Jake’s drink is melting in the cup holder. Soon it will be completely liquid. He’s drunk about half.
“I always forget how hard these are to finish. I only needed a small. There’s nothing medium about the medium.”
I lean forward and turn up the heat.
“Cold?” asks Jake.
“Yeah, a little. Probably from the lemonade.”
“We’re also in a snowstorm. Whose idea was it to get iced drinks, anyway?”
He looks at me and raises his eyebrows.
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” he says. “I get sick of these after four sips.”
“I’m not saying anything,” I say, raising both hands. “Not a word.”
We both laugh.
This will probably be the last time I’m in a car with Jake. It seems a shame when he’s like this, joking, almost happy. Maybe I shouldn’t end things. Maybe I should stop thinking about it and just enjoy him. Enjoy us. Enjoy getting to know someone. Why am I putting so much pressure on us? Maybe I will eventually fall in love and lose any fears I have. Maybe it will get better. Maybe that’s possible. Maybe that’s how it works with time and effort. But if you can’t tell the other person what you’re thinking, what does that mean?
I think that’s a bad sign. What if he was thinking the same things about me right now? What if he was the one thinking about ending things but also was still having fun, or not entirely sick of me yet, so was keeping me around just to see what would happen. If that’s what was going on in his head, I’d be upset.
I should end it. I have to.
Whenever I hear the “it’s not you, it’s me” cliché, it’s hard not to laugh. But it really is true in this case. Jake is just Jake. He’s a good person. He’s smart and handsome, in his way. If he were an asshole or stupid or mean or ugly or anything, then it would be his fault that I end things, kind of. But he’s not any of those things. He’s a person. I just don’t think the two of us are a match. An ingredient is missing, and, if I’m being honest, it always has been.
So that’s probably what I’ll say: It’s not you, it’s me. It’s my issue. I’m the one with the problem. I’m putting you in an unfair position. You’re a good person. I need to work through some things. You need to move on. We tried, we did. And you never know what’ll happen in the future.
“Looks like you’re done,” says Jake.
I realize I’ve put my lemonade in the cup holder. It’s melting. I am done. Done.
“I’m cold. It’s interesting to watch things melt and feel cold.”
“That was a bit of a wasted stop.” He looks at me. “Sorry.”
“At least I can say I’ve been to a Dairy Queen in the middle of nowhere in a snowstorm. That’s something I’ll never do again.”
“We should get rid of these cups. They’ll melt and the cup holders will get sticky.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“I think I know where we can go.”
“You mean to throw them out?”
“If we keep going, up ahead, there’s a road on the left. Down that road a bit is a school, a high school. We can get rid of the cups there.”
Is it really that important to get rid of these cups? Why would we stop just to do that?
“It’s not far, is it?” I ask. “The snow’s not gonna get any better. I’d really like to get home.”
“Not too far, I don’t think. I just don’t want to throw the cups out the window. It’ll give you a chance to see a bit more of this area.”
I’m not sure if he’s joking about “seeing” more of this area. I look out the window. It’s just a mix of blowing snow and darkness.
“You know what I mean,” he says.
Several more minutes down the road, we come to the left turn. Jake takes it. If I thought the original road was a back road, this one redefines the concept of back road. It’s not wide enough for two cars. It’s heavily treed, a forest.
“Down here,” says Jake. “I remember this now.”
“You didn’t go to this school, though, did you? It’s far from your house.”
“I was never a student here. But I’ve driven down here before.”
The road is narrow and snakes back and forth. I can see only what the headlights allow. The trees have given way to fields. The visibility is still almost zero. I put the back of my hand on my window. The glass is cold.
“How far along is it, exactly?”
“I don’t think much farther. I can’t remember.”
I’m wondering why we are doing this. Why don’t we just leave the drinks to melt? I would rather get home and clean up myself than spend however long driving deeper into these fields. Nothing makes sense. I want this to end.
“I bet it’s nice during the day,” I say. “Peaceful.” Trying to be positive.
“Yeah, definitely remote.”
“How’s the road?”
“Messy, slick; I’m going slow. It hasn’t been plowed yet. It shouldn’t be much farther. Sorry, I thought it was closer.”
I’m starting to feel anxious. Not really. A bit. It’s been a long night. The drive there, the walk around the farm, meeting his parents. His mom. What his dad said. His brother. And thinking about ending things this entire time. Everything. And now this detour.
“Look,” he says, “I knew it. Up there. I knew it. You see? That’s it.”
A few hundred yards ahead, on the right, is a large building. I can’t make out much beyond that.
Finally. After this, maybe we can get home.
HE WAS RIGHT IN THE end; I’m glad to see this school. It’s massive. There must be two thousand students who attend every day. It’s one of those big, old, rural high schools. I have no idea, obviously, what the student body is, but it’s got to be huge. And down such a long, narrow road.
“You didn’t think it would look like this, did you?” he says.
I’m not sure what I was expecting. Not this.
“What’s a school doing out here in the middle of nowhere?”
“There’ll be somewhere to get rid of these cups.” Jake slows the car as we pull up in front and drive by.
“There,” I say. “Right there.”
There’s a bike rack with a single-gear bike locked up and a green garbage bin up in front of a bank of windows.
“Precisely,” he says. “?’Kay, I’ll be right back.”
He grabs both cups in one hand, using his thumb and index finger as pincers. He knees open his door, gets out, and swings it shut with a loud thud. He leaves the car running.
I watch Jake walk past the bike rack toward the garbage can. That pigeon-toed walk, stooped shoulders, head bent. If I saw him for the first time right now, I’d assume his hunch was because of the cold, the snow. But that’s just him. I know his walk, his posture. I recognize it. It’s a lope, indelicately long, slow strides. Put him and a few others on treadmills and show me their legs and feet. I could pick him out of a police lineup based only on his walk.
I look through the windshield at the wipers. They make this motorized friction sound. They’re too tight on the glass. Jake’s holding the cups in one hand. He has the lid of the garbage can in his other hand. He’s looking into the bin. Come on, hurry up, throw them out.
He’s just standing there. What’s he doing?
He looks back at the car, at me. He shrugs. He puts the top back on the garbage and walks straight ahead, away from the car. Where’s he going? He stops at the corner of the school for a moment, then continues right, out of sight around the side of the school. He still has the cups.
Why didn’t he throw them out?
It’s dark. There are no streetlights. I guess there haven’t been since we turned onto this back road. I hadn’t really noticed. The only light is a single yellow flood from the school’s roof. Jake had mentioned how dark it is in the country. I was less aware of it at the farm. Here it’s definitely dark.
Where is he going? I lean over to my left and flip the headlights off. The lot in front of me disappears. Only a lone light for the entire school yard. So much darkness, so much space. The snow is getting really heavy.
I haven’t spent much time outside of any school at night, let alone such a rural one in the middle of nowhere. Who actually goes to this school? Must be farmers’ kids. They must be bussed in. But there are no houses around. There’s nothing here. One road, trees, and fields and fields.
I remember once I had to go back to my high school late at night. I was sometimes there during the first hour or so after school for events or meetings. That never felt much different from normal school hours. But once I returned after supper, when everyone was gone, when it was dark. No teachers. No students. I’d forgotten something, but I can’t remember what it was.