“Nothing will teach you that like heading abroad,” I hinted.
“Nah. Doesn’t really interest me,” she insisted. “It’s dangerous abroad. Plus, there’s the whole matter of learning other languages, etiquette, customs… I’d like to keep it simple for the time being.
“Simple with you,” she hastily added.
I smiled. It was a nice thought, but I was determined to help her see things my way, particularly when I knew what she was about to ask…
“What about you?” she predictably continued the train of thought, softly kissing my chest. “What do you want from the future?”
A smile stretched across my face.
“Perfect world? I’d leave.”
She paused. “Leave? Like, go back to London?”
“Yeah,” I wistfully continued. “I’ve been stationed in a few different spots around the world, but mostly Afghanistan. Even in the more exotic locales… South Korea, Sweden, Germany… I could never really enjoy the culture. Not without the military breathing down my neck.”
“You want to see the world,” Clara observed, planting her lips on my neck.
“That’s right. But this time, I'd do it on my terms,” I elaborated, feeling my face harden with the thought. “No automatic rifle at hand’s reach, no combat fatigues. I step off a plane and backpack across Europe. I want to ride camels outside Cairo, eat proper ramen in a hole-in-the-wall dive bar in Toyko, and smoke myself silly in Amsterdam. There’s a great, big world out there, you know… and I want to see it all.”
I reflected on this a moment.
It had been so important to me.
Joining the Marines had only convinced me further that this was the right choice. I’d only gone from one fading superpower to the next. I needed to get away from America, even England, and see the rest of the world.
And I needed to do it independently of military protocols and combat zones.
“How long do you want to be gone?” She asked me, pulling my attention back downwards. “Can’t exactly knock all of that stuff out in a few weeks, unless you’re taking the express route.”
“As long as I can, Clara. I’d take my sweet time with it. Maybe I’d never come back.”
Something changed in her face.
Wait. Fuck.
Turmoil flashed in her eyes.
I reached down and drew her up my body. At my silent behest, Clara laid her head into the nook in my chest. Tenderly, I stroked her hair as I searched for the proper words.
“You asked what I wanted, Clara. And I told you the truth. But being here, with you… I couldn’t just give this up, not even for a second.”
“You need to do this,” she answered, almost mournfully.
“Before, I was convinced… but now…”
“Now what?”
‘Now what’ indeed, I thought for a moment.
“If there was any reason to stay, anything that could pull me from that path… that reason would be you,” I finally answered here.
The moment I saw that scared look in her eyes, I knew that I’d seriously fucked up.
Clara’s face lifted to meet my gaze. She looked terrified – a deer in the headlights, entranced but pulsating with crushing, absolute fear.
“Let me make my own decisions,” I told her gently, fighting down the concern that was swelling in my chest, desperately hoping to calm her down. “You leave that stuff up to me.”
“No,” she told me, climbing up off of me. “That’s not good enough. I can’t do that.”
I leapt up off of the bed. “Wait–”
“No,” she insisted, throwing my hoodie back on. “You can’t just turn down that kind of dream for me. I won’t let you. I’ll never let you. I can’t be the reason you throw all of that away.”
I laughed in complete exasperation. “We get through an entire car ride with our parents, even with the most awkward fucking conversation ever, and it’s me wanting to travel the world that makes you lose your shit?”
Clara turned on me with vicious eyes.
“Look,” I prefaced her, “you told me just today – hours ago – that you’re committed to this cause. Clara, you gave me complete conviction that it was gonna be you and me against the world…”
“That was before I knew you had this dream,” she insisted. “You just heard me tell you that I’m not interested in that kind of a life. And now I find out that you are? And you have been for years? I can’t stand in the way of that. I won’t be the kind of girl to ask you to stay. It’s not happening.”
“Clara,” I repeated, firmer this time. I reached for her wrist, but she yanked it away, staring me down with hellfire in her eyes.
“No, don’t… don’t you even think about touching me,” she growled. “I refuse to let you do this. You have to go, Dalton. Live that life.”
“Clara, I don’t want to go. I want to be with you – to spend my days with…”
My words faltered as I watched her tremble before me. As Clara lifted a face brazen with furious, tear-brimmed eyes, I realized immediately what she really meant with those words.
“You have to go,” she repeated angrily.
“Clara…”
“Now.”
We stood there, watching each other for a moment. I didn’t dare take a step towards her, not while seeing her like this. My heart pounded in my chest, tearing apart with a wound more vicious than any that I could have received in combat.
Because those wounds – the ones you survive, at any rate – are just flesh deep. You lose an arm or a leg, maybe more. You take stray shrapnel to the chest, and with luck you survive it. It kills a part of you, it makes you weaker, but you learn to live on around it.
This was something much deeper.
This was the shrapnel that shredded your very living soul… because you can’t remove ghost shrapnel, even if it’s still cutting you inside, penetrating down to your core.
“Go,” Clara repeated through gritted teeth, her tears rolling freely down her cheeks now.
I’m not an English major, or a literary critic. My weapon was never vocabulary; it was always a knife in a holster and a rifle, slung over my back.
I say this to explain a point: I’m not equipped with the right words for this. I can’t properly express to you how my heartstrings strained in that moment. Every atom, every ounce of my very being was desperate to cross the distance to her, to wipe the tears from her face and sweep her back into my warm, comforting embrace.
The look in her eyes said Don’t you dare.
It said Stay back, I’m warning you.
No weapon could ever win this standoff.
Without a single syllable uttered, I silently gathered up my things and I left her.
Chapter 17
No matter how many sleepless nights passed since that devastating afternoon, I couldn’t know for sure if I’d done the right thing… or made the biggest mistake of my life.
It had been over a week since Dalton left my apartment. Every night when my cheek struck the pillow, I wished that he were there with me.
Whatever the ex-marine had seen in my eyes that day, it had convinced him of what I knew was certain in that moment. Mission accomplished. The man had gone completely radio silent.
Dalton’s words had rattled me down to my inner being. Beyond all hope and reason, I didn’t dare let him choose to stay here because of me. I’d heard how much he loved that dream; I couldn’t let myself be the obstacle to his happiness.
But did I do the right thing?
My unfettered decision had grown uncertain.
Selfishly, of course I still wanted him. I logically expected to need some time to get over him, but I hadn’t prepared myself for how my heart had fractured. When the days continued and I still had to force myself to eat, or exert willpower into every smile, I realized the true depths to the pit of my despair.
My heart broke just a little more every day.
Perfect timing meant that I wasn’t scheduled a single hour
for the entire week after Dalton left. Banquet season had apparently slid down to a grinding halt. That meant less morning shifts to go around, and I didn’t have the energy to fight for the scraps.
Natalie was a godsend. She’s probably the reason I climbed out of bed, made it to my classes, and turned in (most of) my homework.
Dalton apparently did not have a Natalie.
He hadn’t shown up in our class.
He hadn’t tried to contact me in any way.
“I’m sure he’s fine,” she reassured me one afternoon during a commercial break of some sitcom we both liked. “He’s probably just working through things on his own. The bastard will come around, and everything will be fine again.”
“He’s not a bastard,” I told her.
“Technically, he is!” She chirped up. “Guy’s parents never married, right? So that makes him a total bastard. It’s the textbook definition.”
“Fine. He’s a bastard, then,” I grumbled.
Natalie turned to face me with welling concern. Before she opened her mouth, I saw the impending, heartfelt lecture spring to life in her eyes. “Look, Clara…”
“Don’t.” I cut her off, backing the word up with a glare. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“We both know that I might be a bit airheaded sometimes, but even I can see that you two love each other. You’re desperate for him, and I’ve seen the way he looks at you! You can’t ignore that!”