Carrie had felt a perverse expectation when it came to seeing her old high school on-and-off boyfriend, Lars Anestad, this Saturday afternoon, about twenty years after that last time.

It wasn’t anything to do with Lars being a musician, being on the road, and doing his art. That was actually more bittersweet when she thought about her own plight as a housewife and mother of an autistic child—stay-at-home and unemployed, with a stressed husband who was a state trooper, and all of those things. 

But no—Carrie turned it around – before she met up with Lars at the café before his concert. She considered letting herself sit there, once they met, and be aloof, hovering over the waters, and telling herself that whatever he talked about wouldn’t really matter that much. She could sneak in hints of this and that trial and tribulation in her everyday life. And then maybe Lars would ask questions about, “Oh, is it that bad?” and so on and so on. And she would stoically reply, “Yes, but we manage.” That would be something to look forward to, wouldn’t it?

She felt jittery, though. There was after all the little matter of her and Lars having had that semi-serious fling going on when she was in high school. She was in doubt about how to relate to someone whom she had been romantic with but hadn’t seen for, well, almost twenty years. But when she thought more about it, there was something off about that concern. Maybe the real problem lay somewhere else? 

Not in being still attracted to him or something like that, oh no!  … but because there would be so much to say, very personal stuff; a lot had happened in two decades. 

And if it had been one of her closer friends, in the present, she could have been more honest about how she felt: about the good sides, about the bad sides, about what it was like when Michael woke up screaming in the middle of the night and couldn’t explain why he was screaming, woke up all the neighbors, and about several days without sleep. About having a marriage, but you don’t have a marriage, because you and your husband are basically glorified helpers of a disabled person—your own child. 

Etcetera. Etcetera. 

You could share the nuances of that with people you knew. Well. Not with people you had … known. 

She decided maybe not to talk about that at all then, if she could avoid it, or just gloss it over. It was too messy. 

But what then?

There had to be some kind of “Main Topic” that could make it not-awkward to talk for a couple of hours –  aside from old high school memories. 

But … what?

Carrie felt dizzy. This was rapidly becoming very complicated – a simple cup of coffee. Christ, why did she have such a hard time turning people down? 

But, of course she also wanted to see him again. He was indeed (for better or worse) a reminder of a freer time; a time where anything had seemed possible, and she needed that. That was the “sweet” in the bittersweet  … 

Okay, okay. What about sharing with him how badly she missed her art; to have time for that? No, that was also a danger zone. She didn’t want to be treated like a victim, even if she was. Kind of at least. 

Carrie turned around all of the options and then some over and over while doing dishes, changing junior size diapers and prepping her son’s feeding therapy and helping his sister with her homework while her husband got the final half hour’s rest in the attic before it was his turn.  

“I could say that I’m also doing artwork because I’m doodling with my drawings still and I’m doing some exhibitions, maybe, or planning to,” she mused to herself while wiping Michael’s eyes with a napkin in the correct sequence so he calmed down after the internet had a brief glitch and his chromebook went black. 

Then she immediately put that story away, too. She was not doing exhibitions and not planning to do anything, and barely got any art done. She could put up some kind of pretense, but yeah … no. 

Carrie Reese was many things but not a liar.

In the end, she didn’t come out with any kind of coherent strategy for anything before it was time to turn over the kids and drive to the 20 year-in-the-making coffee date. As usual she just would have to muddle through. This meeting and so much else.

Story of my life, she thought.

*

It should have been the perfect spring day, at least in principle. Warm and inviting but not too much like the usual oven, here near the Mexican border. Her husband was looking after the kids, and she had the afternoon off for her little outing. She had even borrowed the Honda. She felt only a little guilty. It had been a long, late shift for him yesterday.

The late noon sun beat down, making the heat shimmer above the asphalt as she drove past endless blocks of identical-looking homes, their muted, earthy tones blending into the desert landscape. Rows of single-story, beige stucco houses blurred past, each with a front yard of decorative gravel and the occasional hardy cactus standing guard. Dusty pickup trucks were parked in driveways, and the quiet streets were lined with palm trees, their fronds rustling in the dry breeze. She passed a sun-bleached strip mall with a faded sign, its large parking lot mostly empty, reflecting the sleepy, midday calm of the neighborhood.

But it was all right. It was Yuma. Home. Perfect.

Carrie put the player on and found Lars’s latest album. She hadn’t really listened to his stuff before, but apparently, he had made three albums. Two of them were only available on Spotify, and one was available as a CD in a limited edition that Lars, very generously, had shipped via snail mail to Carrie’s address. They didn’t have a CD player in the car, and Carrie just switched on her phone and connected it to the loudspeakers. The music was country rock:

Left before the morning found us
Couldn’t bear to see your face
All the words we never said, love
Haunt this ever-moving space
Coffee cold in Cleveland diners
Maps that lead to nowhere new
Every mile I put behind her
Still, I’m driving back to you

On this endless highway, darling
Where the white lines blur to gray
I’m a ghost of what I wanted
Just a shadow pulled away
Tell me, does the wind remember
Every promise that it made?
Or am I just another stranger
On this endless, endless highway

Saw your smile in Carolina
In the blue ridge morning mist
Every town’s a different name, but
Every sunset’s what I missed
Guitar case and fading photos
All the baggage that I own
Freedom’s just another word for
Everywhere and yet alone

On this endless highway, darling
Where the white lines blur to gray
I’m a ghost of what I wanted
Just a shadow pulled away
Tell me, does the wind remember
Every promise that it made?
Or am I just another stranger
On this endless, endless highway

And I know you’re somewhere settled now
With roots I’ll never grow
But some men are born to wander, love
It’s the only life they know

On this endless highway, darling
Where the stars forget my name
I’m the price of all my choosing
I’m the keeper of my pain
And maybe there’s a reason
Why some paths just drift away
Maybe I was always meant for
This endless, endless highway

Listen: https://suno.com/s/bzjbRW3m6pfIuYoa

There was also a band somewhere, several in fact. But mostly he seemed to perform alone, that was what the photos on his unkempt Facebook page indicated at least. Carrie liked the songs, but she didn’t really feel anything about it—similar to her experience of Bruce Springsteen, perhaps. Even if Lars sounded on some of the numbers more like a Gary Moore wannabe. Maybe a mix. 

At any rate, most of it was something about open roads and going from nowhere to nowhere and looking for lost loves and all that stuff. But she told herself that it would probably be very nice for long drives and that it was actually very competently done. She had to find something nice to say if he asked.

But soon it would time for the true strategy, the true showdown.. The cafe was over there. Was she ready? Hell no…

She parked her car near the Daybreaker’s Café. Like every other such establishment in Yuma, it didn’t look like much from the outside, more like a roadside diner. But it had the best pancakes and she felt kind of safe there. Her daughter also loved it, and Jon often had a break there with his colleagues, when it fit into their shifts, so that was all a plus.

It was early afternoon, and quite a few people were lingering around their lunch. It was, after all, Saturday, and people who had a little more freedom than her could go out and maybe take their family with them. As she got out of the car she wondered if Michael would ever be able to sit and eat at a normal restaurant with the rest of them. Probably not something that would happen anytime soon. She threw the thought away quickly.

When she opened the doors to the café, she wondered briefly if she had actually dressed correctly. She had tried to be casual about it, and yet she had found a pair of jeans that were perhaps a little too tight and smooth. It wasn’t like she had that much going for her at the tender age of 37—at least that was her own impression, albeit Jon continually praised her looks, bless him. Still, though, her butt was quite nice to look at (or so Jon had told her).

Of all the things about her appearance she could either like or worry about why this shit?! … But yet here she was, with those pants that maybe showed a little more curve than would be tactically good for a meeting with an old—she might as well label it for what it was—-an old flame. Divorced. Likely available.

It was twenty-odd years ago that she and Lars had been on-and-off. And she was happily married, and apparently, he had been married for quite some time until —what had he said in that last email—until this summer? The summer before that? She looked around.

He wasn’t here yet. Good. Now for choosing a table and to behave like a fucking adult.

What would be the best place?

She checked the time and found an empty spot near the window. Good. Perhaps she could finally impose some order on this day. On herself.

Lars was late. She ended up scrolling randomly on her phone, of course, and then the door opened again, and she saw him.

Tall, dark mop of hair, still with—was that a slight hint of gray in it? It couldn’t be at this early stage; Lars was the same age as her. Definitely more lines in the face and some unshaven beard stubble. He might still look good, she reckoned, at least from a certain angle, but he also looked worn, maybe more than she had expected. Like he was tired. Did he drive all the way from—where was the last place he had been?

And then that non-descript leather jacket and worn jeans. Yeah, he looked exactly like she had imagined, as if he had posed for some cover or something before he came here, or maybe it was just the genericness of it all that disappointed her. It was what she expected, and yet she felt disappointed without really being able to define why.

She got up and waved at him. “Over here, over here.”

“Carrie! Sorry, I’m late …“

“No worries, no prob — good to see you!”

And then, of course, the awkward hug, which became a little longer than she wanted, and then they sat down.

Not a great start, but at least a start.

“So … Here we are,” she said, and allowed the cafe noises to be all around them and just fill the empty space.

“Yeah, here we are,” he said. “Who would have thought that? How long has it been?”

“I think the last time I saw you,” she said, “was New Year’s Eve, 1997.”

“No, it couldn’t be,” he said. “Was that the one in Alan’s summer house up by the lakes?”

“The very one,” she said, “that New Year’s evening. Oh my God, that was a terrible evening, haha.”

He grinned. ” I don’t remember that. I remember, though, that I had a helluva headache after that. What a party. You and me and Alan and Lin … “

Carrie looked down, and Lars became somber for a moment. 

“But … how have you been recently?” Carrie said. “On the road all the time, I wager!”

“Well, yes, and now there’s the little gig tonight down at your cultural center.”

“Is it just you?”

“Yeah, just me. I… there is the band, of course, but everything costs, and tonight is just me,” he repeated. (Måske burde en servetrice komme og bede dem om deres bestilling her? Der er en lovlig overvægt af ren dialog i denne sektion… men okay, det bliver straks bedre.) “What should we order?”

“Oh, yes, of course, what should we order? How about… yeah, let’s start with some coffee?”

“Yeah, coffee is fine,” he said. “And maybe some… ha, they do donuts a lot here,” he added disarmingly.

“Oh, donuts, that’s too heavy for me,” she said. “Maybe some scrambled eggs or something.”

They ordered a very conspicuous mix of light lunch and some donuts. Carrie already felt she couldn’t concentrate.

Here’s a simplified version:

They made small talk about family, then caught up on where they’d been and what they’d done since last writing. Eventually, Carrie’s shoulders relaxed and she felt at ease.

It was not going according to any plan. She was just blabbering and yet feeling strangely relieved that talking came so easy… that was nice. Lars seemed nice, too, and disarming and in many ways he acted just like she remembered him – the best parts of him. 

It was a strange thing that she started to feel she could trust him, like they had been actual … friends in the intervening two decades, and not just the occasional “hey” on Facebook and “we really have to meet soon,” which of course never amounted to anything … until now. 

It was odd because she suddenly felt an urge to … trust him. But trust him with what? 

And then the conversation inevitably and almost too quickly veered into territory about children, Her children. Especially her son.

“He’s autistic?” Lars asked. “I mean, are you sure of the diagnosis?”

“Oh yeah. Definitely.” Carrie chewed her last eggs slower. They didn’t taste as well anymore. 

“Well, my niece is autistic as well,” he said. “Her name is Lara, by the way. Cutest little … Does Michael have language?”

“No, he doesn’t,” Carrie said, “not very much. I mean, he can’t tell me if he is hurting somewhere. He speaks in one- or two-word sentences most of the time. Three words if things are really going well.”

“I guess it’s the same with my niece,” Lars said. “I don’t see her that often, though, not after the divorce, but she’s a bright girl. There aren’t many girls who are autistic, I think … “

“I have heard that,” Carrie said, “but maybe they just haven’t been diagnosed.”

“Maybe,” said Lars. “Anyway, she’s a bright kid. I’m sure she’ll be all right, like I am sure Michael will be. In a way, we’re all a little bit autistic, aren’t we?”

Carrie frowned. Oh, how she had learned to hate that statement.

“I guess we are,” she just said. “Except we’re all a little bit like rugby players, aren’t we? Because I mean, I can kick a ball.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Lars quickly said.

“Of course not,” Carrie took a deep sip of her coffee. “Anyway, he’s in a special school.”

“Is it good for him?”

“He’s happy there. Right now, we’re working on teaching him to go to the toilet instead of using his diaper. So we have to sync our methods – the school and at home.”

“Oh, so that’s what they do at school?”

“That’s what they do,” Carrie said, a little more clipped. ” I mean, it’s also teaching skills and such.”

“But can’t you do the toilet-thing just at home?” Lars said.

“Of course we can,” she said. “But it’s not smart. They have to do it at school, because autistic kids are very resistant to … change, and they’ve got teachers who are trained for this sort of thing. And we’re also hung up every day with a lot of things. I have to mix like seven different supplements for him each morning because of his feeding therapy. He doesn’t eat anything except graham bread.”

Lars breathed deeply and leaned back. “Wow, so there’s no job or anything?”

“Not right now,” Carrie said carefully. “You know I dropped out of college, and then there was this long period in my life, my… what did Lennon call it? Like, my year-long lost weekend or something like that? Not a lot of … qualifications earned there, I’m afraid.”

“Yeah, okay,” Lars nodded slowly. “You were traveling, or…? I think you told me this in an email from … “

“I was traveling,” she interrupted. “And I was also not feeling very good. I fell into some bad company. But then I met Jonathan, of course.”

“Yeah, that’s nice. He’s a state trooper, right?”

“Yeah, Department of Public Safety.”

Lars smiled wrily. “That sounds like a health inspection outfit!”

They both chuckled at that. From then on the conversation flowed more freely. 

Carrie felt relieved that they were pivoting away from her “road” years. They were years when she had taken all kinds of abuse—and as always when that topic got too close in conversation, there was this big, hard wall inside her that just slammed down. She thought she had made peace with that. After all, she had lived a fairly normal life, except, of course, for all the bad dreams and the stress and the Tylenol and the Xanax. But apparently not entirely. 

When it came up, she had briefly – very briefly – wondered if she should tell Lars more about it, but now she definitely felt it was not possible. It was like a knot just tying itself tighter every time she even pondered it.

Lars didn’t seem to notice anything, though. He just chatted about how one should make a song about “The Department” as he called it, as if it was something sinister. So Carrie relaxed and ordered more coffee. 

They talked more about Jonathan’s work. And about what some of the old high school friends were doing. For the most part they had all vanished in the ether. Lars figured that Alan probably was still in the stock market and still married to Marlene, his high school girlfriend, which Carrie was skeptical about. Then Lars’ family, which was mentioned briefly in passing.

Except of course the bit about his ex-wife’s work as a translator, and they were able to talk more about that because Carrie also had made some freelance translation work because of her aptitude for languages. And fortunately, Lars didn’t ask why she hadn’t gotten more work like that, because that was also a very long story.

The conversation turned to career, the trajectory of Lars just choosing not to take an education and go out there and just play, and if he could make a living with his music. And Lars, of course, also asked about Carrie’s art-work and if she still was drawing. And she said that wasn’t really the case, there was no time, space, and energy for that. And it felt like, unlike what she had feared, that she could control that revelation.

But then Lars tried to probe her about why not. And she dodged that the best she could. Lars asked again, with more intensity, why she didn’t draw more, like he was trying to save her artistic integrity or some such. She didn’t want that, so she tried to shut it off.

So she said, “Well, it’s not as if you can live your life over, right? I mean, of course I would have done more to make it as an artist, if I got a magical pill and could do everything over.”

Carrie’s intention had been to dismiss the argument because, as enticing as the fantasy was, it was just that … a fantasy. 

But then Lars said “Even if you could live your life over by magic or whatever, it wouldn’t make you happier.”

She glared at him. Around their table, the drowsy morning clientele of Yuma’s Daybreaker’s Café buzzed to and fro. Business as usual and as dusty as the desert borderlands outside. Carrie gave him a peeved look. She hadn’t wanted to talk more about this, but something in Lars’ unexpected comment about this annoyed her.

“Look, I know it’s not real but if it were, of course I would be happier!” she blurted.

“There are three objections you can never get around,” Lars replied calmly, “if you want to live your life over. Even in a magical thought-experiment.”

With unaccustomed firmness, he added, “This is why Carrie Reese, professional housewife, can never change her past so she ends up today as a professional artist. But you can always look to the fu—”

“Let me stop you right there.” Carrie rotated the spoon with precision in her pitch-black coffee. “What if I had a magical wish spell, like in Alan’s Dungeons and Dragons game back in junior? Something that could make me go back and choose anything—like the right life! Let’s imagine that, Mr. Anestad.”

Lars lifted his coffee with feigned affectation. “It won’t work. For you. For any of us.”

Before she could get more annoyed, he continued. “Objection number One: Let’s say you go back in time and change into who you were at 17, no memories of your grown-up self. You do that with your imaginary spell, yes?”

“I sure as hell do.”

“Fine. But if you start your life over without your memories, then you don’t know that you are better off. Then you can’t feel happy about getting a second chance! See?”

Carrie made a face. “You are also still a spoilsport… And the other two?”

“Objection two is that even with foreknowledge and everything—you’d risk changing a lot of things which might cause even more net misery for you.”

Lars glanced at a passing waitress’s behind with some fascination. “Heck, even good things you change might end up causing more bad things. Suppose you warn someone you know about a car crash and then just have them go home, get depressed for some other reason, and then they go out and kill twenty people in a supermarket with a shotgun.”

“Lars, that’s morbid.”

“I’m just trying to explain why saving people won’t always lead to better outcomes—not even in a magical scenario.”

“Number three?” Carrie asked wearily.

Lars looked down at the pastel table. “You magic yourself young, back to 1996 and remember everything. And yes, after that you… save people, and… and nobody gets shot in a supermarket. But…” he looked up “…Even all that won’t make you happier than you are now.”

“Why on earth not?”

“Because you forget the secret downside.”

“Lars, you are so—”

He broke her off. “—You’ll go crazy from having to experience so many big and small events again—inevitable events. Movies you have seen before… all the little things that secretly annoy you about your friends. And worse.”

Lars finished with a knowing smile. “It’s obvious now, isn’t it?”

“Not… to me,” Carrie said, closing her eyes briefly.

Lars sighed audibly. “No. I guess not.”

She winced. Lars had always had this aloof, even smug, demeanor. When they were in high school she thought it made him mysterious somehow. Now the charm had worn off.

She began to regret saying yes to this reunion. On the other hand, she had thought often about what it would be like to see him again, and… now, here they were.

“Explain number three again,” she demanded.

Lars wasn’t exactly trying to hide his impatience. “Okay. You become a 17-year-old again, with a 37 year old mind. How would that give you any kind of happiness?”

Carrie gave herself a belly-pinch. “I would be just a little happy, I think, with less of this. Anyway, you said that I couldn’t enjoy it if I forgot I had been magically thrown back in time. So fine—I will go back and remember 40-year-old me.”

“37.”

“Same thing.”

Lars smiled vaguely. “And I say again that if you remember your ‘old life’ you have to experience everything—or at least very, very much of everything you already had experienced—twice. It’d drive you crazy.”

“Like venturing out of the friend zone a little too often?” Carrie looked straight at him.

Lars didn’t flinch. “That, too. But… It was a long time ago.”

“Yes. It was.”

“Look, I actually wrote a song about this just after my split with Luca,” Lars said slowly. “When I was thinking, like, constantly if I could’ve done more for my daughter…”

“Like staying with her mom,” Carrie said. It was not a question.

“Yes,” Lars admitted. “But I discovered if you… obsess too much about what could have been, you go nuts. So I tried to find a way to stop it. Stop asking: What if I had stayed with Luca?”

He looked at her squarely. “And it was clear to me: I just had to realize the secret downside. I mean, if I had to live the last 10 years of my life over, maybe I could have dealt better with a lot of the shit that happened—but it would drive me crazy.”

He breathed in, then finished. “I’d not even want to relive half of it. I’d rather live today with regrets and move on to something new.”

“And your daughter? Dani?”

Lars looked at nothing in particular. “Don’t you think she is better off with a father who is not going out of his mind every day?”

Carrie sighed inwardly. Every time Lars enshrined an idea in a song somehow it became the truth. Literally. And proofed against arguments. And something seethed inside her.

For Lars in 1996 and for Lars in 2016. Perhaps it was no wonder Luca was pissed with—

“Do you agree now?” He regarded her carefully.

“What about getting more success as a musician?” she tried. “If you did things again—but maybe twice as hard?” She smirked. “I know you, Lars Anestad. You could live with a lot of repetition if you could get a top 40 hit!”

Lars grimaced. “You can’t live off selling records anymore. I saw that coming already with Napster. And don’t get me started on Spotify.”

“Don’t worry about that.”

The discussion came to a halt again, which gave Carrie some bittersweet moments to consider how the hell it got started in the first place. This was not how she imagined meeting Lars again, after so many years.

How can you be so close to someone in school and then grow into… strangers? The intimacy she had thought of before, seemed to be just that: her imagination… Or … 

At length, Lars said, “It’s not about careers. It’s about if we can be happy changing the past—if we could change it. I know now we can’t.”

“Well, I don’t.” Carrie kept a firm hold on the spoon again. “I would enjoy reliving most of it, I think. If I could be an artist from day one, draw, paint, serious exhibitions, maybe a fill-in issue of the X-Men… instead of fucking starving that part of me for 20 years.”

She bit her lip. “I would also think about doing more for … Lin … and my brother and… others. That would definitely do more good than harm. I’d risk that.”

Lars held up his hand. “Once more unto the breach then: You are 17. Your present family, of course, somehow—” he made a dismissive gesture “—they don’t matter. You use your magic power and—puff!—goodbye 2016. Hello 1996!”

Carrie nodded effusively.

Lars leaned slightly forward, regarding her very closely. He still had beautiful eyes… But he was a different person now. And she was married.

Lars waited a few moments more, then hit the ball home. “Carrie, you have to experience so many events since 1996 all over again. Not just the same TV-programs. What about 9-11?… All the family misfortunes which you can’t change, like your aunt’s sclerosis? Can you honestly tell me you would be okay with that?”

She shrugged. “Why not? And there are many things I liked … I mean Married with Children, I could watch that again” She was only being half-ironic. “I can also experience new stuff; good stuff.”

“Okay, back to objection number two. What about Jonathan? You still want to meet and marry him, right?”

“Yeah…” Carrie looked at the coffee. “I guess…”

Lars continued. “Even if you met Jonathan, you might have changed so much he wouldn’t want to marry you.”

“Okay, so maybe we don’t meet—maybe I can’t have that,” Carrie raised her voice. “But if I was super-happy going to art school and actually having a career, a job…” She faltered again.

Lars snorted. “More like unemployed. It’s art, remember?”

“I don’t care! What if I was super-happy making that choice?” She felt something sting her eyes. “So today… 20 years later… I would be someone.”

“You tell me,” Lars said gently. “Would you risk a life without those who really mean something to you? Jonathan? Your children?”

Carrie smiled wistfully. “…Maybe not.”

Lars nodded. “You see what I am getting at?”

“No!” Carrie was almost shouting now. “I should be able to use my all-powerful magic to make sure I still meet Jon, we fall in love, we have Emma and Michael—preferably without any diagnoses!”

She put both her hands down with a ‘slap’, so their plates and cups rattled. “Objection number two, three and three-thousand: Gone! Puff—It’s A Kind of Magic!”

Lars got up from the table. Slowly. He looked and sounded like he was going to a funeral:

“If you need magic to prevent all negative consequences of anything you ever do in the world, that would be… the absolute worst outcome.”

He looked down at her. “You’d have to stop everything in the world from ever changing just to make sure you didn’t risk anything becoming ‘bad’. Does that sound like a world that will make you—or anyone else—happy?!”

Carrie glared back at Lars for a long moment while the whirr of the café around them continued. People going through the motions. No magic there.

A diminutive redhead slid over to their table, notepad in hand. “Check? Or… is there anything else I can get you?”

“Nothing you have on your menu.” Carrie got up, too.

They paid and exited the café. Carrie walked briskly ahead.

Once they were out in the parking lot, she turned around, facing him. “Is that what you are selling in your songs now, Lars? That we always have to live with our regrets?”

Lars shielded his eyes from the noon sun. “Maybe. But I prefer looking at what can make you happy today, and tomorrow. Yesterday is gone forever.”

“I wish I never played Dungeons and Dragons with you.” Carrie huffed. “Maybe a part of me still believed you could get a big fat magical spell that would just change my bloody life, no caveats. But then again, I am definitely not 17 anymore…”

“I’m going to play a concert for eight people today,” Lars said while they headed for the cars. “The venue wanted to cancel, but I convinced them otherwise.”

Carrie frowned. “Why? You will lose money, too, won’t you?”

“I already have,” Lars said, “just by driving here. But it’s what I do. And there’ll be other gigs. With a bigger audience.”

Carrie hesitated. A second ticked by. Two.

Then she reached out to give him a hug. “If you say, ‘The show must go on’ now, I promise I will hit you.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Lars grinned and hugged her back.

They pulled back and stood taking each other in. Carrie waited for the relief to set in—the feeling that it was finally over. Even though she hadn’t done anything she had planned, it was, in a way, finished. But instead, she just felt bile.

Lars looked at her, his hand on the car door. “Well, I hope we can see each other tonight, then.”

They hadn’t talked about that.

“I’m driving home right after the concert,” he said. “But I hope you’ll come and listen.”

“I’d like that, but…” Carrie said, feeling the bitterness rise again. “But my husband has had his turn here, and he needs a break too.”

“Oh, so you take turns?”

“Yeah, we can’t bring Michael with us, and my mom lives in Los Angeles.”

“Right, okay,” he said. “I get it now.”

“We’ve already talked about what it’s like, Lars,” she said. “You know, with Michael and everything.”

“Yeah, yeah, I just wanted to ask, because I think it’d be really cool to have a familiar face in the crowd, you know? Then we’d at least… then one out of the eight people who show up, or however many it’ll be, yeah, then we’re up to what, twelve percent or something.”

She sighed deeply. “Yeah, well, you’ll probably survive. If nothing else, you have your artistic integrity to live on.”

She said it while leaning against the hood of the car, looking around. There were cars everywhere—the normal noise of everyday life that she would soon return to. And somehow, that felt appealing.

“What do you mean, my artistic integrity?” Lars asked.

“Well, I mean, you’re an artist and all that, and—”

“Yeah, but so are you.”

“No, I’m not,” she said. “But I could have been, if things had turned out differently.”

“Yeah, we’ve talked about that,” Lars said. “And it’s not something you should dwell on, because like I told you, we can’t live our lives over. It’ll always go wrong. So you have to figure out how to shape your future.”

She took a deep breath. “What if I just say that all of that is bullshit anyway?”

“But… I thought we agreed.”

“You thought,” she said. “But now that I’ve had time to think about it, I still think it’s bullshit.”

“Well, then you have to make an argument for it,” he said.

“No, I don’t,” she said sharply. “Actually, I think I only want to argue for one thing, and that is that I should be allowed to dream about something else that could have been, regardless of whether it’s technically or philosophically possible, or whatever the hell it is you’ve been trying to say.”

“But that’s what I’m trying to say, and that’s why,” he said, raising his voice, “it’s a bad idea, because it will only make you more unhappy!”

“What do you know about what makes me happy?” Carrie said. “You’re the one who gets to go play music for people tonight. You’re the one who can send child support to your otherwise well-functioning daughter and then not worry about her for two weeks at a time.”

“Look, I don’t think we should bring my daughter into this,” Lars said. “And maybe I’d like to see her a little more often, you know?”

“Nice one,” Carrie said. “But it’s still a little different being you than it is being me.”

“I’m not disputing that,” Lars said. “Of course, it’s different. But I was kind of hoping you’d be a little open to the idea that when I’m just trying to help you—”

“But I didn’t ask for your help,” Carrie cut him off.

Lars tried to move closer to her, and she automatically took a step back, nearly bumping into the car’s hood again. She moved so that she kept her distance from him.

“Look, that wasn’t my intention, that…” he started.

“No, no, I know it wasn’t your intention,” she said. “I just think… something didn’t land right here. And I think what’s landing now is that you have to go play, and you should go play, and that’s fine. But I’d also like to be allowed to go home. And maybe you think what I’m thinking about—living a different life—is bullshit, but then I want to be allowed to go home with my bullshit.”

“But I never said you’re not allowed to, Carrie!”

“That’s exactly what you said,” she shot back. “You’ve done nothing all afternoon but deconstruct what I wanted, which was just to think, what if things had been different? Because the life I have right now isn’t that great. And maybe it never will be.”

“Look, I think your son is getting better. You told me he–”

“–that’s not certain at all. Autism is a lifelong condition. And it’s also… it could also be a lifelong condition that I… and before you get started with your artistic cheerleading squad again, it could also be a lifelong condition if you’ve dropped out of college and shot all sorts of things into your veins for a few years. Then it might be that you can’t get ahead in the job market either, even if your son could miraculously change.”

“You’re saying it as if everything is already decided in the future,” Lars said. “But that’s exactly my point. Things aren’t decided in the future, they’re decided in the past. And that’s what we have to learn to live with.”

“Yeah, that’s easy for you to say,” Carrie said. “Sure, you’ve had your bumps with your divorce and so on, but I’d say I’ve been a little further out there, if you know what I mean.”

“Are we really going to compare who’s had it worse?”

“Maybe not. But that’s how it is even if we don’t compare, that’s what I go home to. So now you have to go play, and that’s fine. And I have to go home to the life I’m going home to.”

“It wasn’t my intention to make you upset,” he said again, trying once more to get closer to her.

She moved back again.

“The intention was to help you. That’s what… that’s what I’m trying to say. Because I know you’ve had a hard life, and… the other day when I wrote a song about the divorce, I have really been ruminating on this for a long time, and I know this is gonna sound…” He made a face. “But I just had this epiphany about how we can deal with all the past crap.”

“Yes, but not dreaming about how it could have been different. I heard that. But I can’t write songs.”

“Okay,” Lars said, wearily. “We can also say you’ve had a hard life. You have a harder life than I do. I’ll admit that. I can’t imagine what it would be like if I couldn’t play music, or if I was as, what should I say, tied down as you are, and I didn’t have the time or space for it.”

The admission sounded flat in her ears, and she could feel herself getting angrier.

“Yes, it is terrible,” she said. “But you have to shelve it somewhere and move on. And maybe when you do that, it can be nice once in a while to think about something else, even if that other thing can’t exist philosophically. But maybe it can still help anyway.”

“Yeah, it might,” said Lars. 

After they had stood in silence, looking at each other for a moment, she said, “We should probably stop here, so we don’t get angry with each other.”

“But we’re not angry with each other,” he countered lamely. “I could never imagine being angry with you.”

“It’s okay,” she said, and began to feel herself crumble a little. She finally dropped her defenses and stepped forward to give him another hug, one that lasted longer this time. She was just tired. She wanted it to end before she went back to feeding therapy and sleepless nights.

And as they stood there, holding each other in the parking lot, she said, “You go out and play and then think about your past, which you’ve obviously made some fantastic music about. That song about highways and stuff, that must definitely be about your ex, right?”

 They let go of each other again.

“Yeah,” he said. “It was actually her I was thinking of when I wrote it.” He smiled goofily. “It is good therapy.”

“Fine,” she said. “That’s something that works, and it’s good that you can do it.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It is. But I feel like an asshole now. To you.”

“You’re not,” she said and put her hand slowly up to touch his cheek. “You’re always that night in your parents’ attic, 14 February 1997.” Her lips curved to a quick smile.

“Oh … that night,” he said, not knowing where to look. “That was awkward.”

“But also good,” she said before he could go on. “And a good memory.”

“You … think so?”

“Yes,” Carrie said, “and don’t take this the wrong way, but it is good because it is only a memory and that is all it is ever going to be.” 

“But it had potential,” Lars said, rubbing his chin. “Heck, it sounds like new song material now that you brought it up. You… wouldn’t mind, would you?” 

Carrie shrugged. “If the song can be messy—” she smirked, “—about what was bad, but also about all of the good … then I’ll think about it.”

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“Endless Highway” by Lars Anestad as imagined by Suno: https://suno.com/s/bzjbRW3m6pfIuYoa

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This completely revised version published first Dec 2025.