“Clem, c’mon.Turn around.”
He takes me by the shoulder, and I let him spin me in a circle until I’m eye-level with the collar of his jacket.I look at it, the stretchy brown material that edges the dark green canvas, because I don’t know how to look him in the eye right now.
“It worked,” I finally blurt out, then look up at him.
He looks confused.
“What worked?”
“You signing up for another tour,” I say.
There’s a long, long pause.My hands are fists in my pockets.I don’t think I can explainwhymy feelings are still hurt, because I don’t understand myself.It doesn’t make any sense, and I know it.
“I didn’t want it to,” Hunter says softly.“Not any more.Not for years now.”
“I know,” I say.
“I didn’t think I could come back and see you,” he goes on.“Even the thought of living in the same town with you three years later seemed unbearable.”
His hand is still on my shoulder, warm and strong and oddly comforting.I try to laugh.
“I’m that bad, huh?”
“Yeah, you’ve got this weird smell,” he teases.“Itdefinitelywasn’t because I was afraid to see you with someone else.”
I give in.I lean forward and put my head on his shoulder.Even through his jacket it feels familiar, and a tremor runs through me as he puts his arms around me, my hands still in my pockets.
Friends hug, I think.It’s fine.
“Think we can wipe the slate?”I say.“Just start over, like all that didn’t happen?”
I feel a gentle tug on my scalp, and I realize he’s playing with my hair, absentmindedly winding a strand of it around his finger over and over again.Like he used to.
“I don’t thinkthat’spossible,” he says, and I feel his voice rumbling out of his chest.“But I think we can accept that it happened a long time ago when we were different people.”
“I’ll take it,” I say.
I believe it for exactly one second, and then there’s another light tug on my scalp, because he can age and he can come back from the military and he can be more mature and he can change, on the surface, but he’s still playing with my hair the same way he did at seventeen.
I take my hands out of my pockets and put my arms around him, and he holds me a little tighter, my head burrowed against his chest.I don’t know what I’m doing.I’m not sure that people can change, or at least, I’m not sure I believe that they can changeenough.
I never loved you anyway, he said.I don’t think he meant it.I haven’t thought that for years, but he still said it and that’s what counts, right?
“Can I tell you something?”I ask.
“No,” he says.
I roll my eyes, even though he can’t see.Then I take a deep breath.
“I missed you,” I say.
“You missed me?”he says, and he sounds genuinely surprised.“You were at college.There were tons of people around.”
I shrug against him.
“After a while it was just little things,” I say.“I’d see a really great dog or something, and I’d think,I have to tell Hunter about that dogand then remember that I...couldn’t.”
“Tell me now,” he says.“Clean-ish slate.All that is just background noise.”
