Then, when the last rays of the run disappear below the horizon, it’s suddenly dark.The whole cabin is swathed in shades of purple and everything seems to go perfectly still, even the air.I hold my breath, afraid to ruin it.
I want to reach out, put my arms around Clementine, rest my chin on her head as she relaxes against me.It feels unnatural to be sitting here, her so close, andnotdo that.But she’s been pretty clear: this, sitting and watching the sunset together, is gonna have to be good enough.
It isn’t, but I’ve been disappointed before.I’ll survive.
“This might sound weird,” Clementine says, her voice slow in the stillness, “but this kind of feels like college.”
I look around.
“Being in a lookout cabin on top of a mountain with a busted ankle feels like college?”I ask.
She brushes her bangs off her forehead, still looking out the window at the spot on the horizon where the sun went down, smiling.
“Not that part,” she says.“But sitting on a tiny bed and eating in the dark does.”
I grab our plates and stand, walking them to the basin.There’s no real sink, but there’s a big bucket and a tank of water for dishes.
“I thought you went to class and shit,” I say.
She laughs.
“That too,” she says.“But while I was living in the dorms, the only place to sit in anyone’s room was the bed.So I ate a lot of cereal there, or if people wanted to watch a movie or something, we’d all have to sit on the bed.And now, anytime I’m on a twin bed doing something besides sleeping, it feels like college.”
I sit down next to her again, leaning against a window so now we’re facing each other.A small, mean part of me wants to ask whatelseshe did on her bed in college, and who she did it with, but I don’t.
“Sounds like I missed out,” I say.
Clementine shrugs.
“Not really,” she says.“Unless you reallylikesleeping on spilled coffee because you were too lazy to change the sheets.”
I’ve done that anyway, but I don’t tell her that.
“What else did I miss by not going to college?”I ask.
“What do you mean?”
She’s sitting cross-legged next to me, and she scoots a little, turning so she’s facing me instead of the window.
“I didn’t know about the bed thing,” I say.“I mean, I knew about classes and frat parties and tests and papers and all that, but what don’t I know I missed?”
That isn’t my real question, but I don’t know how to ask my real question.I want to know whatshewas doing while I was sleeping on a cot in a dusty tent, or in a tank for twelve hours, or busting down doors only to find frightened women and children.
“You’re thinking about this the wrong way, you know,” she says, tipping her head against the window to her right and looking at me, her hazel eyes deep in the dark.
“What’s the right way?”
“You were in the Marines,” she says.“Just because you weren’t in college doesn’t mean you weren’t doing something, you know, noble and important.”
I raise my eyebrows.
“Can I get that in writing?”I ask.
Clementine kind of laughs, then looks out the window again, at the thin strip of light at the horizon.
“You’re not the only one who managed to grow upsomein eight years,” she says.“I was kind of a dick about you going into the military.”
I don’t say anything.I’m too surprised for a moment, and I don’t quite know how to respond.
