CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

ZANE LEWIS

I check myself in the mirror. Between our fight the day before, the sex we had before that and the dinner to come, I have no real clue what Harper and I are going to talk about. There’s too much ground to cover.

But I know we have to do something. Her mom knows about us fooling around in the yard, but she doesn’t know about the sex, and she definitely doesn’t know about the fight. If things get too tense at the dinner party later, a lot of stuff could come out that would screw everything up, and I feel like I kind of owe it to my parents not to be the cause of that.

I head downstairs. Dad is sitting in the living room, watching something about how aliens were responsible for all the things the ancient civilizations did.

“Hey, where you headed, Zane?”

I stop short and shrug off the question. “Just going for a walk in the woods,” I say.

“Have you given any thought to what we talked about yesterday?” Dad looks at me intently and I shrug again, feeling nervous.

“I’ve been letting it soak in,” I say.

“I wanted to talk to you. Before you head out,” Dad says.

I raise an eyebrow. “It was good advice. I don’t see why you need to add to it now,” I tell him.

“I had a chat with Nadine this morning.”

Months of grueling basic training is the only reason I can keep my face from showing how much I’m dreading what else Dad might say next.

“Don’t you have a chat with Nadine most mornings?”

“Zane, sit down.”

I want to say that I don’t have time, but I know if I don’t Dad is going to come up with some reason to detain me, or he’ll get Mom in the room, or something like that.

“I need to head out, actually,” I begin to say.

“You’re going to meet up with Harper, aren’t you?” Dad keeps his eyes on my face and after a moment, I nod.

“Yes,” I admit.

“When we had our talk yesterday, I had to wonder who it was you were talking about, someone you’d known for a while, who you didn’t think about ‘that way’ and all that,” Dad says.

“I never said who it was,” I point out.

“There aren’t that many single girls from your high school still in town, or in town right now,” Dad tells me.

I cringe. I probably should have thought of that, but I’d been too occupied with making sure he wouldn’t immediately guess it was Harper.

“Right,” I say.

“So when Nadine told me that she caught the two of you, I put two and two together,” Dad says.

“So does that change what you told me yesterday?” I just want to get this conversation over with as quickly as possible.

Harper is definitely at the treehouse by now, wondering when I’ll show up.

“I want to clarify one thing for you,” Dad tells me.

“Go ahead,” I say with a nod I’m pretty sure I won’t like it, but I owe it to my dad to hear him out, and I don’t have to follow his advice.

“You’ve got this going on, whatever it is, and I’m not going to speculate until you’re ready to tell me, and you’ve got the thing with the army going on,” Dad says.

“Right,” I say, and I nod, gesturing for him to continue.

“My advice to you for what it’s worth, on both of those issues, is this. If you’re actually in love with Harper, then you should see where it goes, and maybe consider re-joining the civilian world if it looks serious. But if it’s not going to go anywhere, and you already know that, then you need to make a clean break and you need to re-enlist so you’re not going to end up running into her again.”

I look at Dad for a while after his little speech, and I have to admit, the advice makes a lot of sense. There’s just one problem with it.

“I don’t really know what the situation is,” I admit.

“You’d better find out tout de suite,” Dad says with a smile.

I shake my head at that, but he’s right.

“I’m going to go talk to her and see if we can figure it out,” I tell him.

“Just make sure you don’t screw up dinner tonight. Your mom is really looking forward to it, since it’s the capper to our anniversary week, and she wants it to be perfect right before you leave us again.”

I cringe at that, and stand. I need to hurry if I’m going to get into the woods before Harper gives up on the meeting.

“I’ll do my best,” I say.

“I know I don’t have to tell you to keep your head on straight,” Dad says, giving me another one of those looks.

I decide to leave before he thinks of more advice for me. I’ve already got enough going on in my head.

At least Dad has a better opinion of the situation than Nadine does, according to what little I was able to get out of Harper the day before. But as I finally get out of the house and start towards the woods, I don’t know whether that isn’t because he’s pretty sure I’m going to decide to reenlist.

I shake my head, finding the trail that leads to the treehouse, and thinking about what an incredible mess everything has suddenly become. Harper might still be pissed at me, and I’m not sure if I can blame her for that. Nadine is definitely pissed at me. I don’t know if she’s told my mom about it, but I’m pretty sure Mom will be at least a little upset about it.

We’re going to settle this and figure out what the hell we’re doing. Part of me wants to keep it casual with Harper, say that we did what we did, and it’s done and we should make a clean break of it. She’s in the city, I’m still in the army for at least the next couple of months. Besides, is a woman really a good reason to get out of the army if it’s doing right by me?

Wait until you talk to her and see what she has to say about this, and then figure it out.

I can see the tree house up ahead, and for a second I don’t see Harper. I expect to see her standing under it, waiting, but she’s nowhere to be seen. The old tree house actually still looks like it’s in good shape, the wood is weathered-looking, but the basic structure is metal and plastic, so it hasn’t fallen down.

“Zane?”

I look around at the sound of Harper’s voice.

“Up here!”

I look up, and there she is, standing in the tree house, peeking through the branches out of one of the windows.