his head than when it came out of his mouth.

“I just don't want to make things uncomfortable,” she said.

Did she mean uncomfortable for him or for her? Because the only thing making him uncomfortable was having to say good-bye. Well, the only thing other than her seeming to be okay with it. Or was she just being self-protective? He needed to let her know how much he wanted to see her again. But he needed to find a low-key way to do it.

“So, has Austin asked you out for New Year's yet?” Stu's voice boomed across the buffet table.

“New Year's?” Naomi was confused.

“Stu!” Austin squawked.

“Austin used to have this obsession with finding a New Year's date.”

“It wasn't an obsession,” Austin objected. If Stu thought he was being funny, he wasn't.

“In college, he used to count the days remaining until New Year's. Do you still do that?”

“No!” Austin avowed, a little too strongly.

“He used to start counting from a year out.”

“You're exaggerating.”

“Was it someone else I lived with junior year who announced on January second, ‘Only three hundred and sixty-four days to find a New Year's Date'?”

“I did that one time,” Austin said, “and it was meant as a joke.”

Naomi was laughing as she headed toward the fruit sculpture at the far end of the buffet. It was unclear if she was laughing with him or at him. He grabbed a plate and started digging into the corned beef hash.

“You son of a gun,” Stu said, socking Austin in the arm.

“What are you trying to do to me?” Austin asked.

“What are you talking about? I totally have your back.”

“Why the hell did you bring up New Year's?”

“Women eat that stuff up,” Stu said. “Makes you look sensitive. I'm betting you're going to be the next one going down the aisle.”

Typical Stu. Whatever he was doing, he wanted Austin to do. That was how Austin had ended up taking the computer programming class. It was also how he had ended up joining a fraternity. “Well, lay off,” Austin said. “She hasn't even agreed to let me drive her to the airport.”

“That's cause you move too slow.”

“I don't move too slow.”

“Like, turtle speed.”

“I don't think that's exactly accurate,” Austin said, his voice doing its characteristic rise in pitch.

“What's not accurate?” Naomi asked, returning with a plate of blackberries. Austin didn't know what to say.

“Austin's opinion of Silicon Valley,” Stu replied, confirming he had Austin's back. “Did he tell you I asked him to be my partner on EZstreets?”

“He did,” she said while procuring a buckwheat-pecan waffle.

Stu looked surprised. “Did he tell you I continue to ask him every week?”

“He didn't,” Naomi said.

“It hasn't been every week,” Austin assured her, inching closer to her.

“Just about,” Stu insisted.

“Stu, I have a career. I have a job.”

“You have a job in Michigan. Most people couldn't find Michigan on a map.”
Was
this supposed to be helping?
“It's like you're living off the grid. Come and join the real world.”

“Since when is Silicon Valley the real world?” Naomi asked with a smile, seeming to also take a step closer.

“He's missing out on a gold rush.”

“Gold rush or gold fever?” Austin said, his hand lightly grazing Naomi's waist.

“If this is an illness,” Stu said, gesturing toward the expansive hillside view just beyond the elaborate buffet, “may I never heal.”

Austin had a sick feeling in his stomach. At first he thought it was the hash. But he'd had the feeling for almost fifteen minutes, which was roughly how long it had been since he'd last seen a familiar road sign. He wondered if Naomi already suspected what he was slowly coming to realize:

They were lost.

Well, not lost, because there weren't many roads in the mountains, and there was only so far they could go before hitting a freeway or the ocean. But for the moment, Austin had no idea where they were.

“I think I made a wrong turn,” he said. He had been paying too much attention to Naomi and not enough to the road, and they had very little time to spare.

“You know I don't believe in wrong turns,” she said, smiling.

“You're really serious about that?” It was one thing to make a philosophical point. It was another thing to be running late to the airport.

“Turn there,” she said, pointing to a small road branching off on the right.

“Do you have any clue where it goes?”

“Let's find out.”

He looked at her like she was crazy. A good crazy. “But what if we miss our planes?”

She put her hand on his. “Then we miss our planes.”

He turned. And when that road came to an end, he turned again. And then again. He didn't know what direction they were going in anymore. No, that wasn't true. With her hand in his, he knew exactly in what direction they were going. He just didn't know which way the road was headed. But it didn't matter. They skated along serrated hilltops of green and yellow brush and basalt outcroppings, with the vastness of the Pacific to their right, which was not the side it belonged on, and yet he wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

They talked nearly nonstop, shouting to be heard over the sound of the wind from the open windows as they compared their favorite episodes of
The Wonder Years
and shared their mutual fondness for Duran Duran. Austin cranked an eighties station on the radio, and, under duress, Naomi confessed to having once attended a Milli Vanilli concert. But it was Austin who had seen Madonna's Blond Ambition tour. He insisted he went only as a chaperone for Mandy, feigning indignation as Naomi laughed and watching her caramel-colored hair dance in the breeze. He was disappointed when they inadvertently came upon Route 73 slashing across the pristine landscape.

As he was about to turn onto the concrete thoroughfare, there was a moment when he thought about taking off in the opposite direction. It was an irrational thought, but a compelling one. All it would take was one turn of the wheel and a press on the gas pedal to set off into the unknown. He glanced at Naomi and tried to read her face. She was looking out the windshield with a pensive expression. Was she having the same thoughts? Was she hoping he would do something extraordinary? Or was she just admiring the late-season wildflowers?

“He'd never know.”

He made the turn onto Route 73. He traded the two-lane byway they'd been traveling for the eight-lane highway and closed the
windows as he did so. He followed the signs to the 405 freeway and then to the airport. Well, to the Thrifty rental car return, where they boarded a shuttle bus to the airport.

They were no longer alone, and it felt odd. Like they should have had a significant interaction before boarding the bus. But it had all happened too quickly, pulling the car into the Thrifty lot, removing their luggage, well, her luggage and his carry-on computer bag, and then running to catch the shuttle before it left. And here they were, in the company of a newlywed German couple, three backpackers, and an elderly couple from Nebraska with three oversized vintage suitcases.

The shuttle bus came to a stop at the Delta terminal. Austin helped Naomi with her bright red compact suitcase and the Nebraskans with their battered, bulky ones before going inside and inquiring about his own, which he was happy to hear had finally arrived. He was less happy to hear it was in transit to the Crystal Cove Resort.

The security line was mercifully short. Or short by LAX standards. Austin would have relished extra time with Naomi. But Homeland Security protocol didn't provide for a particularly romantic atmosphere. Soon enough, he was putting his shoes back on and accompanying Naomi to her gate.

If he was going to say something, it was now or never. But he didn't know what he should say. And it felt forced and uncomfortable to say something intimate under the glare of fluorescent lights and the gaze of harried strangers. He wanted to convey what he was feeling without sounding false or foolish.

“It was great meeting you,” he said, which accomplished neither. “I mean, re-meeting you.” He corrected his words but not their tone. He wanted to hold her, but not standing in public at an airport gate. He wanted a private moment. A special moment. But their lips were already meeting before he had come up with a strategy, and the moment passed stillborn.

There was a quick good-bye, and he walked away. The internal recriminations commenced immediately. He couldn't believe he had fumbled the moment so completely. As he was jostled by anxious travelers, he replayed the scene over and over. Halfway to his own gate, he stopped in the middle of the crowded corridor, telling himself he should go back. And do what? Proclaim his love for her? People didn't fall in love in the course of a few hours. Not rational people. It deprived love of any real meaning if you labeled every transitory desire “love.” It diminished love. And it diminished his feelings. Which were real, if undefined.

But if he wasn't going to tell her that he loved her, what could he say to her? “Don't go.” He groaned. Or “This isn't the end. This is only the beginning.” Everything he came up with was hopelessly clichéd and a bit preposterous. He wasn't good at this kind of thing. As many an ex-girlfriend would have happily concurred. Well, not so happily. But there were several women on the planet who could attest to how inept he was at saying what he was feeling.

He needed time to think. Of course, he could have been thinking on the drive from Crystal Cove or on the shuttle bus or in the security line. But all that time was spent simply enjoying being with Naomi, not thinking about her. Well, he
was
thinking about her. Nonstop. But not about what he wanted to say to her. That was a different kind of thinking.

He veered into a men's room, where he paced back and forth until an older man washing his hands began to eye him nervously. Austin entered one of the stalls, put down the toilet seat, and sat himself down to mull his options.