Cary nudged her knee with his. “Why don’t you ever say anything bad about the Navy?”
She looked up from the table. “What?”
“You haven’t saidanythingnegative. No passive-aggressive comments. No bald criticism.”
“Why would I do that? That’d be very disrespectful.”
Cary shot her a look. “Since when do you care about being disrespectful?”
“I don’t know,” Shiloh said sincerely. “But it must have kicked in at some point...”
“You don’t have to be respectful with me.”
“Cary, you’re one of the only people in the world I actuallydorespect.”
“Shiloh.” He leaned over his chicken Parmesan. She pulled the plate away from his chest. “Iknowyou hate that I’m in the Navy. You’ve always hated it. You want to fund the schools and make the military throw a bake sale.”
“Are you quoting a bumper sticker that I had on my math book in eleventh grade?”
He nodded deeply. “Yes.”
“Well...” She shrugged, then held up her fork. “One,I was an asshole in eleventh grade. Ask literally anyone.
“Two...” She shook her head. “Two is still that I was an asshole. I hadn’t given any serious thought to geopolitical realities. I was just talking big—and taking the stance that matched my outfits.”
Cary was listening intently. There was a line between his eyebrows.
Shiloh set down her fork. “I don’t know... The military seemed like an awful life to me. I couldn’t understand why anyone would opt into it—whyyouwould opt in, when you were so smart and gentle and could do other things. I didn’t want you to die in Kuwait.”
“Very few Americans died in Kuwait,” he said.
She rolled her eyes. “Well, I don’t want you to die in Iraq or Afghanistan, either. Or really, anywhere, for any reason, other than extreme old age. So I guess that’s a feeling I share with my seventeen-year-old self—fear.”
Shiloh could hear her voice getting higher. “I don’t like that you’re in the Navy because it’sdangerous. And because it means— Well, I don’t know what it means for us, actually, because we haven’t discussed it. But I know I only have fifteen more days with you before you leave again. So I hate that.”
Cary’s right hand was on the table. Shiloh took hold of it with her left, the one with the ring. “But I don’thatethat you’re in the Navy, Cary. I can’t. It’s so clearly who you are now. It’s ingrained—it’s practically embroidered. And I respectyou. I’m grateful for you, I thank you for your service.”
Cary’s face crinkled. It was an almost laugh. “That’s a first.”
“Let me be sincere,” she said.
His smile faded. “Sorry.” He turned his palm up, so he could hold her hand. “So... you don’t have moral and ethical objections?”
Shiloh blew air into her lips. Her head fell back on her chair. “I feel like I’m disappointing you... I hope you weren’t in love with my teenage principles. They weren’t exactly thought through.”
She lifted her head and sighed. “I think I’d have to do a lot of reading to know whether I have ethical objections to the military beyond garden-variety feelings about torture and bombing civilians. I mean”—she raised her shoulders—“I feel really strongly that we should close Guantánamo. Is that something?”
Cary laughed.
Shiloh frowned. “Idomorally object to you laughing about Guantánamo...”
“That’s not why I’m laughing. I’m just surprised. With you.”
“I haven’t changed completely, Cary—I’m not, like, pro-war now.”
“No one in the military is pro-war.”
“I don’t actually believe you,” she said, “but okay.”
