Something Like Normal(31)

Moss laughs and fist-bumps me, and I feel the most normal I’ve felt since the day we got back from Afghanistan—except for when I’m alone with Harper. These are my brothers. This is my family.

“Hey, Harper?” I call across the restaurant.

“Yeah?”

“I was serious about the fishing.”

“Me, too,” she says. “I just have to finish up with this table of idiot Marines and I’ll be ready.”

“So, wait. Are you and her…?” Kevlar’s head swivels from me to Harper and back. He leaves the thought unfinished, which sums up me and Harper pretty accurately. Unfinished. She’s not my girlfriend, but I’m not interested in anyone else. Unless you count Paige, but… I don’t know why she gets to me the way she does. I don’t like her the way I like Harper. He drops his head to the table, making the silverware rattle. “This world is so unfair.”

“Dude,” I say. “I told you already. If you’re going to get a girl, you have to actually talk to one.”

He gives me the finger without looking up.

Harper finishes her shift and we follow her to the radio station, where she leaves the Rover for her dad. Driving down Daniels, Kevlar keeps rocking forward in the passenger’s seat, as if he’s trying to make the Jeep go faster.

“Jesus, Solo,” he complains. “My old granny drives faster than you.”

“I’m doing sixty.” The limit is forty-five and I’m keeping pace with traffic. “What’s your rush?”

Moss leans through the space between the seats. “You should have seen him on the drive down,” he says. “We’d have been here even earlier if he didn’t get stopped three times for speeding. Boy has some serious road rage, too. Shit. I’m less afraid of the Taliban than his cracker-ass driving.”

I laugh, but I can’t help wondering if this is what Kevlar brought home from Afghanistan. And what about Moss? He told me that he grew up in the projects in Baltimore. He wasn’t a gang member and he wasn’t from a single-mother home. His dad was ex-Army on disability and they couldn’t afford a better neighborhood. Moss told me once he plans to go to college when he gets out next year.

“Seeing people get killed is nothing new for me, Solo,” he said to me once, while we were lifting weights in our makeshift patrol base gym. “You do what you can to let it go. Otherwise it’ll eat you up.”

I glance at him in the rearview mirror and he’s looking at the scenery as we pass, all Buddha-serene. Maybe he’s the lucky one.

Kevlar reminds me of a dog with his head stuck out the window as our charter captain, Gary, speeds the boat across the water, heading for fish. Kevlar’s got a beer in his hand and the go-fast he’s been craving. For the first time since they showed up at my bedroom door, he looks really relaxed.

Moss is in the cabin, looking a little seasick.

“Do my back?” Harper—stripped down to a green-striped bikini top and shorts—hands me a bottle of sunscreen. The bruise she gave me below my eye is still fading to yellow, but she’s inviting me to touch her bare skin. It’s kind of a mind-fuck moment and I have to mentally field strip an M16 to keep from getting turned on—but I like it.

Kevlar comes into the cabin for another beer as I’m spreading the sunscreen between her shoulders. His red eyebrows lift over the top edge of his sunglasses and he mouths son of a bitch at me, making me laugh. “Anyone else want a beer?”

Moss shakes his head. He still looks a little queasy.

“Too early for me,” I say.

“Dude, it’s happy hour in Helmand.” Kevlar throws me a beer, which nearly slides out of my sunscreen-covered hand. I touch the can to Harper’s back, making her squeak. As she turns around to smack my arm, I watch Kevlar chug his entire beer, then go back to the fridge for another.

“Travis?” I turn to look at Harper. Her voice goes quiet. “Everything okay?”

I’m not sure how to answer. I have my own shit. I’m not sure I can deal with his, too. But maybe I should. Maybe that’s what we need—to talk about Afghanistan, about Charlie. There’s a dot of sunscreen at the tip of her nose, so I reach up and rub it in. “Yeah, I’m good.” I don’t think she believes me. “Give me and Kevlar a minute?”

“Dude, you okay?” I ask, after Harper is back out on deck.

“Yeah, why?” Kevlar says.

“I don’t know. Just seems like you’re drinking a lot.”

“The hell, Solo?” His eyebrows pull together and he frowns. “I’m on vacation.”

“Sorry, man.” I throw up my hands. “I’m just saying if you need to talk or whatever—”

“Fuck off.” Kevlar goes back out on deck, facing into the wind. The boat hits a wave and a spray of salt water catches him in the face. He lets out a joyous whoop, grinning like a fool.

I go out beside Moss. “How long has he been this way?”

“Since we got home, I guess,” he says. “I took the bus to see my family, so I’m not sure. On the way down here he told me he spent a night in jail back home in Tennessee for getting in a bar fight. I don’t know, Solo. It’s like real life isn’t big enough for him anymore.”