I sit up, awake, with my heart whizzing around in my chest like a bottle rocket, and Harper standing at the foot of my bed. I lift my hands to check for blood, but I know it was a dream. The trouble with this dream, though, is that it’s true.
“It was our fault,” I say. “Charlie’s and mine.”
She sits cross-legged on the bed, facing me. Her dress is gone, replaced by her faded red shorts and a Clash T-shirt. Her feet are bare and for the first time I notice that her toenails are painted red.
“We were operating out of an old yellow schoolhouse, and nearly every time we went outside the wire, we were ambushed,” I say. “Even when you’re expecting an ambush, you never know when or where it’s going to go down. So most times we’d be walking along some dirt track somewhere, they’d start shooting at us, and we’d end up waist-deep in a muddy canal for the next five or ten minutes, shooting back. They’d run away, we’d chase them, they’d blend into the population, and we’d be left pissed off and wet, with no prospect of a hot shower when we got back.”
Harper watches my face and I know she’s wondering if I’ll lose it again. I won’t.
“The day Charlie was killed, though, it was different,” I continue. “Charlie and me… we saw this little kid with a cell phone. A lot of times local guys would use their phones to tell the Taliban our position. So we saw this kid, but we didn’t say anything because he was just a little boy, you know?”
Harper nods, but I don’t know if she can understand. He was one of the kids in the crowd when we handed out soccer balls and beanbag dolls just a day earlier. He’d bounce up and down with excitement every time we gave stuff away, like it was the first time anyone had ever given him anything. He once tried to grab a whole handful of pens from me. How could that kid be suspicious? Except we should have been suspicious when we saw him with a cell phone. We should have reported him to Peralta.
“A few minutes later, we were ambushed,” I say. “Charlie was shot and while I was trying to stop the bleeding, I got hit.”
Her eyes widen and move to the fading red scar on my upper arm. Moss bandaged it up before we carried Charlie’s body back to the base. The wound wasn’t bad enough to send me home or anything, and I went back out on patrol again the next day.
My throat goes dry.
“I couldn’t save him,” I say. “I failed him twice. And I never told anyone.”
The official report says I risked my own life in an attempt to save that of a fellow Marine, sustaining a bullet wound and killing an enemy combatant in the process. It sounds a lot more heroic on paper than it was, though. Especially because when it happened I remember rage, not bravery.
“The thing is…” I stop and run my hand across the top of my head, trying to find the right words. “Charlie’s dead and I’m still alive, and I don’t think I deserve to be.”
“Do you think he’d agree?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “He’d probably tell me to stop being an idiot.”
Harper’s smile is so gentle and sweet. “Sounds like good advice to me,” she says.
I laugh a little. “Knowing it and doing it are two different things. I don’t—I don’t know if I can.”
She crawls up to sit beside me, takes the remote, and presses the button for one of the premium movie channels. “Maybe you should talk to someone,” she says. “Someone who can help you, I mean. A professional.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
The movie is one of those ’80s Brat Pack types about a poor girl in love with a rich boy who doesn’t know she’s alive. Not my type of film, but Harper wriggles her way under my arm and rests her head against my shoulder, and suddenly I couldn’t care less what’s playing on the television screen.
“Hey, Harper,” I say. “About what happened with Paige—”
“Let’s not,” she says, her eyes fixed on the TV screen. “Just consider it strike two.”
“That’s pretty forgiving of you.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t really want to kick you when you’re down, but mostly for some crazy reason”—her face tilts up and she gives me this shy little grin—“I think you might be worth it.”
I nod. “I totally am.”
She laughs and elbows me in the ribs. “So.” She settles back to watch the movie. “Do you want to do anything special tomorrow?”
I want to suggest something cheesy and touristy—like the Fountain of Youth or the wax museum—and the words are right there in my mouth, waiting to be spoken. But exhaustion crashes over me before I can let them out. I wake just before sunrise to find myself spooned up behind Harper, her ponytail tickling my nose. Something I’m not ready to name works itself under the grip of Charlie’s death and loosens it, and keeps the nightmares at bay when I fall back asleep.
Chapter 15
Harper wakes up and for a moment, before she opens her eyes, I feel—strange. As if last night was a one-night stand and I should bail before we have to speak to each other. Except that makes no sense because we didn’t have sex and I fell asleep with my face against the top of her head. I might have even drooled in her hair.
It’s just—I’m embarrassed. She’s seen a side of me I don’t really know. And I guess that could be considered a good thing—because I trust her with it—but it doesn’t stop the flash of panic that she’s seen too much.
Then her eyes open and she blinks, her face scrunched up with sleepiness, and the weirdness dissolves. After that, she smiles and my brain dissolves.
“Hey.” Her voice cracks with the first word of the day.
“Hey back,” I say, my voice low beside her ear. She shivers. I love that.
“Have you been awake long?” Harper asks.
“An hour, maybe.” My fingers find bare skin where the bottom of her T-shirt has inched up and slide my hand underneath. Her skin is warm from sleep. The tiny catch in her breath makes me grin.
She shifts to kiss me. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
“Just didn’t.” My thumb grazes the underside of her breast—and my cell phone rings. “Shit,” I say against her mouth.
Harper laughs. “You should get that.”
“Probably,” I agree, kissing her as the ringing continues. “But I don’t want to.”
My mouth still on hers I reach for the phone on the bedside table. She pushes me away so I can answer. “This better be good,” I say.
“Well, good morning to you, too.” Charlie’s mom pretends to be offended, but I can hear the laughter in her voice. “I didn’t wake you, did I? I wanted to catch you before you had breakfast so you and Harper could join us at the house.”
I look at Harper in my bed, her hair all crazy from sleep, and I do not want to have breakfast with Charlie’s mom, but it would be impolite to refuse. “Yes, ma’am, we’ll be right over.”
As I scribble down the address, Harper doesn’t wait for me to tell her where we’re going. She scrambles out of bed and heads for her own room, leaving me with the prospect of yet another cold shower.
“That’s the place, right there.” Harper points from her side of the Jeep at a squatty purple house with yellow trim and flower boxes full of red flowers. It should be an antiques shop, or where someone’s grandma lives, but a painted sign hanging from the front porch roof and bordered with white Christmas lights says it’s the home of Sweet Misery Tattoos. I park along the curb in front of the shop.
Bells jingle on the front door handle as I open it for Harper and we’re in a living room that’s been converted into a waiting room with an old leather couch, a cash register counter filled with body jewelry, and a coffee table full of tattoo magazines. A wooden curtain with an image of the Buddha on it hides the studios and a rope across a set of stairs bears a sign that says Family, Friends, & US Marines Only.