<<Beth to Jennifer>> No. I think it’s @ euphemism for pl@ying the electric guit@r. Or @n idiom.
I don’t know. Do you really think “masturbation” is one of Tron’s red-flag words?
<<Jennifer to Beth>> Well, it doesn’t matter now. If we get fired because you insist on poking the dragon, you’re going to have to support me and my pricey Baby Gap habit.
<<Beth to Jennifer>>
1. Poking the dragon. Is that another masturbation reference?
2. Baby Gap. Still?
<<Jennifer to Beth>>
1. Ha.
2. Still. Last weekend, I scored a celery green snowsuit with matching mittens for $3.99!
<<Beth to Jennifer>> Green is a smart choice—good for an imaginary girl or an imaginary boy.
And the season isn’t at all relevant with imaginary children.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> Exactly. I don’t even go to the adult Gap anymore. Once you’re an imaginary mother, it’s hard to take time for yourself.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> I imagine.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> So, what’s tomorrow’s Indian Hills story about?
<<Beth to Jennifer>> There isn’t one.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> There better be. You’re on the morning budget for 15 inches.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> F ck.
SO, THIS WAS what Lincoln’s romantic life had come to. Reading what women wrote about other men, other attractive men. Guitar gods and action heroes and redheads.
That night, after he trashed Beth’s and Jennifer’s messages, after he’d left The Courier, Lincoln got onto the freeway. It was laid out in a rough square around the city. Once you were on the freeway, you could drive as long as you wanted to without getting off, without ever really going anywhere.
It’s what he and Sam used to do on nights when they didn’t feel like being around their parents or sitting in some diner. Lincoln would drive, and Sam would roll down her window and lean her head against the door, singing along with the radio.
She liked to listen to a show called “Pillow Talk” on the light-rock station. It was a request show.
People would call in and dedicate songs on the air. They always requested sappy songs that were ten or fifteen years old even back then, songs by Air Supply, Elton John, and Bread. Sam liked to mock their on-air dedications, but she rarely changed the station.
She’d sing along, and they’d talk. The talking came easily to him when he was driving, maybe because he didn’t have to make eye contact, maybe because it gave him something to do with his hands. Because it was dark and the freeway was empty. Because of the love songs. And the wind.
“Lincoln,” Sam had asked him on one of those nights, the summer before their senior year, “do you think we’ll get married some day?”
“I hope so,” he’d whispered. He didn’t usually think about it like that, like “married.” He thought about how he never wanted to be without her. About how happy she made him and how he wanted to go on being that happy for the rest of his life. If a wedding could promise him that, he definitely wanted to get married.
“Wouldn’t it be romantic,” she said, “to marry your high school sweetheart? When people ask us how we met I’ll say, ‘We met in high school. I saw him, and I just knew.’ And they’ll say, ‘Didn’t you ever wonder what it would be like to be with someone else?’ And you’ll say …Lincoln, what will you say?”
“I’ll say, ‘No.’”
“That’s not very romantic.”
“It’s none of their business.”
“Tell me, then,” she said, unbuckling her seat belt and putting her arm around his waist. “Tell me now, won’t you ever wonder what it would have been like to be with someone else?”
“First, buckle up,” he said. She did. “I won’t wonder that because I already know what it would be like to be with someone else.”
“How do you know?” she said.
“I just do.”
“Then, what would it be like?”
“It would be less,” he said.
“Less?”
He looked over at her, just for a second, sitting sideways in her bucket seat, and squeezed the steering wheel. “It would have to be. I already love you so much. I already feel like something in my chest is going to pop when I see you. I couldn’t love anyone more than I do you, it would kill me. And I couldn’t love anyone less because it would always feel like less. Even if I loved some other girl, that’s all I would ever think about, the difference between loving her and loving you.”
Sam squirmed out of the top half of her seat belt and laid her head on his shoulder. “That is such a good answer.”