CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

ZANE LEWIS

“It’s such a nice night out,” Mom remarks as the three of us walk across the lawn to go to the Polsens’ place. “I’m glad we’re closing out our anniversary week this way.”

“It should be a nice, restful end of the week,” Dad says, looking at me. He didn’t ask me how the talk with Harper had gone, but I knew it was probably weighing on him almost as much as it was on me.

I know I’m about to have to deal with Nadine and Harper for at least the next few hours. Harper and I left things so up in the air that I don’t know what we’re going to do other than avoid talking about anything personal all night. And how is that going to go?

I find myself tugging at my tie, at my pants. I haven’t done that since I went into basic. I know I’m nervous when I can’t keep myself from fidgeting. Just take a chill pill, Zane. You’ll get through tonight, and whatever is going on between you and Harper, you can figure out later.

“Bev, Nolan, Zane!”

I can see the tension in Nadine’s eyes when she greets us at the door, but she’s got a smile on her face so I know there’s no point in saying anything about anything. It’s going to be a night of faking it until I make it.

“Thank you so much for doing this, Nadine,” Mom says, leaning in to kiss her on either cheek. I shake hands with Marshall, and wave at Harper. When it comes time for me to kiss Nadine on the cheek, she barely lets me get close enough.

“Nadine has been hard at work since last night,” Marshall says, leading us all into the dining room, and I take a few quick breaths, glancing at Harper to see how she’s doing. In spite of the composed look in her face, I can tell she still feels it.

Tonight is going to be interesting as hell.

“I remembered how you always go on about the first meal you had on your honeymoon together, so I wanted to recreate that for you,” Nadine says, and Mom’s eyes widen.

I look at Harper again. In spite of us coming to some kind of almost-agreement that we’re going to basically pretend like the past several days didn’t happen, I can’t stop myself from looking at her.

Even if I didn’t have a near-constant reminder in the back of my mind of how good our one time having sex was — even if it was in my parents’ bathroom — it would be impossible not to notice her. She’s wearing a little black dress with a hem that’s a couple of inches above her knee. There’s not much cleavage, but I don’t need that to remember how great her tits look, anyway. The thought of ripping the dress off her and having her again keeps floating through my mind, and I can barely stand it.

We all sit down except for Nadine, who goes into the kitchen to get whatever she’s bringing out first. It looks like the inside of some restaurant that would cost an entire paycheck to eat at, four plates on the table in front of me, two bowls off to the side, three different glasses. The whole nine yards.

“Nadine, I think you may have lost your mind,” Mom says, just as Harper’s mom comes out of the kitchen with a tray in her hands. There’s a bottle of wine, and six cocktail glasses with four shrimp each and two sauces.

“Shrimp cocktail, classically served with both aioli and cocktail sauce,” Nadine says. She begins setting down the cocktail glasses on each of our top plates, and hands the wine bottle to Marshall to open.

I swear she nearly drops my cocktail glass on top of me, on purpose, before breezing on back to her own chair. Harper gives me a quick look. Whatever is on Nadine’s mind, she obviously is not my biggest fan right now.

“To start off the festivities the right way, Nadine and I chose a Prosecco,” Marshall explains, and for once in my life I feel like alcohol might not be the solution to an awkward situation but might actually just make it worse.

Hopefully there won’t be enough for all of us to get drunk, because from the way Nadine is already acting, she doesn’t need any of her inhibitions lowered.

“So, Zane, have you thought anymore about reenlisting?” I look at Nadine as she asks the question and for a second, I hate her. I can see the look in her eyes. It’s like she wants me to hurt her daughter, like she wants me to say the wrong thing, even if I’m not even sure what the right thing would be, and make Harper hate me for good.

“I’m still thinking about it,” I say.

“Zane’s got plenty of time to figure it out. He doesn’t have to make up his mind for a few months yet,” Mom says, and I can’t help but be grateful.

“You know, I’ve heard that more and more women are joining the military,” Nadine says as Marshall starts pouring wine into everyone’s glasses.

“Lots of opportunity for women these days,” Marshall comments, and I want to kick him.

“Oh yeah, tons of opportunities for women,” Nadine says, and she gives me another one of those looks.

“I have a lot of respect for the women I work alongside,” I say, knowing I have to do something to put a stop to this. After all her hard work, is Harper’s mom seriously trying to wreck my parents’ anniversary dinner at her house?

“Who was that girl you brought home with you that last time you were in town, Zane? Tracy?”

I close my eyes for a second. I’d brought Tracy home with me mostly because she didn’t have family of her own to see around the holidays. We had been involved on a strictly casual basis before and after that, though she’d already transferred off-base months before the time my parents’ anniversary came around.

“Yeah, Tracy. She’s actually gone on to an assignment in Germany,” I say, hoping that will keep Nadine from coming up with some way to get in a dig at me.

“That’s one thing I would never be able to deal with, in the army, the fact that at almost any time they could ship you off overseas, and your loved ones have to sort of let you go,” Nadine says.

“Fortunately, this close to the end of his tour, that’s not a real risk for Zane,” Mom cuts in, and I try to eat my shrimp cocktail and drink some of the sparkling wine for a few moments.

Marshall and my dad are both doing their part to keep things going, and I don’t know if Harper’s dad knows about the situation, but he’s a champ for it. They’re talking about how perfect the shrimp is, and how good both the sauces are.

Harper is quieter than I’ve ever seen her, eating little bites of her shrimp with the different sauces, taking tiny sips of her wine. This is going to be the longest fucking dinner of my life, I think, and hope that we can both get through it.