THE BUS TO LAMONT

I had a suitcase when I boarded that bus. The wheels were scratched and there were still luggage tags on it from my mother's trip to the Philippines. I was one of the first ones to board and gave myself a window seat, and you...well, you were the last. You apologized profusely to the bus driver, who waved you off like a flea, and your pupils darted around the bus until they landed on the seat next to mine. I don't know where you thought you were going, but your floppy, black hat was too summery for winter. I hated you for it. It kept flicking my head as yours bobbed up and down while you slept.

You pointed to the seat, still flustered from your tardiness, and asked, "Is anyone sitting here?" I shook my head, slightly disappointed because I thought I was going to luck out with a footrest. "I'm Winnie," you said, sticking your slender hand out. Your clarity was too bright for the morning. You were tea when I asked for coffee.

"Sutton," I said.

"You're going to Lamont?" you said, and I thought you were stupid for asking me. It wasn't as if we were at an airport. We were on the same bus with the same destination.

I nodded and asked you the same to be polite. You told me you were. "I'm going to open up a restaurant there. But it's not going to be like other restaurants. I'm not going to limit myself to one cuisine. I'm going to make all of my favorite foods."

I nodded and pretended I cared, which I didn't. "That's nice. Good luck with that."

You smiled brightly, as if I were the only one who approved of your farfetched dream. "Thanks! So why are you going to Lamont? Do you have family there?"

"No." I paused. I didn't have a proper answer for you. Could I just tell you that I wanted a change of inspiration? I thought you probably wouldn't even understand.

When I didn't reply, you nodded your head. "That's okay. You don't have to tell me. Sometimes reasons are meant to stay within your soul."

And that's when I knew I was dealing with a whack job.

The only thing I remember from that bus ride was you. I had a book with me, but concentrating on the words was difficult with your endless chatter. "If you decide to stay in Lamont—because you look like the type of girl who sees the world as her roadmap—then you should stop by my restaurant when it opens."

"Do you have a name for it yet?"

You half-smiled and shook your head. "I'll know it when I see it."

"Where's it at?"

Your small shoulders shrugged and I could tell you were somewhat embarrassed. "I don't know yet. I'll know it when I see it."

That was when I thought, This girl is delusional.

You always told me that you were a dreamer and that I was your dream catcher. You would say, "Sutton, thank you for keeping my dreams from falling down a blank abyss," and I would say, "Okay, Winnie, you need to sleep." And you would shuffle to the other side of the room and bury yourself in thin, cotton sheets.

"What do you like to do?" you asked, stretching your toes as far as they could reach below the seats in front of us.

"I like to paint," I said.

You bounced your head like it made all the sense in the world. "I can see it. Sutton, what do you paint?"

"Cities." It was broad, which was probably why you liked it so much. You liked to leave room for all of the possibilities and perspectives.

"That's beautiful. The only thing I can paint is barbecue sauce on meat." You laughed. "And even that's not beautiful."

"Cooking is an art. I can't do it," I admitted, laughing quietly.

I realized then that it wasn't all that painful to talk to you anymore because you sounded like an actual person rather than some quack with too many fortune cookies. But then you ruined it. "Cooking is ephemeral and painting is everlasting."

"But you can't eat paint. I mean, you can, but you might die."

"But you can always feast upon its colors with your eyes and drink it all in again and again. That's what I really admire."

"Okay, yeah, but if I were hungry and someone handed me a painting, I'd be annoyed."

"You can crave more than just food, you know."

"Yeah," I said. "I know."

The following half-minute was filled with the chug of the bus and the wind hurling itself at us, and then I asked you if you knew it was winter. You said that you did and asked me why I asked. I pointed to your hat and you laughed like it was a joke I was supposed to understand. "It's my lucky hat," you said.

"What makes it so lucky?"

"Circumstances. If I'm being honest, I think it's lucky by association."

You shouldn't have been able to pull it off like you did. If you hadn't worn it and just told me that your favorite hat was floppy and black, I would've pictured a washed-out bumblebee with a hat too big for her sun-swept head. But even in the winter on a bus too small for its personality, you managed to wear it like you always were able to.

"And I need all the luck I can get," you said.

"Why?"

You said in the daintiest whisper, almost like it was a secret between strangers, "It's my first time away from home. I'm not one to just up and leave, so this is new for me. Branching out and being more than just a line cook at a diner."

"I think that's great. I wish more people would pursue their dreams."

You hummed in agreement. "You look like you have a dream. What is it? Do you want to paint the cities?"

"I don't know," I said. "I've never been one for stability—"

"Don't call it stability if it's passion." I asked you to explain because I had no idea what you were saying. The vague tarot reader was seeping back, but I learned later that it never really went away. "You have stability in what you do. You paint and you travel, correct?"

Somehow you knew me and knew how I worked. It freaked me out because I didn't tell you anything other than that I painted cities. Quite honestly, I felt insulted as I always did. There are those who tell you that they would love to uproot their lives to travel, but they don't mean it. They still want something to come back to, somewhere to call home. They don't want to have a resume full of high school jobs when they're twenty.

But then again, neither did I.

Lamont was never supposed to be as permanent as it was. I was only supposed to be there for a few days before exploring something bigger, somewhere I could get lost in.

By the time the bus stopped for the third time, we were already friends. I knew your middle name and you knew mine. You thought of them as built-in aliases, and I reminded you that your middle name was in database somewhere. You cringed and said that databases could never replace intimacy. I agreed.

"How do you do it?" you asked me. "How do you just leave? Do you ever look behind and wonder what you're missing?"

"Sometimes," I said, "but you're always going to miss something. You just have to choose what you want to be present for."

This delighted you and you asked how long I would be in Lamont, if I would get a job there and maybe a place to stay. I shook my head and told you the truth. "Not super long. I'll probably just crash at a bed and breakfast and use what savings I have left until I can get another job." I looked up and asked you, "What about you? Why Lamont?"

There was a breathy laugh and your lips folded into your mouth. "To tell you the truth, Sutton, I don't know. I think it was the cheapest train ticket to a place I'd never heard of. I thought to myself, if I'm really going to do this, then I have to start with whatever life hands me, and it handed me Lamont."

"Great," I said. "Now we both have no idea what this city is like."

"You can't go wrong with a name like Lamont. It's very romantic."

I realized that you were alone. You didn't seem like the type of person who could go without companionship. "You're alone."

"As are you."

"Did you leave anyone behind?"

"You mean besides the past?" I gave you a look and you sighed. "Alexander. I ghosted him not so long ago. We were two wings to a dove. Alexander, the left, and Winnie, the right."

"And then what happened?"

"We fell," you said. "We could've floated all our lives and have it be okay, but why float when you know you can fly?"

"I'm going to pretend I understood that. I'm sorry, Winnie. Breakups suck."

"Who did you leave behind?"

"Who said I had anyone to leave?"

"You said that breakups suck. How would you know if you've never left anyone?"

"Who said that I was the one to leave?"

And you hugged me and I patted your back awkwardly because I had only known you for not even a day. You needed that more than I did, and I accepted that because that's what friends do.

When we reached Lamont the next day, you handed me a slip of paper with your phone number on it. "If you ever need anything." I watched as you walked away with three suitcases, the snow falling onto your black, floppy hat.

I went to Treasures, an antique shop in front of the bus stop, and asked where the nearest hotel was. "No hotels," the women at the counter said. "But there's a bed and breakfast down the street. Ask for the chicken and waffles. You won't regret it."

I walked until I came to a great, bright-blue house with a sign posted in the garden reading saravilla – bed and breakfast. The path and the garden leading up to the front door was powdered white like it was the first snowfall. A man came out to carry my luggage up the steps. I booked the smallest room they had and wheeled my suitcase up the stairs when I insisted that Michael didn't need to carry it again. I couldn't afford tips.

The room was quaint and clean. There was a queen-sized bed with a brass bedframe pushed up against the floral-clad wall, and there were lamps almost everywhere. There was one on the bedside table, one overhead, and a couple on the wall for good measure. The curtains, which were red and draped along the floor like a gown, were half-drawn and allowed an armchair to peek out. I placed my clothes in chestnut drawers and slid my suitcase under the bed. And then I called you to ask where you were staying.

"I haven't found an apartment yet," you said. "But I will. It can't be that difficult to find a place in a town like Lamont."

"Are you just wandering around looking for for lease signs? You know the Internet exists, right? And ads?"

"But that would be using databases to build intimacy."

I found myself offering you my room. "Just until you can find a place or until I run out of money."

"Really?"

I gave you the address and you showed up with three bags and your floppy hat. You told the receptionist my name and you turned around and I was there. "Let me take those," I said, leaving you with the smallest one to carry.

"I've never been to a bed and breakfast," you marveled, drinking it all in and eating it all up. "This is so cozy."

You upturned everything I had ever learned. I didn't know who you were, yet here I was, sharing something I had never shared before. My present. The unoccupied drawers were yours. "Sutton," you said, "I'm so pleased to be sharing Lamont with you."

And on a perfect day when you're content with the world, you smile and nod and breathe in the air and feel the stillness around you. That perfect day lived in that moment.

After a hot lunch of tomato soup, I went with you to look for vacant storefronts. "We'd be better off looking at ads," I said. "I know you don't like it, but it's so convenient."

"I'd be robbing myself of the moment."

"What moment?"

"The moment where I tell myself that this is it. This is what I left everything for."

We didn't go to the real estate's office until a week later, after we had signed for our apartment. When I cosigned with you, there was a war in my head, shooting me, telling me that Lamont was not the place for this. I didn't listen because, well, I was happy. The apartment only had one bedroom, but we were already used to sharing a room. When we stepped through those doors, I could already see the wheels turning. You had ambitious plans for redecorating it, to make it your own, but I warned you that it wasn't a good idea because all of it was temporary. You told me you wanted a house with dark-blue shutters and a garden fenced with stones and a yellow kitchen with white cabinets and purple flowers. I told you that I wanted a bed and running water, and you said that this place was perfect for me.

I had never seen you happier than when we hung up that first banner above the storefront. Not when that critic called your restaurant "culinary simplistic with an added touch of brilliance" or when you opened the door to your house with dark-blue shutters and a garden fenced with stones and a yellow kitchen with white cabinets and purple flowers or even when you told me that Christopher has proposed. We stepped back and looked at the red banner spelling Winnie's out in yellow letters. You hugged me and danced into Treasures and found someone to take our picture. That was the very first picture you hung up, right above our table.

"Sutton," you told me, "I want Winnie's to be your museum."

I painted the bus stop for your grand opening. When I showed you, you burst into tears and told me that the bus stop was our beginning. The pads of your fingers swam across the canvas, climbing and dipping between brushstrokes. "I am in awe," you said.

You said that every single time I painted Lamont, telling me that I had a strikingly vivid perspective. You never failed to fluster me. "Stop," I said. "It was nothing."

But you always disagreed. "If it was nothing, then why paint it?"

I grew used to your profound ways of thinking, found them almost endearing. You didn't get on my nerves anymore when you opened your mouth, so that was something. You were naïve in ways I didn't understand. You would weep at experiences you'd already had, curl up into tulip buds when the lights went off, and snuggle up beside me when the shadows visited. The heater was barely working when I told you about Levi. You had a flashlight to our faces and trembled more than I did before going off on a frenzy and baking cookies at two in the morning. One hand was on your hip and the other mixing the dough when you told me that men were lost souls without a purpose. I translated it. "So men are stupid?"

"Not stupid, Sutton. Lost."

"I'm going to go with men are stupid." I laughed and you wept into the bowl.

You always made cookies when you were distressed. That's how I knew to bring you grated Parmesan and petals. Our apartment was filled with cookies and cheese and wilted petals after you let Peter go after Winnie's almost went under. "I did not mean to create a void," you said. "I just didn't know what to do."

And I handed you tissue after tissue and watched as you blew your nose like an elephant. I heard the elephant trumpeting every so often. I heard it when I told you that my time in Lamont was running short.

You met me at the bus stop and I told you that I'd come home soon.