I drove from my home in Los Angeles all across the great Southwest to my parents’ home in Colorado over the past 36 hours. There’s a lot of desert and tired shrubs in between. And it’s beautiful the whole way; even the ugly parts are beautiful, and, somehow, even the racist Arizona towns have their charm. I like the Southwest. It’s deserts, mountains, and pine forests sprinkled across one large patch of red earth. A place of redemption, like all those old cowboy stories.
And on this drive, I was looking for my own form of redemption: three years ago, I drove the opposite way, from Albuquerque to Los Angeles, with someone I had only met once before over some coffee. She was a stranger, barely a legal adult, and I was offering her a free ride across the country so she could start her next phase of life. All she had to give me was her time, sit shotgun, and make sure I didn’t fall asleep at the wheel.
We broke down seven hours later between Barstow and Needles with 70-ish miles barren, barren desert on either side. It was August, and we used two cheap Chinese fans to cool ourselves. Two hours later, the tow truck arrived. We spent an awkward night in a crummy motel after eating McDonald’s for dinner—I wore a shirt to bed so I wouldn’t make her feel uncomfortable. The next morning, with a new radiator and a four-hundred-something dollar bill, we were back on the road and finally made it to the Golden Coast.
That same person, now a friend of nearly three years, joined me for this latest drive on a whim: my companion. We talked for nearly 12 hours of drive time. A janky AUX cord distorted her music so much that we didn’t listen.
We gossiped, of course, talking about who’s dating who right now, who should break up, and all the other drama of collegiate runners. We talked about how virus variants and music festivals don’t mix well. We talked about our climate anxiety and our wildly different approaches to what we should do with it.
She told me she wants to live somewhere in a small town. She told me about how her dad smashed his face in on a rock after falling during a trail run. She told me about how she wants to go to graduate school so she can use her remaining NCAA eligibility. She told me how she expects her childhood home to burn down any year now, that that area is “overdue.”
I talked about the three apologies I gave during quarantine.
The second was because I was a bad boyfriend to my now ex-girlfriend of roughly three years, that I was too lazy to drive a few hours to see her, that I just sort of gave up on our relationship. And after I apologized, my ex- thanked me for doing it, for validating her. She hugged me.
I explained to my companion why one of my two best friends from college hardly speaks to me now—and when I apologized to her (my third apology of quarantine) all she said was, “Okay.”
I didn’t bring up why my other best friend from college won’t speak to me at all anymore, or how that first apology went. My companion didn’t seem to notice the omission.
Instead, she tried to make me feel better, providing some reasons I can’t remember right now. That I need to give myself some slack or something like that. I lied and said I agreed with her.
A few hours later, I dropped her off in Albuquerque and said adieu. We didn’t break down this time, so I guess we found some redemption there. But I’m still searching.