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“Did you find an Arabian princess to keep you company?” someone asks behind me, squeezing my shoulders with their hands. I jump, drop the beer in my hand and then turn around, knocking his hands off me.
Fuck. My heart jumps into my throat and I can feel the topsof my ears turn red. “Sorry about that,” Josh mumbles, reaching down to pick up the bottle that fell.
I look to Frankie. Her eyes widen and she immediately asks if I’m okay.
Blowing out a shaky breath through my nostrils, I work my jaw back and forth. I avoid the questioning glances and take the beer back. “Thanks.” Twisting in the chair, I lean back like I’m not bothered by anything. “And it was Iraq, not Saudi Arabia.”
“My bad.” Laughing, Josh sits next to me, nudges my ribs. We laugh it off and while I attempt to lighten the mood and change the subject, I know everyone noticed my reaction to him touching me.
The conversations flow and thankfully, it’s away from me for a while or until Ethan and Frankie disappear. Then I’m left alone with Josh. “What’s up?”
I stare at him and the shadows dancing across his face. I search his eyes wondering where he’s going with this. “What?”
“What’s up with you? You’re jumpy and more aggravated than you used to be.”
I want to scream in his face. Here this guy went to college and got a degree. I went off to a war that wasn’t mine to fight. I mean, what the fuck did he think I’d come back like? Happy to have served my country? No. Fuck no. But I don’t say any of that to him. Instead, I blow it off. “Just tired.”
“Okay, so you don’t want to talk about why you’re back.” He shifts in the chair, his face lit up by the string lights above us. “But why’d you leave in the first place? I wouldn’t have pegged you for joining the military. Baseball, yeah, but the Army? That’s not you.”
I squint into the darkness at nothing in particular. The lights blur and look like tiny fireflies dancing around the sky. Maybe this is me avoiding the truth. Who wants to admit they were fucked up over a girl and bailed on everyone?
Not me. I’d love to go as far to say I joined the military because it was the honorable thing to do. After 9/11, I wanted toserve my country. That’s the right answer. But it’s not mine. I didn’t do it for that. I did it because it seemed logical. And in fact, enlisting wasn’t a logical one. It was a spur of the moment plea I made with myself to disappear. One that nearly ended my life.
But this is Josh. He’s been a big brother to me since I was eight. There’s no talking my way out of this one. He’ll call bullshit on me.
Drawing in a breath, I blow it out carefully, watchful of Frankie in the distance. “I don’t know. I guess I was scared I wouldn’t be what she needed.”
Josh shakes his head, side-eyeing me. “I don’t think that’s it at all. I think you were scared she wasn’t whatyouneeded right then.”
Well, maybe.
Sometimes we do shit, and at the time, it seems like a good idea. The right decision. Then days later, months, years, we look at what we did and think, “Well, that was a fucking stupid decision.”
That’s where I’m at. I was a jackass. I slept with her and then bailed.
I’ll be fucking lucky if she ever talks to me again. I certainly don’t deserve it. But I had to see what, if anything, is salvageable of my relationship with her… and get this douche Shane out of the picture before I kick his cocky ass. I have my work cut out for me. And if I thought the past few months were hell, I have a feeling I haven’t seen anything yet.
12
EVIE
Do you notice that girl walking down the street wearing heels and regretting life decisions? Not only am I at the lowest point in my young uneventful life, but I’m very much aware that I’m wearing the wrong shoes for a hike up the highway in the middle of the night.
Frankie and these goddamn shoes. Why did I listen to her?
If there has ever been a point in my life when I hate her, it’s right now, as I’m walking home from Shane’s house and contemplating how I got myself into this mess. Because I’m an idiot girl who fell for the wrong boy. That’s how.
I know what you’re thinking, or at least whatI think of me. I’m weak. But I’m not. There’s no more forgiveness. There’s survival and I’m doing what I need to do to protect the ones around me.
After the third pothole, I nearly break my ankle in, and roughly a mile down the road, the shoes have to go. It’s either that or my feet are going to be hamburger meat in the near future.
With a sigh, and the heels dangling from my hands, my mind unconsciously drifts back to Grayson and the smile that makes my bones ache for more.
I’ve missed him so much it hurts and seeing him tonight had been another reminder of how incomplete my life has been without him. I should be upset that he never called or anything and left with just a “Dear Jane” letter after we had sex. I should be upset about all of that. But I know why he left. I saw the warning signs. The fact is, I can’t be mad at him. And I don’t want to be. After he left, nothing was the same and I want my friend back.
I miss the warmth of his smile and the nights where we would lie in his bed and talk about everything and anything. I miss the smell of him, and how he always tripped climbing in my window and the curse that followed. I miss watching his baseball games and throwing Cracker Jacks at him from the stands with Frankie. The smell of the dirt from the field after it would rain. I miss watching him play the piano for me late at night. I miss the impromptu serenades he would do for me when we’d sing along to the radio.
I miss being at a party, wondering where he was and then him appear out of nowhere to put his arm around me, the warmth I experienced—feeling like I belonged to him if only for a moment. I miss our families hanging out together every weekend, the barbecues, the parties, our arrest records.