Lindsey

 

“If you were searching for a good time, you could’ve just asked,” a voice says from behind me. Though I believed I was walking alone down the streets of Amsterdam, I don’t have to look over my shoulder to confirm who’s following me. The owner of that voice has been taunting me since Chicago.

“You’re a walking, talking harassment suit, you know that?” I say. So much for a nice, quiet walk to find weird souvenirs for Blake and Landon. If I didn’t know Bryant was harmless, I’d be more offended, but in the short time I’ve known him, I’ve whittled him down to his lonely core.

He surrounds himself with mayhem—what he perceives as minor partying and harmless drag-racing—to overshadow the fact that he’s always been alone. He was abandoned by parents who preferred the high meth gave them over the responsibility of raising their kid, for days at a time. Bryant wraps it all in boisterous jokes and a persona that says he doesn’t take life too seriously, and he probably doesn’t expect anyone to look past that mask. What he doesn’t know about me is doing just that is the single biggest motivation behind my photography. And maybe the fact that he seeks attention because he’s lonely, while I sentence myself there because I don’t want to be disappointed by love, makes us kindred spirits in a way. I’ll die before I tell him that, though.

“Only if you’re threatened by me,” he says, appearing in my periphery, all sandy-blond hair and puppy-dog brown eyes—Dare and Fall’s token hippie/surfer kid. He’s wearing a striped poncho today, one he bought from a stall on a street in Mexico and, despite it being early spring in the Netherlands, a pair of tattered leather flip flops. He ducks closer to my ear, earning a sidelong glance from me. “Are you threatened by me?”

“No. I just wish you’d get the hint and take your pursuit elsewhere.” The comment does nothing to deter his usual confident swagger.

“You know I only do it to make you smile, don’t you? I’m not really a creep.”

“I know you’re not. I can read you better than that. I just wish the things that came out of your mouth weren’t so creepy.”

“Deal. No more creepy comments.” I get a few moments of peace as we walk silently across brick-paved paths. Then he says, “I can read you too, you know. I just can’t figure out why you never smile. Are we that much of a pain in the ass?”

“One hundred percent,” I say, and he barks out a laugh. Everything he does is big and loud. “No. This is the time of my life.”

“So why don’t you look it?”

“You’re annoyingly invasive, you know that? You remind me of someone back home.”

“Is that someone as devastatingly handsome as me?”

“Handsome, no. Pretty, yes. She’s a girl. Anika.”

“Anika.” He rolls the name around in his mouth and smirks again. Is it possible for someone to fall in love with a name?

“She’d hand you your balls in a purse.”

“A woman after my own heart. But I get what you’re doing, diverter. You’re trying to beguile me with tales of beautiful women.”

“Consider me impressed by your vocabulary.” The smells wafting from the next storefront lead me to it by the nose. We’ve reached a floral shop overflowing with tulips and hyacinths, and a woman in a long skirt is watering the ones outside with a galvanized can. It’s the quaintest thing I’ve ever seen.

“If all it would’ve taken was a bouquet of flowers to steal your heart, you should’ve told me. I’d have filled the bus with flowers.”

“And subsequently been murdered by Natalia,” I murmur. Natalia is the opposite of fun; I’m not sure why she’s even a drummer. But somewhere within her is this beast that only comes out when she’s holding the sticks.

“Ahh, she’s as harmless as a teddy bear.”

I exhale the nauseating scent of flowers and force myself to move on. “Then I guess I’m not doing my job correctly. I haven’t seen that at all, if it even exists. How do I get to her?”

“You want to know what makes her tick?”

I give him a look that says obviously.

“I want to know what makes you tick. Call it a trade.”

“I hate live flowers. I was wondering if they had any dead ones,” I deadpan.

Bryant’s smile fades, and a comical crease forms between his eyebrows. “One, that’s sacrilegious. Two, that’s not information worth spilling Natalia’s deepest secrets for.”

“Or is it?” I raise an eyebrow, amused at the way he’s concentrating on my words. Has confusion ever been so entertaining?

Bryant stops in the middle of the sidewalk, despite the flow of pedestrians, and squares his shoulders. “I want something good or I walk.”

I gradually slow to a stop, the glint of sunlight off the water of the canal up ahead beckoning me. “What’ll it take?”

“Tell me who’s got you wrapped around his finger. Or her.”

I roll my eyes, make a show of putting my hands on my hips and tapping my foot with impatience, but he doesn’t budge. Even the amiable natives are beginning to shoot him looks. “Ugh, fine, but can you come on? We’ve got to walk if I’m going to tell you.”

He all but beams as he strides forward and draws even with me again. I don’t speak until we make a right so we’re walking along the canal, watching the guided boat tours as they drift by. “Jenson King, a musician.”

He scoffs. “You don’t have to tell me who he is.”

“I thought you wanted to know.”

“No, I meant that the name says it all. The dude literally just threw away his career, but it’s not like he was obscure before that.”

My mind lurches at this news, and every part of me wants to ask him to elaborate, but that’d be like baiting the water. There was life before Jenson, and now there’s life after. I can’t confuse the two or else I’ll undo all the mending I’ve done to my lonely heart.

“So, he scare you off like he did his ex-wife?”

Who am I kidding? My heart isn’t mended. My instinct to defend him is proof of that. But an overly passionate response would be more telling than anything. “No. Not at all. I was in love.”

It’s possibly the first time I’ve said it out loud, and it’s the first time it hasn’t sounded completely ridiculous. It was fast, short-lived, but it was love. And if I had to list the reasons why it happened when I did everything in my power to push it away, I’m not sure I could. Yet, it’s undeniable.

 “And?” he presses.

“And I couldn’t handle that then.” I shrug as if the matter is simple. It seems black and white now that I’ve said it out loud. But there’s an ocean of gray uncertainty that threatens to swallow me, and I’m not sure I want to be consumed.

“I feel you. Too young, you know. You have your whole life ahead of you.”

“But what’s sadder—having more years with someone you love because you were brave enough to admit to it, and possibly risk it burning out one day, or less because you were too much of a coward? Or, how about none at all because you were just too late?”

“More. Give me less, any day. Hot and heavy, know what I mean?” He elbows me in the side and I roll my eyes for possibly the thousandth time today. Bryant can have his intense moments, but an immature comment is never far around the corner. “But we’re different, you and I. Maybe I misjudged you, but I didn’t think you were such a chicken ’til now. No risk, no reward.”

I swallow my retort along with the lump in my throat. I’m not a goddamn chicken, but I also don’t care to ride the see-saw that is this conversation. “Anyway, you owe me information. Natalia, remember?”

“She’s a rich kid who had everything growing up and hates that it ruins her badass vibe. Happy?”

I slouch in disappointment. “That’s it? I just did a lot of soul-searching there.”

He slings an arm around my shoulders, pulling me into his side. “At least we accomplished something today—I thawed part of your frigid soul, dude. Now, what kind of errands was I interrupting earlier? You were seriously concentrating before you noticed me.”

I give him a rundown of the wish list my family’s made: macarons for my dad’s fiancé, Scotch for Dad himself, a postcard from every city I visit for Mom, a kiss from a stranger for Blake, a legit stranger—like an entire person, preferably Italian—for Anika, and wooden shoes for Landon. That last one I think is a joke. Mostly. But my thoughts are never far from Jenson. We’re an ocean and several countries away, and still I’m surrounded by him. I don’t even notice Bryant’s asked me a question until he’s stopped a dozen feet behind me and I realize I’m meandering alone.

“What?”

“I asked you what you wanted.”

“Isn’t that the question of the century?” I huff.

He chuckles, shaking his head. “I meant now. Like right now. Gelato? Dead flowers? Pot?”

I ponder that for a moment. I haven’t thought about what I’ve wanted in weeks. This trip, this job, it’s about more than me. It’s about the band and making dreams happen that once felt impossibly out of reach. “I want to see where the flowers grow.”

“So, like, the shop we passed thirty minutes ago.”

“No, where they actually grow.” For once, I don’t want stale. I don’t want the stems of blooms that have already been given a death sentence. I want to see the place where they flourish—hills covered in a rainbow of potential. “In the ground. In a field.”

“Don’t you know anything about anything?” he asks semi-seriously. “The tulip fields! I can make that happen easily, you know. I’m magical like that.” He makes a move toward the street, raising his arm like he’s going to hail a taxi, and I nod in confirmation.

For now, I want magic. For now, I want easy, because the realizations I’m beginning to make have been difficult to come by and almost impossible to accept. And I know that when I return to the U.S., whenever that will be, life won’t just get easier. It never gets easier when you proclaim something so complicated. But I think maybe I’ll be ready. Ready to explore the possibility, at least, and hopefully that’s enough.

“Then work your magic, Bryant.”