Chapter Text
It ain’t over ‘til we say it’s over, and I say: it’s not over! If you’re getting this message, it means you are formally invited to come hang out at Camp Renner in Lake Tahoe from April 28th to whenever the fuck you wanna go home as we celebrate 8+ years and one hell of a run. Directions will be sent upon request. Bring a bathing suit, a bottle of something strong and if you’re feelin particularly crazy, your kids.
Assemble, avengers. (And for the love of fuck, do NOT TELL PEOPLE THAT ARE NOT INVITED I CAN ONLY DEAL WITH SO MANY OF YOU HELLIONS)
Beautiful is a relative term, but I’ve always found something beautiful to LA. Born and bred in New York City meant that I would never get rid of the city lights and continual sound of traffic that was in my bloodstream. LA, in all of its superficial and gilded glory, is still beautiful to me. I think of an eternal summer whenever I come to LA; I think of sunsets and palm trees and an easier breeze ruffling through my hair. I think of forced smiles and the ones that came naturally, I think of camera flashes blinding me and I think of nights where the moon was swollen in the sky over an otherwise empty space that stretched out in front of me. There’s something about the frequency I switch to whenever I’m in LA that I continue to find alluring and that I chase after whenever I’m here. LA is a temporary sort of place and more often than not, I’m a temporary kind of woman.
Nothing lasts forever. I know this, and I do well to remember it. I knew nearly ten years ago when I first came aboard on the S.S. Marvel that someday it would come to an end because all things do. I knew the same about my marriages, my time in different places, the days when I could throw my daughter onto my hip and not feel like I was winded ten steps in. Nothing lasts forever, everything comes to an end, and bringing the Avengers chapter of my life to its close stung just as much as everything else did when it ended. Endings, though they be inevitable, hurt like a bitch. I know this, yet it always surprises me.
The release of Endgame drained me more than any other movie I’ve ever put out – the magnitude at which Endgame stood made every other project I’ve taken on pale in comparison. I cried in hotel rooms ‘round the world, and not just because I missed my daughter or because I’d let an otherwise unidentified Chris get too much tequila in my system and then shook me loose to go watch Gone with the Wind. This time, I cried because all of it was the last time for the foreseeable future, if not for forever. The last time we would all be together with some real purpose and excuse to it. I think that it’s simply human nature, tangling yourself in your emotions whenever something comes to a close because you so desperately want for it to stick around for just another day even though time only moves forward.
Apparently, all my tears of mourning were premature. I woke up the day of the Endgame premiere to a text in the group chat from none other than Jeremy Renner kindly dictating how I’d be spending the next week. The already existing plans I had were more than content to shove themselves into a back drawer for the time being; Rose was with her father, the only thing I intended to do until I was explicitly needed by someone was to sit on my patio with a glass of Pinot Noir and watch the sky, revel in the beauty of California until New York started calling, and all of that went up in smoke when next to the thought of spending time with the people I’ve already started to miss despite only being on Day One of The End.
LA to Lake Tahoe is roughly eight hours, and buying a flight so quickly on a whim sounds like it requires effort. For the time being, I am on a short-lived, retirement-esque vacation, and exerting effort isn’t on the to do list. Reaching out to Jeremy for those directions seemed much lazier, so I did, and the conversation that was held bore even more fruitful results.
“Just ride with me,” he’d propositioned before I had the chance to ask for the address to punch in on Google Maps.
“Ride with you? For eight hours? No thank you; you drive like you’re auditioning for the Fast and Furious. My idea of a vacation does not include motion sickness.”
I could hear the eye roll slip through the speaker. “First of all, Scar, I love ‘ya, but you’re a pussy. You take some Dramamine and you get over it.” The transition between sentences was lost to me as I scoffed. “Secondly, I never said I was gonna be behind the wheel. I brought the bus out here to let my guy work on it a little and now we’ve gotta haul it back to Nevada since parking down here is a bitch, so he’s driving it back while I lounge on the couch and take a nice eight-hour nap. I am inviting you to hitch a ride with me – I’ve already extended the offer to two of the others, so it’s not a big deal.”
“Oh, I come in third place now?”
“We never know what your plans are. I had all but marked you as absent on Camp Renner’s attendance.”
That had stung a little. Was I really that much of an absent presence in the lives of my costars, my friends? I didn’t think me missing a few of the outings to the Underworld was that big an issue – I worked ‘round the clock, I all but raised Rose independently on the weeks I got her, and in the rare free moments, I burrowed under a blanket and prayed for sleep to find me. We weren’t young and spry anymore. We had children, responsibilities, lives. I was simply living mine and losing track of all the days that flew underneath my nose. “Well, consider me there,” I’d said in response, puffing up my chest even if he couldn’t see. “And on that bus to Nevada.”
There was once a time where I would have crossed the ocean on foot for Jeremy Renner. Things haven’t changed much.
By the laws of science or direction or whatever, the sunsets in LA are utterly breathtaking, but I’d go so far as to argue that the sunrises are equally beautiful. I spend my morning out on the patio in the back of my house with a cup of coffee watching the sun come up on a new day, a day that marks the definitive end of a chapter and the beginning of whatever comes next. Endgame has officially been out for a complete day, which subjectively feels as though an entire lifetime has passed – it’s what makes Jeremy’s little distraction of a road trip and vacation so irresistible. It gives me a moment to catch my breath and find my footing now that such a large chunk of my life has met its maker.
(Safe to say that LA also makes me a sap: all of the worst decisions I’ve made originated in the city of angels, where the sunshine seeps into my brain, heightening my emotions tenfold and leaving me completely compromised. It’s why I keep my resident status in New York. At least when I’m there my senses are about me and I’m not looking at everything with a pair of rose-gold glasses on.)
I’ve spent most of April living out of a suitcase, so there isn’t much to pack. I throw on something old and remotely comfortable that’s lingering near the bottom and return back to my patio to bide the time, let the late April morning breeze encompass me and the sun warm up my bare feet. My phone starts ringing somewhere close to noon, a press picture of Jeremy from a few weeks ago where he’s dramatically posing in a tangled web of streamers that we’d both found hysterical lighting up the screen of my phone. “Hello,” I sing into the receiver as I cradle the phone between my ear and shoulder.
Jeremy cuts right to the chase. “Can you please buzz me in?”
“Buzz you in?” I repeat.
“Yes. I am sitting in front of your house and there is a gigantic ass gate in front of it.”
“Wow, nothing gets past those eyes of yours, Renner.”
“C’mon, Scar. Buzz me in.”
“Is no one sitting out there watching the door?”
“There is, but I’m pretty sure me promising that I am indeed Jeremy Renner, fellow costar and acquaintance isn’t going to get me where I need to go.”
“He takes signed headshots as bribes.”
“Buzz me in.” The line goes dead before he can hear the low rumbling of laughter stirring in my throat.
I breeze through the house to make sure everything’s turned off, slinging my duffel onto my shoulder and pulling my suitcase along behind me on my trek out the door. The tiny panel on the foyer wall is blinking red, insinuating a request from someone wanting on the property. Renner. I punch in the code to open the gate and flip the lights in the foyer off.
Jeremy comes rolling into my driveway right as the front door comes to a close behind me, his Porsche gliding onto its brakes and the smug smirk on his face visible even through the tinted windshield. “Mornin’, hot sauce,” he greets, pulling his hands out of the pockets of his leather jacket and letting them fall by his sides.
“Hiya, handsome.” I skip down the last few stairs, my suitcase clunkily following behind me. His smile lines deepen as he meets me halfway, arms open for the hug that I happily walk right into.
It’s a familiar hug, a safe hug, and the two of us let time stand still for a moment wrapped up there in one another’s arms. My chin comes down to rest on his shoulder, hands gripping tight to him as he nestles his face down into the small space in the crook of my neck. “Missed ‘ya,” he mumbles softly after I’ve had enough time to start losing myself in the scent of his soap and laundry detergent.
“You saw me two days ago,” I point out.
“Still missed ‘ya.” He pulls away from me slightly, one of his hands still hovering somewhere over my lower back. “Been catching up on your beauty sleep?”
“Truthfully, I think I slept more on the planes.”
Jeremy’s hand finally leaves my waist, reaching around me to grab my rolling suitcase. “Well, that makes one of us.”
“Aw, are you bitter?” I tease him, trailing behind him to where he’s got the trunk popped open.
“What, that we spent the majority of April on a plane? Little bit, but it comes with the territory.” He pauses as he lets the handle on my suitcase fall with a noisy clank. “Came.”
I watch him bend down to grab my suitcase, old habits dying hard and unable to bite my tongue. “Careful,” I warn him. “Don’t blow your back out.”
Whatever brief tension that blew over us leaves just as quickly with my comment, Jeremy’s eyes shooting up to give me the look of death. “Will you ever stop with the whole Old Man Renner thing?” he grumbles, swiftly picking up my luggage and hoisting it into the trunk.
He holds his hand out for the duffel, and I pass it off with the most winning smile I have in my arsenal. “If it hasn’t stopped by now, I’m afraid it never will.”
Both of his hands reach up and slam the trunk door back down. “Splendid.”
“So, what’s the game plan?” I ask as I shuffle back towards the passenger side of the car. “This is a pretty car, but it’s not the luxury tour bus I was promised.”
Even underneath his quintessential dad-baseball cap he’s got on, I can see him roll his eyes. “Figured this would be a hell of a lot easier to back out of your driveway – you seem pretty fond of all your trees.” I give him a nod of affirmation, the door handle giving way under the tug of my hand and allowing me to slip inside the Porsche. “We go back to my place, pick up the bus, and then we pick up the other hoodlums. And then it’s just a straight shot to Nevada.”
“How many other hoodlums are we talking?” Jeremy closes the driver door behind him, fishing the keys from the pocket of his jacket and jamming them into the ignition.
He shrugs. “Just me, you, and two of the others.” He turns the keys in the ignition, engine purring to life and the sounds of an AC/DC song that he was likely listening to when he got here quietly picking up where it left off. “I paid a pretty penny for my tour bus, I’d like to keep her in one piece.”
“So a certified road trip, then,” I finish. Jeremy just looks over at me, lips spreading into a wry smile as his wrist fluidly snaps the gear shift into reverse.
“You got it.”
We don’t talk much on the drive to Jeremy’s, instead rolling the windows all the way down and letting the wind rush in around us. I feel the bassline of the music running up from my feet straight into my teeth, sun warm on my arm every time it peers around the corners of the buildings and trees we pass. Coexisting next to Jeremy has never been complicated; if anything, it may as well be embedded somewhere in my genetic code considering how natural it feels. I think it’s why we’re constantly gravitating towards each other. There’s nowhere else we need to be if we’re beside one another. At one point his right hand drifts over onto the console, resting there casually with his fingers dangling down on the side as a quiet invitation for me to tangle them around my own. He squeezes my hand when I do – be it confirmation, reassurance, or just because, it warms up even the coldest parts of me and melts me farther back into the seat.
It’s about a half-hour drive from my place in Los Feliz to Jeremy’s in Hollywood Hills, the change of scenery in what’s only a five-mile drive somewhat jarring. Jeremy hates the city so he opts to practically live in the jungle, all of the pines and bamboo shrouding the Nest in vegetation and making it impossible to see the next-door neighbors down the hill. He and I differ on having a view of downtown anywhere, but I understand why he keeps things like this. It feels like we’ve already put LA long in our dust and are completely alone for miles, tucked away in a secluded corner of the world where nothing else can touch us. Breathing seems like it’s easier here.
Sure enough, his bus sits in the middle of his driveway waiting for departure just as insinuated. “We won’t be here too long,” he tells me as he swings the Porsche past the bus and pulls up into the garage to park. “Just gotta get my shit together and then we’re outta here to go get the others.”
“Yeah, remind me: why are we picking up the others again?” I ask, the car coming to a stop and Jeremy twisting the keys out from their ignition.
“They’re stops on the way, said I didn’t mind. You, on the other hand, were very much out of the way.”
My lips curl up into a soft smile. “I do know how to drive, y’know. I could’ve just met you here instead.”
“Yeah, well,” he mumbles sheepishly as he pushes his door open. “I don’t mind going out of my way for you.”
We come up through the garage into the living room where Jeremy whirls on ahead of me to god knows where, leaving me in my slower pace. I’ve only been the Nest one other time in my life and it’s rather hard to forget in all of its awe-inducing glory. Jeremy keeps his house looking something like a mausoleum; everything has its place and should something leave its place, his teeth are set on edge. The only thing about it that shows sign of life here are the scattered toys shoved under the coffee table or strewn about the couch that belong to Ava. That, and the way sunlight scatters through the trees and pours into the windows, and it feels like his interpretation of home.
I trail around to the bar, taking note of the gold-rimmed photo frame with all of his house rules as my fingers traipse over the surface of the bar. Do not fuck with Ava. No social media. No photos. No glass by the pool. Nothing in JR’s butt. It cracks a smile onto my face. We might not be the same people we were when our friendship first started, but some things never change, and those are the things that I hold onto tightest when I start feeling the world spinning.
“You hungry?” Jeremy’s voice tears me away from my train of thought. I turn my head to see him taking the stairs two at a time, his own duffel bag slung haphazardly over his shoulder. “I’ve got some leftover shrimp scampi that’s gonna go bad if I don’t eat it now.”
I pull myself up onto one of the barstools, letting my legs dangle as my eyes follow him across the room. “I’d never say no to pasta.”
He drops his duffel down onto the couch on his trek into the kitchen, disappearing from sight momentarily. My eyes wander around the room, and I spin back around to take a better look out his floor-to-ceiling windows that I know, should I press the right button, would lift up like a garage door and give me full rein of his backyard. Real-estate has always been one of his fortes; he once told me how he loved taking something and pulling all of its concealed beauty front and center. Everything sparkles, he’d said. Just gotta know how best to angle the light.
Jeremy returns a few moments later, two forks balanced between his teeth with a giant takeout box in one hand and two Stellas gripped tightly in the other. He drops them once he gets within range of the bar, taking the forks out of his mouth and passing me one as I reach for one of the bottles. When he pulls out the barstool next to mine to sit down, he’s treated to the sight of a stuffed fox sitting on the stool. “I swear,” he sighs as he picks up the fox and throws it over his head, letting it land somewhere on the carpet near the couch. “Ava’s got more shit than I know what to do with.”
“You are preaching to the choir,” I reassure, Jeremy hopping up onto the seat and opening up the takeout container. “Rose won’t let me throw away anything of hers, even if it’s falling apart and only held together by a single, fraying thread. I’m one step shy of seeing if TLC wants to do a Hoarders special on a four-year-old.”
That elicits a chuckle out of him. “That’d be a good one.” He pushes the container a little closer to me, invitation to stab my fork straight through the middle and start twirling. “She in France with Dauriac?” he asks after a small pause. His voice lowers, much gruffer than before, meaning that something about that question is awkward for him to ask. I don’t know why – he, of all people, knows that I’m not one to hide shit, especially when it’s rather cut and dry.
Plus, Jeremy Renner is shit when it comes to keeping things from me. I know he never really liked Romain, only did his best to pour it on thick because he thought it was what would make me happy and as my best friend, he’s only ever been in the business of making sure that I’m happy.
“Yep,” I answer plaintively. “I think she’s with Romain’s mom this week?” One of my shoulders folds in a shrug as I take a bite, washing it down with the Stella. “Dunno. Rose doesn’t like me calling and cramping her style.” Jeremy just nods in understanding, the tines of his fork spearing through a shrimp. “Is Ava down the road with Sonni?”
“Canada, but yeah. Talked to ‘em last night.” Unlike myself, speaking about his ex is not done blasély. He and Sonni had a nasty divorce that ripped into him, and even when all was done and settled and given the thin smile of cordiality, he didn’t like to dwell on it. In the same vein of Jeremy only liking Romain to save face, I was never Sonni’s number one fan and was more than happy once she was out of the picture. I remember the toll that it took on him back when we were in the middle of Ultron and I can’t bring myself to forgive her for what she did to him in the way he’s seemed to move on from it. He hadn’t been himself at all, and sometimes I swear he’ll always be a few degrees off from the way it fucked with his head. Just like having Ava had shifted the axis of his world, going to war with somebody that I think he suspected he’d be with forever kept tilting him even further. Not that I’m the type to psychoanalyze (that requires too much effort for the vacation I’m supposed to be on), but it seems like the aftermath of it all still has its fangs embedded in him and talking about it isn’t really a road we should go down.
It stares back at me from the picture frame sitting to my left. Do not fuck with Ava. That little girl re-centered his entire universe. Being parents has changed us more than even we probably realize; the days when we were fucking around as we ran around a town that was not our own, wrestling in Evans’ living room floor and doing shots right before a bad karaoke session, bar-hopping after premieres and spending the weekends watching shitty Westerns, they are all long gone. Sure, we still laugh and joke, have our cake and eat it too, but now we can feel the rubber-band stretching out and all of our responsibilities waiting to smack us back in the face. We wait for it and we invite it, because that’s what gives us a place and a purpose in this world. We’re older. We’ve traveled around the sun a few times and it’s given us a few more wrinkles around our eyes, a few more miles on our record, and a few more reasons that any moments like these are those to be treasured and handled with care.
We eat in relative silence, Jeremy pushing the shrimp over towards my side of the container after he’s had his fill and me hitting the bottom of my bottle fairly quickly. Once I can’t stomach any more and Jeremy’s circling the bottom of his own beer, he disappears back into the kitchen long enough to get rid of our trash and we’re back out the door.
I get my things from the trunk of his Porsche, one of Jeremy’s arms outstretched to take one of my bags off my hands. “Yo! Miller!” he yells down the expanse of driveway as we walk out of the garage. “You ready to pull out?”
Jeremy’s driver grins like the devil, visible even from a couple of yards out. “Haven’t heard that one since my ex-wife,” he jokes, triggering Jeremy’s ridiculous laugh that makes him sound as though he might break into a coughing fit at any second. “But yeah, we’re good to go whenever.”
“C’mon, Scar,” Jeremy says as he reaches for my other bag to pass off to Miller. “Our chariot awaits.”
He might say Ava takes the cake, but Jeremy’s the one that’s got more toys than I think even he knows what to do with. The litany of motorcycles and cars and tour buses and things with motors that he has in his name astounds me. It all comes from a place of being able to have the things he never had as a kid and rightfully deserves now that he’s got the means to have it; I still can recall the first designer handbag that I purchased for myself when I had enough money in my bank account. It wasn’t because I needed it, it was because I wanted it, and the mantra of treating yourself had never felt more prevalent. I’d worked my ass off and I deserved some tangible reward for that. His bus is just that on a much larger scale with wheels.
Like every time we’re crossed with a staircase, Jeremy stops and holds his arm out for me to take. I roll my eyes as I scoff good-naturedly, accepting the offer anyways.
I’ve been on the bus a couple of times before since Jeremy no longer takes studio-issued trailers and brings the bus in as substitute. It feels like a middle ground between the Nest and what I suspect will be the likes of Camp Renner. There’s always the smell of coffee coming from the full kitchen even when he doesn’t have the espresso machine plugged in, couches draped in thick cashmere blankets that I distinctly remember triumphing over Hemsworth in six rounds of rochambeau for during a lull in filming that we’d designated as siesta time, tinted windows that block the outside world out while inviting the sunlight in. Of course, there are significantly fewer signs of inhabitance on the bus now – no empty water bottles littering the counter, no random stuffed animals peeking out from underneath the skirt of the couch, the overhead radio that never seemed to be off now silent.
I let myself drop down onto the couch, kicking my sneakers off and folding my legs up underneath me while Jeremy settles down next to me. “So, which deviant are we picking up first?”
“Liz,” he answers, bringing his foot up to rest on the opposite knee and the arm closest to me stretching out along the back of the couch. “She’s the closest of the two.”
I turn my head so I’m facing him, bewilderment splashed over my features. “She’s literally five minutes down the road.”
His free hand lifts in a half-hearted shrug. “Parking is a bitch here. Besides,” he continues, the arm resting behind my head drawing a little closer to encompass me. “I didn’t make you drive. I happen to be a gentleman.”
I nod teasingly. “Of course.”
“Why else would I have let you wipe the floor with my remains for nearly ten years?”
My eyes widen as the choked laugh falls from my throat involuntarily. “Excuse me, let? Tying your own damn shoe did you in several times if I recall correctly, and I’m sure that your fingerprints will forever be embedded in my arm’s deep tissue from where you did your best to put up a fight. There was no let about it, I kicked your ass fair and square.”
“TSA could probably tell which prints belonged to me and which ones were result of the infamous fighting match between you and Hemsworth.”
“Damn straight.”
The memory leaves a fond smile lingering over my lips as I nestle back farther into the couch, Jeremy’s bare arm warm against the back of my neck. “You gonna miss it?” I say softly, hands wrapping around one of my knees.
His answer is barely a murmur. “Already do.”
Lizzie lives down in one of the nearby canyons, barely a two mile trek. She’s waiting out in her driveway, bag sitting on the tops of her feet and hand shielding her sunglasses-clad eyes to catch a glimpse of us when we come creeping around the mountain. I stay on the bus while Jeremy gets out to help her load her stuff. I can’t help myself but to watch from the window of the bus as Lizzie nearly trips over her bag in the rush to meet Jeremy in the same hug he’d greeted me with earlier, propelling herself onto the balls of her feet and slinging her arms around his neck. The two of them are close in the same way that Evans and I are; there’s bonding in doing multiple films together, even more bonding when you’re putting your life in their hands as you go eighty miles an hour down a vertical drop or you’re relying on them to make you smile whilst trying to stave off a divorce with someone who doesn’t see reason. It’s safe to say that Lizzie held the keys to Jeremy’s sanity while we were trekking through Ultron. In return, he’s taken on the big brother role in stride.
They stay interlocked for a moment before she retreats and picks her bag off of the sidewalk, passing it off to him so he can stow it under the bus. A few moments later, I hear Miller open up the doors to the bus and footsteps follow right after.
Lizzie peeks around the divider as she pushes her aviators up onto her head, breaking out in a smile when she sees me. I’m like Jeremy in a lot of senses, one of them being that Lizzie was also the keyholder to my sanity as we trekked through Ultron. The severe drought of estrogen on set had grown unbearable (Cobie never stayed as long as I needed for her to) and having Lizzie around was roughly the equivalent of Jesus Christ descending from heaven. I was happy to have her then and I’m even happier to have her as one of my dearest friends now that all is said and done. “Babe!” she draws out delightedly, all but diving onto the couch. “Jeremy didn’t say you were coming.”
I have to suppress the urge to frown. “Have I really gotten that flaky?”
“You’re a single, working momma who sleeps with one eye open if you bother to sleep at all. I don’t call that flaky, I call it having a life.”
“Well, the life is on pause for the time being,” I finish, my arms snaking around Lizzie’s shoulders and drawing her in close.
“Good,” she answers, locking both her hands around the back of my waist. “I miss you even though you’re sitting right next to me.”
“Ladies, there’s a bed in the back if you want to continue the love-fest,” Jeremy informs us as signal of his return, looking down at the both of us with a crooked smile.
Lizzie unwraps one of her arms to swat dismissively at him. “Shut up, Renner.”
When Jeremy looks at me to see what my stance is on the subject, one of my eyebrows arches in contest. “You heard the woman.”
The other stop on our way out to Camp Renner is to pick up the other stowaway, one Christopher Evans who happens to be staying at some hotel in West Hollywood. It is infinitely more complicated than picking up Lizzie. For starters, maneuvering a tour bus down any street that’s off Sunset Strip is asking to defy the way of the natural universe. There is also no feasible place to pick him up near his hotel because parking a tour bus on the side of the road is begging for disaster and Chris doesn’t have security with him, so walking down the street is a hard negative. We have to Google Maps the business entrance to his hotel, Lizzie calling him and telling him that we’re doing this pick-up Oceans Eleven style lest we hold up traffic and get the cops involved, or worse, the paparazzi.
Jeremy and Lizzie agree that it would be rather entertaining to see Chris try and hop onto the bus while we roll very slowly on the brakes to keep from stopping, but I, being a fantastic friend and the voice of reason, shut down the idea and tell them that all that awaits us down that road is a trip to the emergency room.
Miller puts three minutes on the clock to get Chris on the bus and us out of the business loading dock before we inevitably cause a scene. Nothing about Jeremy’s tour bus is subtle. “We’re out front,” Lizzie barks into the receiver of her phone, perched up on the couch and looking out the window for any sign of him. “Double time, Cap.”
“Sheesh, Olsen,” comes Chris’s voice from the speaker. “I’m on vacation, and vacations mean no running.”
“Renner says that you’ll be hitchhiking to Nevada if you don’t pick up the pace.”
“Tell Renner he can kiss my ass.”
“When hell opens their ice rink!” Jeremy yells.
From the window, I spot Chris walking out of the revolving door, donning his staple sunglasses and ballcap with the phone to his ear. Lizzie begins waving in the window, even though the chances of him actually seeing it are slim. “Black bus at twelve o’clock,” she instructs.
His head lifts slightly, stopping in his tracks. “Nah shit.”
Miller is outside to grab his luggage, Chris ending the call with Lizzie as he boards the bus. “Ever thought of being a drill sergeant, Lizzo?” he says, making his grand entrance. “Now that you’ve got free time, you should really make money off your real talent: bossing people around.”
“Somebody’s got to keep your asses in shape,” Lizzie mutters as she falls back down onto the seat, legs twisted beneath her.
“Ah, not anymore,” Chris sings. “I am off the clock, off the diet, and once we’re outta this zipcode, off the fuckin’ grid.” He glances over at Jeremy as their hands collide in the universal male greeting handshake. “Do you have service up in Lake Tahoe?”
Jeremy grins. “You have to hike for half a bar, and that’s on a good day.”
“Music to my ears.”
“Uh, yeah, speaking of music,” Jeremy transitions, spinning around in the seat he has since retired to. “Miller, can we get the radio back here?”
Miller, who has just started clomping up the stairs, shoots a glare Jeremy’s way on his way back to the driver’s seat. “You wanna come get this fuckin' thing turned outta here and across three lanes?” he suggests, hooking his thumb in the direction of the wheel.
“On second thought, my legs are functioning just fine to get up and do it myself.”
Miller makes us all sit down and shut up while he gets the bus back on the road, citing that it takes complete silence, finesse, and a dash of prayer to the traffic gods. Lizzie and I split off to the same couch, tugging one of the blankets down over us while I indulge her in all the recent pictures of my daughter that she’s since missed out on while Chris and Jeremy figure out how to not distract Miller while finding the appropriate radio station to meet their needs. Occasionally, I’ll glance away from the video of Rose that Lizzie is fully engrossed in to see what the boys are doing. Jeremy catches my sights at one point and he winks at me – it’s a subtle gesture that holds absolutely no sub-context of any kind, but I still find the warmth seeping into my cheeks and my lips curling into a smile.
Once we’re on I-5, Miller is less on edge and the boys are free to turn up the classic rock station as loud as they want. Lizzie and I snuggle together up underneath the blanket while Chris tells some incredibly animated story about the last day of his life that involves a room service guy, tears, and partial nudity. For some people, a road trip would entail stopping every couple of hours at a tourist trap, some unfortunate fate befalling them like running out of gas or getting lost or losing someone at a sketchy gas station, and finally arriving at their destination only to find that it was the journey that had meant everything or some other symbolic shit. For us, it’s just as the name would suggest: a trip via the road. Chris, Jeremy and I have all been left drained by the magnitude of press, Lizzie’s emotions are sitting under a very fragile veneer and threaten to trigger my own once it breaks, and we all just want a minute to breathe air that is not of the plane variety and appreciate one another’s company. Shenanigans can wait until tomorrow when we’re joined by the others.
“Who all is coming, anyways?” Chris asks at one point. “Not that you three aren’t a blast or anything.”
Jeremy begins to prattle off names from the top of his memory, counting them on his fingers while he stares at the ceiling in hopes it will have the answer. “Us four, Downey, Rudd, Hemsworth, Ruffalo, Karen, Brie, maybe Mackie? I know Danai couldn’t, Cheadle said he was up in the air about it and if he decided to come, I’d know when I saw his ass on the doorstep. Tried inviting Sebastian but his number’s out of service, so there’s that.”
“Out of service?” Lizzie repeats, her eyebrows furrowing together. Her hand juts out from the blanket, motioning at him. “Gimme your phone. I’d bet one of those gas station soft pretzels that you have it typed in wrong.”
Jeremy pulls his phone from the pocket inside his leather jacket, throwing it clean across the aisle of the bus. Lizzie leans forward, intercepting the phone and cradling it down in her lap before it has the chance to knock me square between the eyes. “Password?”
“Ava’s birthday.”
“Anybody bringing their kids?” Chris continues with his questionnaire. It’s my turn to look in their direction with a puzzled look on my face, Chris returning it with an exasperated expression. “I gotta know if this is family friendly or if I’m allowed to drop a few F-bombs.”
Jeremy shrugs. “I have no fuckin’ clue. Scar and I obviously don’t have our girls so you’re clear for cursing at least until tomorrow.”
Lizzie makes a strangled sort of noise, one of her hands shooting up in victory. “It’s 3046, not 4046.” She stares Jeremy down across the way, her smirk dripping in complacency. “I believe you owe me a soft pretzel.”
“When Miller stops to refuel, I’ll give you my wallet.” He then makes a gesture. “And while you’re in there, change his number. Fuck knows I won’t remember that.”
“Way ahead of you, grandpa.” She starts typing away, not bothering to look up as the follow-up comment slips past her lips. “What are you gonna do without my sharp mind around?”
He sighs, arms stretching over his head as he leans back in the seat. “Deteriorate.”
“Poor Ava,” Lizzie chides. “Thank god she’s got me and Scarlett to keep the memory of you in your prime alive.”
“Wait, when did I get roped into this?” I ask, holding one of my hands up for pause. Lizzie glances back over her shoulder to give me a look.
“Since always,” she answers.
“Yeah, Scar,” Chris chimes in teasingly, and when I shift my sights up, he’s got some kind of look on his face that I would love nothing more than to slap clean off. “Since always.”
“Shut up.”
“Try and make me.”
“What am I ever gonna do without your smart ass around?” I steal Lizzie’s line, and Chris merely shrugs.
“You don’t have to worry about that. I see another twelve years of making films together in our future.”
I groan, head falling back against the arm of the couch as I slouch farther down under the blanket.
It’s not that I’d be opposed to that, not even in the slightest. Saying predicts you don’t know what you have until it’s gone, and this whole experience has been testament to that. I miss all of the people surrounding me, the ones that are on their way and the ones that I don’t know when I’ll see next equally now that there’s nothing more than memories tying us together. I try not to tangle myself up in emotion and be a sentimentalist. It stifles productivity and shuts off possibility. It’s been hard this time around, though; I find myself acting as a sponge, soaking up the way Chris makes fun of me and the smell of Lizzie’s perfume that’s started permeating into the blanket and the sound of Jeremy’s laugh reverberating off the bus walls to save for a rainy day when I physically feel the loss of them in my heart.
The hours start to rush past like the miles of asphalt underneath us, the engorged sun in the sky sinking lower as the afternoon stretches on. At some point we decide to give conversation a rest and take advantage of the copious amounts of space and blankets at our disposal. Lizzie and I keep in our arrangement on the couch, each of us taking an end with our hips bumping together in the middle. Chris takes the other small couch on the opposite side, and Jeremy disappears into the back room where he’s likely gone to have his privacy while FaceTiming with Ava.
I don’t know how much time passes between the time I close my eyes, supposedly blink and open them again, but it’s clearly been awhile judging by the state of unconsciousness Lizzie’s currently in when I peer around the blanket to get some sort of sense to my surroundings. Lizzie sleeps like the dead, stiff as a board and her aviators back down over her eyes to imply she is not to be disturbed. Someone’s tugged down the shade screens over the windows over our heads so the sun isn’t as infiltrating and I think the radio has been entirely shut off.
Tucking the blanket up underneath my armpit and freeing my arm, I carefully shift myself onto my side so I don’t wake up Lizzie. Chris is still laying on the other couch, but he’s awake, scrolling through something on his phone. He must sense my eyes on him, his head turning slightly and a lazy smile spreading over his lips when our eyes meet. “What time is it?” I whisper, my voice catching in different spots as I try to keep quiet.
“A little after four,” he hums quietly. “Miller said we’re a little over halfway there.”
“Ah.”
Silence settles back over us for an extended pause, Chris returning back to whatever it was on his phone that had been occupying his attention. “So, are you finally gonna tell him?” I shift a little more onto my side, one hand sliding up under the throw pillow I’ve since tucked under my head as my eyes burn little holes into the side of his head.
“Tell who what?”
Chris grimaces, looking away from his phone to shoot me the age-old ‘you know what’ that he may as well have a patent for. “Renner.”
“Tell Renner what?”
“C’mon, J. Don’t get all coy with me.”
“I’m not being—” Lizzie stirs a little, scaring Chris and I both into frozen positions as we watch her nestle deeper into the back of the couch. I feel like I can’t breathe until I’m positive she is still lost to the world of the awake, much more conscious of my volume when I pick up where I left off. “I’m not being coy, Chris, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He rolls his eyes, letting his phone fall into his lap as he turns slightly to look at me head on. “Speaking as your best friend from when you were seventeen, what I’m about to say comes from both a place of love and the fact that I probably know you better than even you do.” My eyes widen slightly as his prompt to get on with it. “You love him.”
I blink a few times in rapid succession. “Why would I need to tell him that? He already knows.” Clearly, whatever I’m saying isn’t settling right with Chris, him shaking his head more fervently this time.
“I’m not talking about like that. I’m saying that you love him.”
Oh.
Well.
Okay then.
My throat starts to close up, and I’m suddenly very aware of the tires rolling underneath us on the seemingly very specific way that the asphalt has been paved. The lack of words coming from my throat is invitation for Chris to continue, his voice low to keep the conversation between us. “Look, I’m not trying to come outta left field and throw something at you just to shock you. You two have been dancing around each other since we were in Albuquerque in ‘11. If there was ever a time to let him know how you really feel, it’s now.”
“I…I don’t…” My brain is short-circuiting inside my head, tongue heavy. For as long as I’ve known Jeremy, which has been a significant portion of my life, there has always been some sort of unspoken thing between us that didn’t have a name, barely saw any recognition, and could only be seen if the light hit it at the precise angle. I chalked it up to him being my best friend, the perfect gift from a universe that had aligned just right when our stars exploded. Sure, there were moments when I felt like I was deliberately wearing blinders to keep from letting something into my sights or when his walls were particularly difficult for me to scale over, but that was extenuating circumstance bleeding into our friendship and fucking everything over. “What even makes you think that?” I mutter out hoarsely.
One of his shoulders falls half-heartedly in a shrug. “You guys have always just been unnecessarily close. Or—well, no, not unnecessarily…just inexplicably close, I suppose.”
“You and I are close,” I offer up.
He shakes his head. “Nah, it’s not like that. You and I have our lines drawn pretty clear in the sand.” I give him that one, eyes cutting away for a brief second as concession. “But you and Renner are different. There’s just something blurred about it all. Maybe you just don't see it, maybe you didn’t mean to do it, but it’s there. Whenever you two are together it’s like nobody else exists, the way you speak your own little language in just one look and automatically know what the other is thinking.”
“I’m not that hard to read. Neither is he.”
Chris gives me a sad smile. “You’re both pretty damn impossible. You’re only easy to read because I’ve known you since you were seventeen, and he’s only easy because I’ve seen the man naked. There’s not a whole lot left to guess on after you cross that line.”
He makes a pretty strong argument there. “You both just have your tells. I know how you get when you’re in love with somebody, I know how it kinda consumes you. I had my suspicions back when you asked him to fill in for Walk of Fame, but it never went anywhere.” His head tilts to the side the deeper he falls into his contemplation. “And then I really had some suspicions when we were all in Atlanta for Our Town, but it didn’t go anywhere after that either. You just kept getting with these other people that weren’t him and it kept confusing the hell outta me.”
“Your point being?”
“You don’t get another one of…these,” he says, gesturing around us with his index finger. “You know I don’t believe in all that universe-meddling shit, but Scar, this is it. We have reached the end of the road. Now or never, do or die, collide or keep going in your opposite directions. Maybe, just maybe there was a fuckin’ reason all the other people didn’t work out, and maybe, just fuckin’ maybe, it’s because they weren’t the one thing that you kept passing up on for whatever reason. Stop letting it go nowhere, not when he makes you happier than any of the other tools I’ve had to sit by and watch you date.”
“They weren’t all tools,” I defend unenthusiastically.
“Eighty-seven percent were.” He sighs. “Just…just at least think about telling him while we’re out here, okay? Promise me you’ll do that much.”
“I don’t—"
“I have seen you cry a lot in your life and I have never seen you cry the way you did when we were in Singapore.”
I don’t have anything to fight him with on that one; I’m not one to willingly let someone else have the last word, but he gets it on grounds of interference by none other than the aforementioned man of the hour sliding through the now-opened door panels between the kitchen and the rest of the bus. Chris and I hit pause on the conversation, both looking back at Jeremy.
“Miller said there’s an exit with a gas station up ahead,” he informs us when he takes survey of the scene, eyes stopping on the still-dead-to-the-world Lizzie. “One that’s got the pretzel I owe her.”
He grins as he takes a few steps towards my couch, bending down and resting his hands so they’re right near Lizzie’s head. There’s a pause, like he’s quietly counting to three and building up to the moment where he claps, the sound like a shot. It sends Lizzie jolting upwards, sunglasses falling down the bridge of her nose.
Jeremy just starts laughing, Lizzie scowling once her heartbeat starts regulating. “Oh, fuck you,” she grumbles, tugging the blanket tighter around her chest as she flips him off.
“You love me, Olsen,” he sings. “Better wake up if you still want that pretzel, it’s gonna be here in one-point-three miles and if you miss out, then you miss out for good.”
My ears are still ringing from the clap, mind on a loop with his first words. You love me.
Chris stares past Jeremy, looking at me expectantly like I ought to take some sort of heed with his words, as though his words should hold a double entendre and mean something to me.
I spend the next four hours picking apart a soft pretzel as I comb back through my memory and analyze the last fifteen-something years of my life where Jeremy’s been involved to piece together a puzzle I didn’t even realize I’d been on the box of.