“Track Two:” Run

We’re too big for this place. It’s all I could think about lately, how we’d outgrown it here. How small this town was. Large enough not to be noticed in, small enough that we could afford it. 

“I miss the smile that used to be on your face,” he said the other day. 

We weren’t getting too big for this place. 

I was. 

And unfortunately, it was starting to show. 

Pack your bags, we’ll make an escape… I asked him that the week before he noticed my smile had faded. But he didn’t correlate the two. 

I said, ‘I’ve got some money and old 80s tapes.’ 

The 80s tapes were true. I’d picked up a boombox from the thrift shop and collected cassette tapes at every garage sale I passed. 

The money… well, that was dwindling. 

None of that matters, though, because James likes it here. 

He’s happy in this town. 

Content. Satiated. 

It was me who missed the thrill of being on the run.

It was me who hated standing still. 

You know that joke, when two people want to come up with some creative way to say they met… instead of the reality? (Reality being that it was a blind date, that their grandmothers set them up, or it was on a dating app…)

‘we’ll just tell them that we met in jail?’ 

That’s the bit. 

We’ll tell them we were wild and free until we were caught- but that’s when we found each other. 

It’s romantic and epic, and dangerous.

It’s what people say because they would be absolutely fucking right. It is romantic and epic and dangerous. 

I should know. 

Because that’s how James and I actually met. 

He was in one holding cell and I was in the other. 

That’s why it’s so funny to me now. The two of us sat on the front porch, staring off at the sunset, sipping tea that isn’t even spiked with whiskey. And he’s pleased as punch with life. 

I think there might be something wrong with me. 

When I met James, he had a bloody lip, a bruise coming in under his eye, and a leather jacket that matched mine. He was even crazy enough to entertain the absolute weirdos in his cell- engaging them with his stupidly charming eyes, lulling them with his friendly smile… but James was also smart enough not to be the craziest one in containment.

I think… I fell in love?

Lust-

Admiration-

Whichever it was at that moment, I was into it. So I put myself on my best behavior and hoped both of us would not only walk out of these cells in the morning, but that maybe we would together. 

That night in holding, in an attempt to get some very uncomfortable sleep, I let my head rest in between the two slats of the bars that separated our cells. And while I was playing a game of ‘what if?’ in my head; wondering what would happen if I didn’t try to talk to him before the morning… James had moved to the end of his bench, so he could be closer to me.

“Hi.” He smiled at me. Those pale grey-green eyes- engaging even in the dim light.

“Hey there-“ I would have preferred a more witty opener out of myself than that, but oh well. I was tired.

“I’m James.”

“Kate,” I said.

“What are you in for, Kate?”

I gasped, feigning modesty. “Getting right down to the personal business? I think I’d rather tell you how many men I’ve slept with.”

James laughed loud enough to wake the drunk in his cell who’d been passed out for hours. And that warmed me to my core. 

That I could make James laugh like that. 

In that moment, I thought I’d like to try and make him laugh like that for all the days ahead of us if I could. 

And I don’t ever think thoughts like that.

 We talked for the rest of the night until we both dozed off, heads resting on one another’s, set against the gaps in the bars. 

Turns out I didn’t have to wonder ‘what if?’

Then the morning came. 

We both walked out of jail only a couple of hours apart. Him first, having been on his best behavior (and having a better connection to family members with cash who could bail him out). 

But he waited. For me.

My stomach flipped when I saw him.

I had fallen. And it only took one night in jail.

So, on a spree of less murderous-Bonnie-and-Clyde-style-adventure, we left that town for the next one- and then the one after that, and the one after that. 

We ended up in Montana at summer’s end. In a college town with an influx of 10,000 kids and seasonal residents to blend in with.

A town big enough to stay anonymous. Small enough that we could afford it- for awhile. 

The money didn’t last there.

I wasn’t boosting cars (which was most often my crime of choice), and James wasn’t conning people out of their cash anymore. James even got a job. A real one. 

I mean, we had fake identities, but for the most part it was all real. We were behaving like- normal people.

I think that was the day I started to feel sick.

The day I blamed the cold for the reason my skin was growing paler and the light had left my eyes. But it wasn’t the weather, or the encroaching winter threatening from the tops of the mountains. It was us. 

I wanted to settle down with James. 

I just didn’t want to actually be settled. 

I wanted to move around the world with someone. 

James was my home, but for me, home was a moving target.

People always say you need to know where your partner stands on three things: politics, family and religion. I figured, hey- you meet a guy in jail, you’d think you’d know his wild streak. 

But James was full of surprises.

James liked consistency, routine, and homelife. He didn’t even miss the con, so far as I could tell. 

But I did. 

“What about a road trip?” I asked him. 

“When? I’ve got work this weekend…” I mean. What? He couldn’t even call out sick for a Saturday shift now? This has gone too far.

“James. I love you. But this place is killing me.”

He set down his teacup on his porch and turned away from the pink and purple swirls in the sky that were setting in front of us to address my crazy thoughts.

“Well, at least you finally said it.” He said. “So what do you want to do about it?”

In moments like this, I always turn to classic films for guidance. And there is no better cinematic connection to what I was feeling in that moment, than the 1994 classic, Speed. 

We were Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves. Everything is great on the bus. Diffuse the bomb, slide into safety… fall into each other’s arms… but they even said ‘I have to warn you, I heard that relationships based on intense experiences- never work.’

So, what happens next then?

If you’re not constantly working through an extreme situation, then what’s the real problem, you? Or the bomb on the bus? (Obviously, the problem was them, because Speed 2 happened and Jack and Annie don’t make it because she goes on a cruise with that other guy.)

James asked me what I wanted, and I didn’t know what to say. Not really. So I add this, “Let’s get out of town and do a job! Pad the savings with some cash, have a  little fun along the way- we can road trip to all those horrible tapes I keep buying!”

James smiled at me sweetly, nodded his head, and picked up his teacup. “I’ll call out of work this weekend then.”

He agreed. 

But I think I might have been the bomb on the bus this whole time. Just ticking down and biding my time… until I could mess it all up for us.

Which I did.

I made a mistake. 

The drive toward the chaos was fun though. We sang at the top of our lungs, windows down, the grit of old cassettes mixed with the free floating dust off dirt roads swirling in the air all around us. 

The drive out, was perfect. 

I should have been happy with that. 

We should have turned around, and done the same thing all the way back home.

But we didn’t.

James and I spent the afternoon wandering around a town five hours southeast of where we were living. We milked strangers for cash, lifted wallets off passer-bys, even shoplifted like we we fourteen years old all over again.

The last thing we needed was a car. 

Not when we had our perfectly legal truck. 

But I ‘couldn’t help myself.’

That’s what James said to me as we were handcuffed and put in the back of a cop car. We got lifted for my errant, out-of-practice attempt to boost a car that belonged to an off-duty cop.

“This-“ James referenced with his head, unable to move his shackled hands. “This is what you wanted?”

Obviously, I didn’t want this. Not exactly.

“Well?” He prodded.

“I just needed some excitement,” I mumbled it, I wanted it to barely be audible.

James said nothing. He just inched closer to his window. As far away from me as he could get. 

“I’m sorry,” I said. 

James just sighed and shook his head, staring out the window of a cop car at a pink sunset.

 “You deserve better than me.” I said.

He stayed silent, eyes on the horizon, and very quickly I wished I had been more grateful for all the sunsets more beautiful than this one that I had seen from my very own porch. When he was happy at my side.

Here’s what I know-  I made the mistake that landed us here. But James would be making the mistake if he stayed with me.

“James Garvey-“ James looked up at the cop. “You made bail.” Of course, he did. I smiled. His family was nothing if not reliable. 

Run run run run, I thought. James does deserve better than me. He should run. 

Then, before James was released from the cell he turned to me and said, “I will go, anywhere with you-” Easy to say when you’re walking away, and you know I can’t follow. “But I also don’t think it would hurt you to realize it’s okay to stand still for a while.”

And then James was gone. 

The next morning, I was released and walked outside craving coffee, my sunglasses and a toothbrush- in that order.

I got none of those things. 

But what I did get, was James, sat outside on the steps of another jail…waiting for me. Again.

Maybe he was still that crazy guy I met in jail that night.

“I wasn’t lying,” he said. “I’d go anywhere with you.”

I thought about saying sorry for the chaos, but I just grabbed his hand instead, and decided to stand still with him. Wherever it was that he wanted to go this time. 

At least for a little while. 

Inspired by the first and last lyrics of the song “Run” by Gerald Ahern