The Road Home

The BMW stopped at the top of the hill.

Amanda eased off the accelerator and let the car roll to the shoulder. Below her, the Maine forest stretched in every direction, a sea of green broken by islands of blue where the lakes caught the morning light. For the first time since leaving camp, she allowed herself to look back.

She pulled into the gravel parking lot of the basement bar where she’d first met Ben.

The white BMW looked absurdly clean in New York and thoroughly Maine now, streaked with mud and pine dust. Amanda left the engine running and stared at the bar entrance. This was where the summer had begun. A drunken twenty-three-year-old she’d been forced to retrieve from a bar. A boy she’d thought was an idiot. A boy who had turned out to be funny and generous and unexpectedly wise.

She turned off the engine.

One last look.

One last goodbye.

She stepped out of the car in her gray suit and heels and stood in the gravel. The morning air smelled like pine and water. She could hear birds somewhere beyond the trees. A breeze moved through the forest, carrying the faint smell of campfires and lake water.

She thought about what she was leaving.

The fresh air. The quiet. The ridiculous camp meetings. The campers screaming with excitement. Deb’s laugh. Sal’s terrible financial decisions. The storage barn that was no longer a disaster. The carnival. The Ferris wheel.

Ben.

Then she thought about what she was returning to.

Factories so loud she’d have to wear earplugs. Continental breakfasts eaten alone in hotel conference rooms. Managers who would resist every change until eventually they had to be terminated. Executives demanding twenty percent improvement without asking what the people doing the work actually needed. Spreadsheets. Flowcharts. PowerPoint presentations.

A perfectly optimized life.

She stood there longer than she realized.

Eventually her feet began to hurt.

She looked down at her heels sinking into the gravel.

“This is ridiculous,” she muttered.

Then she heard someone shouting her name.

Amanda turned.

At first she couldn’t see him.

Then a bicycle appeared over the hill.

Ben.

He was pedaling toward her as if the bicycle had personally offended him. Sweat covered his face. His hair was plastered against his forehead. His shirt was soaked through. His chest rose and fell violently as he fought the last stretch of the hill.

Amanda stared.

He braked hard in front of her and nearly crashed.

“Don’t go.”

He could barely breathe.

Amanda looked at the bicycle.

Then at him.

“How did you expect to catch my BMW on a bike?”

Ben bent over, hands on his knees, trying to recover enough oxygen to answer.

“I don’t know.”

Amanda almost laughed.

“That’s not an answer.”

He straightened and looked at her.

“I was hoping you’d stop.”

She stared at him.

“I was hoping you’d stop instead of thinking with your ridiculously logical brain and actually feel with your heart. Maybe determine what is really best for you instead of what looks best on paper.”

Amanda bit her lip.

He knew her too well.

That was the frightening part.

He knew the part of her that she spent her entire life hiding behind processes and plans.

“After tomorrow,” she said, “I don’t have a job or a home.”

“Me either.”

She looked at him.

“That’s scary.”

“I know.”

“I need a plan.”

“I know.”

Ben stepped closer. His blue eyes held hers.

“But we’ll figure it out.”

Amanda didn’t say anything.

“We work well together,” he continued. “Hell, we could start our own consulting firm. I’ll make the connections. I’ll build the relationships. You can take care of all the terrifying spreadsheets and process maps.”

She smiled.

He took another step.

“The plan doesn’t matter. The process doesn’t matter. The people you do it with matter. And whatever I do, I want to do it with you.”

Amanda felt something inside her finally give way.

Not break.

Release.

For years she’d believed love was something you earned by performing well enough. Be successful enough. Be available enough. Be useful enough. Fix enough problems. Make enough money. Become indispensable.

She finally understood that none of that had anything to do with love.

“I lied,” she said.

Ben smiled slightly.

“About what?”

“About you being just a friend.”

His smile disappeared.

Amanda looked down, then back at him.

“I cared about you. I cared way too much. I hated seeing those girls hanging all over you. I was jealous of every single one of them. And when I saw that wall, I decided you were going to hurt me before you ever had the chance.”

Ben listened.

“I was scared,” she said. “Daniel made me scared. And instead of telling you, I did what I always do. I found a problem, made an assumption, and avoided the conversation.”

She took a breath.

“I care about you.”

Her voice almost broke.

“I don’t want to leave you.”

Ben smiled.

“That’s a start.”

He stepped closer.

“We can figure out the rest later.”

Then he kissed her.

He was still covered in sweat. His hair was soaked. His shirt was damp, and when he pulled her against him, the moisture immediately transferred to her perfectly pressed gray suit.

Amanda laughed against his mouth.

“You’re ruining my suit.”

“I know.”

“I just spent an hour getting ready.”

“I know.”

She kissed him again.

The suit didn’t matter.

The interview didn’t matter.

The BMW didn’t matter.

The plan could wait.

Behind them, the Maine forest rolled toward the horizon, green and endless, with blue lakes scattered through it like pieces of sky that had fallen to earth.

Amanda had spent her career believing that the goal was to eliminate waste, reduce variation and control the process.

She finally understood the problem with that philosophy.

Some of the best things in life were the things you couldn’t standardize.

A reckless decision.

A wrong turn.

A summer in Maine.

A boy on a bicycle chasing a BMW.

And the right person standing at the end of the road.