Chapter 6 Harper
CHAPTER SIX
Harper
“That one is definitely Jim Carrey from Dumb and Dumber,” I say, pointing at a cloud. We’ve played this game since we were small. Animals are too easy, so the clouds have to resemble characters from movies or shows. “Ten points for me.”
“Yeah, I see that. Ten points awarded,” he mumbles, irritated I’m ahead. “The clouds are always best at the beach.”
He has a huge blanket spread on the soft sand. It’s a beach on his base, so it’s empty but for us. It’s strange, to be honest. I grew up here, and we never had military access, so we were always packed into the popular beaches like animals.
I think about how fluffy and beautiful the clouds are on the East Coast, but I don’t say it. It would make this moment less somehow. “Yes. Especially when we don’t have to worry about people stepping on us.”
“It’s nice, huh?” he asks. He’s actually curious. I haven’t been exposed to his military world, and I can tell he’s doing it incrementally.
Rolling toward him, I prop one arm up on my head so I can look down at him.
“When I can’t hear gunfire, sure, it’s nice.
Are you happy? Does this kind of life make you happy?
Happier than you’d be with…” I say, almost saying me.
“Than college and studying stuff that interests you? Don’t get me wrong, Ben.
I’m proud of you. So proud. But as your best friend, I need to hear you tell me you’re happy with this life.
” My gaze skirts to the dark buildings on the horizon—the place the bullets are firing.
He turns to look at me, squinting in the sun. He refuses to wear sunglasses. He says after years and years of wearing corrective lenses, he’ll never wear glasses of any sort again. While it’s idiotic, it also makes sense. I shade his eyes with my palm so the sun is deflected, and he smiles.
“They’re practicing right now. I’d be at the range if I wasn’t here with you. I’m not sure how to answer, Harper. I’m happy knowing I’m making a difference. Before you ask, yes, I am making a difference. Will I go down in history books? Who knows?”
He licks his lips, and I keep my hand in place. “You know I had a hard time understanding your reasoning, but I give you credit. You’ve been steadfast with your decision for a few years now. Will you stay in the Navy forever, then? Is this it for you?”
“Deep questions when I have a belly full of salted caramel, Harpee,” Ben replies, sitting up.
Now he’s looking down at me, so I sit up as well.
“I’m happy.” I want more, and he knows it.
Biting the corner of his lip, he adds, “I don’t think school would make me happy knowing how messed up the rest of the world is.
I’m not faulting you for your choice, but knowing what I know now…
it changes everything. There’s so much bad in the world.
Stuff civilians have no clue about. Stuff that would change everything. ”
I pick up the Spider-Man comic book sitting on the blanket between us and page through it.
“Yeah, that’s true.” I whisper the words.
“I want the best for you.” For so long I thought I knew what that was.
Seeing him here in this element proves me wrong and tells me he’s where he needs to be regardless of how I feel. “Are you safe?”
My thumb lands on the page where Spider-Man defeats a bad guy, and I sigh. I meet his gaze. I’ve ignored Tahoe’s comments from earlier all day. Right now seems the best time to bring them up. While I’m listening to guns firing.
He grabs my face with his thumb and forefinger. “Don’t worry about me.”
I’m indignant. “Someone has to! Telling me not to worry has never worked,” I sling back, chewing on my thumbnail.
Ben gives me a crooked grin and grabs my wrist to halt my bad habit. I remember when that same grin went from a geeky smirk to a panty-scorching smile, and I blink away the memory from long ago. “I have, ah, girlfriends. I’m not lonely. Is that what you’re asking? If people worry about me?”
“Ugh. No. I don’t want to know about your girlfriends. More than one?” I ask. “Wait, I don’t think I want to know the answer. I’d hate you for it.”
“Oh, come on!” he pleads.
I hold up a palm in his face and close the comic with my free hand. “Don’t.” I laugh. “Not only do you look like one, you act like one, too,” I remark, smiling.
“Act like what? A badass with an awesome personality that the ladies love?” Ben kisses his bicep awkwardly, then waggles one brow at me. “Give me some credit.”
Sighing, I lean back on the blanket but startle when a cacophony of gunfire ricochets in the air.
Ben puts his hand on my stomach. It’s flat and warm.
He’s calming me, not doing anything untoward, but I can’t help but realize what this would look like to any outsider.
Now that I’m not sloppy drunk. “Act like a womanizing perv,” I say, tossing his hand away.
“Harper, Harper. Are you jealous?”
I shrug. “You’ve never had luck with girls. It makes sense you’d sow your wild oats now that you’ve”—I pause, unsure how to phrase it—“grown up.”
He coughs. “It was weird,” he says, lying down again next to me.
“Women wanting me for what I look like and what I do. I thought it was a joke, you know? They told me about these Frog Hogs, these women who want to date and have sex with SEALs. Totally real, Harps. I was so stymied when I met my first one I probably stared at her for an entire minute before I responded to her question.”
“Which was?” I ask.
“Oh, her question?” he asks, obviously lost in thought. “She asked if I was going to buy her a drink.”
My eyes are closed so he can’t see me roll them. “Classy,” I remark. “Then what? You took her home and had dirty, wild, frog sex?”
“Pass me the comic,” he says.
I reach next to me and hand it to him. He opens it in front of him. It blocks the sunlight beaming into his face.
“Are you really going with no comment on this one?”
He laughs. “Yeah, I took her home.” Ben pages through to a random page, and I wonder which one it is.
Gross. His answer shocks me a little, and it picks at a thread of our unraveling friendship.
Old Ben would have never had a one-night stand.
I’m not brave enough to ask if it’s a regular occurrence.
“There’s so much wrong with that, but we don’t have time to dissect it right now,” I remark, sighing. Since Ben, I’ve only been with Marcus.
“I’d prefer we never dissect it,” Ben replies.
So would I, come to think of it.
We talk a little bit about his father’s promotion and my parents’ new deck that wraps almost all the way around the house.
Something my mother has asked for since we moved into that house.
We’re supposed to make it there for dinner shortly, but I’m so comfortable here I know for a fact we’ll be late.
I don’t get this sense of self and freedom frequently, so I have to drink it up while I can—while being late doesn’t matter.
Ben pretends to read the comic bubbles through squinted eyes.
“My graduation is rapidly approaching. You’re going, right? Maybe if you start planning for it now, it will work out.”
He’s a slave to the Teams and their schedules. I’m never one hundred percent sure where Ben is at on most days. He travels around the US tracking down people and then…exterminating them. Shivering, I lean down to see which part he’s at. I point at a joke and laugh. He grins, but it falls quickly.
Ben shakes his head. “You know it doesn’t work like that.
I’ve put in a request to be on the East Coast for the week before the graduation and the week after.
That means I could be anywhere from Maine to Florida.
Atlanta has been a fucking hot spot lately.
I’ll give it a good college try,” Ben quips, turning to look at me.
“I wouldn’t want to miss it for the world. You know that, right?”
I think it’s a double entendre. How he wishes he wouldn’t have missed his own, not even happening, college graduation, but he’s going to settle for mine.
I nod. “I know. It happened fast. I’ve been so busy with classes and meetings and everything else, being finished with this degree snuck up on me.
” Enter the real world. A place I don’t function very well.
Inside Harvard walls, I am Harper, a student.
Outside, I have no idea who I am. I’ll be a linguistics graduate with a ton more schooling to finish before I arrive at my ultimate goal.
“I got into the program at USD. Not sure if I mentioned that yet.” It’s a fib.
I was planning on broaching the moving subject during this visit.
He turns his head. “You’re coming back to the West Coast?” Ben’s eyes light up. “For your master’s?”
I nod and try not to show him how pleased I am with his response.
“Yeah. They have a linguistics assistant professor job available. I can do that while I take classes and finish school. I need that PhD after my name.” I grin.
He knows I’m not being a snot. He felt the same way in the past. “Marcus got in, too.”
“Oh. Gotcha. It’s a lovers’ move. Not a move for you to come back home.” What he failed to say, and I know was there, is that I failed to come back home to him.
I push his shoulder, and I’m again reminded about his muscles.
“You’re constantly away anyway. I figured it was time to be closer to my parents, and I’ve been away for a while already, you know?
Nothing is holding me anywhere. It was a good opportunity one of my professors set me up with, and that’s it. ”
“Nothing to do with me then, huh?”
Of course.
“No, Ben. The world doesn’t revolve around you. Didn’t you learn that lesson when you were three? I’m allowed to make decisions that benefit me, just like you make decisions that benefit you.”
“My decisions benefit the rest of the free world, but who’s counting?” he jabs.