CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

ZANE LEWIS

I leave my room feeling a little bit worried still. I can’t quite believe that the week is almost over. That things are still so messed up between me and Harper, and there’s not really much I can do about it.

Mom’s in the kitchen, working on lunch. While I don’t think she knows about the situation with Harper and me, I also don’t know what to talk about with nothing more than Harper and my reenlistment on my mind.

“Hey, are you hungry, sweetie?”

I sit down at the table and think about the question. “I could eat,” I tell her.

Really my stomach’s in knots, but eating at least will give me something to do. Mom brings over what she’s been working on, pasta salad, with leftover roast chicken, tomatoes and little cubes of cheese mixed in. I serve Mom and then myself, and try to think of something to say. How many hours is it until we have to go next door for dinner?

“So you’re leaving in the morning, right?”

I nod. “I’ve got a late-morning flight, so I should have just enough time to get some breakfast with you and Dad and then drop the car at the airport, and I’m off.”

“I have to say, I’m glad that you and Harper could both make it this week,” Mom says.

“You are?”

“Well of course, sweetie,” Mom tells me. “I love you both.”

I’m right there on the point of telling her that I think I might have feelings for Harper, but I don’t even know what those feelings actually are, or whether there’s anything either of us can do about them. So I let the comment stand, and try to think of something to talk about while I eat a few more bites.

“I went out to the lake yesterday,” I say.

“Oh, your father and I used to go out there all the time,” Mom says.

“He told me that.”

“I know you and your friends used to go skinny dipping down there when you were teenagers. Though you all thought you were so clever you couldn’t get caught,” Mom says with a little grin.

I laugh. “I think we’re all just glad the cops never showed up,” I say.

“I think there was probably a little conspiracy to prevent that. None of us wanted you kids to get in trouble for the kinds of things kids do.”

I have to laugh again, but in the back of my mind I’m thinking of the fact that Harper and I only just went skinny dipping a few days before, and Mom apparently has no idea. It’s probably for the best that she doesn’t know.

I finish off one bowl of pasta salad and consider having another one. I know we’ve got a big dinner at the Polsens’ place, but I don’t know if I’ll even be able to eat. Everything I try to think about circles right back around to Harper. This isn’t good. It isn’t like I’ve never been into a girl before. I had a couple of girlfriends in high school, and I dated Cheryl Sheppard more than half the year between high school and basic.

But there’s something different about the way I feel towards Harper.

It isn’t that she’s been my next-door neighbor for as long as I can remember, or even that she’s suddenly gone from being the nerdy girl who’s practically my sister to this hot city-living woman. It’s something that goes in another direction that I don’t even really know how to name.

“Do you think you’re going to end up deciding to reenlist? I know you said you didn’t really want to talk about it, but you’re going to leave in the morning and I figured I’d pick your brain a bit before the only way I can talk to you is on the phone,” Mom says.

I try to pull my head out of the clouds to think of a way to answer her.

“I don’t know,” I admit.

“You should talk to your dad about it,” Mom suggests, and I grin.

“We talked about it yesterday, and I’ve got a lot on my mind about it, it is really complicated,” I tell her. “Right now, I don’t really know which direction I’m leaning more towards. It’s weird.”

“Well, you’ve been in the army for pretty much your whole adult life so far, seeing as how you went into basic just before you turned nineteen,” Mom points out.

“There’s that, and the fact that I don’t really know what I’d do outside the army,” I say.

“You have great skills, and you’re really a lot more disciplined than you were before you left,” Mom tells me.

“I could see about going to college, or transferring my certifications into something in the civilian world,” I say, almost more thinking out loud than anything else. “I really don’t know.”

I finish up half a bowl more of pasta salad, and decide that before Mom gets any bright ideas that might lead her to ask me questions I can’t answer, I’ll go back to my room.

I start playing Tekken on my PlayStation. Of course, that makes me think about Harper and I groan, even as I’m playing a tournament against the computer, because it seems so damn pathetic not to be able to get her off my mind.

I know she’s been avoiding me since our fight, but I don’t know if that’s because she’d really rather never see me again, or because she thinks it’s going to be awkward and wants to put it off until she absolutely can’t anymore. She could just be busy, but I don’t really believe that.

There is going to have to be something done between us before dinner tonight, or sitting down with her parents and mine is going to go absolutely pear-shaped. FUBAR, as my commanding officer likes to say. But it can’t come from me.

Harper made it clear at the lake that she doesn’t even want to talk to me, that she didn’t even want to be in the same room or the same place as me. I’m pretty sure she’s probably cooled down by now or she wouldn’t be in her parents’ house, but I don’t know.

You could text her and see if she’s at least interested in talking, or if she’s still pissed at you.

But then almost right away I push that idea out of my head. If I text her and she’s still pissed, that’s going to make dinner that much more awkward. I have to hope that Harper is going to decide to do the right thing and somehow get in touch with me.

Just when I’m on the point of deciding to leave the house out of sheer boredom, my phone buzzes. At first I think it’s one of the guys from the base, wanting to confirm when I’ll be back, but instead I see, as soon as I check the screen, that it’s Harper.

We need to talk, don’t we?

I grin to myself. I’m relieved that at least Harper’s willing to reach out.

We do. What do you think we should do?

Obviously, in the middle of the day and considering the situation, we can’t meet in our usual spot. I don’t even think that the lake is necessarily a great idea.

We need to hash everything out. We need to do it before dinner.

I almost roll my eyes. It was obvious enough that I didn’t even think it needed to be said, and yet Harper had said it.

Right.

We can’t meet at the usual spot, so we need to figure out somewhere we can both go. I think to myself that at least Harper isn’t still so pissed at me that she can’t stand to even talk to me. That is a good thing, even if the rest of the situation is pretty shitty.

Do you know if your parents know about the other night?

I think about that question for a moment. From the conversation I had with Dad, I almost figured that he knew that I was talking about Harper, but neither of us had mentioned her name. I have to assume that if he did know about her, that he would have said so directly.

I don’t think your mom said anything to them, at least not yet.

We need to find a place where we can meet privately.

I know she doesn’t mean it that way, but I can’t help but think of what I want to do with, and to, Harper as soon as I get her alone. I can’t, I know that, but I want to all the same. She was so good that in the back of my mind, ever since the night we had sex, a fantasy of having her again has been playing steadily, right along with everything else going on in my head these past few days.

Let me think of something. If you figure something out, text me.

I sigh and put my phone aside, trying to think of somewhere we could go. It’s not easy. Our parents will probably be watching us like hawks, even if it’s for different reasons. We need a getaway.