I blinked at him. “You want to buy me a bike?”
He shrugged. “Well,” he said, “I want to buy us both bikes. And then maybe this summer we can ride them together. Either here, or if we get a share in the Hamptons. Biking to the beach together could be a lot of fun.”
I blinked again. After I got over the fact that Darren wanted to buy me a bike, which I admit is a weird gift, I realized what a thoughtful gift it actually was. He wanted to get me something that showed me he planned to be together throughout the spring and summer too. If I accepted it, was I agreeing to the same thing? Did I want to agree to the same thing? I thought about bike riding with him—it would probably be a lot of fun. And the idea of going into a share house with Darren instead of just by myself was really appealing. I liked my life with Darren in it, and I was pretty sure I’d continue to like it. More and more, in fact.
“This is a huge gift,” I said.
“Well, your bike will be a little smaller than mine,” he answered.
I laughed. “Do the colors have to match?”
He scratched his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “But let’s go ask?” He said it like a question, like he wasn’t a hundred percent sure I’d accept this gift, or his suggestion to go into the bike shop.
I took his gloved hand in mine. “Yes, let’s,” I said. “And if I forget to say it later, thank you.”
I’d planned to give him a bottle of his favorite bourbon for Valentine’s Day, but I quickly changed my mind.
“By the way,” I told him, spotting a sign as we walked in the door. “I’m returning the Valentine’s Day gift I was going to give you.”
He looked at me with questions in his eyes.
“I’m getting us matching helmets instead.” I pointed to the sign that said: Cold Weather Sale: Two for the price of one!
He smiled and then leaned over and kissed my cheek. “I knew you were my kind of girl,” he said.
And I was starting to think he was right.
xxxiv
A week after Valentine’s Day, my cell phone rang with a long-distance number on it. I didn’t recognize the country code, and—amazingly—you weren’t the first person I thought it could be. I’d figured maybe someone from one of the stations in Europe that was licensing our show was trying to get Phil and couldn’t find him at the office so was trying my cell. (I know, not likely.) I picked up the way I did at work.
“Hello, this is Lucy Carter,” I said.
The line was quiet.
“Hello?” I said again.
“Luce?” It was you. It was your voice. I felt it deep in my stomach. My name on your lips vibrated through my whole body, and I was glad I was sitting in my desk chair already because I didn’t think my legs would’ve been able to support me.
“Gabe?” I said.
I heard you sniffle over the phone.
“Are you okay, Gabe? What’s going on?”
“I have a black eye,” you said. “And a gash in my cheek. My lip is split. And my ribs are bruised.”
My heartbeat was speeding up now. “Where are you? What happened?”
“They tried to take my camera, and I wouldn’t give it to them, so they beat me up until some U.S. soldiers stopped them.”
“Are you in Baghdad?” I asked.
“Yeah,” you said. “I’m in the green zone now. I’m safe, I’m okay. I just . . . I just needed to hear your voice. I hope it’s okay that I called.”
“Of course it’s okay,” I said. My eyes were welling with tears at the thought of you broken and bleeding and wanting to talk to me. I wondered, if I were hurt and shaken, who would make me feel better—you or Darren. Or maybe it would be Kate. Or my parents. “Is there anything I can do?” I asked.
“You’re doing it,” you said. “You’re there, you’re talking to me. When those guys were on top of me, all I kept thinking was: What if I never hear Lucy’s voice again? And I’m okay, and I’m hearing your voice. So it’s good. The universe is good.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that. What to say. After all those months of silence, here you were, hurting and missing me too.
“Will you be back in New York any time soon?” I asked.
“I think this summer,” you said. “The Associated Press is making me take next week off, and I think I’m going to go see my mom. Then I have vacation time coming this summer. I was thinking about visiting then. I miss everyone. I miss you the most.”
I wanted to ask if you were coming home to stay. If you missed everyone enough to give up on the idea of living in Iraq. If you missed me enough. But instead I said, “I miss you too, Gabe.”
Then Phil was standing in the opening of my cube and saying, “Lucy? Do you have the notes from that budget meeting yesterday?”
And then I was nodding at Phil and telling you that I had to go, and you were saying you’d get in touch soon, and I was saying okay, we’d talk more then.
But I didn’t hear from you again until the last day of your trip to visit your mom when you wrote me a quick e-mail saying that you were feeling better and looking forward to your return to Baghdad. And then all the worry for you, the concern I’d felt when I heard your voice—it hardened back into anger. How could you have called me like that, brought those feelings back to the surface, if you weren’t planning on following through? It wasn’t fair, Gabe. So much of what you’ve done, what you’ve asked of me—if I were a referee, if life were some sport, I’d stand up and shout, Foul! or Do-over! like we did when I was in summer camp. But there are no referees in real life, no true do-overs.
I kissed Darren extra hard that night.
? ? ?
BUT I COULDN’T GET YOU out of my mind—I kept thinking about how you were trying to show people everywhere how similar we all are in the hope it would combat violence, and instead you got hurt.