The Three-Day Bus Ride Home: Our Long Distance Relationship Story

This long distance relationship story started long before texting, FaceTime, or sharing your location from a phone. Kendra and I had been together for around two years and were living together in Ocean City, New Jersey, when everything fell apart and she left for Arizona.

At the time, I thought it might be the end of us. Instead, it became one of those chapters of my life that I can still picture decades later: an apartment on 13th and Asbury, a mixtape full of sappy songs, a birthday phone call, updates from payphones along a three-day bus ride, and the moment Kendra finally stepped off that bus in Philadelphia.

Obviously, it wasn’t the end of our story.

Life Above the Chatterbox

When Kendra first moved to Ocean City, her family owned the Chatterbox, the big pink restaurant that sat at Ninth Street and Central Avenue for generations. She lived somewhere else at first, but eventually moved into an apartment above the restaurant that her aunt and uncle owned.

Being right upstairs made her convenient. There was always another shift that needed to be covered, something that needed to be managed, or someone who needed help. She became a babysitter, employee, manager, and whatever else was needed. She worked an unbelievable number of hours. I remember her even working a 24-hour shift once.

Then I came along, and after we started dating, I couldn’t understand it. Why did she have to work constantly? Why was it always work, work, work? I wasn’t trying to start some family revolution. I was a young guy dating a girl I cared about, and I couldn’t understand why so much of her life had to revolve around that restaurant.

Eventually, Kendra started asking some of those questions herself. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, I became the bad guy. The idea seemed to become that I wasn’t good for her, and eventually she started seeing a therapist.

She was prescribed medication during that period. I believe clonazepam was one of them, along with another medication I can’t remember well enough to name. Looking back all these years later, I don’t pretend to know exactly what was happening inside her head or what role any of that played. I only know what it looked and felt like from where I was standing.

13th and Asbury

By then, Kendra and I were living together on 13th and Asbury in Ocean City. It was an older-style house with character, including a few French doors that led into the bedroom. It’s strange what your brain decides to save. Decades later, I can still picture those doors.

Things between us had deteriorated badly. The night before she left is probably one of the hardest memories from that time. She had gone out with friends and came home tipsy, and the person who came through those doors didn’t seem like the woman I’d fallen in love with. From where I stood that night, it felt like she hated me with everything she had.

I was heartbroken, and then some old friends from her hometown showed up to take her away. They were guys, which certainly didn’t make the situation any easier for me. They arrived in a truck, picked her up, and headed west.

Kendra was going to Arizona.

Moving Back Home

After she was gone, there wasn’t much left for me at the apartment. Eventually, I left 13th and Asbury and moved back in with my mother. I went to work, spent time with friends, and tried to keep living my life, but I was devastated.

This was also long before texting, social media, FaceTime, or carrying a computer around in your pocket. When somebody moved across the country, they were really gone. Communication meant finding a telephone and actually calling someone.

At some point, I apparently decided music might accomplish what I couldn’t, so I made Kendra a mixtape. Not just any mixtape, either. It was loaded with the kind of sappy songs a heartbroken guy sends to the girl who just moved across the country.

I even put Pink Floyd on it, and Kendra hates Pink Floyd. Apparently, I wasn’t thinking that part through very well.

I sent it to Arizona anyway.

The Birthday Phone Call

Time kept moving, and eventually my birthday came around. I was working at Schooners then, and on my birthday I remember sitting alone at the bar when one of the waitresses came over and told me I had a phone call.

It was Kendra calling from Arizona to wish me a happy birthday.

We talked, and I don’t remember either one of us making some big declaration about getting back together. There wasn’t a movie speech where everything suddenly became clear, and she never told me she was coming home. But I remember getting off that phone with an unmistakable feeling that I couldn’t explain.

She’s coming back to me.

I couldn’t have proven it. She hadn’t actually said it. Somehow, though, I just knew.

She’s Coming Home

More time passed. One day I had a few friends over at my mother’s house when the phone rang again. It was Kendra, and this time she had news.

She was coming home.

She wasn’t flying, either. She was getting on a bus in Arizona and riding it all the way back East, a trip that was going to take about three days. I went from heartbroken to practically jumping off the walls. Three days suddenly felt like forever, but at least now there was a destination at the end of them.

Remember, there were no cell phones. Kendra couldn’t sit on the bus texting me updates or share her location so I could watch her little blue dot move across the country. Instead, whenever the bus stopped somewhere and she had the opportunity, she’d call me.

Every one of those calls meant she was a little closer.

For three days, I waited while Kendra slowly made her way across the country and back toward me. Somewhere during all that excitement, I also made a reservation at the Hampton Inn in Egg Harbor Township.

I had plans.

Crash Into Me

The bus was supposed to arrive in Philadelphia sometime around 10 that night, although I don’t remember the exact time anymore. What I do remember is working my shift at Schooners around the time she was due home and hearing the same song seemingly over and over again.

It was Dave Matthews Band’s “Crash Into Me.”

Someone played it on the jukebox, and then it played again. I swear I heard that song about four times during my shift.

There are songs that become attached to periods of your life whether you want them to or not. Years later, you can hear the opening notes and suddenly you’re not standing wherever you are anymore. You’re back in a restaurant decades earlier, waiting for your shift to end because the girl you thought you’d lost is somewhere on a bus headed home.

When my shift finally ended, I got in the car and headed for Philadelphia.

The Bus Pulled In

After everything that had happened—the arguments, Arizona, moving back into my mother’s house, the mixtape, Pink Floyd, the birthday phone call, and three days of waiting for updates from bus stops across the country—it had all come down to watching for one bus.

Then it pulled in, and Kendra stepped out. I can still picture it.

It was like the sun was behind her.

Man, what a sight. The woman who had gotten into a truck and disappeared toward Arizona was standing in front of me again.

We got into the car and started driving back toward South Jersey. There was alot to talk about, and we tried to catch up on as much as we possibly could during that drive. There was no way one car ride could account for everything that had happened between us, but at that moment I don’t think it needed to. She was sitting next to me. She was home.

Eventually, we pulled into the Hampton Inn in Egg Harbor Township. We went inside, found our room, and closed the door behind us. What happened after that doesn’t need its own chapter.

The rest is history.

Looking Back

It’s strange looking back at that period now because I know something the young guy sitting alone at the bar at Schooners couldn’t possibly have known. I know how the story continued.

At the time, though, there were no guarantees. When Kendra left for Arizona, I didn’t know she would eventually become my wife. I didn’t know what our lives would look like decades later or everything that would happen between then and now. I certainly didn’t know I’d someday be sitting here remembering an old apartment on 13th and Asbury, a terrible night behind a set of French doors, or a mixtape containing Pink Floyd songs she probably didn’t want to hear.

I didn’t know I’d remember sitting alone at the bar when a waitress told me there was a phone call. I didn’t know I’d remember Kendra checking in from bus stops as she crossed the country, or that “Crash Into Me” would forever remind me of waiting for her to get home.

Those little details are what survived.

At the time, all I really knew was that I loved her, she’d left, and it hurt like hell. Then the phone rang. Eventually she got on a bus, and for three days, one stop and one phone call at a time, she made her way back across the country.

And then that bus pulled into Philadelphia.

She stepped off.

And she came home.