“I’m just sayin’.”
“Yeah, well, let’s examine the facts, shall we?” I say. “I am here with a girl, who happens to be insanely hot”—Harper goes pink—“while you are dressed like a Tennessee douchebag in the hopes of possibly getting some trim. Harper could turn me down tonight, tomorrow night, and the night after that, and I’d still have a better chance of getting laid, you inbred hilljack.”
We glare at each other until Kevlar cracks a smile and then starts giggling. Soon all of us are cracking up, except Harper, who looks mystified.
“You guys are so mean to each other,” she says, which only makes us laugh harder.
It’s true. We say the most offensive stuff to each other. Racist. Homophobic. Insulting each other’s moms. Sometimes, every once in a while, it leads to knock-down-roll-around-on-the-ground fistfights, but mostly we laugh because we don’t mean it. Any one of us would take a bullet for the other.
“So are we partying or what?” Kevlar asks, packing some Skoal in his lower lip.
Moss shrugs. “I’m in.”
“Yep,” Harper says.
Kevlar tries to drape his arm around her shoulders as we walk down the hall to the elevator, but it’s kind of difficult considering she’s about four inches taller than him. “You know,” he says, “it ain’t too late to kick Solo to the curb.”
“Why do you guys call him that?” she asks.
“You know how in Star Wars, just before the garbage masher walls are about to start closing in, Han Solo goes, ‘I got a bad feeling about this’?”
Harper nods.
“Well, it’s pitch-black night in the ’Stan,” Kevlar says. “And we’re boarding helos that are going to drop us in the middle of West Bumfuck, where God knows who is going to be shooting at us, and out of the blue Stephenson goes, ‘I got a bad feeling about this.’”
“We were scared shitless,” Moss adds. “But every time one of us would repeat it, we’d start laughing all over again.”
I remember the nightmare feeling when the helos left us there in the black unknown, covered in our first layer of dirt, unable to walk away. Unable to change our minds and go home.
My joke wasn’t prophetic. We raided a couple of houses, rounded up a handful of suspected bad guys, and by the time the sun came up, we felt like cowboys—and I was permanently Han Solo.
I move between Kevlar and Harper, putting my arm around her.
“They also call me Solo,” I say against her neck, making her shiver, “because I always get the girl.”
She side-eyes me. “Han Solo was kind of a tool.”
Kevlar giggles and spits tobacco juice into the mouth of an empty beer bottle. “She does have a point.”
“He’s the one who ran interference against the Empire so Luke Skywalker could blow up the Death Star,” I protest. “He’s a hero.”
“He’s a scoundrel.” Harper smirks at me as she presses the down button beside the elevator doors, and I smile back because she knows her Star Wars.
“You like me because I’m a scoundrel,” I say, quoting the movie. “There aren’t enough scoundrels in your life.”
The elevator dings and the doors slide open. Harper looks at me, then at Moss, then at Kevlar—and laughs. “So not true.”
The club downstairs is surprisingly full for August. Only none of the women here are young or nubile. It’s full of middle-aged people in tropical clothes, rocking out—if you can even call it that—to a Jimmy Buffett tribute band called the Floridays.
“Lots of fine, fine ladies here tonight, Kenneth,” I say. “Which one’s it going to be?”
“If I wanted a cougar, I’d do your mom.”
“Why? Getting tired of your own?”
He ignores me. “This place sucks. Where else can we go?”
We walk to the Shamrock.
Harper’s friends are in residence at a table near the bar. Lacey squeals and makes an instant beeline in our direction, her cowboy boots tapping on the floor as she walks. I glance at Kevlar to see if he’s checking out her tiny denim skirt, but his eyes are locked on Amber, whose hair is now dyed a shade of red a lot like… his.
“Dude, no.” She’s Tour de France. He’s training wheels. He’s so not ready for Amber Reynolds.
“Dude, yes,” he says.
“Harper! Travis!” Lacey reaches for us, pulling us to her table, but her smile is directed at… Moss? Not that I have a problem with that, because he’s good-looking for, you know, a guy. It’s just that this is not the way I expected it would go down, if it went down at all. “So are you going to introduce us to your friends?”
I make the introductions, then head to the bar and order a pitcher of beer. While the bartender is pouring, I look back at the table, where Lacey curls herself around Moss’s bicep and a nervous-looking Kevlar is talking to Amber. Crazy.
Harper joins me.
“So, are we in a parallel universe?” I ask. “Because I have no idea who that guy is.”
“He is pretty drunk,” Harper says. She glances down at the floor, then up at me. That shy thing gets me every single time, even when Paige did it and I knew it wasn’t real. But Harper… it’s not a calculated maneuver to get me hot. It’s authentic. And still incredibly effective. “Do you, um, want to go for a walk?” she asks.
This could be an invitation to go for a walk or it could be for something more. Either way, I’m in. Even if it means walking to Bonita Springs and back. “Sure.”
“We’ll be back in a while,” I say as Harper puts the pitcher on the table. I reach into the pocket of my jeans and pull out a three-strip of condoms. “Be safe. Have fun. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
Kevlar looks up at me with a shitty grin. “So that means your mom’s a go?”
I smack the back of his head, then thread my fingers through Harper’s. “We’re outta here.”
We cross Estero and cut down one of the beach access lanes, where we leave our flip-flops behind. The sand is cool and damp between my toes as we walk toward the fishing pier and beach shops.
“So what’s up with the pocketful of condoms?” she asks. “Did you think you were going to need that many tonight?”
“I bought them for Kevlar. Just in case.”
Harper slants a skeptical look my way. “Really?”
“I guarantee the one he carries around in his wallet expired a long time ago,” I say. “So I picked some up at the beer store this afternoon because I knew he wouldn’t think of it until it was too late.”
“That was kind of… nice.”
I laugh. “Yeah, well, I’m kind of a nice guy.”
“Did you keep any for yourself?”
“Nope,” I say. “Should I have?”
She shakes her head. “Is that okay?”
I shrug. “I’m not in any rush.”
We pass through Times Square, stopping to watch a magician performing for a handful of German tourists. After we buy twist cones at the Dairy Queen, we head back up Estero until we reach her street. “Do you want me to walk you home?”
“I don’t want to go home.”
“Harper—” I start to tell her that she should face what’s bothering her, but what business do I have telling her what to do when I have no idea how to face what’s bothering me? “Okay.”
“It’s just—if we get down there and her car is still in the driveway…” Harper trails off. “I don’t have a problem with Alison, but a little warning would have been nice, you know?”
I nod. “That’s what I told your dad.”
“You did?” Her face and voice go soft, and she kisses me right there on the street corner. Until a passing car honks and someone shouts that we should get a room.
“Do you want to go back to the hotel?” I ask.
“What if the room is… occupied?”
I shudder at the mental picture of Kevlar and Amber, and Harper grimaces as if she’s imagined the same thing.
“Yeah, never mind,” I say. “Let’s go to my house.”
The sun is bright through the slats of the blinds when I open my eyes the next morning. The clock on the bedside table says I’ve slept later than I can remember sleeping since before I went to boot camp. And I feel good. Rested. Like I’ve—
I’ve slept all night.
No insomnia. No nightmares. No pills.