Then I grab my phone and call for pizza. Standing still was more than I could do.
I stand in the bathroom doorway, looking at the new floor. Clean boards, tight seams, solid underfoot. We built that today. Together, in the particular easy way that only happens when something real is already underneath the surface. I press my fingers together where his hand was. I can still feel the warmth of it. The careful way he held my calf.
The slow pass of his thumb, and the way he looked up at exactly the wrong moment, and I forgot what I was supposed to be thinking about. I know what I felt in that look. I've known for a while. It's not fondness. It's not comfort. It's the thing that makes me aware of every inch of space between us and every inch where that space closes. He stepped back today as it cost him something. I think it did. And I think one of these days, one of us is going to stop stepping back. I'm not going to pretend I don't know which one of us is going to be first. Besides, he wasn't going anywhere. And for the first time, I'm not just hoping that's true about the guest house.
Chapter 15
The Hard Truth
Bo
Iclose my eyes and grip the handle to Ethel’s diner, my regular Monday morning stop. Austin, Mason, and Levi have been coming since they returned home, and now it’s more of a Monday hangout than a military one, but I love it all the same. It’s been a few months since I started, and with Rowdy’s help, I have been sleeping better, not to say the nightmares are gone; they're not. But it is easier.
I’ve learned that Ethel's Diner has a certain rhythm. Coffee mugs clunk against the counters. The scrape of utensils on plates. Pots and pans clinking in the kitchen. Everyone is taking their time, getting their bearings before the day and week start. It was the same every Monday morning. By the time I push through the door, Sam is already in the back booth, newspaper folded in quarters. He looks up at me over his paper before shaking his head. Rowdy, knowing the routine, makes his way to the far table and plops down under the table next to Molly and lays his head against the cool tile before I’ve even sat down.
"You're late," Sam says, without looking up.
"Two minutes."
"Three." He flips the paper, then hms and shakes his head. “It’s good to know the world has gone crazy. I swear if more people minded their own business and got their faces out of those stupid phones, they’d all be a lot happier.” He looks up when he hears Mason agree with him. "Lila already came and went," he says, pointing his finger at the full cup of coffee waiting in front of me. “I figured you’d be here.”
I take a good long whiff and wrap both hands around it. Not a bad way to start the week, or any day, really.
Jake is at the end of the table, talking low with Terrance about something to do with a fence line and a property dispute that's apparently been going on since 1987. It’s the same conversation every time they bring it up. I’m sure my logistics training could fix the issue, but who am I to solve a decade or two's worth of property line issues? Austin's beside them, half-listening. Mason is next to me with his jacket still on. My guess is he was out feeding. Falon did the same thing. She’d already finished half her day before the sun came up.
“So, how’s it going, Bo?” Levi asks as he plops down between Mason and Austin.
“I’m good, Tyler just flew out this morning from base. Makes my heart race every time,” I say, closing my eyes and trying not to think of bombs going off and Tyler not making it home. He’s as much of a brother to me as he is to Falon, though she’d deny it, saying she was his favorite.
No one says anything for a minute, the silence telling me that they are all thinking the same thing I am. That’s why I love this group. They aren’t pretending that they know; there are no pretenses. It is real, raw, and hard for us all to swallow.
Sam sets his paper down after the table begins to moveagain. He looks at me with a question in his eyes. He wants to know the truth. Am I really okay, or am I putting on a front? I smile in return, knowing it wasn’t an answer. Terrance starts a conversation about his upcoming fishing trip, asking if anyone wants to go. I shake my head. I’m not much of a fishing man, and they all know that, but I appreciate the offer.
"You going to tell me, or are we doing the quiet version?" Sam asks from the corner, raising his mug to Lila, a silent request for a refill. She nods, grabs a pot from the counter, and heads over.
“Can I get ya anything, Bo?” she asks. I shake my head, and she starts asking the rest of the table, getting the attention off me for a while. I look back at Sam, knowing exactly what he just did.
"Something in between," I say low enough for just us two. A kid screams from the front and throws his eggs, and I freeze for a moment. Rowdy has his head on my lap, and I rub his head absently as I breathe again. Sometimes I feel like an idiot for jumping at every sound, but Sam assured me it was normal, and so did Austin, who still jumps every now and again. He’d once told me about his detail before he met Milly and how, still to this day, he sometimes got nightmares, but they are far and few between now.
Sam nods. Then lifts an eyebrow. He knows there’s more.
I take a long sip of coffee. Set the mug down. "I told her. About the promise. About Tyler asking me when I came back. All of it."
Nobody moves. Jake and Terrance stop talking. Austin sets his spoon flat on the table.
"How'd she take it?" Mason asks. His voice is level. The entire table was now a part of my conversation. In a townlike Everwood, I’d be surprised if they weren’t. I know Mason's asking because he's been there. We’ve all had this kind of conversation before, more or less.
"Better than I deserved, most likely." I look at the coffee ring on the table, the same one I've been staring at since the first Monday I came in here. "I think it might have been easier if she had gotten mad or pounded my chest. At least I’d know what she was feeling or thinking. But she didn't. I think she’d planned on confronting me the day I brought home Rowdy. I think she knew then, but instead, she waited until I pulled her out of the floor first.”
At the table’s confused faces, I told them about the subfloor and how she’d tripped over the extension cord. “She didn't walk out, though. She cried and said her peace, I told her mine, and—" I pause. "We fixed the floor."
Terrance laughs, then stifles it when Sam glares at him. The old man still commanded respect like he did in his old general days.
"There's one more thing that’s been bothering me. I didn’t ask her, because it wasn’t the time. Would have made it sound like I’d planned on keeping a secret." I keep my eyes on the table. "She didn't find out from me.”
Jake grimaces, and Mason glares at him.
“You told her?” Mason seems almost offended and angered. I am glad I have him on my side.
