Purple Hearts(33)

I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I was pretty sure it was reality TV. And after the big leaps of the last couple of days, I was ready to listen to her talk about reality TV as long as she wanted to. I had my best friend on my side. I wanted to cry with relief. “Sure, Nor. It’s all you.”

“Okay,” she said, concentrating. “Where did you do it, how did you do it, why didn’t you call me, and what are you going to do now? Go.”

I told her everything, still popping almonds. From the moment I’d formed the idea after she left my house to the embarrassing proposal at Frankie’s to the shocking on-board-ness of Luke, to the day at city hall and the disaster at Chili’s. When I came to last night, I paused.

I tried to make my voice casual. “So, yeah. Now he’s deployed, and we’ll Skype every once in a while, and that’s it.”

She stood up and got closer to me, narrowing her eyes. She smiled. She smelled like rose petals. “You slept with him, didn’t you?”

I breathed in a mouthful of almonds, coughing, then laughing, then coughing more. Nora cracked up with me, patting my back. When I recovered, eyes watering, I said, “How did you know, you psychic?”

“I saw you two together, Cass. There was some heat, queen.” I looked at her, suddenly confused. “Some real heat,” she muttered, pulling her phone from her pocket to use as an eyeliner mirror. “And not just anger.”

“I mean,” I started, thinking back to last night. Thinking back to crying out as he pushed me against the wall. “I thought he was cute, but . . .” Thinking of this morning, how slowly our lips let go. “Whatever. We are so awkward together. We piss each other off constantly. He’s, like, this conservative bro. Maybe I have a thing for bros.”

“You don’t have to justify it to me!” She tossed the eyeliner toward me. I missed it. It clattered on the floor.

Right. It was her idea. Kind of.

But Luke, specifically, was not her idea. And in any other circumstances, I would have never seen Luke again after that night at the bar. Maybe I would have run into him again through Frankie, but we would have never even remembered each other’s names. And now we were entwined. There was another mismatching jigsaw puzzle piece: Luke’s silver-blue eyes.

I heard the door open and close upstairs. Toby. It was time for practice. I got nervous.

“Okay, Nor, this is an absolute, military-grade secret.”

“Ha!” She squatted near the case for her bass, flipping the levers on the lid. “Duh.”

“Swear.”

She did a budget John F. Kennedy impression. “?‘We hold these truths to be self-evident,’ I solemnly swear not to reveal this classified information.”

Toby came down the stairs, wearing a fantastically crisp white shirt over his broad shoulders, a red bandanna, and his dusty brown hair pulled into a ponytail. “Very festive Mick Fleetwood, Toby,” I called.

He grinned. “Long time, no talk, Cass,” he said.

“Sorry.”

As we set up, Toby came near where I was bent, and plunked a few notes on the electric piano. “Oh, by the way.”

I looked up. In his hands was a shiny, brand-new vegan cookbook. “I saw this and I was thinking about you today, so . . .”

Nora released a large cough. I looked over at where she was innocently plugging in her bass. I couldn’t be sure, but I could have sworn I heard her say something underneath it. “Bad timing.”





Luke


My small, donated German laptop sat on the green tin table that also served as the place for cards, for clipping fingernails, for unwrapping milky British chocolate, for putting lotion on blistered palms after maneuvering a heavy gun all day, for setting up a mirror to shave. Our room at Camp Leatherneck was about half the size of our dorm rooms at Fort Hood. Fake wood paneling and exposed pipes that didn’t keep the cold out at night.

We were in temperate country, in Helmand Province. The heat was bad, but the frigid nights were worse.

It was me and Frankie and a kid from the division we didn’t know too well, Sam Adels, the only other redhead aside from Davies. Everyone called him Rooster.

Both Frankie and Rooster were over at the community room, the bass from someone’s R&B shaking the thin walls, so it was kind of pointless to Skype with Cassie. We didn’t have anyone to fool.

But we had said two weeks, so I was here, online.

In a lot of ways, this place was good for me. Sobriety was a gift I received every morning. Clarity. Blinding sun. Everything I had to fear was outside of me, and the ways I would fight it were established, unquestionable.

I woke up, I ate, I bent next to Clark over a huge engine, repeating his words, writing down parts and drawing diagrams, following his lead.

Then we’d load up and take the rickety roads up and down the Kajaki Dam into the villages, negotiating with the Afghan National Army (ANA) at checkpoints. The elders of the villages would speak to the translators, the translators to the captains. We’d hand out blankets to the women, licorice to the kids, passing through herds of goats and volleyball games. Still, we were on full alert at all times.

I watched for Cassie’s name to go green in the Skype window. I looked closer at the icon she’d chosen as her contact photo. A man in red and gold robes, smiling and pointing. I realized it was the Dalai Lama. Spokesperson for world peace. Funny, Cass.