Waitin’ on a Drive Home
“I'm really lucky to have her. That’s what my guys friends keep telling me.”
He flicks ash from his cigarette, then lifts it to take a drag. It flares, briefly lighting his face; he’s smiling.
“Nah.” A pause as he exhales smoke into the night air, and I wonder what he’s about to say. “You deserve her.”
I’m perversely pleased to hear it. We’ve been standing outside for fifteen minutes now, away from the noise of the after-contra crowd, leaning against two cars, facing each other. His name's Mike, though I rarely remember it for more than thirty seconds at a time. He's one of my girlfriend’s boys, which is why I'm talking to him, and the reason why we’re talking about her. It seems fleetingly strange – I didn’t like him the first time I saw him, because my first glimpse of Mike was my girl vaulting into his arms to kiss him square on the lips.
Much like I did, seeing him today after five months’ absence from the dance floor.
“Not to say you aren’t lucky too,” he continues, flicking the cigarette into the dirt. “She’s hot.”
I laugh; he raises an eyebrow. “No, really. She’s one of those girls that make you look twice and then wish she was interested in you. Or, y’know, your gender.” He crosses his legs, looks up at the stars. “It's always the good ones who are taken. Or gay.” He looks at me, grins, winks. “Or both.”
“Hah. Next girl I find, I’ll send her to you, how about that?”
“Eh. I’m good with mooning after Darla.”
"Darla is a terrible name.”
“Well, yes,” he concedes, and then points out, “But she's a very pretty girl.”
The moon is rising over us, and the stars as well. It’s getting cold. We’re quiet for a few minutes, and then he asks, “Can I play you a song?”
Any other boy, and I’d think he was hitting on me, but just minutes ago he’d been telling me about how important music had become to him, and how he was taking such joy in singing ever since he discovered he could. So I nod, and he opens the back of the car so that we can sit, and he pulls out his guitar.
I let him sing alone at first, but the chorus is so simple that soon I join in, singing an octave above. It’s a pleasure to sing like this, alone under the sky with a friend.
The song ends, and he starts to play idly. Then, making it up as we go, we start to trade verses, building a song about summer, above leaving college for the year, about being alone, about reaching out. I sing about loneliness, he counters me with his refrain of “Reach out your hand / Take me to the promised land”. I laugh, and in song tell him that it will be a long summer, for so many of my friends are gone this year, working or traveling.
And then I can tell the song is ending, and that last words are meant to be mine. So I let the music get to the right point, and I sing “Waitin’ on a drive home… alone.”
As the last chord fades, out of the darkness beside me comes one final echo of the refrain, sung quietly, “Take my hand.”
It's a good ending, better than mine, and it makes me want to keep on singing our duet. But the night is growing older, and my phone buzzes against my hip; this is the latest I can leave and still be home before midnight. So I give him a hug goodbye, and a kiss, then turn to walk down the street to my car, happy in our growing friendship.
Behind me in the darkness, I can hear him singing the refrain softly to himself.
I smile.
