Maybe, just maybe, Sean Diaz's life is finally coming together.
His brother is in for their spring break road trip. The internship at Nickelodeon looks like it will pan out. And he is currently having coffee with Sarah.
Sarah was shocked a couple of months ago when he texted her asking if they could talk. And after some coaxing, she agreed to meet up. Sean apologized profusely for being such a dick during their break up and emphasized that he did not expect her to forgive him. But he gave her the chance to say what she needed to in order to get over him.
And that conversation was hard.
Like, he has stared down the barrels of guns, and that didn't seem as hard as standing there, getting verbally punched in the gut for things he did but didn't really do.
But he and Sarah had been friends before they started dating, and, after some crying, they decided to give being friends again a go.
And it's weird. Even though Sean wouldn't say he lived this life, it really is becoming his life. All those old feelings about Sarah, the way she makes him laugh, the way bad things just seem to disappear when he is with her—those are all still inside him.
When they meet up for coffee every couple of weeks, Sarah walks in, and a dumb grin always stretches across his face.
The coffee shop isn't too busy today, but it's filled with background conversation and the clicking of laptop keys. Sarah has changed the purple streak in her hair to blue, and Sean remembers helping her dye it blue once while they were dating. They did it in her bathroom, and he was in his boxers so he wouldn't stain his clothes. She was also wearing a pair of his boxers. He was super careful, but as he combed the goopy dye through her hair, he dropped some of it on his chest.
The sparse patch of hair between his nipples was blue for two weeks. Sarah's slender fingers would play with it as they lay in bed, watching videos on her laptop, and his breath would catch as her skin brushed against his.
"So Diego told me he, Toby, and Pete are going down to Daytona Beach for spring break," Sarah says. Her brown eyes shine through the steam rising from her coffee cup. "It's senior year. The last hurrah. Why aren't you going?"
"I'm going on this kind of road trip with Daniel," Sean says, pouring a sugar packet into his drink.
"Daniel? Your little brother?"
"Sí, Daniel es mi hermanito."
"I thought he got on your nerves."
"Yeah, but, he can be a cool kid. He's turning sixteen, and I kind of miss the little dude."
"Sounds a little codependent to me," Sarah says.
"How is hanging out with my little bro codependent? Wait, does codependent not mean what I think it does?"
"Well . . ." Sarah turns a stirrer in her coffee, even though she hasn't added anything to it. "The way you would talk about it, it sometimes sounded like your dad maybe put too much responsibility on you for watching your brother growing up. It sounded a little unfair to put that on someone who was a kid himself."
"It's not like that," Sean insists. "Dad was raising us both on his own. He's basically Superman, but he's not a god. He just needed me to help out."
"I wasn't criticizing your father, Sean. I know Esteban Diaz is awesome," she says, with a smile. "But Daniel, even when you'd say you missed him, it sounded like he was, I dunno, an obligation not a person. It's just weird that you're blowing off a trip with your best friends and boyfriend. Like, are you going on this trip with Daniel because you want to or because you feel like you have to?"
"Okay, first, Toby is not my boyfriend."
Sarah rolls her eyes and smiles. "Sure, buddy."
"And, second, I'm going because I want to. Obviously I want to." But as he says it, something about it doesn't feel true. Like, yes, he does want to spend time with his brother, but he also needs to be closer to him. These past few months, it's felt like part of his heart is missing. But not only that, there's this sense of . . . guilt? He's not sure how to explain it, but it's like a cold, damp towel that has sat on his chest—a feeling that by not being closer to Daniel he's somehow letting the kid down as a brother. That he's somehow letting Dad down as a son.
Like he's letting everybody down.
"Well, then, it is sweet you want to spend time with your little . . . enano? That's your word for him, right?" Sarah says. "So what are the Diaz boys going to do?"
"We are going to find our mom."
Sarah is sipping her coffee as he says it, and she hacks and coughs and wheezes, so long that Sean looks around for someone who might know the Heimlich maneuver. "I'm sorry," she says, still clearing her throat, "did you say you're going to find your mom? The Karen Diaz? You hate her. Do you know how high I had to get you before you would say anything about Karen other than 'fuck her'?"
"It's Karen Reynolds, actually. And I think I know where she is, and I think I can make things right with her." It's not really that Sean thinks he can make things right, it's that he knows. He's already made amends with her. He doesn't see why he can't do it again. "Daniel's never met her. I'm sure he wonders about her. I thought this would be something nice I could do for him, help him get some closure."
"This is. Wow. This is unexpected. Is this part of your inexplicable Year of Personal Growth?" Sarah asks.
"I'm just trying to be a better person. For me and for the people I care about."
"Well, you're always full of surprises, Sean Diaz." His hand sits on the table, and suddenly Sarah sets hers on top of it. On reflex, he traces the lines of her fingers with his thumb the way he has hundreds of times.
They're staring at each other from across the table, and he notices her lips, remembers the way they felt soft on his. Remembers the way she felt when he held her close. The way her chest felt against his, as he set the laptop aside and kissed her when his chest hair was dyed blue.
"I'm sorry," Sarah says, suddenly pulling her hand away. Her voice shifts, suddenly, jarringly softer. "I don't think we should do this anymore."
"We shouldn't do what anymore?"
"I think we should take, like, a break or something."
"A break from what?" Sean asks, confused. "From drinking coffee?"
"No. From trying to be friends."
He blinks. "What?"
"I thought I could do it. I really did." Sarah wrings her hands anxiously. "But whenever we are together, I just feel the old pull of things. I want to reach out and hold your hand while we're walking together. When we hug, I notice all the extra space between us that shouldn't be there. I look into your eyes, and I think about how that's what I saw after we kissed. I don't think I can move on if we keep hanging out."
"I mean, I feel that too," Sean says, playing with the wrapper of the empty sugar packet. "But, I dunno, things with me and Toby are . . . well, we aren't boyfriends. And I don't know what is up with you and that guy Graham, but if we're still into each other . . . maybe we should get back together?"
"Absolutely not. Sean, you cut my heart out with an x-acto knife then ran it over with your car. Like, you put the car in forward then reverse, just backing over it repeatedly."
"Okay, getting back together is a bad idea."
"And then," Sarah continues, "it's like my heart got stuck under your car, so you drove through a field of broken glass and cactuses."
"I get the picture. You can stop."
"And then you dug it out from under the car with a shovel you used to scoop dog shit, poured salt on top of it, and lit it on—"
"Okay! I get the point. I was a dick when I broke up with you," he sighs. "I was just trying to say I still have feelings for you too."
"I know. I can see it in the way you look at me." She smiles, but her eyes are no longer shining through the steam of her coffee. "This sucks, you know? Because I really do think you're awesome, minus the whole breaking my heart thing."
"But we were friends before we were dating," Sean says. "Maybe we just need more time to get back to that. I don't see why we can't be friends again. This—the whole getting coffee, hanging out—it's been going well! We just have to try harder."
Sarah sets her hand on top of his again, but this time it doesn't feel like a girlfriend. It feels like someone consoling you. He remembers his grandmother doing this when he met her again in Beaver Creek, when she said she was sorry that his dad had died. "I really want us to be friends, but I don't think we can. I would love for us to just hit rewind, go back to how things used to be. But life doesn't work that way."
"Yeah, it can," Sean says quietly.
Sarah shakes her head. "Right now, I think us being 'just friends' is in the past. And we both need to move forward. And trying to bring that back . . . it's like making a shitty reboot of a good movie, you know?"
And Sean sits there as she gathers her things, feeling helpless. It's like being a little kid, and you're too small to stop your parents from moving you to someplace you don't want to be. Like waking up one morning when you're eight and someone you care about is no longer there, and you couldn't make them stay. He wants to tell her to stop.
But there's nothing he can say because he knows she's right.
Sure, he can travel through time. But there are just some things you can't go back to, no matter how hard you try. And if you do, you just make things worse.
Sarah stands up, coffee cup in hand and purse over her shoulder. The strand of blue hair falls onto her face—the same one he helped her dye a summer ago. "I hope your road trip with your brother goes well. And that whatever is out there, you find what you are looking for with your mom."
# # #
The thing with Sarah sucks, but Sean can't dwell on it because, holy shit, road trips are logistical nightmares.
First, he has to do double-shifts at Target to justify taking an entire week off. And, just because he has a break from school doesn't mean he has a break from schoolwork. He loses sleep trying to get on top of projects and still thinks he'll have a few things to do on the road. Though he has a grasp of most of his memories in this timeline, he has no idea how he has gotten through art school with his shitty-ass laptop running a bootlegged version of Windows. Then there's the whole trying to put samples together for Nickelodeon thing, and his anxiety medication doesn't fully stop the fluttery fight-or-flight feeling ever-present in his heart.
And what will they do about food?
Where do they sleep each night?
He can't afford even the sleaziest of motels more than a couple of times, so he buys the cheapest tent in his Target. He does more math than he has in years trying to figure out how to afford gas. And how does he make it all the way to Seattle, down to Arizona, and back to Savannah without having to drive two-days straight with no sleep?
When he and Daniel were on the run, he worried. A lot. But at points, it was sheer desperation trying to get through the next meal or the next night with no time to think about it. And if things got real bad, he could always just steal. It was almost easier to do this with no money rather than not-quite-enough money.
One night, Sean is at his drafting table, working on a storyboard, Facetiming his father, and stressing out about paying for gas when Dad says, "Why don't you take my car? It doesn't make sense for you to drive up here from Georgia. Your padre did a good job, but your car is not held together with magic."
"I can't ask you to do that," Sean says, grinding an eraser against his drawing, which isn't coming out right.
"I will have Juan give me a ride to work for the week. It will be a good bonding experience for us."
"I dunno." Sean blows the eraser dust, which scatters like heavy snowflakes. "I'd have to fly up, and I can't afford a plane ticket either."
"Sean, I will buy you a plane ticket."
"I can't ask you to do that either," Sean says. "It's too much money, and this was my idea. So I have to figure everything out, I made this a problem, and I can't let Daniel down, and . . . "
That fluttery, fight-or-flight feeling tingles in Sean's chest. It's like his heart is beating out of rhythm.
"Sean, look at me," Dad says. "Breathe. You don't have to do things all on your own. Buying you a plane ticket means I get to spend more time with my oldest son. You are not letting anyone down by letting me help you."
Sean tries to refuse again, but Dad won't let him, eventually wearing him down into saying yes. And Sean still feels guilty about it, like he's a goalie who lets the game-winning point slip by him only to be saved by the clock running out in time.
"Thank you," Sean says, redrawing lines on the storyboard.
"De nada," Dad says. "I appreciate how hard you are trying to be here for your brother."
"That's the goal," Sean says.
But after they hang up, he glances at the picture on his wall, the one he remembers from his twenty-first birthday. It's him at the bar with his Savannah friends, including Sarah, just before the two of them started dating.
Back when they could still be friends.
And he thinks about what Max said in Augusta. That maybe a C-minus life needs to be good enough. That maybe if he accepts that he and Daniel are not close, then maybe the universe won't punish him. There's no way she can know that. It's just an idea.
But it's an idea that feels true to him.
And, though he tries to write it off as his anxiety, he can't shake the feeling that this road trip, that his being stupid and selfish and going for everything, is going to blow up in his face. That it's going to put someone he loves in danger.