“I can’t promise it’s going to be a good time.”
“That’s okay.” I can’t see her eyes behind her sunglasses, but she’s smiling as she twists her hair up into a knot. She makes messy look so damn good. “I’ve never been to St. Augustine. Have you?”
“Nope.”
She’s happy and I don’t want to spoil it by telling her about Paige. She’s going to be pissed. Now would be the perfect time, so she still has a chance to get out of the Jeep and leave me. But I don’t want that to happen, so I throw it in reverse, spitting gravel as I back out into the street.
“I brought music.” Harper reaches back to her duffel and pulls out her iPod. “What do you want to hear?”
“You pick.”
She plugs her iPod into the stereo with one of those fake cassettes and dials up a reggae-sounding band I’ve never heard before. Harper sings along, her bare feet propped on the dashboard, and I wish I could run off somewhere with her, away from Paige and Charlie and the United States Marine Corps.
I pull in for gas at the Racetrac just before the interstate.
“I’m going in for a Coke,” Harper says as I’m punching the buttons on the self-serve pump. “You want one?”
“Yeah, sure.”
I’m leaning against the side of the Jeep, waiting for the tank to fill, when she comes out. “I’ve got something for you,” she says.
From behind her back, she dangles a bag of Skittles in front of my face, and it knocks me out that not only does she remember my favorite candy, but buys it for me. Paige never did anything like that. With one hand I snatch the bag. With the other, I wrap my arm around her waist and pull her against me—and kiss her.
The latch on the gas nozzle pops when the tank is full and the pump shuts off, but we don’t stop until a voice comes through the little speaker on the pump, asking if I’ve finished fueling my vehicle.
“Wow,” Harper breathes. Her hands are beneath my T-shirt, splayed out on my back, so I’m pretty confident she was as into it as I was. “I should buy you Skittles more often.”
“You don’t have to buy my love,” I say. “I’ll kiss you for free anytime you want.”
As soon as the words leave my mouth I wish I could spool them back in. Buy my love? Jesus, she probably thinks I’m an idiot. Because I am an idiot. But she doesn’t look freaked out that I dropped the L-word on her. She smiles.
“I already knew that about you, Travis.” She gets back in the Jeep. “I read it on the wall in the girls’ locker room.”
“That,” I say with a laugh, “doesn’t surprise me at all.”
It’s pretty much impossible to talk when you’re doing eighty with the top down on the interstate, so for the next few hours Harper keeps the music on shuffle and we sing along. I don’t claim to be a good singer, but back in high school, Eddie and I got it into our heads that we were going to start a band with him on bass, me on guitar/vocals, and whoever we could find on drums. It was a punk band, so we figured I wouldn’t have to sing well.
We drive into the middle of Florida, through towns I’ve never heard of—past farms and orange groves and trees that aren’t palms—until we reach the outskirts of Disney World. The crops there are restaurants, hotels, and tourist attractions, and traffic picks up, because even in the summer there is no escaping the Mouse. Once we’re on the other side, the landscape changes again and the green highway signs tell us we’re getting close to the beaches. New Smyrna. Daytona. Ormond.
The miles close in on St. Augustine and I start thinking about Charlie. I asked him once, when we were picking through our MREs for the best parts, why he joined the Marines.
“It was the commercial that got me, man,” he said, shoveling a plastic forkful of sloppy joe into his face. “You know the one where the guy jumps into the pool and comes up out of the water in full gear?”
I had no idea what he was taking about. I never paid attention to the recruiting ads on TV and I hadn’t even considered enlisting until the day I walked into the recruiter’s office. I had no idea that most guys don’t sign up and ship to boot camp a few weeks later, the way I did.
“My mom’s a hippie type,” Charlie said. “She was always talking about how I should take a gap year between high school and college to find myself. I think she was expecting me to backpack my way across Europe or live in a Buddhist monastery in Thailand. So I’m watching TV one day and that commercial comes on and I start thinking about how fucking cool it would be to be a Marine.”
Moss, who was sitting with us while we ate, just shook his head and muttered, “Boot.”
Charlie laughed, because insults never stuck to him. He was rubber that way. The only thing that would have ever gotten under his skin was if the other guys had made fun of his mom being a lesbian, but I was the only one who knew. “So I go to her and I’m like, ‘Mom, I’m going to join the Marines.’ She’s completely horrified on account of her being a tree-hugging peace freak, but she says, ‘Well, if that’s what you really want—but, Charlie, wouldn’t you rather go on a vision quest or something? I know a guy in New Mexico. He has peyote.’” He laughed again, his mouth full of food. “My mom—the only parent on the planet to try and talk her kid into doing drugs to keep him out of the Marines.”
It’s just past lunchtime when we roll into St. Augustine on Highway 1. My face feels tight from the wind and sun, and the end of Harper’s nose is a little bit pink. My insides are bunched up now that we’re here, even though the memorial service isn’t until later this evening, and I still haven’t figure out what—if anything—to tell Harper.
“You hungry?” I ask as she lowers the volume from highway to city.
“Definitely.”
“How do you feel about barbecue?” On the side of the street is a little soul food place. The smell of barbecued meat hangs in the air and my stomach growls out loud.
“I think your stomach already decided,” she says. “But that sounds good.”
We go inside and order ribs, greens, and macaroni and cheese off a menu board spelled out in mismatched letters.
“Do you want to sit in or out?” I ask.
“In,” Harper says as we sit down at a picnic table. “The air-conditioning feels good.”
She’s right, it is, but shit—I have to take off my sunglasses. Because it would be weird if I didn’t. And as soon as I do, she notices the black eye.
“What happened to your eye?”
“I got in a fight with Ryan.”
“Over Paige?”
“Why would you think that?”
She picks up a rib. “Because if you were going to get in a fight with your brother, chances are it would be over a family thing or Paige. I went with logic.”
“I, um—I kind of hooked up with her since I’ve been back.”
She puts down the rib and starts gathering all of her food onto the tray we brought from the counter. She does it really fast. Angry fast.
“Harper, I didn’t mean—”
“Don’t talk.” Her voice is low and controlled as she stands with the tray. Quiet, so she doesn’t draw attention. “Or I’ll dump my lunch on you and that would be a waste of good food. I’m going to the Jeep.”
I get up, but she cuts me with a look so sharp it drops me back down on the bench. My stomach growls again, reminding me I’m hungry, but to dig into my lunch would be a dick move. On top of all the others I’ve made since I’ve known her, I mean. From the window I can see her sitting in the passenger seat with the tray on her lap. She doesn’t look my direction at all. So I eat.
And try to think of a way to fix things. Again.
She’s still in the Jeep when I go outside, but the tray is gone, and she goes out of her way to not look at me. I check the computer-printed directions to the hotel and then start the engine.
“Why?” Harper says as I pull out into traffic. At first I think she’s asking me why I slept with Paige, but then she continues. “Why would you bring me all the way to St. Augustine and then tell me you hooked up with your ex-girlfriend?”