I tell her about the Elkhorn fire, the one that recently got put out, the one she gave us a plaque for.I tell her about the frustration of spending days digging a firebreak — a wide strip of bare earth that a fire can’t cross easily — only for the wind to change direction and the firebreak to be useless.
When we pull up in the driveway of her house, I can hear that the party has moved back to the dorm.From the sounds of the merriment, it’s co-ed, and theremighteven be more women than men in the back yard right now.
“Want to come over for a drink?”I ask.
Clementine kills the engine and shakes her head.
“I really am getting up early,” she says.“I’ve gotta drive to Ashlake and help my dad move.”
“Where are your parents moving to?”I ask.
She looks out the windshield and blows her bangs out of her face, her hand still on the keys in the ignition.
“Not my parents, just my dad,” she says.“They’re getting divorced.”
I blink in surprise.I can’timaginemy parents getting divorced.
“Shit, Clem, I’m sorry,” I say.
“Thanks,” she says, and then there’s a long pause.
“It’s been rough, but I think it’s for the best, long-term,” she goes on, though it doesn’t quite sound like she believes herself.
She doesn’t make a move to get out of the car, so neither do I.
“They were never really happy together,” she says quietly, still looking out the windshield.“I don’t know.Maybe they’ll be happier apart.”
I put my arm around her and pull her close.She presses her face into my neck, and I take a deep breath of her hair — lemon and pine needles — and force myself not to do anything but give her this friendly, chaste hug.
I want her.I want her likecrazy, because I absolutely remember howincredibleeverything we did was.But I know better than to think I’ll get her by pushing, because Clementine’s also fucking stubborn.
“Thanks,” she mumbles into my neck, and I can feel her lips move, her voice vibrate.It sends a tremor through me, and I clench my jaw against it.
I don’t say anything, and we stay like that for a while, in the front seat of the Forest Service SUV.Quietly, slowly, I press my lips against her dark hair, hoping she doesn’t notice.
“I gotta get to bed,” she says, and sits upright.
Then she turns her head to look at me.
“I’m sorry,” she says.“It’s just...I need to think.”
“Don’t think,” I say, and give her my most charming, rakish smile.“Give me a night and I can change your mind.”
Clementine makes an annoyed face.
“Is that what you think is gonna happen?”she says.“That’s what clean slate means?”
Shit.
“Clem,” I say.
She just shakes her head again.
“Just give me a couple days,” she says, and gets out of the car.
I havea couple beers at the party.I talk to Mandy, her roommate, for a while, along with a few other girls from town.The other guys are all pretty drunk, and I mostly sit back and watch.Normally I’d be right in there, but I feel a little like I’ve been capsized, like everything I thought I knew is upside-down.
The waitress from the barbecue joint is there, the one who wrote her number on my receipt.She flirts with me, and I try to flirt back — it’s harmless, and besides, Clementine just turned me down — but my heart isn’t in it, and after a few minutes she goes off to find someone else.
