Winter Wonderland

twenty-three: a blessing

*

five months later

Six months into my job at King Evans Creative and I've already been given a raise. I couldn't believe it when Aisha set up a meeting with me to discuss my first half a year in the company and told me that I was an invaluable asset, that my work warranted reward. Storie and I had already been planning a summer trip so that was just the boost I needed, solidifying my confidence in my job and myself, and I felt a little less guilty about splashing out on the full bedroom for our ride on the Sunset Limited.

We flew to New Orleans ten days ago and after a couple of days there, soaking in the culture and the spooky stories that weren't quite so spooky in the middle of a warm July day, we hopped on the train for the first leg of our trip. Fifteen hours across Louisiana and Texas, most of it in the daylight, until we got to San Antonio just after midnight and checked into a hotel for a couple days. From there we had a sixteen hour trip that ended up being eighteen hours, depositing us in Tucson, Arizona, where we spent a night and a day before catching the next train out of town, ten hours all the way to Los Angeles. The views were phenomenal, desert and mountain for days.

Now, after three days in Los Angeles, where we stayed in Santa Monica and spent most of our time on the beach when we weren't being tourists in Hollywood and Beverley Hills, we're back in Ohio. It's a bit of a downer to be back, to be honest. I wasn't sure Los Angeles was gonna be for me when we first arrived at Union Station in downtown LA, but I was sold when we went up to the Griffith Observatory and saw the city from above, when we cruised past the celebrity homes in the hills and dug our feet into the soft sand of Santa Monica, when I paid way too much for watermelon and chili from a woman trawling up and down the beach with a bucket full, and then bought more anyway 'cause it was so damn good. Sure, Hollywood is a pretty gross dive, but I could get used to the rest.

So, yeah. I'd rather not be back in Ohio right now. At least our vacation isn't totally over yet. We've still got a couple more days and instead of flying straight to Cleveland and going back to our apartment, we flew into Detroit instead and rented a car to drive round the western edge of Lake Erie to Five Oaks. It's about time we spent a day or two with Storie's family. We may see Kris quite a bit, seeing as he lives in Cleveland too and as much as he travels, we still grab a drink or a meal with him once every week or so, but Five Oaks is just far enough from the city that we don't make the effort as much.

As for my family, well, it's been a while. Work's been ramping up recently and with our trip already booked, there hasn't been much time to go to Cincinnati. Ninety minutes to Five Oaks is one thing; four hours to Cincy is quite another. We can go see Storie's parents in a day trip but it's pretty hard to wanna get back in the car the same day if I've already driven two hundred fifty miles. It's been a couple months since I last saw my parents, but at least this time it's for a positive reason: I've been busy doing a job I love, travelling with the woman I love. The last time I went so long without going home was because I was stuck in a deep depression and couldn't bear to face my family, couldn't bear to let them see how far I'd fallen. Now I'm flying high.

"Mom wants to know what time we'll be there," Storie says, one arm hanging out the window of the rental car. "We're not far, right?"

"About half an hour," I say. We haven't long crossed the Maumee River, a depressingly brown river that cuts Toledo in half and feeds into Lake Erie. "Who's there?"

"Mom, Tad and Jasper, and Nav and Gray," she says, pulling in her arm to put the window up when we pass by a truck leaving a trail of disgusting black exhaust. "I can't wait to see Gray. It feels like forever."

Although we were last in Five Oaks maybe five weeks ago, that was just to see Jen, Tad, and Jasper. It's been a couple months since we last saw Gray, and I still can't believe he's about to be a father. Navya's due date is less than a month away now, and I still see her husband as a gangly, overenthusiastic child. Obviously he's not, but twenty-three still seems so young.