Harper reared up, the top of her skull narrowly missing cracking into my jaw. “Get the fuck out.”
I smiled a little. “I’d rather not. I’ve got an extreme case of nakedness going on right now, and I don’t think your neighbors would like to get an eyeful of my bare ass high-tailing it to my car.”
She rolled her eyes. “Nice divert there, buddy. But no go. Seriously, you weremarried? What happened? Was she really your high school sweetheart?”
I sighed.In for a penny, in for pound, I guessed. “Yeah. We started dating when we were sophomores, and it was pretty serious. I told you I grew up in Alabama ... well, our town was damn small, one of those that you see in movies or on TV, where everyone knows everyone else. And once you were linked with a person, everyone expected the two of you to go the distance: marriage, kids and happily-ever-after.”
“Even if you were only a teenager looking for happy-for-right-now.” It was a statement of understanding, not a question. “Yeah, I get that.”
“Exactly. I always knew I wanted to go to college. When we were seniors, I won a baseball scholarship to a good school. Not huge, not a big name by any means, but it was a full-ride education, which was more than my family would’ve been able to afford. I was so excited ... but taking it meant moving to Georgia, about ten hours away from home. Caren—that was my girlfriend—was really smart. She actually graduated with her associates degree at the same time she graduated high school, and she was qualified to work as a certified nursing assistant, which was exactly what she wanted. She’d never been interested in a four-year college.”
“Hmmmm.” Harper drew small circles on my abs with the tip of her finger, and I shivered a little. “But ...”
“But we were in love. Or we thought we were, anyway, and maybe that amounts to the same thing. It seemed like a no-brainer. We got married the month after high school graduation, and we moved to Georgia together. We rented half a duplex in the town next to my college. Caren got a job at an assisted living home, and I worked landscaping until classes began. And for a while, it was great. I felt like we were playing house, you know? Playing at being grown-ups. We cooked dinner together, we cleaned the house together every weekend, we spent our Sunday afternoons at the laundromat, doing our laundry ... it was all new and novel.”
“Until it wasn’t.” Harper sighed, and the brush of her breath teased my nipple. My cock began to harden again as I tried to stick to my train of thought.
“Uh ... right. Exactly. When classes started up for me, everything changed. I was still working part-time, but it was at the college, as part of my scholarship. And suddenly, everything was different. Caren was still who she was, working a real job and doing the housework and cooking and all, but I was a college student now. I was surrounded by people who were like me, the way I’d never been before. I’d go to study sessions and stay up half the night with them, just talking philosophy or shit like that. I went to lectures on campus, telling Caren it was required for my coursework, when it technically wasn’t.
“Things got tense, but it wasn’t horrible. Not yet. And then after Christmas, my commitments with the baseball team intensified. Now I had practice all the time, and I spent any time I wasn’t studying hanging out with the guys on the team. Caren and I started fighting just about every day, it seemed like. I tried to do better about pulling my weight around the house and paying attention to her, but I was being pulled apart. It felt like I couldn’t do anything right.”
“You were so young.” Harper pressed her lips into my pec. “And you were kind of in an impossible position.”
“That’s how I felt, but the guilt was intense. It all built up to one night in the spring when we had a huge argument. She said things about my maturity and lack of commitment and how I wasn’t ready to be a husband, and rather than respond, I stormed out and drove around. I knew I should go back home to her, but every time I thought about it, I got madder and madder. I ended up staying out all night.
“Early the next morning, I went to this coffee shop, not too far from our house. I was going to pick up coffee and Danish to take back to Caren, kind of a peace offering, but the place wasn’t open yet, so I sat on a bench outside, waiting. While I was there, this guy comes up to the shop next to the coffee place. He was wearing a uniform, and I realized he worked at the Army recruiting center. Later, he told me I looked so rough, he thought I was a homeless dude, and he’d been about to offer me money, but when he got closer, he realized I was just exhausted. So he unlocked his storefront, invited me in for some coffee, and he offered me a listening ear.”
“He sounds like a good man.” I could hear the smile in Harper’s voice.
“He was. He still is.” I smiled a little, too, remembering. “We talked a long time, and eventually, he told me about how he’d ended up in the service. He loved his career, and by the time I left, I was excited about the prospect of joining the Army. I don’t know why, but it sounded like the best idea ever. Maybe because Caren had said I was immature, I wanted to prove I wasn’t. If I signed up, I could be in the ROTC during college, which would help us out with money, and then after I graduated, we’d have the greatest life, being able to travel around the world and getting paid for it. I thought Caren would jump at this.”
“I take it she didn’t.”
I gave a huff of humorless laugh. “Not exactly. I came home right as she was getting ready to leave for work. I had all the papers and brochures, and I told her this was what I was going to do. I found out in that moment how stupid and blind I’d been. It turned out that Caren and I had very different goals.Shewanted to move back to our small town and live there forever. She’d figured we’d have our big four-year adventure while I was in college and then go back home for real life to begin. I’d never planned to move back there. I loved my family and my home, but it felt stifling to me, the idea of being in one place the rest of my life.”
“Ohhhh.” Harper shook her head, her hair tickling me. “And you’d never talked about the future before that? You never realized it?”
“I think I didn’twantto realize it. In my mind, I guess I figured Caren would come around to my way eventually. Or maybe if I didn’t acknowledge it, the difference didn’t exist.”
“But it did, and she didn’t. How long did it take you to come to that conclusion?”
“Not long.” My tone was dry. “After we talked—argued again—that morning, she went to work and I went to class. I was a zombie, since I hadn’t slept, but I was young and I pulled through. Even survived baseball practice—thank God we didn’t have a game that day. I dragged my feet going home, even though I wanted my bed and sleep more than anything else in the world. When I finally skulked back to the house around eight that night, I was surprised that Caren’s car was still gone. Then I went inside and pretty quickly realized her clothes were gone. All her shit was gone.
“Shewas gone.”
I remembered that night and that feeling all too well. My immediate sense had been relief—I didn’t have to deal with her and I could sleep before I thought about reality again—and then that had been colored quickly by guilt, that I’d been happy she wasn’t there. Both of those were followed up fast with hurt and regret when I’d read her note, telling me that she’d realized what a mistake we’d made in getting married.
“She just left you?” Disbelief infused Harper’s voice. “With a note?”
“Yeah. She said it wasn’t anyone’s fault, but it was clear that we wanted different things. She said she was going back home, and that maybe once we’d both had time to think and grow up a little, things might be different between us.” I paused. “I guess it’s possible she really believed it when she wrote it.”
“What did you do?”
I shrugged, my shoulder moving against the pillow. “Our lease on the duplex was just about up, and I couldn’t swing it without her paycheck, so I moved out the next month. I lived in campus housing, in the ROTC dorms for the next three years. I spent that summer—and all the next ones—training, and after graduation, I went active duty.”
“What about Caren?” I detected a slight note of derision, but I ignored that.
“Six months after she left, I got a letter from her, telling me that she was filing for divorce. She’d met someone—a guy who’d gone to high school with us—and they’d started dating, and now they wanted to get married. I signed the papers and wished her well, and that was the last time I heard from her.” I chuckled a little. “My sisters were furious, though. They wanted to egg or TP her house.”
