“I think she said she’d lost it or something, which was why it was in Bastien’s room. But he thought it was Bastien’s at first, and that was…” Javier clears his throat. “Bad.”
I don’t consider myself a violent person, but then again, I’ve never met Raul Lopez in the flesh.
“Why are we talking about how tuberculosis was hot?” he asks after a beat.
I grin down at my feet as I navigate a spot in the side walk where tree roots have fucked it up. “Flowers, I think.”
“Right.”
“Anyway,” I say, because it’s so easy to get sidetracked by Javier, so easy to talk to him for so long his break runs out and he doesn’t get to enjoy any of it. “The save the dates are done.”
“Thanks,” he says, and now I can hear a chair scraping along the floor. “Are we supposed to be doing anything else?”
“I have no idea. I’ve never gotten married.” And then, on a sudden whim: “Have you?”
“Me?” he says, like there’s anyone else I could be asking right now. “No. Do I seem like I’ve beenmarried?”
“I know a lot of people in the service get married young for benefits and living together and shit,” I protest. “And feelings.”
“For all my mistakes, getting married young wasn’t one of them,” he says, and oddly, I realize I know what he means. That Javier at twenty was a mess, not fit for lifetime companionship. “Why—have you?”
I snort, which is not a pretty sound. “Nah,” I say. “I’m not—um.”
“Not what?” he asks after a moment.
Not the kind of girl you marryis what I almost said, something a man I was dating once told me after a few drinks. He’d followed that up withNo offense, but like…and then waved his hand at me and my hair and my tattoos and hadn’t had to explain any more because I just laughed.
I’d laughed and then rolled my eyes and acted like anyone who’d take offense at that was too dumb and fragile and needy to be worth bothering with, and after the drinks I’d still slept with him, like I had something to prove. Like I needed him to know that I was cooler and better than all the girls who’d mind him saying something like that.
I used to carry that shit around like a badge: the weird, quirky, cool girl who was up for a good time and wouldn’t be mad if you never called again.
Back then, I hadn’t quite realized that there are polite, respectful ways to tell someone you’re not interested in a serious relationship. That you can have casual sex with someone and still treat them like they’re a whole person. That it’s not lame to want to actually date someone.
Anyway, therapy is great.
“Not a divorcée,” I tell him.
“Do people still use that word?”
“I just did.”
“It’s very classy, like your couch.” His voice goes a little lower, like he’s tilting his head back or something, and I can picture it: little back room, folding chair, Javier sprawled over it in all four directions at once, looking up at the ceiling. “Like you should be flitting around Paris on a Vespa, with a scarf over your head and a cigarette in a holder.”
I’m not opposed to it, honestly. “Who says I’m not? You don’t know my Thanksgiving plans.”
“Bonjour, mademoiselle,” Javier says. “Which meanshello, miss.”
“I knewthat.”
“Did you?” he asks, and I laugh and keep walking.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
JAVIER
December
“I figured out the answer,”my mom says. It’s not late yet, but it’s dark, and I’m walking back to my car from class on the Cumberland Community College campus. I’m half listening to her and half trying to iron out a list in my head of everything I need to do: I need to go home and eat dinner and check the florist schedule for tomorrow and see whether that extra shift I volunteered for this weekend is happening, and I think Zorro needs more cat litter and shit, I’ve gotta refill the ADHD meds that they’ll only give me for a month at a time because it’s not like they’reeffectiveeffective, but it’s finals and god help me if I don’t have them.
