“We’re old friends,” he says.
“We went to high school together,” I say.“Over in Ashlake.”
“Oh, my sister lives there,” one of the ladies says, but I barely hear her.
Old friends.
It feels weirdly good to put a label on what we are, and it feels weirdly good that the label isold friends, like we really are past our dumb breakup bullshit.Like finally, at least, we’ve talked again and we’re cool.
“Go fighting bison!”Hunter says, holding up one fist, and the ladies all titter-laugh.
“We want to hearallabout firefighting,” one of them says.“Isn’t it scary?”
“Actually, I said I’d see Clementine home,” Hunter says, and looks over at me.
I’m about to sayno, you didn’t, when I remember his request for backup.
Well, hisdemand, but that’s not a fight old friends have.Instead, I fake a huge yawn that turns into a real one.
“Yeah, I have to get up bright and early tomorrow,” I say.
“It’s sweet of you to walk a lady home,” one of the ladies says.
Nancy nods, but the look she gives me isn’t quite as positive.She lets his arm go.
“Come into Ellie’s Bakery sometime,” a woman says as we turn away.“Free cookies for firefighters!”
“I’d be delighted,” Hunter says, and then we’re walking away from the knot, across the lawn, and onto the sidewalk.
We walk in silence for half a block, cross a street, and then he speaks up again.
“Thanks for the rescue,” he says.
“It’s your hide when they find you later,” I say.“And make no mistake, theywillfind you.”
“I can only take so much goddamn fake nice in one day,” he says.“Tonight they’re grateful their houses didn’t burn down, but give them a week and they’ll be writing letters to the editor about how today’s misspent youth will never amount to anything and we should all be drafted.”
I laugh out loud.
“Miss small-town life yet?”I ask.
“I don’t have to miss it,” he says.“I still live in Ashlake.In the winter, anyway.”
Ashlake is an hour away as the crow flies.Three hours if you’re a human and have to drive around the mountain.
“I didn’t know that,” I say.
“You would if you had Facebook, or Twitter, or went to our five-year reunion,” he says.“I was starting to wonder if you were dead.”
I make a face, but deep inside, I think:he looked for me.
“I spend half my time in the woods, digging holes to poop into and not showering a whole lot,” I say.“And I didn’t really want to re-live high school.”
“You’re the only one,” he says, as we cross another street and I lead us left.“I’m pretty sure most everyone we went to high school with peaked at about age seventeen.”
I glance over at him.Even if he looks a little uptight right now, in a button-down shirt and khakis, I can tell that at least he didn’t peakphysicallyat seventeen.Not that he was bad then.Not atall.
A quick shiver runs through me, and I tear my eyes away.
