WHERE THEY PLANT THE TREES IN STRAIGHT LINES
Each chair in the restaurant is different. Tall backs. Low backs. Red cushions. Tan cushions. None of them match. It reminds you of England. Or what England might look like, since you’ve never been. You’ve never been much of anywhere outside of New Jersey. Your family could never afford to go to England even if they wanted to.
And yet, here you are, in a beach town in Delaware, where Eric’s parents have a second home, about to go with him to Maryland where they say wild ponies run in the surf.
When the waiter brings the check, Eric doesn’t look at the bill. He just snaps his plastic card into the little vinyl book and scoops out a toothpick. He’d ordered filet mignon without even looking at the menu, too. Your dad scrutinizes two-dollar checks for onion rings at the diner, and yet Eric doesn’t even bother looking at the bill. Your entire life your parents have never taken you to a restaurant as nice as this one, and Eric’s only 18.
As you step outside, the humid summer night makes you forget all about England. Kids with ice cream cones walk hand in hand with their parents down Rehoboth Avenue, and it’s clear you’re in America. Eric’s Jeep is parked out front and the doors are off so you slide right in.
The wind drowns out the radio as you speed toward Ocean City. His music is loud, but the wind mixes with it to create white noise that’s peaceful. It complements the dunes and the salt marshes and the moonlight. Then Ocean City in all its neon-ness swallows the stillness of the road.
Soon you’re stuck in traffic.
It’s after 9:30, but stores are still open. You turn down the radio. Eric speaks as if on cue.
“Let’s go into that surf shop. I wanna get a new pair of board shorts. You want anything?”
“I’m good. Whatever.”
There’s a country song coming from the pick-up truck next to you. You look at it from the corner of your eye. It’s a tall one, higher than Eric’s Jeep, and the paint on the fender is rusted from the salt air, like most locals’ cars. Two guys up front are snickering at you. Eric doesn’t seem to notice. When the light turns green, he also doesn’t seem to notice how they cross both lanes and follow you into the parking lot. It’s a bit unnerving, like the time that guy was staring at you in the movie theater ticket line and waited until the lights went down and sat right next to you and you had to run out.
The surf shop is wall-to-wall glass with so much fluorescent light it makes your eyes hurt. That, coupled with the scent of surf wax, coconut sunscreen, and fresh rubber from the racks and racks of sandals, wakes you up in a nauseating sort of way.
Eric grabs an ugly turquoise two-piece.
“Babe, you want this?”
“I dunno. I don’t really feel like trying anything on.”
“C’mon, just get it. Or get shorts like me.”
The guys from the truck are looking at surfboards. And at you. The driver trades glances your way. When his back turns, you catch his reflection in the mirror and notice a neck tattoo, or an upper back tattoo, and how it spreads across his shoulders beneath his loose tank top. Something about his muscular back makes him less threatening and more like the football players in your class that are twice the size of the ones at Eric’s private school.
“Ava?”
You weren’t listening.
“Oh, yeah, what? Sorry.”
“Let’s check out. I wanna get to the motel.”
“Sure.”
Eric hands his card to the cashier and she bags the shorts. The guys from the truck are still inside when you pull out onto the Coastal Highway.
The motel is one of those old ones with a pool sunk in the middle of the parking lot. It’s overpriced, but it’s July and Eric’s paying so it doesn’t matter.
He takes a quick shower as you lay in bed with the seashell-print comforter balled up by your feet. The A/C hums in the window. The chain lock on the door hangs loosely in place, which makes you feel slightly better than if it weren’t there. When Eric steps out of the shower, the room fills with steam, and his towel shows off his skinny torso and that round little stomach you once thought was cute. As he approaches the bed, you swing your legs off the mattress and stand to face him. The sand from the previous guests, gritty on the floor, rubs between your toes.
It’s 3:00 a.m. now. Eric’s snoring mixes with the rattling A/C. The same thought that kept you up last night at his parents’ beach house does it again—a general anxiety about moving into his apartment when the semester starts. He said he’d split the rent, but you need an off-campus job and don’t know where to find one. It’ll all work out, you tell yourself. You’ll find something in August before school starts. The pharmacy job during high school was easy to juggle, so a job during college should be, too.
It’s noon when the bridge to Assateague Island comes into view. Eric pulls into a gas station and parks next to antique-looking pumps resting on an island of gravel.
“Can you fill it up while I go to the bathroom? You want anything? I’m going to get some pretzels and water.”
“Yeah, pretzels are good.”
He hands you his credit card for the gas and jogs into the store.
A moment later he disappears around the side of the building, bathroom keys dangling in his hand.
That’s when the music starts. The same country song from the night before. It happens right when you start fueling the Jeep, at the exact moment you’re pulling the trigger to let the gas into the tank. It’s the same pick-up truck. It slides onto the other side of the pumps. It’s him—the guy with the neck tattoo. He’s alone. He jumps down in the same loose tank top.
You turn away to stare across the street.
Along the edge of the neighboring farm there stands a single row of perfectly spaced trees, planted symmetrically in a southern style, stoic in the heat. They might be sycamores or cherry blossoms. You don’t know. But they look unsettling and romantic all at once.
The pump dings. The guy begins whistling. That’s when he recognizes you.
“Hey, I know you. I seen you before.”
You let yourself look at him. His eyes are green and his smile has a crooked tooth that looks better than what five years of braces did for Eric.
“For real, I seen you before—” He has a touch of an accent. “Where’d I see you before?”
“I dunno. I think you’ve got me confused with someone else.”
“Naw, I know you. I saw you at that store last night. At the surf shop.”
“Maybe.”
“You was with that guy, the one with the Jeep. He your boyfriend?”
You want to answer quickly and get him to go away, but for some reason you don’t. You hesitate and look back at the trees, at the way they’re planted in a straight line. It seems unnatural, the way they’re forced into order, like Eric’s teeth. Then you think of all those chairs at the restaurant, the way they were thrown together chaotically. It makes you think of England, even though you’ve never been.
The guy is waiting for your answer, though. He’s standing there like he can’t move forward until you reply.
So, for some inexplicable reason, you lie.
“No.”
“He’s not your boyfriend?”
“No, just a friend.”
“Huh, well. I’m Clark. What’s your name?”
“Ava.”
“Ava. That’s a nice name.” He pulls the nozzle from his truck and clicks it back into place. “Well, I hope I see you round here more often.”
It’s as if he’s going to reach out and shake your hand, but he doesn’t. He climbs back in his truck, fires up the engine, and drives away. His rear bumper shows a line of rust like his fender.
Just as he’s about to vanish over the horizon, you take notice of how the tree line ends, how it’s forced into obsolescence by perspective. The trees march along in order, dizzying in their conformity. Then, right before his truck shrinks out of view beyond the trees, he stops.
His white reverse lights go on. He makes a u-turn.
You look toward the side of the store and still don’t see Eric. The guy’s truck is coming back quickly. Your heart rate increases like that time you played seven minutes in heaven in sixth grade and Tommy Stewart pressed his body close to you in Darla Paulson’s basement.
As the pickup slides back onto the gravel, you see the guy’s smiling white teeth and notice how tan his face is. He doesn’t get out, he just sort of yells over his engine.
“Hey, you, listen, I don’t normally do stuff like this, but you wanna trade numbers and maybe I can call you sometime?”
There’s still no sign of Eric from the bathroom. It’s as if he’ll never come back.
It only takes ten seconds to exchange phone numbers, yet in that miniscule amount of time, something changes. All of a sudden, after two years of being one half of a couple—a couple at Thanksgiving, at Christmas, at Easter—you’re no longer one half of something. You’re no longer Eric’s girlfriend. You’re just Ava.
And that’s more than enough.
***
A.E. Milford is a Los Angeles-based author. In addition to writing for film, Milford has had fiction published in journals including Philadelphia Stories and the Schuylkill Valley Journal. Milford is currently working on a new novel.
