So she waited, picking up her peanut jar and rattling the last of her ration. Three. She was down to three. Her stomach growled.
“Not everyone can learn—not everyonewantsto learn,” he finally told her. “And... it ended up being too much for her.”
“Oh, my God,” Tash realized, thinking back to that year. Yes, Thomas and Rachel had broken up not too long after that bowling party. And suddenly it all made sense. “Rachelbroke up withyou...?”
“Well, no, I mean, yes, but,webroke up. It was mutual. I had a choice...” His voice trailed off.
Tasha leaned in and put voice to his next unspoken word. “But...?” She trailed it out and made her voice go up.
“She wanted me to go to medical school, become a doctor.”
“What’s wrong with that? You absolutely should. You’d be a great doctor. Melvin agrees.”
“She wanted me to leave the Teams to do it,” he said.
“Oh, no,” Tash said. “Oh, Rachel, yikes.”
“Mmm-hmm,” he said. “I said,I’m sorry but I’m not ready to leave the Navy, she said,Okay, it was fun, but I’m going home, and she packed her things.”
“Whoa, really? Just like that?”
“Yeah. It was kinda surreal, because it happened so fast. I mean, one minute I thought everything was great—better than great—and the next, I’m driving her to the airport, and she’s telling me,Call me if you’re ever ready. It was... bad. I was blindsided and... really hurt. She knew I was a SEAL from the jump, and it seemed so harsh.I love you, except for that important job that you have that you love so passionately.Idon’t love that, so nowyouhave to change or I’m gone.”
“Wow,” Tash said. “I thought... I mean, everyone thought...”
“That I dumped her?” he said. “Oh, good.”
“Byeveryone, I really just mean Alan and Mia.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“They wanted you to marry her. They were crushed when it didn’t work out.”
He laughed as he finished the last of his beer. “Uncle Navy wascrushed.”
“Well, Mia was crushed, and Alan was supportive.”
“Ah,” he said. “That sounds about right.”
“As for me,” Tasha said, and he looked up from pouring himself another small handful of his peanuts—his eyes flashing his alarm. She smiled at him sweetly, because yeah, shewasgoing there. “I was still convinced you were going to marryme. It seemed about the right time for Rachel and her smarty-pants to exit stage left. In my head, she wasn’t good enough for you—although shedidhave the tall thing down. It never occurred to me that she might’ve broken your heart, and I’m sorry I wasn’t more empathetic.”
He was clearly uncomfortable with where she’d taken the conversation, because he jumped on one of her details. “The tall thing?” he asked. “That’s the second time you’ve mentionedtall.”
“Well, yeah,” she said. “Because when I was really little, you told me you couldn’t marry me because I was too short.”
Thomas laughed. “Yeah, okay, I remember that. You had no time for any rules that said seventeen-year-olds couldn’t marry five-year-olds, so I went with height as my maincan’t marry youexcuse.”
“It got me to eat my vegetables religiously, for years,” Tasha told him.
“You were such a funny kid,” he said. “That pink settee...?”
“Oh, my God!” she said, laughing. “Right?”
When she’d first moved in with Uncle Alan, he’d taken Tasha furniture shopping to buy a bed, a desk, and a dresser for his empty second bedroom. In the center of the showroom, she’d spotted a pink upholstered sofa—the perfect accessory to theI’m a Russian Princess in Exilefantasy that she insisted upon playingad nauseum.
Alan had read the tag aloud—nearly fainting at the price—and it was described as a “settee.” After that, she refused to call it anything else. It became the beginning and end for her—the absolute pinnacle of her hopes and dreams. Her uncle had ended up buying it and putting it in his tiny apartment’s living room. His SEAL buddies had laughed their asses off—until they started having kids of their own.
“You know, it’s still in Alan and Mia’s playroom,” she told Thomas.
