Riza looked at him and frowned. “That’s going to hurt your knees, why don’t you just make a step with your hands?”
“I feel more chivalrous doing it this way.”
She sighed and shook her head. “Suit yourself.” She climbed onto his back and fed her arm through the window. She reached lower until the window and car frame pinched her shoulder painfully. She had the momentary fear that her arm would get stuck inside and they’d be trapped there, having to yell for someone to call the police to release them. As she wiggled her fingers, she found the lock and pulled up.
She jumped off his back. “You’re good,” she told him, starting toward her own car.
He scrambled to his feet and brushed pebbles off his knees. “Hey, wait.”
She turned.
“I’m Nolan.” He thrust out his hand.
“Do people call you No for short?” Riza asked.
He chuckled. “Kids in school called me Noodle a time or two. Does that count?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Could be worse.”
“It stopped my junior year when I suddenly shot up to six feet and then people steered clear on the chance that I also had muscles underneath my newly baggy clothes.”
“Did you?”
“Not even remotely. I made skeletons look fat.”
Riza smiled. “I think we may have shared similar body types in our youth.”
“Based on your ability to fit your arm through that crack, it seems your skinniness has persisted.”
Riza felt her face get red, and she started to walk away, but he grabbed her arm.
“Sorry, was that insulting? I didn’t mean it that way. You have a great body. Shit, that sounded fresh. I just mean you look healthy.” He sighed and slapped a hand on his forehead. “I’m going to stop talking now. I’d like to thank you, though.”
“It’s fine.”
“Can I make it up to you by taking you out for a smoothie? We could walk to the food co-op? Someone told me it’s not far from here.” He looked right and then left, as if unsure which direction the co-op was located.
“It’s two blocks that way,” she said, pointing.
“You’ll join me then.”
She bit her cheek and looked at her car. Her cell phone was tucked inside. Casey would have called. She wondered if he’d learned anymore about Sandy.
“Okay, sure.”
“Are you born and bred here in Traverse City?” Nolan asked, sipping his strawberry mango smoothie.
Riza had opted for blueberry banana, and she was pleasantly surprised when she took a drink. She’d never had a smoothie in her life and had always imagined they tasted like blended grass. “Pretty much. You?”
“Nope, I’m a southern Michigan man. I just inherited an old house and I moved up here to sell it. I like to consider myself a citizen of the USA rather than any state. I grew up in Jackson. It’s a big small town and any kid raised there desperately tries to escape until they hit thirty and then suddenly they return, get hitched, and buy a suburban house on the same block their parents still live on.”
“Where have you lived outside of Michigan?”
“Vermont, Seattle, Florida, and finally Colorado. Boulder, Colorado was my favorite, but then my dad called to tell me they’d found a lump in his throat. Even before the tests came back. Advanced lymphoma that had metastasized to his brain and bones. I drove home the next week and four months later my dad was gone.”
“I’m sorry,” Riza murmured, fiddling with her straw.
Across the cafe, two teen girls sitting at a high-topped table burst into tinkling laughter. Nolan smiled and closed his eyes. “I love listening to people laugh,” he said.
Riza glanced at the girls, a half-melted dessert on a shared plate in front of them. They looked relaxed and happy. Riza envied their effortless comfort sitting together, talking like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Not since the Six had Riza had a friend that she could sit and talk with.
“Do you have many friends?” she asked.
Nolan offered her a smile and tilted his head. “I have friends all over the world, but since quality not quantity is supposedly the better of the two, I think I’ve been cultivating the wrong kind.”
“I haven’t been cultivating either kind.”
“Why is that?”
She took another drink and wished she hadn’t spoken the words. “Busy, I guess. Why do you travel so much?”
He flipped a lock of blond hair off his forehead, a move that made him seem no older than the teen girls laughing across the room. “My buddy called it a quarter-life crisis, but now that I’m in my thirties, maybe he’d call it a mid-life crisis. It’s like everyone follows this formula, this life production line. Graduate high school, go to college, meet the girl, get a job, get married, buy a house, pop out a few kids, buy a lawnmower, mow the lawn ten thousand times, die in front of the TV with a can of beer in your hand.”
Riza chuckled. “You had me until that last part.”
“You know what I’m saying though, right? I know you do. I can always spot a wanderer like myself.”
Riza snorted. “I’ve never left Michigan.”
“It’s a heart thing, not about geography.”
Riza sighed. “Yeah, sure, I get it. I’ve never been wife material or mom material. I can barely stand myself, let alone expect someone else to for forty or fifty years.”
“How about your job? Are you into it?”
Riza thought about her work managing the properties of the wealthy people who showed up for a few weekends every summer. “It’s pretty mundane, but…” She squinted at the Formica table before her. It seemed to have sparkles imbedded into the pale surface. “It keeps me occupied. I like to be moving, doing things with my hands. They promoted me to an office manager position last year, and I lasted about three weeks. I can’t sit at a desk. There’s too much idle time. That’s never been good for me.”
“I feel ya on that. Cooking has always been my thing. I love it too. But staying in one place, well, that’s a struggle for me. I wish I had now. I wish I’d buckled down and started a restaurant with my dad before he died.”
“But then you’d be running it alone now.”
Nolan nodded. “But he would have gotten to have his dream, you know? Even if I’d closed it a year after, so I could be free again, it would have fulfilled his life. I always thought we had more time.”
Riza tucked her hair behind her ears and rested her elbows on the table. “I’m sure there’s wise words here, something like ‘You fulfilled his dream by being his son,’ but honestly my thoughts lean more toward the ‘You can’t complete anyone’s dream.’ Even our own dreams are… impossible. I mean, we might be able to accomplish something, but no lasting happiness comes from that. I’ve followed through with plenty of things that ended up making me miserable once I finished them.”
“I think you might be a pessimist.”
“I prefer the term ‘realist,’ and I’ve yet to see much in this life to be optimistic about.”
“Hmm… now you’ve given me a challenge. Ever been ziplining?”