Whatever You Want

Arizona, May 2023

“It’s only a fourteen hour drive. I would do that,” she says, setting her phone on the table and leaning back in the booth. “I’ve done longer.”

“For a weekend?” Sam laughs. “You’re crazy.” He looks at the route on his own device. “Wow, it's literally exactly 1,000 miles. That’s kind of cool. And quite far.” He sighs. “I wonder if I'll ever see you again.”

“I hope so,” she says.

They'd been following each other online for years but only met in person two days ago.

“Obviously me too.” He pauses. It’s their last night together. “I knew I liked you, but I didn’t think I’d like you this much.”

Her eyes brighten, "I didn't think I'd like you this much!"

He tries to read her mind from across the table but finds her inscrutable. Is she as crazy as he is? He doesn't ask. He can't admit this is more than a crush. If she suddenly grabbed his hands and said, "I think I'm in love with you," he's fairly sure he would blow up his life then and there to rearrange his constellations around her. But he knew if he did, he wouldn't forgive himself.

So he sips his drink, poker-faced. “Well, I live fourteen hours away,” he says.

They sit in silence for a beat.

“I’ll still like your Instagram stories,” she offers.

“I love when you like my stories.” He means it so sincerely and can’t help but laugh, relieved at her pivot to talking about something safe.

He doesn’t tell her that when he posts, he’s always thinking of her. It’s easier to laugh at their situation—a little digital happenstance led to unserious flirting, and now here they are, looking at maps over dinner.

It was never supposed to turn into anything real. Neither of them dared imagine it before, and he's pretty sure they aren't starting now. But it’s sweet, this halfhearted effort to square their intimacy with their incompatible realities.

“It’s good we didn’t hook up,” he says, not for the first time that day.

“Yes,” she agrees. “If we had, I’d get attached.”

“Right,” he says, as though he wasn't. “Yeah. Me too.”

~

They pay the bill and walk back to her studio apartment. A last-minute astrology reading is as good a pretense as any. They sit in mismatched chairs between her bed and the kitchen and lean over an iPhone screen. She says it’s really cute that his Venus is in Pisces, and the air is thick with the unsaid and impossible.

Shy, he asks, “Can we hold hands?”

“Yes.” And they do.

“I wanted to do this all day,” he confesses.

“I could feel it.”

Their foreheads are touching. She is murmuring something kind. Sam notices how the high elevation has dried out his lips. Wetting them with his tongue reveals a texture not soft and tender, but cracked and uninviting. And yet…

“Do you want to kiss?”

Immediately, a touch breathless, “Yes.” And for a few seconds, something like a kiss happens in a stiff blur of closed mouths and not enough time. It isn’t how he wanted it. He pulls back and the space between them warps. They are still holding hands, but she is 1,000 miles away again.

“It’s late,” Sam says.

They arrive at the threshold, hearts still beating hard. A long hug. The romance and nonsense of it all swirls tempestuously around them, and each statement hits him like a gust.

“I’ll miss you.”

“You too.”

Insanely, “Love you.”

“Love you.”

He turns and she closes the door.

Walking back to his car, the encounter reverberates through him, he feels high. He’s never felt so activated; electrified; thrilled. Before turning the ignition, he texts her. I’m literally shaking.

Same.

~

2 Weeks Earlier

Last week, Emily and Sam packed up their shared life into a U-Haul. This was the second time in as many years. Her dad flew out to help them pack. He would drive with her the 2,343 miles from Montana back to Vermont, where she was starting a new job in June. Sam would follow later, after taking a solo road trip through the Southwest to visit friends.

Or at least, that was the plan until Emily found him crying on the eve of her departure in the back of the mostly packed truck. She dropped the box she was carrying and rushed to put an arm around him. “My love, what’s wrong?”

He wiped away tears, embarrassed, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what's going on, but, I don’t know, I’m feeling really sad about leaving all of a sudden.” He looked up at her, “We’d only been here a year, when we decided to move six months ago, but since then it feels like everything is clicking into place.”

Emily nodded. She’d watched him come alive this past year. He was always out with new friends, always inviting her along, though she rarely had the energy.

He went on, “It just feels like I’m doing something wrong. I love my life here and I feel like I belong here in a way I never did in back in Vermont. For the first time it just feels like I’m… home.” He wiped his face again, “I’m sorry, I know it’s not helpful to bring this up right now.”

She held her trembling partner. The same convulsions had wracked her own body 18 months ago, before they came out here. The prospect of being so far away from her family, her community, her home, made her almost physically sick. It was only bearable with the knowledge that it was temporary; an adventure; an experiment she could quit whenever she wanted.

“Do you not want to come?” She asked.

Tears welled up in his eyes. “Does it matter what I want?”

Her heart dropped. He continued, “You’re going. We’re dating. I have to come with you. But yeah, if I’m being honest with myself, I’m not ready to leave. But like, it’s too late.”

“My love,” she held his face and focused on his red, teary eyes. It was important he understood this, “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

He looked confused. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I wish you told me how you felt sooner, but I get that maybe it didn’t click until now. If your body is telling you that moving isn’t the right call, you don’t have to.” She watched his disbelief turned into a thoughtful frown.

“But what about us?” He asked.

Emily didn’t think this was relevant, and patiently explained, “Well, I assume at some point you’ll be ready move back to Vermont. But if you want to stay until the end of the summer or maybe even the end of the year, I mean, that would be hard for me, but we would make it work.”

Sam looked at her in wonder, “I could do that?”

She squeezed his hand. He was cute. “My love, you can do whatever you want!”

His eyes widened, as though he’d never considered this before. Perhaps he hadn’t.

~

One Week Later

Even in the shade, sunlight bouncing off the sandstone cliffs makes Sam squint. He paces in front of the gas station, waiting for Emily to pick up the phone. He’d sent a cryptic Can I call you? minutes before. She is as warm as ever, “Hello, my love, how are you? How’s your road trip going?”

“Hiii, I'm good! It’s so beautiful out here. How’s the new apartment? How’s unpacking?”

She sounds cheerful over the phone. “Unpacking’s going ok! The new apartment is really great, and my parents have been so helpful. It’s feeling really good to be back here. Are you enjoying the desert?”

They catch up for a bit. He tells her a funny story about some vanlife people he stayed with for a few days. They talk about how she feels being back home. Then he says, “I have something kind of crazy to ask you.”

“Oh my gosh what?”

“And you can definitely say no.”

“Okay…”

“Remember when I went viral on Tiktok?”

“Yeah,” she laughs. Talk about a fluke.

Sam dives in. “Okay, so: Someone that followed me after that started liking a bunch of my videos and we kinda became internet friends, in like, a very casual way, just minimally chatting from time to time. But there’s like, not not a vibe, if you know what I mean...” He paused.

“Um, okay.”

“Well, the city she lives in in Arizona isn’t that far off the route of my road trip. And I thought, I don’t know, it could be fun to actually meet this person. So, I messaged her like, ‘Hey I’ll be in the area next week if you wanna go on a hike together or something.’ And she replies, like, immediately, and invites me to come visit for three days.”

“Bold of her.”

“No exactly! Kinda makes me wonder if maybe she wants to kiss me.”

“Do you want to kiss her?”

“I don’t know, I mean, that’s why I’m bringing it up. You always said that if I ever wanted to kiss someone else, I maybe could if I asked you first.”

“I did say that.” And Sam could hear her smile through the phone. She took pride in her willingness to ‘queer’ their relationship, as she put it. And they both took pride in the security that made it possible.

“So I guess this is me asking. Obviously if you’d rather I don’t kiss her – or just not go at all – I won’t. Seriously, it’s not a big deal. I can do other stuff out here. I just wanted to give you a chance to weigh in before I said yes to this. Informed consent and all that.”

“Uhhh wow. Well. Not what I was expecting when you called me,” she says.

“I wouldn’t stay with her, just to be clear,” he says, “I’d camp in the National Forest nearby.”

“Oh that sounds nice,” she says absently. He can hear her thinking. “Well thank you so much for asking. I definitely trust you and I feel very secure in our relationship...”

“I’m not going to be resentful if you say no, I understand this is a lot.”

“No… I actually think it’s okay. This seems very cool for you. My one ask is that you stay responsive and keep in touch. I don’t need to know everything that’s going on, but I don’t want to feel like you’re ignoring me while you’re with her.”

“Yeah, of course. That makes so much sense. Also like, there’s a chance I’m fully imagining this. Maybe nothing will even happen, I just wanted to make sure I had informed consent before even saying yes to going.”

“That’s sweet of you, thank you for being so thoughtful. Good luck, and, uh, let me know how it goes!”

“Woah. Ok, wow, thank you, you’re one of a kind. Ah! I’m kind of nervous now!”

She laughs, “I think you’ll be fine.”

“Ok, I’m gonna get back to driving. You’re the best, I love you so much.”

“I love you too. Talk to you soon.”

~

Out West

The car blows past red rocks and dry riverbeds—out of Arizona, past Zion and Bryce canyons, through Utah, into Idaho’s sagebrush plains. The taste of adventure soured after last night. That morning, he texted his delusional crush a heartfelt goodbye to which he received no reply. Something tells him he never will. He doesn’t blame her. He had told her about Emily and the plan to move back to Vermont eventually. Everything was above board and returning to baseline, so why does he feel like screaming?

He feels confused, dysregulated. Usually Emily helps him with this. He wants to call her, but he can’t imagine what he would say. Should he just drive to Vermont after all? Screw his summer plans, what right does he have to be selfish? What good has it done?

He can’t stop thinking about last night. She made him feel crazy, believe in magic, and throw reason to the wind. And that’s just a body being a body, he tells himself. But he can’t remember the last time he felt that way; can’t deny that no matter how much he loves Emily, no matter that she is his best friend – she never made him feel like this. Beneath the crazy, he feels the stirring of truth: He wants someone who does. It isn’t fair. It’s not her fault. He can’t unfeel it. He doesn’t know how to go back to Vermont, back to regularly scheduled programming, with this dissonance.

The last state line brings him into Montana. The land changed while he was gone. Spring rains had coaxed grasses and wildflowers into the usually beige hills. A rest stop appears and he pulls over sharply, gravel crunching beneath tires. It’s dusk now and the sky softens, pink settling on distant peaks. The engine idles beneath him and he tries to remember who he was before Emily or the girl in Arizona. Who is he outside of a relationship? He feels suddenly like a stranger to himself.

He thinks of her voice, steady and warm: You can do whatever you want. As though his body decided something before his mind caught up, he begins to cry.