Chapter Twenty-One
Zack
She fell asleep that night with my arm wrapped around her. We were arguing about James Blunt, whom she apparently loved and had seen in concert more times than I cared to know about. She seemed to think it hilarious how much I loathed his music.
“Did you know he was in the Royal Navy in Kosovo?” she asked, in the bright, chirpy voice she always used when a disagreement arose between us and she was trying to win me over, but I was refusing to yield.
“I could care less—” I groused, smiling in spite of myself.
“And that he was instrumental in brokering a peace deal!”
“B.S. He probably played guitar for someone who was involved in the peace talks, and they were so annoyed that they told him that just to shut him up.”
“Can you imagine dating someone like that?” she asked with stars in her voice.
I rolled over and glared at her in suspicion. “What, you wanna go out with him?”
“No, I just mean, what if you were dating James Blunt, and you broke up with him—”
“… because he’s a whiny, emo, irritating song-butchering piece of snot—”
“… and then a year later,” she said, raising her voice to talk over me, “all of a sudden his song is all over the radio and you can’t escape it. Think how annoying that would be, but how cool for him that he wrote something you couldn’t get away from.”
I threw her a quizzical look, as though I had never truly seen her until this moment. “I’m glad you’re not a multi-talented artist with a vindictive streak. If we ever broke up, I can see there’d be hell to pay.”
We went on talking and arguing like that for about an hour before she finally began to fall asleep. At one point, she asked me about the tattoos on my arms, and I told her about them. It was only in the moment just before she closed her eyes that I realized she hadn’t asked because she was interested, but just to hear the sound of my voice.
I lay there for a long time after she had gone to sleep, wanting to memorize her features and wondering how something so perfect had fallen into my life.
***
When I awoke the next morning in the hazy gray pre-dawn light, Kelli was stumbling around frantically trying to gather up her clothes. I couldn’t help smirking with delight as I watched her scooping up her socks and smelling them to make sure they were still good to wear.
“What are you laughing at?” she asked as she buttoned up her shirt. “Am I really that funny?”
“I don’t think you realize how funny you are,” I said, rising slowly and stretching. “One of the bonus perks of dating you—in addition to being brilliant, you’re also insanely funny.”
“You forgot about ‘great boobs’ and ‘great in bed,’” Kelli said sarcastically.
I shrugged and said, “I figured that went without saying.”
I threw on my boxers and got out of bed. By the time she reached the door of the apartment, I was already standing there waiting for her.
“Anyway,” she said, jingling her keys, “don’t try to keep me this morning; Evan wanted me to come in early, and he’ll be pissed if I’m late.”
“You sure you couldn’t be just a few minutes late? Like half an hour to an hour?”
I ran my lips over her hair; she squealed with delight and beat me away with her fists. “No, quit! I don’t relish the thought of explaining to my boss that I couldn’t get to work on time because I was sexing it up with my boyfriend.”
“Mmmm.” I frowned and shook my head. “Seems like a guy like him would understand.”
“Well, if you really think that, then you’re welcome to come down to our basement and tell him I couldn’t make it to work because we were making sweet love.”
“Is that an invitation?”
“Go on, get out of here!” Kelli exclaimed, pushing past me. “I’ll see you soon, I’m sure.” She opened the door and walked out.
I went into the kitchen and fired up the skillet, wanting to remember every second of her visit. It hadn’t escaped my attention that she had called me her boyfriend just before she left, the first time either of us had hinted that we were dating the other. I guess that makes us official now , I thought as I reached into the fridge and pulled out a package of mozzarella and some tortillas. If that was the case we would almost certainly be seeing each other again before very long. It wouldn’t matter if we were on the other side of the country; we’d find a way.
As I ate breakfast at the table in the dining room I wondered what my buddies would think if they knew I had hooked up with the girl they hated so much. “Traitor” was one of the kinder words they had used to describe her, and I had never taken it well. “How does it feel to be dating a woman who hates her own country?” I could hear Chuck and the other guys asking when they heard the news. But if that was how they chose to react, they were going to have a fight on their hands.
I had nothing else to do for the rest of the day, so after I finished breakfast I went into the living room and turned on the TV. I felt weirdly guilty about lying there on the couch, like I ought to be doing pushups or tracking a nest of guerilla fighters to their mountain hideout. Instead, I was watching CNN, and it was a normal Monday.
On the TV, they were talking in breathless tones about a mosque bombing in Afghanistan, but outside my window I could hear the constant drone of city traffic. I felt a sense of comfort listening to it. I was back here in America where I didn’t have to worry about being burned alive or kidnapped or having my leg blown off because I stepped in the wrong place. Those were all things that happened somewhere else, not here, not in this country that I loved.
I don’t think I had fully realized until just then how stressful it had been living in a place where I could be killed at any moment. Before, my body had always been tense as though bracing itself for attack. But I wasn’t going to die now, and there was no reason to worry. It was the strangest feeling.
I was shaken out of my thoughts with a start when the front door suddenly opened, and a figure strode into the room. For a single, wild moment, I thought someone was trying to rob my apartment, but then I realized it was only Carson.
He had dispensed with his uniform entirely and was dressed in a pair of loose-fitting shorts and a Chicago Bulls t-shirt. Anyone passing him on the street might have mistaken him for a gym rat, one of those guys who spend all day lifting weights in front of a mirror and all night in the club bragging about it. “Hey man,” he said, holding up his right hand for a high-five. “How’s it hanging?”
I remained motionless on the couch. “You’re lucky I waited to see who it was. Otherwise you’d be on the ground right now with my knee in your back.”
Carson gave me a puzzled look, as if it was perfectly normal for men to go barging into each other’s apartments without invitation and without knocking. “Anyway,” he said, seating himself in the big leather armchair by the window, “What’d you do last night?”
Briefly I brought him up to speed on my date with Kelli and its aftermath. He seemed especially interested in knowing what we had done when we got back to the apartment, so interested, in fact, that I was wary of telling him.
“I’ll just let my imagination fill in the blanks,” said Carson, shutting his eyes and allowing a lascivious smile to spread across his face. “Oh, nice. Very nice!”
“Hey, stop that,” I shouted, throwing a pillow at him. “Cut that out!”
He shrugged, as if to say, “That’s what you get.” But out loud he only said, “So what’d y’all do for real?”
I shrugged. “Mostly just talked about James Blunt.”
“That whiny bastard?” Carson scoffed. “Sounds very sexy.”
“It was a wild night. You been busy since you got back?”
He smirked and shook his head as if to say being busy was for losers. “I went out to the Marquee and bought drinks for a few girls, but none of ‘em wanted to come home with me. One told me I looked like Paul McCartney, and I was like, ‘Young Paul or old Paul?’ and she just laughed.”
“You should’ve told her you play guitar.”
“I actually brought my guitar and sang a couple songs! I sang ‘Behind Blue Eyes’ and tried to play ‘Wonderwall,’ but they wouldn’t let me. Apparently it’s become uncool in the year since we were gone.” He rolled his eyes. “God, sometimes it’s so hard to keep up.”
“Wonderwall was never cool,” I pointed out.
“Still cooler than freaking James Blunt. Anyway, I won’t be going back to that night club. The drinks were subpar, and the girls weren’t much better. One of ‘em had never heard of Jay-Z. Can you imagine going through your whole life not knowing who Jay-Z is?”
“How old was she? Twelve?”
“Seventeen, I think. Her ID said twenty-one, but there’s no way that was real.”
“She’s probably an undercover cop.”
“Well, maybe I’ll invite her to the awards ceremony on Saturday. Who are you bringing?”
“Saturday?” I had nearly forgotten we were being honored with a banquet on Saturday afternoon. “I don’t know; I hadn’t even thought about it. I’d probably invite my mom if she were here.”
“That’s why you’re a better man than me,” said Carson. “Anyway, you ought to think about bringing Kelli. I bet she would love to go with you.”
“Maybe,” I said slowly, a note of uncertainty in my voice. “As long as the firing squad doesn’t attack when she gets there.”