I finish my beer and go to bed, muttering something to Daniel about not feeling too great.Once I’m there, I lie awake on the too-soft mattress, and wonder if I’m an idiot.
I shouldn’t have told her why I signed up for another tour of duty.I shouldn’t have told her that I didn’t think I could handle seeing her with anyone else, even a year after we split up.I wish I didn’t know she missed me afterwards.
For a long time after the break up, I was pretty sure she’d cheated on me.I never had any proof, but I was wildly,insanely, incurably jealous.We’d video chat sometimes when she got home from a night out, and it would be three in the morning for her, early afternoon for me.I was with a bunch of other guys in a dusty hellhole, and she was getting drunk and going to parties.
She made friends.She had homework, and study groups, and a social life, and suddenly it seemed like she waspopular, miles different from the nerdy, kind-of-shy girl I’d fallen in love with the year before.We talked less and less, and I thought more and more that I was the former, forgotten boyfriend on the side, the guy she thought she couldn’t break up with because he was serving in the military.
I have no idea if she really did cheat on me.She swore up and down that she didn’t, even when she was sobbing in her dorm room and shouting at me over a staticky connection.In the end it didn’t matter because we broke up anyway, and then I re-enlisted, even though I was three years away from finishing the term I was already on.
I went halfway around the world, and I ended up in the same tiny town with her anyway.If I believed in fate, I’d think this was it, but I don’t.I’m stuck thinking this is just cold, unfeeling coincidence, and I’m not sure which is worse.
I fall asleep to the sound of drunk horseshoes, thinking about Clementine’s lips on mine with the stars above.
ChapterNine
Clementine
When I driveup to my parents’ house, there’s already a ton of furniture on the front lawn.My dad is sitting in an armchair, just looking at it.He waves when I get out of the car, and even from thirty feet away, I can tell that he’s trying to be cheerful but failing miserably.
“Hey, Dad,” I say.“What’s going on?”
He gets out of the chair with a grunt — one of his knees isn’t what it once was — and looks around, surveying the scene.
“She wanted my things out of the house,” he says, his tone carefully neutral.
I glance at the front door.
“She’s not there,” he says.“She rode her broomstick off earlier this morning.Something about a ‘much-deserved girls’ day out.’”
I’m here for two days.Today is Dad’s day.Tomorrow is Mom’s day.I’m staying with my sister, who’s at least a neutral party, since I’m afraid that staying with either parent will make the other angry at me.
I try to ignore the broomstick comment.Neither of them is exactly handling this well, and I’m still trying to be supportive and understanding, yet stay out of it.
“Will she mind if I go get a glass of water and pee?”I ask.
“Go for it,” he says.
Inside, the house looks weirdly half-empty as I fill a glass and drink it slowly.Things that I wouldn’t have thought were my dad’s are gone — the old cuckoo clock that used to be in the foyer, for example.I always just assumed it had been my mom’s idea, but now it’s not there.
I finish my water, stare at the spot where it used to be, and wonder how well I know my parents aspeople.I know that they have lives that extend before and beyond my time on earth, but it’s hard to think of them asMartha and Rickand notMom and Dad.
Sometimes, I wonder if they were ever in love, like really in love.I know they got married quickly, and that I was born about a year and a half after the wedding.Maybe they felt like they were already stuck by the time they realized they weren’t right for each other.
Maybe they were right for each other, though, I think.And they couldn’t make it work anyway.I’m sure it happens, people who love each other but just can’t be together.
I force myself to think about anything but Hunter, last night.I finish my water, pee, and go back outside, where my dad is lounging on a couch, waiting for the movers.
I’m really just therefor moral support, because three burly men come and move all his furniture and possessions into a moving truck, then from the moving truck into his new apartment, in an old building across town.It’s not a particularly nice place, but it’s perfectly fine.There’s nothing wrong with it.
“I don’t think I’m gonna be here for long,” he says, flipping on the lights.“Just until I figure out what I want to do next.I’ve been thinking of moving to Mesa, it’s a nice place, got that cute downtown, and the commute to Ashlake wouldn’t be a problem...”
We arrange his furniture and start unpacking.He’s got boxes and boxes from Target: four plates, four bowls, four sets of silverware, a microwave.He tells me that all my parents’ flatware was from their wedding registry, and that when my mom wanted to keep it, he let her out of spite.
“Letherremember that she married me every time she eats yogurt,” he says, tearing into another box.
Then he looks over at me.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” he says.
