Chapter 5
PAUL DIDN’T TELL ME ABOUT his orders until we’d been seeing each other for about a month.
We were in the backseat of his Chevelle, and I was groping around in the dark for my underwear, which had been dispatched to some far-flung corner of the car a quarter of an hour earlier, when he just said it, all of a sudden, like he’d been trying to keep the words inside but couldn’t do it anymore. “I got orders to go to Italy.”
I froze, then repeated what he’d said very slowly. “Italy?”
He nodded.
“Why?”
“There’s a submarine tender in the Med, and they want me to head up RADCON.”
I didn’t know what a single word coming out of his mouth meant, and it felt like maybe that was what he’d been counting on. “Do you want to tell me what that means, in English?” I said, unable to keep the hurt out of my voice.
“A tender’s just a big boat that repairs and resupplies subs.”
“And RADCON stands for…”
“Radiological Controls.”
Hell if I knew what that meant, but I had so many questions that this one would have to wait. “How long will you be over there?”
He didn’t miss a beat. “Two years.”
I wasn’t quite sure what to say to that.
If he’d said two months, or even six, I might have begun to have delusions that we could keep this going.
That he’d write and that I’d visit and that somehow the time would pass and we’d find ourselves back here, in Charleston, doing some version of what we were doing now.
But two years was like a lifetime to wait for anyone, especially a man I’d only recently begun dating.
“When do you leave?” I asked.
All of a sudden, he got real interested in the headrest in front of him and started picking at a seam in the upholstery with his thumbnail. “Three weeks.”
I sat up a little straighter, certain I hadn’t heard him right. “You’re going to Italy in three weeks?”
He shook his head. “Technically, I’m going to Puget Sound first.”
I had no idea where Puget Sound was, but I wasn’t about to admit that.
“For training,” he offered. “Then I go to Italy.”
Slowly, it was dawning on me that none of this was news to him. “Have you known this whole time?” I whispered.
He wouldn’t admit to it, said only, “I’ve known for a while now.”
“Jesus, Paul,” I said, feeling like a total idiot for not putting the pieces together sooner. I began to search for my underwear with a renewed sense of purpose—anything to make me feel less exposed. “When were you going to tell me?”
Paul grabbed my hand, tried to get me to sit still. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
I had dated plenty of boys, and had my heart broken by a few of them, but never like this. “I think I want to go home.”
“Will you listen to me for a second?” said Paul, running a hand over his tightly cropped hair. “I thought we were having fun and that, by the time I left, it wouldn’t matter.”
“It was fun, but—”
“Just let me finish,” he said, so I shut my mouth.
“What I’m trying to say is that it’s starting to feel like it does matter.”
The way he said that last part, it was like he was asking me a question. What did he want me to say? That if and when he disappeared, I’d be devastated? My pride wouldn’t allow it.
“Come here,” he said, softly, and maybe because I’ve always been a sucker for a long goodbye, I climbed onto his lap, still half dressed. For a few seconds, we just sat there with my head resting on his shoulder. Then he whispered into my hair, “I don’t want to go to Italy without you.”
I lifted my head, touched my forehead to his. “I don’t want you to go to Italy without me.”
He breathed in, then out. “So come with me.”
“I can’t,” I said, which wasn’t technically true but might as well have been.
“You can,” he said.
I pulled back, trying to get a good look at him. “How?”
“Marry me.”