Amanda

The gun-training facility is in a brick building, nestled in an office park. We could just as easily be visiting a financial planner, a small software company, or a Meals on Wheels office for elderly assistance.

In other words, this is not what I’d envisioned.

In my mind, a gun-safety course would be held at a gun club, down a long, dusty, unpaved road leading to big, open fields with targets in a straight, unending line. People would walk around with noise-cancelling earphones, wearing guns on their waistbands, popping open cans of Coke and talking about aim while smoking unfiltered Camels and cracking jokes about tits and ass.

Instead, when we walk in, the counter at the front makes me think I’m at the Registry of Motor Vehicles.

Until I see the guns in the glass display case.

“Gina registered us online,” Andrew says as we get in line. He starts to scowl.

“No VIP option?” I tease. Andrew’s not accustomed to waiting in lines. Ever.

“Not on our timeline. Gina managed to get us in today.”

“It’s only been two days since your YouPorn incident.”

He looks around the room, only his eyes moving, his face impassive. “Shhhh.”

“Why are you shushing me? Because you watched gun videos on YouPorn?” I raise my voice intentionally.

A few snickers greet my words.

And then: “Hey, man, you see Ricky Rimfire’s new series? Top of the line. Almost as good as Full30 videos.” A man behind us nudges Andrew. “Good stuff. You here for the advanced Lethal Force class?”

Ever watch a man go from stoic to smug? I have. A few too many times.

Like right now.

There’s a special quality that infuses his very being, a dominant male awareness that makes him stand taller, arms wider, all of him highly attuned to competition. Make no mistake: when you have this many men in a gun-safety training center, you’re getting your daily RDA of Smug.

Vitamin S is plentiful here.

A playful hand goes to my shoulder as Andrew smirks and says, “Taking my wife. Her first time.”

“A gun virgin?” the guy half purrs, half growls. “Nice. My old lady’s a used-up gun whore.”

I look up at Andrew and bat my eyelashes. “Just think, honey. Someday I can be a used-up gun whore, too. Life goals!”

He winces as the word whore comes out of my mouth.

He’d damn well better.

“Everyone’s gotta start somewhere, man,” Andrew says to the guy, using a voice that makes me think my husband has been microchipped and is currently being controlled by a character from Santa Clarita Diet, who is about five seconds away from being eaten by Drew Barrymore.

We reach the counter. “Amanda McCormick,” I say to a dude in a red polo shirt with a logo for the training center on it.

“Hey. Nice. Only three women in today’s class and you’re one of them.” I get the creeper voice. Women know that one.

Maybe I was wrong about the tits and ass after all.

He nods at Andrew, who stares him down. The guy’s eyes flit to my left hand. He frowns and is allll business suddenly.

“Ok, then, Miss McCormick, we’ll–”

“It’s Mrs.” Andrew corrects him.

“Right. Let’s get you both in class.” We’re handed a small packet of papers and directed to a hallway to the left. On the walls around us, I see gun cases, gloves, and all kinds of gun-related retail products.

The offices smell like floor mats. You know the kind. The big, thick, black floor mats you find at the entrance of almost every store, but especially in automotive-related places. That thick petroleum scent triggers some part of my brain that tells me this is serious, rough work.

A generation ago, I would have said men’s work. But we’re not in the 1980s now, are we?

Although it feels like the 1950s here.

As more and more people trickle in, Andrew and I go to the vending machines to the right, choosing a water for me and a soda for him. He’s taking it all with an equanimity that surprises me. It hits me that we’ve never spent significant time together in a situation he doesn’t control.

This is suddenly an even more interesting venture.

Everyone else seems to be slowly headed down the hallway, so we follow the crowd, shuffling along. Andrew’s dressed in a navy polo shirt and jeans, a leather belt and blue sneakers. I’m wearing a short-sleeved, gauzy, pink cotton top Shannon’s mom insisted I buy a few years ago on a mystery shop, and white jeans with wedge espadrilles. No open-toed shoes, we were told.

Something about live-round shooting.

We file one at a time into a standard rectangular room with long folding tables on either side of a wide middle aisle. I count six rows of tables, six chairs at a table. There’s no assigned seating, so I follow my natural inclination and head for the front row.

“What are you doing?” Andrew grabs my arm. I halt.

“Getting seats.”

“In the front row?”

“That’s where I always sit in classrooms.”

“Why?”

“Because then when I have questions, the teacher calls on me first. And I can interact more. See their facial expressions and–”

“Oh, God, you were a brown nose, weren’t you?”

“A what?”

“Teacher’s pet.”

I perk up.

“Thank you!”

“That’s not a compliment.”

“Then screw you.”

“Already did this morning.”

“Don’t get all cocky about it happening again.”

“Did you call me cocky?”

“I did.”

“Be careful with that word.”

“Why?”

Before he can explain, the instructor walks in. I grab his hand and pull him to the front table on the left. Normally, I’d sit on the end near the aisle, but in grudging respect for his stupid objections to the front row, I pull us closer to the wall.

“Welcome to the Basic Firearms Safety Instruction course. Today we’ll spend our time together covering firearms basics, laws regarding gun ownership and use, and at the end, you will fire live rounds on our shooting range. Unlike other safety courses, we have you handling guns and using them–under supervision–on the range. By the time you’re finished with this course today, you will have a certificate you can take to your local town hall that allows you to apply for a gun permit. Massachusetts has some of the strictest gun-licensing laws in the country.” He pauses theatrically to take a sip of water.

A few guys grunt, the sounds close to boos from an unhappy crowd.

“Without this course, you cannot apply for a license. We are here to help you.”

The grunts stop.

An assistant offers handouts to everyone. Pens are provided in a pile in the middle of the table. Andrew stretches to grab two, giving the guy next to him one of those head nods men give each other. I wonder if it’s some Neanderthal evolutionary signal.

I won’t kill you if you don’t kill me while I reach for this mammoth bone.

Nod.

In a classroom setting, I am the ultimate systems manager. Andrew may be a master at power dynamics, negotiation, and plain old sociopathic corporate navigation, but he’s not the same kind of rational systems mapper I am.

Walk me into any situation and I am wired to figure it all out, fast. Not from the frame of power structures, like Andrew.

From the perspective of operational flow.

I see tables in front with guns, the magazine clips sitting next to them. I look up at the video screen, the PowerPoint set up and ready to go. An attendance sheet floats forward from the back of the room. All the details register in my mind, puzzle pieces that get inserted into categories, working together to form the process that takes us from chair warmers to holders of gun-safety instruction certificates.

And then my mapping gets brutally interrupted by a hand on my inner thigh.

“What are you doing?” I hiss out of the corner of my mouth.

“Saying hi.”

“Your fingers are verbal now?”

He walks two of them even deeper into the valley my thighs form under my pubic bone. “They have a language of their own.”

I kick his ankle.

He’s too smart, anticipating my move. A low chuckle sends ripples through me as I fight the desire he’s intentionally inciting in me.

“You’re seriously playing sex games in a gun-safety course?”

“Why not? It’s our honeymoon. Shouldn’t it be about sex?”

“You’re the one who turned sex into guns!” I huff.

My baiting isn’t working. He’s long past being upset by the reminder of Bubba and YouPorn. I’ve miscalculated. Oh, the sexy smile that spreads across his face, eyes filled with dirty thoughts about what he wants to do to me the next time we’re in bed.

Or in the backseat of our car.

Or up against the wall in the courtyard outside this building...

“They need to turn the air conditioning up in here,” I inform him, pointedly moving my legs away from him.

He doesn’t move his hand. It lingers. I clear my throat, grab the bottom of my chair, and pull myself up and to the left.

That forces his hand. Literally.

And gets me an irritated glance from the instructor.

Instantly, I’m transported back in time to third grade, the year I had the only male teacher in my elementary school.

Older men make me uncomfortable. Not creepy uncomfortable. Just... anxious. I don’t understand how to relate to them. My dad left when I was five, and Mom never remarried. I could always talk to Shannon’s dad, but Jason’s different. He’s kind and a natural teacher, with so much patience, you’d think God hand picked him for Shannon’s mother.

Because you need nine lifetimes of patience to be married to her.

Being glared at by an older man who is an authority figure triggers every people-pleasing cell in my body, a full-blown panic explosion that turns my blood into tears and my heart into a cantering gelding.

The man is not happy with my behavior.

Neurons chatter with each other at breakneck speed, humming at frequencies that eventually make every atom inside me quiver with something close to fear, but not quite. It’s not shame. Not regret or remorse or abject humiliation. It’s the visceral knowledge that I’ve done something wrong under the authority of a heavily-armed man who represents an entire class of people I do not understand.

But should.

It’s the should that is so crazymaking.

Then again, isn’t it always?

Andrew grabs my hand and squeezes, giving me a concerned look. “What’s wrong?”

“The teacher glared at me.”

He starts to laugh, a mocking tone that makes me cringe. He stops abruptly and leans in, his body heat a comfort he cannot understand. “You’re shaking.”

“Am not.”

The instructor clears his throat and this time, he glares at Andrew.

Who pulls his head back, broadens his shoulders, and raises his eyebrows in the universal gesture of You got a problem with me?

The instructor looks away and continues talking.

Victory manifests in strange ways when it comes to nonverbal conflict.

The next hour is spent touching guns. Rifles, handguns, revolvers. Big guns, little guns, magazine clips, bullets. We’re expected to have a tactile relationship with the weapons, as if we’re not just learning how to manipulate these inanimate objects, but are supposed to gentle them with our touch, like the metal has a skittish nature and needs to be reassured.

We also have lots of downtime as we go up to the gun tables in groups of six.

“What kind of license do you have?” I ask Andrew during one of the quieter stretches.

“Handgun.”

“Then I want that kind, too.”

“Depends on your town.”

I scan the printout for Weston.

“Actually, honey, don’t even worry about it,” an older man behind me says. I turn to follow the source of his voice. “As long as your husband has a handgun license, you don’t need one.”

Snorts emanate from three men around him.

“Bullshit,” one of them says, a grizzled-looking guy with a scraggly beard. As he speaks, I see deeply stained, crooked teeth. Our eyes meet, his filled with a crackling intelligence. “She needs to carry. I won’t let my wife and daughters leave the house without carrying. They have conceal permits.” He gives Andrew a challenging look. “You got your conceal permit?”

“No.”

He scoffs. “Why not?”

“Because we have a bodyguard everywhere we go who is armed,” I explain, not thinking about how that’ll sound until Andrew gives me an incredulous look that says So much for fitting in.

“And I’m the fucking queen of England!” one of the guy says in a falsetto British accent.

It takes everything in me not to laugh.

Andrew puffs up, rolls his eyes, and pointedly ignores the guy.

For all eternity.

The rest of the classroom portion involves short videos, more PowerPoints, a detailed discussion of local towns and the relative ease of getting a handgun permit in each, and a hands-on demonstration of revolvers, rifles, and handguns that makes me glad I’m taking this course.

I could do without the politics, as the instructor makes pointedly negative comments about various gun laws, but one thing we all agree on is this:

Gun safety is paramount.

“All right, folks,” the instructor says, clapping his hands together and rubbing them with glee and a smile. “Time for the fun part: live-round shooting.”

Every time the course moves on to the next phase, I’m reminded of how socially programmed we are in formal school settings. Gun-safety class isn’t high school or middle school, no, but it has an order, and it involves a group of people taking lessons. We shuffle out of the room, clutching purses and notes, and assemble in a rag-tag line down the hall.

“This half,” the instructor says, cutting off the group right behind me as I stand behind Andrew, “can go take a break, get drinks and snacks, look at the merchandise up front–but be ready in twenty minutes.”

“Smoke break,” one of the men who reeks of tobacco says, leaving sight quickly as our half of the line moves forward.

“You need goggles!” the instructor calls out. “Any lead allergies? Heavy metal?”

“Only allergic to White Snake!” someone yells, getting snickers and laughs in return.

The instructor waves his hand dismissively, but he’s laughing.

There’s a thick door with a small window that separates us from the shooting range. Five people can fire at the same time, and there’s an instructor with each student. Two more students line up behind whoever’s currently shooting, I discover, as Andrew moves forward. I get an encouraging hand squeeze before he goes through the door. He ends up shooting first at his station, so I can watch him but not be in there at the same time. As he puts the goggles and noise-cancelling earphones on, a sense of elation fills me. Akin to pride, it’s undefined, but it has to do with being together. Watching him in action.

Holding shared space together.

But... at a gun range. This is so weird.

People come out holding paper targets with bullet holes. Most of the holes are way outside the target perimeter, but once in a while someone comes out with an actual hole in the target’s heart. Applause greets them, along with low whistles of approval from the rougher men.

Just like that, I’m determined to earn that whistle.

Bizarre, right?

But remember: most of the crowd is male. Older than me. Some primal childhood core component of my sense of self is screaming to be the center of that attention. Doesn’t matter if I’m in a presentation, at a cocktail party for Anterdec, watching my father-in-law coo at his grandchild (who is also my niece), or buying tampons from some dude at the drugstore: if the person is a man my father’s age, or close enough, my brain lights up in the regions designed to respond to praise.

Praise I never got from him.

Will I always seek this out? Will I always be uncomfortable around older men? I don’t know, but there is one thing I do know: I’m going to shoot the hell out of that bullseye.

“Grab a pair of goggles before you go in, and as soon as you’re done shooting, come on out. Don’t linger,” one of the instructors calls out before the door opens and I’m allowed in. Andrew’s on the opposite side of the range. It’s ice cold in there, the air redolent with an industrial scent that feels more vibrant than it has a right to. That much energy shouldn’t be present in the same space with people grasping in their hands a weapon that kills with one shot.

Then again, maybe that’s exactly why that kind of vibrance fills the space.

A holy respect washes over me as I step into the first column and watch the person ahead of me, his face tight, shoulders hunched, elbow pulled in as the instructor explains some detail that makes the guy change his angle slightly. At any point in here, someone could turn three feet and fire a live round into the small crowd of people at the back.

People like me.

Impulse control is a funny construct, isn’t it? We’re biologically wired for survival, but we also have this tremendous drive fueled by curiosity and risk. Thankfully, we’re socialized by all the rules about not hurting others, because if we weren’t, moments like this could become tragic. A social contract exists: don’t harm others.

Even when you can.

I turn my attention to Andrew at the other side of the room, taking in the vision of my husband holding a gun, face set in steely determination, shooting a target that represents a human being but that is really just a pale piece of paper with thick black lines on it, and nothing more. His upper body moves a few inches back, broad shoulders rippling under his shirt as the gun fires and the kick produces kinetic force strong enough for him to need to hold his core. His legs are apart, not too far, but enough that his thighs and ass tighten with the rebound of every shot.

My body goes numb and fizzy, hard and warm as I watch. He’s graceful. Strong. Powerful. Determined.

And holding a device that kills.

Mastering power you never, ever want to use requires a deep well of goodness. Honor. A direct lifeline to a moral core that has confidence in using it if needed, but that fervently prays that moment never comes. The measure of a person isn’t in how they use their power.

It’s in how they don’t use it.

I make a tiny, scared sound as my shoulder is tapped and I throw my arms in the air, surprised and biologically triggered by the interruption of kind but no-nonsense eyes behind goggles. “Your turn,” one of the instructors says, his beard thick but trimmed, glasses under his goggles, the arm touching me thick with muscle and covered in rolling, colorful tattoos.

“Oh! Okay,” I say as I step forward.

Andrew is talking animatedly to his instructor, holding the paper target. I can’t see it across the room, but I’m sure he nailed it.

“Second thoughts?” my instructor says.

“What? No!”

I catch Andrew’s eye. He gives me a thumbs up and crosses the room, violating the rule of not lingering, but when did my husband ever care about other people’s rules?

“You’ll do fine,” Andrew says, ignoring the sour look from my teacher. “Everyone misses their first time,” he adds, touching the same shoulder that the guy just shook.

I can only smile as he leaves, pointing to the door. I’ll find him there, I know, waiting.

“Revolver or pistol?” the instructor, whose name tag says Dan, asks.

“Pistol.” The classroom handling of guns led to a surprising preference for this one.

“Okay.” He hands me a pistol, the heaviness still so foreign. His words about the type of gun wash over me as I stare at it, transfixed. This is a gun. I am holding one. I listen as Dan explains all the basics, which distill down to one point: Don’t be stupid.

I can manage that.

“Spread your legs apart a little. Unlock your knees. You’ll need to be fixed but flexible to handle the kickback. Let’s play for about seven shots, and if you want another go-around, we can do that.”

His words wash over me. I keep staring at the target. At the center. The dark spot over the paper human’s heart.

And then I’m holding the gun, right hand wrapped around the handle, left hand supporting under the butt of it, my index finger on the trigger. It takes a lot of effort to pull that trigger, more than you’d think.

Everything important should take effort. More than you’d think.

Focusing my eyes on the site, I take in all we’ve been taught, mixing it with my social conditioning about guns, which is one hundred percent from media influences. Mom never owned a gun. No one taught me how to do this. I’m here now, standing in a place filled with my fellow students firing, pop pop pop, our whole beings centered on driving a piece of forged metal through a pretend heart, to kill a pretend bad guy, to use the power.

On the top of the gun, there’s a small metal piece, almost like a razor blade with a notch in it. That’s the sight. My mind wants to focus on the distant target, but the training kicks in.

Level the sight.

Center the target.

Practice your power.

My finger holds, waiting until it all lines up, and then I just... flow.

Click. Boom!

My shoulder flinches with the rebound. I tighten my core and radiate strength out to my shoulders and arms.

“Again,” the instructor says.

Level the sight.

Center the target.

Click. Bang!

“Try three in a row,” he says in a voice that sounds quizzical, evaluative, his cool demeanor peeling off to show this is a man who holds a lot of emotion under the surface.

I do.

My whole being does.

In the seconds it takes to assemble all of the pieces of myself, the gun, the space between me and the target, the whole milieu, I become a tree. My feet are roots that seek the center of the Earth, my hands blending into the metal of the gun and touching the paper target, reaching, reaching, as I become the space between objects, as my eyes calibrate the distance between every atom in the room, as the roof lifts up and the sky becomes my hair, the scent of metal my musk.

Click. Bang!

Click. Bang!

Click. Bang!

I blow through the magazine and Dan quickly hands me a new one. Awkward suddenly, I discharge the clip and load the new magazine.

“You can do seven more, then we need to get another student in here,” he says, eyebrows up. “Let’s see if you can keep it up.”

Keep what up? I want to ask, but the draw of what I’m doing is stronger.

I sight.

I center.

I shoot.

And seven bullets later, I’m done.

Dan presses a button that brings the paper target, a torso-sized piece of ivory paper with a black silhouette printed on it, up to us like a dry cleaner summoning your order.

“Where’s the heart?” I ask, dazed and charged, electricity flowing through my hands, my chest, my feet.

“You obliterated it,” he says, shaking his head. “You’ve been practicing, huh?”

“No.”

“No?”

“This is the first time I’ve ever held a gun.”

He laughs.

I don’t.

“You’re serious?”

All of the centeredness that came into me seconds ago floods away, leaving me shaky, weird. I take the target from him and head to the door, opening the heavy metal slab slowly.

Andrew’s there, at the back of the hallway, not in line. Our eyes meet. He looks down at my paper.

And that’s when the whistles begin.

“Holy shit, lady! You blew out the heart!”

I hold up the target. Andrew’s grin turns to amazement, the dizzying change making me laugh.

“Hold it up! Let us see!” one of the men calls out.

I do.

“How many rounds?” someone asks.

“Fourteen.”

“Not a single stray. Good work, lady.”

“Didn’t you say she doesn’t have a gun license?” says the guy who sat behind us in class.

“I don’t. Today was the first time I’ve ever fired a gun,” I tell them.

“Crack shot! Crack shot!” a few call out.

“Ringer!” shouts another.

Then the applause comes.

It has less power than I expected.

Andrew still hasn’t said a word, but he makes his way past the line of people, gently pinching the top corner of my paper target, searching it as if looking for an error, a mistake, a hole where it isn’t supposed to be.

“You blew out the heart,” he finally says.

“Don’t ever screw around on that one, bud. She’ll blow your sac off from two hundred feet,” someone says to cackles of male taunting.

Andrew ignores them.

“Is this good?” I ask, shaking the bottom edge of the paper.

The line erupts into spontaneous laughter.

One of the men takes Andrew’s target out of his hand and holds it up. Most of the bullets hit the heart, but a few are in the outer rings of the target.

“Lady, you didn’t just blow out the paper heart. You blew the fuck out of your husband’s ego. You’ve never touched a gun and you did that?”

Andrew shows no emotion.

“This is amazing,” he says to me, weaving us through the crowd. I curl my paper toward me, so people can’t easily see. Andrew takes me to a quiet corner in the retail section, looking dazed.

“I want to do this again!” The words form in my head before I realize they’re even present, rolling out of my mouth like a perfectly sighted shot.

“You should.” His body tenses, hand moving up to his mouth, then raking his hair. He keeps looking at my target, then his, and it hits me:

I’m better at something he thinks he should be better at.

“We can come back together,” I say, so close to throwing myself under a bus to save his feelings. I’m about to say platitudes like It was beginner’s luck or I’m sure my gun was calibrated differently, but I don’t.

It turns out there are other forms of power we need to master–but never use.

Tests come in many forms. I just passed one. Not the shooting.

The test of not sacrificing my achievement for the sake of someone else’s feelings.

The true test is what Andrew says next.

“You nailed it,” he says under his breath, looking again at my target. “Absolutely nailed it.” Brow down in concentration, he peers at me with a look I’ve never seen before. “Congratulations. How did it feel?”

“Feel?” I’m confused, elated, riddled with adrenaline.

Opening his mouth, he starts to say something, but closes it. “You ready to go?”

“Andrew.”

“Mmmm?”

“Talk to me.”

“Did you like it?” he asks.

“Like what?”

“The power.”

A cold, tingly feeling lights up my skin. “You know?”

“Know?”

“You know it feels like that? Because in the moment, yes. It’s visceral and it takes over. It’s like the piece of me that gets buried in daily life has a chance to come and take the wheel. And boy, does she like to be in control.”

“Does she?”

“She also likes beating you at something. Being better than you.”

It’s no secret that I’m married to one of the most overtly and unapologetically competitive men I’ve ever met. Andrew and his brother, Declan, are nutso about beating each other.

Competition has never been a major part of my relationship with Andrew, though.

“You are better at this than I am,” he grinds out. “Doesn’t change a thing with us.”

“Agreed.”

“But I’m rethinking gun ownership.”

“You are?”

“That’s what our security team’s for, right?” He guides me outside, into the bright glare of sunlight that feels like it’s been waiting for us all day, wondering when we’d finally show up.

“Yes, but I liked shooting!”

“We can do it recreationally.”

“How injured is your ego? Really?”

“It’s pretty hurt. Needs bed rest to recover.”

“Bed rest, huh? How much time in bed?”

“How much do you have to spare?”

“I’m a crack shot, Andrew. Everything I aim at, I hit.”

“That’s my line, Amanda.”

“Oh yeah? Let’s go home and you can prove it.”

“You’re a much better target than this.” He crinkles his paper and tosses it in the trash can as we leave.

“Better looking, too.”

My phone buzzes. It’s a text from Carol.

How’s the honeymoon going?

I look at the crumpled practice target at the top of the trash.

I take Andrew’s hand in mine.

I stare back at the phone.

How in the hell am I supposed to answer that?