The Lucky One(64)

He touched his knee to hers. “Where’s all this coming from?”

“Let’s just say I haven’t had a lot of luck in the dating world.”

He knew enough to stay silent, but when he lifted his arm, he felt her lean into him. “It didn’t bother me at first,” she finally said. “I mean, I was so busy with Ben and school, I didn’t pay much attention to it. But later, when it kept happening, I began to wonder. I began to wonder about me. And I’d ask myself all these crazy questions. Was I doing something wrong? Was I not paying enough attention? Did I smell funny?” She tried to smile, but she couldn’t fully mask the undercurrent of sadness and doubt. “Like I said, crazy stuff. Because every now and then, I’d meet a guy and think that we were getting along great, and suddenly I’d stop hearing from him. Not only did he stop calling, but if I happened to bump into him sometime later, he always acted like I had the plague. I didn’t understand it. I still don’t. And it bothered me. It hurt me. With time, it got harder and harder to keep blaming the guys, and I eventually came to the conclusion that there was something wrong with me. That maybe I was simply meant to live my life alone.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” he said, giving her arm a reassuring squeeze.

“Give me a chance. I’m sure you’ll find something.”

Thibault could hear the wound beneath the jest. “No,” he said. “I don’t think I will.”

“You’re sweet.”

“I’m honest.”

She smiled as she took a sip from her beer. “Most of the time.”

“You don’t think I’m honest?”

She shrugged. “Like I said. Most of the time.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She put the bottle of beer on the table and gathered her thoughts. “I think you’re a terrific guy. You’re smart, you work hard, you’re kind, and you’re great with Ben. I know that, or at least I think I do, because that’s what I see. But it’s what you don’t say that makes me wonder about you. I tell myself that I know you, and then when I think about it, I realize that I don’t. What were you like in college? I don’t know. What happened after that? I don’t know. I know you went to Iraq and I know that you walked here from Colorado, but I don’t know why. When I ask, you just say that ‘Hampton seems like a nice place.’ You’re an intelligent college graduate, but you’re content to work for minimum wage. When I ask why, you say that you like dogs.” She ran a hand through her hair. “The thing is, I get the sense that you’re telling me the truth. You’re just not telling all of it. And the part you’re leaving out is the part that would help me understand who you are.”

Listening to her, Thibault tried not to think about everything else he hadn’t told her. He knew he couldn’t tell her everything; he would never tell her everything. There was no way she would understand, and yet . . . he wanted her to know who he really was. More than anything, he realized that he wanted her to accept him.

“I don’t talk about Iraq because I don’t like to remember my time there.” he said She shook her head. “You don’t have to tell me if you’d rather not. . . .”

“I want to,” he said, his voice quiet. “I know you read the papers, so you probably have this image in your mind of what it’s like. But it’s not like what you imagine, and there’s not really any way I could make it real to you. It’s something you had to have experienced yourself. I mean, most of the time it wasn’t nearly as bad as you probably think it was. A lot of the time—most of the time—it was okay. Easier for me than for others, since I didn’t have a wife or kids. I had friends, I had routines. Most of the time, I went through the motions. But some of the time, it was bad. Really bad. Bad enough to make me want to forget I’d ever been there at all.”

She was quiet before drawing a long breath. “And you’re here in Hampton because of what happened in Iraq?”

He picked at the label on his bottle of beer, slowing peeling away the corner and scratching the glass with his fingernail. “In a way,” he said.

She sensed his hesitation and laid a hand on his forearm. Its warmth seemed to release something inside him.

“Victor was my best friend in Iraq,” Thibault began. “He was with me through all three tours. Our unit suffered a lot of casualties, and by the end, I was ready to put my time there behind me. And I succeeded, for the most part, but for Victor, it wasn’t so easy. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. After we were out, we went our separate ways, trying to get on with life. He went home to California, I went back to Colorado, but we still needed each other, you know? Talked on the phone, sent e-mails in which both of us pretended we were doing just fine with the fact that while we’d spent the last four years trying every day to avoid being killed, people back home were acting as if the world was ending if they lost a parking spot or got the wrong latte at Starbucks. Anyway, we ended up reuniting for a fishing trip in Minnesota—”

He broke off, not wanting to remember what happened but knowing he had to. He took a long pull on his beer and set the bottle on the table.

“This was last fall, and I . . . I was just so happy to see him again. We didn’t talk about our time in Iraq, but we didn’t have to. Just spending a few days with someone else who knew what we’d been through was enough for the both of us. Victor, by then, was doing okay. Not great, but okay. He was married with a kid on the way, and I remember thinking that even though he was still having nightmares and the occasional flashback, he was going to be all right.”