CHAPTER TWELVE

ZANE LEWIS

I fall behind Harper a bit at the store, more than happy to enjoy the view from behind. I did promise Mom I would pick up a couple of things, but that was more of an excuse to spend some time with Harper than anything else. I’m glad it worked, watching her push the cart in front of her, watching the figure eight of her ass showing against the dress she put on before we left.

“Do you dress like this in New York, too?”

Harper stops and looks at me with one eyebrow raised, in the middle of reaching for pickles.

“Mostly,” she replies. “Why do you ask?”

“You must get hollered at constantly,” I smirk. “I mean, if you look like that…”

“I keep my headphones on,” Harper tells me.

I laugh. “Oh, right. You don’t do much driving in the city,” I say.

“Almost none,” Harper says.

“Is the car a rental, then?”

We took mine, which was definitely a rental, but we’d had an argument about it for all of half a minute.

“It’s my car,” Harper says. “I just generally don’t drive unless I’m actually leaving the city. There’s no point in it, anyway.”

I remember, almost too late, that Mom wanted me to get mayo, and I grab it off the shelf and add it to the cart.

“So you just take the subway everywhere?”

“Or the bus sometimes, though it gets rougher on the bus in some respects than the subway. And of course, cabs are going day and night,” Harper replies.

“Where do you keep your car then, if you’re not driving it?” The idea is so weird to me.

“There’s a parking garage where I pay rent to have access to a spot,” Harper replies. She grabs some bowtie pasta off the shelf and puts it in the cart, and we move onto another aisle.

“You pay rent to be allowed to park somewhere?” I shake my head at that.

“Yeah, it’s not that bad, actually,” Harper says.

“You have to pay rent to park somewhere?” I shake my head again. “That just sounds crazy.”

“Well,” Harper explains. “There’s a limited amount of parking space in the city. So I pay one-fifty a month, and I’m guaranteed to never have to search for a spot.”

“A hundred and fifty a month? Christ.” I snag a pack of Oreos for a later snack.

“It’s not bad, really,” Harper insists.

“It sounds terrible,” I tell her.

“You’re just biased against the city,” she says, making a face at me.

I laugh. “Maybe if I lived there I’d start to love it.”

“Maybe,” Harper says.

“Maybe instead of reenlisting, I’ll leave the military and move in, become your roommate,” I tell her.

Harper raises an eyebrow at that and snorts. “I don’t know about that,” she says.

“What? You don’t think I can cut it in the big city?”

“No,” she replies, shaking her head. “I don’t.”

“I got through basic. That was hell. I think I can deal with New York City.”

“Hmm. I don’t know about that,” Harper says.

“Why? What’s such a big deal about New York that I couldn’t handle it?”

“Everyone thinks they can deal with it,” Harper says.

“So how come you can handle it, but I can’t?”

“You can’t really call yourself a New Yorker until you’ve cried on the subway or some other really, really public place, and didn’t even care about the fact that everyone can see you,” Harper explains.

“Sounds a lot like the army,” I say.

“How’s that?” Harper looks at me confused. We start down another aisle.

“Well the goal of basic is to break you down, bring you all the way to the foundation. Then build you back up.”

“I’ve heard that but I guess I never really thought it was a real thing, I figured it was just something you say about an experience like that,” Harper says.

“No, it’s totally legit,” I counter.

“So how do they do that?” Harper steers us to the produce aisle and I try to remember what else Mom wanted.

“The screaming in your face thing isn’t really part of it anymore, but basically, they work you and work you until you’re exhausted, and then you have to work some more. You eat, sleep, shower, everything, on their schedule. If one person doesn’t make it through, none of the group does.”

“I guess I can see that,” Harper says, picking up a cucumber. Almost against my will the filthiest possible thought flits through my head.

“Anyway, after weeks of eating, sleeping, working, doing everything to someone else’s will… you just sort of break,” I explain.

“I have to admit, it does sort of sound like living in the city,” Harper says.

I laugh. “So, see, I could totally make it there.”

“Alternately, I could make it in the army,” Harper counters.

“I wouldn’t want you to go into the army, anyway,” I tell her.

“Oh? Why not?”

I think about that question for a few seconds. “You’d get this kind of… hardness to you. It’s not bad, exactly, but it would change you.”

“Like the city hasn’t,” Harper says, rolling her eyes.

“It’s different,” I insist. “Women in the military are great, don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those cavemen guys who think women don’t belong.”

“Good,” Harper says.

“It’s just that by going through that process… you’d have ended up less sweet. You wouldn’t blush anymore, or if you did it wouldn’t be easy to make you blush the way it still is.”

“It’s not that easy to make me blush,” Harper protests.

“It’s easier than it would be if you had to learn to keep a straight face when some commanding officer is going off not five inches from you,” I point out.

“Okay, that’s fair,” Harper says, laughing.

“And your taste in clothes would be different. I like this look you have going on, it’d be a shame to see you all uniform-correct.”

“Are you flirting with me, Zane Lewis? Because there are some people from West Ridge High who would drop their jaws at that.”

“I flirted with you back then, too, you just didn’t notice,” I tell her.

“That’s because you flirted with everyone,” Harper counters. “It doesn’t count.”

“Well I needed someone to practice my moves on,” I say.

“I was your practice?” Harper laughs out loud.

“Of course! I knew I was never going to do anything with you, and I wasn’t going to get anywhere. It was good practice for girls playing hard to get, because you were actually impossible to get.”

We keep going around the grocery store for a while, talking about what we were like in high school. I have to keep reminding myself about what Mom wanted me to get as just talking to this new, grown-up Harper who came from the city is distracting as hell.

I can’t get the image of her stripping out of my mind.