An Ever Fixéd Mark by Jessie Olson Page A

eyes. He turned those eyes to her as he
fastened his seat belt. The gray seemed to overtake the green. He
looked… nervous. Lizzie knew she should say something, anything to
start the conversation and stifle the oppressive silence that had
overtaken the car. “Weather’s nice, huh?”
    “It is a nice night.”
    “The moon is supposed to be full, I think,”
Lizzie felt like a dork. Was she trying to sound too desperate for
a story out of a romance novel?
    “It’s the perfect temperature. Not too warm,
not too cold,” he started the ignition.
    “The way May is supposed to be.”
    “I don’t expect anything of May weather.
It’s always different. Sometimes hot. It’s even snowed.”
    Lizzie tried to remember a May when it
snowed. “Well, I brought a sweater just in case,” she was impatient
with herself for her lame conversation.
    “So, you’ve been to a lot of Jack’s
gigs?”
    “Yeah. I don’t know if you remember the band
he tried to start in high school. Most of those guys moved away
after college. Just Mike…” Lizzie paused, wondering if Ben
remembered Mike from his friendship with Oliver. She didn’t want to
remind him or remind herself of the conversation on the back deck
of Jen and Jack’s house. Or the wordless fifteen minutes after. She
wasn’t sure how much of her history she should reveal at this
point, if ever. “Mike’s the drummer. Anyway, after Jack and Jen had
Zach, they got serious and recruited some other musicians. They’ve
been together for about ten years. I think they are pretty decent,
even if I’m family. “
    “It’s good to see he is still devoted to it.
I remember his love of guitar back in high school.”
    “Yeah. Jen really supports him. Have you met
his wife?”
    “No.”
    “They got married real young,” Lizzie knew
she was talking a lot, but couldn’t think how else to fill the
silence. “They thought she was pregnant. She was. She lost it, but
they were engaged and decided to elope anyway. Two years later,
they had Zach. They have a daughter, Izzie, who is three.”
    “Sounds like a happy family.”
    “You know, I think they are soul mates. They
were probably married in their last life, too.”
    “You believe in that stuff?
Reincarnation?”
    “I think so. I mean… I really don’t KNOW. I
don’t necessarily know that any of it is THE answer. But, yeah,
it’s nice to think we come back here eventually. I would like to
see another century. See what new gadgets teenagers have two
hundred years from now,” Lizzie laughed at herself.
    “But you wouldn’t be you?”
    “I don’t know how it works, Ben. You
probably think it’s all… silly.”
    “I like what you said about not knowing THE
answer.”
    “So you’re not an atheist?”
    “Did you think I was an atheist?”
    “I guess I did. Are you?”
    “No.”
    “Hm,” Lizzie looked to the cars they passed
on the Pike.
    “You were pretty religious in high school,”
Ben commented.
    “I was a good little Catholic girl from a
small town,” Lizzie kept looking at the blurred cars. “I am
definitely not that now.”
    “You live in a suburb.”
    “I’m no longer Catholic… and I’m definitely
not good.”
    “You’re good.”
    “I don’t think we’d be in this car right now
if either one of us thought I was good.”
    Ben pursed his lips together and tightened
his grip on the steering wheel. Lizzie knew she hit some sort of
nerve. She couldn’t tell if it was his sin or hers that caused his
immediate tensing. He took a deep breath and relaxed his arms. “Do
you really think that makes you a bad person?”
    “Well…” Lizzie faded her voice. If he did
have a wife or girlfriend, obviously what they did together did
make her a bad person. She still wasn’t ready to ask him that
question. “Sometimes it does.”
    “To do something that makes you feel
good?”
    “It’s not the physical act,” Lizzie argued.
She couldn’t believe the conversation about weather shifted to sex
before