He lives in the middle of nowhere in West Virginia, so visiting his family is always a scary trip for me, considering my anxiety. I have to tail him to the extreme while driving, even when I'm on the highway. Oh, and did I mention, I get absolutely zero phone service? A.k.a. if I lose him, I'm basically forced to lay on the side of the road and say, “this is how I die.” Not that I have ever imagined that, or anything, though. The highway is for speed-racers, and don’t even get me started on how reckless and oddly comfortable these people are on those tiny, narrow, little back roads. Add in the factors of driving at night, and taking two separate cars… It was a disaster waiting to happen. Little did I know that particular night we were about to take off, I was about to be the closest to a disaster I had ever been in my entire life.
50 mph roads became 65 mph; 65 mph became 70 mph. Everything was going pretty well, even when we started on the big, bad, Route 70. He wasn’t being a complete speed demon this trip, nor was he weaving too much. But it was a short-lived easy hike, of course. I got stuck behind a super slow 30 mph wide load vehicle, not to mention with a state trooper boxing me in on my side. Bam - lost him. It took him a minute to realize he couldn’t quite spot me in his rear view mirror. Too bad that was about 55 seconds too late.
Me, on the other hand, well, it only took me about 3.24792 seconds to start a full fledge panic attack, hyperventilating and all. I was God knows where without phone signal. Fuck. Me.
Completely lost, both physically and mentally, I pulled over to the side of the road and attempted to calm myself down enough to say a prayer. Then I realized – duh, I'll turn roaming on to call him. (Thanks, God.) Hopefully my dad won’t be too upset about a small surcharge on the phone bill, given it was a surcharge that could be a matter of my life and death, considering I am on the side of a nearly abandoned interstate highway at pitch black 1 a.m. Totally safe, right? When I turned on roaming, my phone buzzed and lit up like the 4th of July with four missed calls, two voicemails and five texts from him. I managed to stop shaking like an abandoned puppy enough to find his contact name on my favorites and click. I could barely hear the ringing over my deep, heavy breaths, but I was shocked to hear him pick up sounding even more frantic than me.
“Don't you ever fucking do that to me again,” he said.
He raised his voice for a few more spurts I couldn’t quite make out, followed by-
“I nearly blew out my car turning off at an exit to get back on 70 and look for a wreck because I thought you could have d- …just tell me where you are, baby?"
He had always been sensitive. Sad movies, depressing commercials. He was always one to tear up from time to time. But he never let me see him cry. This time, I didn’t need my eyes to see him – my ears were enough to know he had lost his mind. I couldn’t help but wonder how hysterical he would be if he had lost me. I took an odd comfort in that as we both calmed down.
We quickly came up with a plan to meet at a nearby gas station. At that point, he had already caught up to me since he sped like crazy while searching. I pulled into the dark and eerie lot first. Dark, it was; but the few flickering lights that managed to make the parking lot not completely look like a murder scene was enough to comfort me, after everything I had just experienced.
After a few minutes that seemed like hours, he pulled into a spot next to me. I use the word “pulled” loosely; he practically jumped out of his car to hug me. Longest hug of my life. When I thought I had already cried out every bit of water in my body, the waterworks started right back up again. I could tell he started to cry, too, but stopped himself. He had to be strong for me.
“I am so, so sorry for yelling at you. I have never been so scared in my life,” he said over my shoulder. I could feel his heart pounding against mine. We were still mid-hug. He had me back, and it was clear as hell he was not letting me go.
He loosened his hold on me and cupped my face with two hands. Staring into my eyes – which were arguably just as glazed over as mine – he uttered,
“I'll tell you what...now I really know how much I love you.”
But what he couldn’t know, what even I didn’t know until that very moment I was wrapped in his arms at a dirty, rundown gas station in the middle of good ol' West Virginia…was how much I really loved him.
