Stages of Grace - By Carey Heywood Page 0,61

to sit and eat at. It’s almost lunch time. I wonder if Ryan's hungry. He’s gone to the restroom. It’s probably a smart idea that I do the same. When I get back to the car, he is there, waiting for me.

"Should we eat lunch?" I ask.

"Sure. I’m not really hungry, though. Big breakfast."

I laugh, remembering our faces when his plate came out.

"We could always buy sandwiches now and eat them later."

We walk over to the deli to see what they offer. Ryan, again, refuses to let me pay. I don’t mind, I won’t have a source of income when I get to Florida. Just thinking about it makes me nervous. It’s hard not to second-guess my choices. I'm leaving so much behind: a good job that I loved and Jon. I don’t know what to think about Jon. When it comes to him, I just feel unsettled. It had been my goal for so long to make our relationship work. It feels like I've given up, but had he given up first?

When we get back to the car with our sandwiches, I take over driving. It feels good to have something to do, and Ryan makes a good navigator. I feel somewhat guilty for sleeping instead of helping when he drove.

"If you're tired, feel free to take a nap."

"I'm not tired."

"Well, if you get tired."

"Alright. Hey, Texas! We haven't seen that one yet, have we?" Ryan searches for it on our list.

I'm still winning, but it makes me smile that Ryan hasn't given up yet. While we drive, I ask him about New Zealand. It seems like another world. It's weird thinking it's summer there Ryan tells me The Lord of the Rings movies were filmed there, and fans still visit to see locations from the films. He grew up playing soccer, or football as they called it, and rugby. He was the bane of existence to his older sisters, always messing up their plans. He tells me the funniest story about one of his older sisters having a big party, and he was home and allowed to attend. Well, all of her friends thought it would be hysterical to get him drunk, He had been maybe eleven at the time.

He drank everything they gave him, including at one point, something red. It may have been a daiquiri, but it did not agree with him, and he got sick. He had never been sick like that before, and his vomit was red. He was still so drunk he thought he was throwing up blood. He wasn’t but it did not stop him from going to each and every member of the party to say goodbye. You see, he was saying goodbye because he was certain that he was dying.

"I actually remember feeling quite calm about dying. God, I was such a prat. I felt like a right idiot the next morning when I figured out I was still alive. Many of her friends had spent the night. I avoided them all, I was so embarrassed. She is still mates with some of those kids. My sister and her mates still take the piss, sorry still tease me about it."

"I wish I had brothers or sisters."

"I didn’t growing up. They were such a pain, and God, when they were teenagers I thought they were mad. Now that I'm older, I get how lucky I was to have them. They used to beat the crap out of me, and I deserved it but they were my fiercest protectors if anyone else said a foul word towards me."

"You're lucky to have that."

"I am. I know it."

Ryan asks me if I have any embarrassing tales from my childhood. I tell him about my dad and what an outdoorsman he was.

"He loved camping and hiking, fishing, really almost anything outdoorsy. He also loved owls. I always tried to please him, and one morning when I was playing in a park near our home, I saw what I thought was an owl. It was really a large hawk, but I was little and couldn’t tell the difference. I wasn’t sure why but the hawk landed not far from me and looked at me. I became convinced I would be able to get it to follow me home and give it to my father as a gift. Using a, ‘here, birdy birdy’ I tried unsuccessfully to get it to follow me. A neighbor saw me near the bird and came and shooed it away. He then