Amy & Roger's Epic Detour

“Sure,” I said, still smiling. “Just a second.” I handed him the phone. “Magellan,” I said, “you have a call.”

“It’s just a stupid nickname thing,” he hissed at me, before taking the phone. “Cheeks, hey,” he said. “Listen, we’re in your neck of the woods … what?” Roger glanced over at me again. “Oh. No. That’s just a friend. Hadley’s in Kentucky.”

Now it was my turn to feel embarrassed. I looked out the window until Roger waved at me to get my attention and mimed writing. I grabbed a pen and wrote the address and directions Roger dictated to me for the Wichita Country Club on a Sonic napkin.

When Roger hung up with Drew, he didn’t look directly at me but instead stared ahead at the road, as though there was something to see besides endless highway and cloudy skies. “So Drew says it should take us about twenty minutes,” he said. “I guess he’s just finishing up work.”

“Oh, that’s great,” I said. “Magellan?”

“Well, whatever,” he said, and I noticed that he was blushing slightly. “I told you it was just a stupid nickname thing.”

“I think it’s funny,” I said. “Because of your whole explorer thing?”

“Yes,” said Roger. “But it’s really gotten out of hand. I swear, some of the guys on the floor never even knew my real name. Hadley thought it was really stupid.” He had the tone in his voice that came out whenever he said her name. A combination of wistful and resigned.

“I think it’s funny,” I repeated quietly.

Roger shot me a quick smile. “I did too,” he said. “At first. It’s less funny after six months when people are yelling it at you across the quad.” He pointed to the napkin on the console between us. “Ready to navigate, Chekov?”

I picked up the napkin and smoothed it out, trying to decipher my scrawled directions. “Ready.”

Twenty minutes later, as promised, we pulled up in front of the Wichita Country Club. There was a very intimidating guard in a small wooden house checking cars as they drove through, so we drove a little farther down the street and parked. We’d both gotten out of the car and Roger had taken out his phone to call Drew again when I heard a screech of tires. A tiny red car was careening out of the entrance and heading straight toward us.

“And that’ll be Cheeks,” Roger said, smiling. The car swung around and stopped next to the Liberty. The driver’s side opened, and a round-faced, round-headed person emerged. He was wearing a teal polo shirt, pressed khakis, and loafers. “Dude,” Roger said, walking over to the car. “You look like you’re about to sell me insurance. Or trying to get me to rush your frat.”

“Magellan,” said Drew, and he and Roger did a quick guy hug that seemed to mostly consist of hitting each other on the back. “You happen to be looking at the Wichita Golf Club’s newest golfing assistant.”

“You mean golfing assistant as in … caddy?” Roger asked.

“It’s much more than that,” Drew insisted. “There’s an art to it. I have to choose the clubs. I have to read the greens….” He gestured expansively and must have noticed me as he did so. “Well, hello,” he said to me, giving me a big smile, and I noticed that his voice was suddenly deeper.

I registered all of this with surprise, and a growing sense of anxiety. He thought I was pretty. I knew it was probably because of Bronwyn’s clothes, and I felt a flash of anger at her for doing this to me. I liked being invisible. Things were easier that way. I felt my heart pounding as I looked at him, smiling expectantly at me, hating how awkward even the simplest interaction now felt. Old me would have smiled back, and even flirted a little, just for fun. But I just stuck my hands in the pockets of my jeans and stared at the ground, wishing I was still in an oversize T-shirt. “Hi,” I murmured. “I’m Amy.”

“Andrew O’Neal,” he said. “Pleasure.” He looked over at Roger and raised his eyebrows, but Roger frowned and shook his head, and Drew sighed. “Nice to meet you,” he said a little resignedly, his voice back to his normal register. I looked back and forth between the two of them, trying to figure out what had just occurred.

“Now that we’ve been properly introduced,” said Drew, “let’s move on to more important matters. Such as food.”

I hadn’t realized it until he’d said the word, but I was starving. Which was ridiculous, because we’d been eating and snacking all day and hadn’t been doing anything except sitting in a car. Roger looked at me, and I nodded. “Sounds good,” he said to Drew.

“Excellent,” Drew said, heading back toward his car. He motioned for us to join him. “The foursome that I was assisting forgot, for some reason, to extend an invitation to the clubhouse for dinner. So I’m famished. And you probably need a break from driving, Magellan. I think New Way is really the only way to go.”

“New Way?” asked Roger, as Drew opened the driver’s door and Roger opened the passenger door.

“New Way,” Drew agreed, pushing his seat forward so that I could climb into the back. “You’ll see.”

There’s no place like home.

—The Wizard of Oz

New Way, we soon discovered, actually meant NuWay burgers, and was, according to Drew, a Wichita landmark. Wichita itself seemed kind of confusing, with a highway running across the city, dividing it in two. Drew pulled up in front of NuWay Café, the name spelled out in white on a red and yellow awning. We suddenly seemed a long way from the yellow and red arrows of In-N-Out, with palm trees on the cups. CRUMBLY is GOOD! a sign on the window of the restaurant proclaimed.

We followed Drew into the restaurant, which was decorated with framed black-and-white pictures of NuWay and its customers through the years. It seemed Drew was telling the truth about the landmark thing. He took over the ordering for us and insisted on treating, and we emerged five minutes later with two brown paper bags that smelled delicious and were immediately dotted with faint translucent grease spots. We all got back in the car, and Drew drove us down the highway to Freddy’s Frozen Custard.

“Frozen custard?” I asked. Unable to find a spot, Drew had double-parked and headed inside to get us dessert. I pulled on my seat belt to give it some slack and leaned forward into the space between the front seats.