“You can’t make new old friends.”

Pop quiz, hot shot. Who made this statement? 

1. The girl working the Taco Bell counter inside the Loves Travel Stop outside Kansas City, seconds after I ordered three chicken quesaritos;
2. Meredith, Dad’s friend and sometimes lover, at the end of her recorded story, which I’d listened to five more times before burying it in my duffel bag; 
3. Dad, on the front of the envelope he’d left in Meredith’s care, the one that once held the note from his second attempt at suicide, the first being a haphazard attempt more akin to being young and on drugs in a tidal pool; 
4. All of the above

I used to hate All of the Above answers. They felt cheap, manipulative, a true set-up for a debate on the concept of gray areas. Laramie and I started dating when she was in nursing school, and through dental school. Everything was multiple choice and All of the Above. Except for when it was only c) or a) or e) None of the Above. Everywhere. The textbooks and tests and study guides and note cards. Some sleeps, when I’m not blessed with canceled dreams of raising a family with her, the All of the Above note cards take over, flipping through my REM sleep like a goddamn carousel of red-eyed demon horses. 

That an All of the Above answer could indicate the invisible connective tissue of critical thinking hadn’t occurred to me yet. Laramie never had a problem with it. And she was the one getting graded. Why should I? “Chill,” she’d say, feet up on the sofa, relaxed despite the stakes. 

“Relax? The difference between fever chills and pulse rate isn’t enough to justify someone – you – passing and graduating and getting a job and us getting the hell out of here.”

“Me not knowing the right answer and getting to graduate is what kills people,” she had said.

The fierce eyes she gave me, well, wouldn’t you, too? What’s the saying? Can’t see the forest through the trees? I couldn’t see a fucking leaf. 

Sorry, Laramie, if you’re reading this. I got too caught up in it, and us, and didn’t realize a few things. A lot of things.

“You can’t make new friends” was written on the front of the envelope Dad had given to Meredith years after the actual suicide attempt. She didn’t say how he’d attempted it in her recording, only that he had, and that the keeper of the letter (Dad loved reading me bits from Tolkien when he took me on the road) would tell that tale.

The girl working the Taco Bell counter had simply repeated it after me when I asked her what she thought of the phrase “You can’t make new old friends.” 

“I guess that depends when you start,” she said with a drawl you could only be born with. “Order number twelve!” 

I was order number thirteen, so I stepped aside for a woman in running shorts and tank top. She looked comfortable and cute in a too cute for me sort of way. The shorts and tank top implied (to me), comfort for a road trip. I was wearing running shorts and a t-shirt. Simpatico, the two of us. I imagined our meet-cute then and there (and later; the road plus my issues made for a lonely place), how the girl working the counter was so confused by my question that she mixed up our orders, mine and the cute woman, and how she would leave the restaurant and I would pick up my order and head to my car, sack of food rolled and set on the seat next to my water bottles, and bag of snacks neglected for quesaritos. I’d get napkins ready and laid on my lap, get the hot sauce packets organized into piles according to heat level, crack a bottle of water, and then right before I dug in, there’d be a tap on my window. There’d she be, the cute woman, miming a rolling down motion, meaning she was my age or at least understood a time when cars had a crank for rolling down windows instead of a button. I’d hit the button on my car and awkwardly ask, “Yeah?” And she’d hold up her bag and say, “I think they gave you my order.” And I’d glance into my bag, having only surveyed the hot sauce situation, and realize, my goodness, there was a cheesy gordita crunch and three tacos. “Yeah,” I’d say, offering her my bag in exchange for hers. “How about that? Sorry about that.” 

“No reason to apologize,” she’d say, “Not your fault.”

“Let me make it up to you,” I’d say. “If you find yourself around Kansas City tonight, the Tigers are in town. My treat.”

And her silence was the scene ending, the “Not your fault” replaying.

Only it was, because I’d asked the girl working the counter what she thought of the phrase “You can’t make new old friends,” and now I’d met this cute woman because of it, and wasn’t it possible that was Dad’s way of saying he was looking out for me, after all of these years? 

That hadn’t happened. The woman got the right order number twelve, and I got the right order number thirteen. But miles down the road, with a full belly and music on the radio, I thought about it anyway, because the thought that something like that could happen someday kept me tumbling down the hill like a rolling stone.