Chapter_24_You_Never_

In the blink of one night, my entire world view of Mom and Dad changed.

We saw it with Wyatt’s mom too.

I can’t stop myself from crying in the driveway the next morning as we say our farewells to my parents.

I know my dad’s surgery won’t be easy; my mom will have an equally hard time taking care of him while worrying that nothing bad is going to happen to her.

“I hope I live to meet my grandkid,” my dad jokes.

I shoot him a deadpan stare, not ready for any gallows humor but secretly thinking his delivery is kind of funny. Wyatt stays focused on loading up our car.

“Enough, Gio!” my mom says. She’s annoyed but also can’t help but laugh as she loops her arm through my dad’s.

“Four more weeks!” I playfully remind them.

We hug and kiss and squeeze and hug more, profusely thanking each other for all the fun.

Nothing but love between us.

Our furry daughter reluctantly jumps into the car with us and we pull out of the driveway.

My parents stand in front of their garage, waving, uncertain of their own future but feeling fortunate they’ll be around to meet their new grandkid.

I wave and watch them become smaller in the rearview mirror until we can’t see each other anymore.

Virginia Woolf needs gas so I drive us to my local childhood gas station... which is now a Dunkin’ Donuts? “When did that happen?” I ask.

“I was hoping you wanted to fill us up with a dozen glazed donuts,” Wyatt says.

“I think we’ve eaten enough for the next six months,” I remind him.

We drive to the next nearest gas station, where I remember fueling up my mom’s car as the sun came up after a night out with friends hitting the gay bars in Chicago while I was home from college.

I pump the car full of unleaded and exhale, my dad’s health now weighing on top of everything else.

Back in the car, I take the wheel again. “Colorado, here we come.”

“We should get to our hotel in Nebraska in just under seven hours,” Wyatt says. Thankfully we’d agreed to split the drive in half and stay overnight somewhere.

“Music?” Wyatt asks as GPS lady tells us to zig through back roads I don’t recognize.

I eye Wyatt. “Don’t you want to talk about what’s going on? With your dad? With my dad? With us? With anything?”

Before he can answer, we hear our fur baby in the back seat chewing on something and I glance behind us. I squint.

Matilda gnaws on a brand-new rawhide bone that’s as thick as her head.

“Did you give her that?” I ask.

“No, did you?” Wyatt asks.

“Oh, crap. My mom must’ve tossed that in right before we left.”

“Always spoiled by Grandma.” Wyatt grins, watching how much Matilda loves it. “I guess we should take it away before it makes her throw up?”

Neither of us move.

We both have no intention of taking something away she loves this much.

“You know what. Just let her have it.” Wyatt relaxes on our rule of never feeding Matilda during a drive.

“Should we check on Flora?” I suggest.

“Good idea. I think she had her doctor’s appointment yesterday.”

Wyatt props up his phone and dials Flora.

“How are the two pre-daddies?” she answers through speakerphone, sounding in a bright mood.

Personally, I’m exhausted, anxious, feeling out of shape, dreading the long drive, worried I’m going to be the world’s worst dad and now the news about my own dad is making me feel like life is about to extinguish my last nerve.

“We’re great!” I blurt out.

“Where are you now?” Flora wonders.

“We’re just heading out of my parents’ house and trying to find the highway,” I say, suddenly not sure of my bearings. We pass a new subdivision I’ve never seen before, but I’m too sidetracked with our conversation to course correct.

“I thought you were going to Michigan?” Flora is still on our original itinerary, not yet aware of our impromptu detours.

“Actually, no. Biz wanted to stop and see his family even though we were scheduled to go to Saugatuck. We’re heading west now, a little behind schedule,” Wyatt chimes in, irritated that I don’t know where I’m going.

“That’s because Wyatt wanted to stop at his mom’s before this, even though we were supposed to go to P-town, but we didn’t and we’ll probably never go there again,” I counter, tinted with a little bitterness.

Where are we?

“It’s not that I wanted to stay at my mom’s. Are you forgetting my brother got into an accident so we went there to support my mom?” Wyatt asks.

“I’m just telling Flora we went to your family’s house and then we went to my family’s house,” I manage.

“Maybe tell Flora you’re being passive-aggressive and making it seem like it’s my fault our plans changed. Like I did it all on purpose to hurt you or something,” Wyatt lets out.

“That’s not at all what I’m saying to Flora—”

“Um... guys?” Flora thankfully slaps us both through the phone.

“Sorry. We just have road trip fatigue,” I try and paper over our real issues.

Wyatt breaks the silence. “How was the doctor?”

“Actually...” Flora says softly.

We quickly eye each other, detecting concern in her voice. We shove our bickering aside and listen.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, admittedly a bit too dramatic.

I do a double take as we pass a small cemetery that doesn’t look at all familiar. I am officially lost in my hometown.

Are we even still in my hometown?I wonder. There are so many new stores, houses and repaving of the streets that nothing looks familiar. I’m so used to only going home during the holidays when it’s covered in a blanket of snow with holiday lights on every house. Seeing it in the summer, now with everything green and in bloom, is making me disoriented.

Flora sighs, never a good sign. “I met with her again yesterday.”

Wyatt and I share another look with each other.

“Okay,” Wyatt says delicately.

My pulse quickens. I try to swallow my anxiety.

She continues. “She said my stomach is still measuring small at this stage. The baby’s abdomen is tinier than it should be. So she’s sending me to a high-risk doctor to get a level-two ultrasound. The baby hasn’t gotten any bigger in the last few weeks. So there’s talk of inducing me early.”

“How early?” we both say in unison.

Wyatt mutes us. “Watch out for that dude on a bike,” he says to me, always the backseat driver, then unmutes us.

“Just a couple days before the due date,” Flora reassures us.

I screech to a halt at a red light, narrowly avoiding the cyclist’s back tire. The cyclist is decked out in spandex everything, speeding through the crosswalk as he flips us off.

“Jesus,” Wyatt says, alarmed by the near collision. He glares at me and puts on a cheery voice for Flora. “I mean—that’s perfect because we’ll be there a couple weeks before the due date.”

“Wonderful. My appointment’s tomorrow and we should know more then.”

“I don’t understand. If the baby is smaller, why wouldn’t they leave them in longer to like... bake more?” I ask, still stuck on the issue.

“We’re having a baby. Not a batch of chocolate chip cookies,” Wyatt says.

Even after all our research, we never stop learning about pregnancy.

The light changes to green and the cyclist stands across the street, bike by his side, staring us down as we drive past him.

“It’s because the baby will get more nutrients outside of the womb. The doctor keeps reassuring me the baby’s fine, so don’t panic, guys.”

“We’re not panicking,” I say, panicked. The menacing cyclist isn’t helping.

Wyatt looks behind us. The cyclist starts riding toward us at full speed, eventually catching up to us. “Biz, I think you should speed up. This guy’s a lunatic and he wants revenge.”

“What?” Flora asks, confused and thinking Wyatt is talking to her.

How is Wyatt always three steps ahead of me when I’m the one driving?

I check my rearview mirror. Sure enough, the cyclist is gaining speed.

He’s becoming larger and larger in my mirror, like an angry Hulk in biker shorts.

“What’s he gonna do, rear-end us with his ten-speed?” I ask.

In one quick second, the cyclist vanishes. We breathe.

I think we’ve lost the guy until he pops up on Wyatt’s side, pedaling as fast as I’m driving.

The cyclist has a look of murder in his eyes, gritted teeth, practically foaming at the mouth as he grasps Wyatt’s door.

“Guys?” Flora asks, sensing we’re, uh, multitasking.

“Can we call you right back, Flora? We’re kind of in a pickle right now,” Wyatt says as calmly as possible, careful not to distress anyone.

Pickle?I mouth to Wyatt.

“You guys focus on driving,” Flora says. “I’ll keep you posted after the doctor,” she adds.

“Sounds perfect, Flora. Thanks for the update,” Wyatt squeaks out.

We must not have hung up yet because she hears Wyatt tell me to take a sharp left and try to lose this creep. “Wait—is everything okay?!” Flora, with her perfect maternal instincts, knows we’re definitely not acting normal.

“Everything’s fine. We’re just being chased by a psycho killer on a bicycle,” I offer.

“Biz!” Wyatt tries to hush me.

“What?!” Flora is genuinely concerned. “Do you need me to call 9-1-1 or something?”

“You have bigger issues to deal with than us being murdered,” I say.

Wyatt throws up his hands in defeat at my bluntness. “Just keep us posted on what the doctor says,” he says calmly.

“I will, of course. Drive safely, guys.”

Wyatt ends the call. He stabs it over and over to make sure we’ve hung up so he can properly freak out. “Do you know how to get us on the interstate?!”

“I’m eighty-three percent sure I can cut through here to get to the highway. Fine, forty-three percent sure.” I have no clue where we are.

Wyatt frantically tries opening his map app. “My reception’s not great.”

I hook a left, heading into an unfamiliar subdivision and the cyclist stays on us. We drive through a quiet residential area with 1970s ranch houses and handwritten signs warning “Drive Like Your Children Live Here!”

It’s a maze we can’t escape.

“We’re Shelley Duvall and this asshole’s Jack Nicholson with an axe,” Wyatt says, whipping his head in every direction. The cyclist barrels after us.

I take a right, then a left.

We’re forced to slow down for a stop sign, not wanting to piss off any residents, or worse, scare a kid. We turn to see the cyclist right next to my window.

Again, his eyes are terrifying.

We both gasp and I hit the gas.

“I’ll kill you!” the cyclist spits at us.

I turn right. Then left. He’s out of sight. For now. But we still can’t find our way out of the subdivision maze.

“We don’t have eyes on him,” Wyatt pants. “Aren’t you from here? I thought you knew where you were going!”

“I know exactly where we are.” I absolutely do not know where we are.

I pull up to a stop sign. Three kids of various sizes on scooters cross.

Before we know it, our windshield is sprayed with some kind of red liquid.

In an epic anticlimactic twist, we turn to see the not-at-all-intimidating cyclist next to us, emptying the contents of his red sports drink all over our car.

“Is that... strawberry Gatorade?” Wyatt asks.

The cyclist has a little bit of a pot belly with one of his bare-skinned rolls protruding through his spandex top.

“Cool, cool. Are you happy now?” I say with renewed confidence, realizing we outnumber this guy.

Our orange Virginia Woolf is covered in red liquid as the light turns green.

“Thanks for the fruit punch!” Wyatt says.

“Bike safely!” I call out.

We can’t help but laugh as we finally escape the subdivision and gun it onto the highway.

Both of us look back one last time to see if the cyclist is behind us.

Just to make sure.