It’s more about Afghanistan than I ever heard from Evan. Even though we dated for eighteen months and I spent plenty of those nights in his bed, he never talked about it, not even if I asked. He had nightmares sometimes, when he’d wake up shouting and wild-eyed, but he’d fling off the covers and stalk out of the room to go play video games. The few times I tried following him he nearly bit my head off.
I wonder, now, in this truck with the air conditioning on full blast and the two-lane road unfurling in front of us, the sunlight strobing through the trees, if I failed him.
“He broke up with me at our wedding,” I say, my eyes on the curve of the road.
There’s a moment of heavy silence.
Then: “At your wedding?”
“Yup,” I confirm, and look through the passenger side window because Silas is right, it’s ridiculous, straight out of an overwrought soap opera. It’s been a year but the shame of it feels like it was yesterday: to be the girl jilted at the altar, the girl who wasn’t worth dumping in private.
Silas makes a noise that might be a growl. Maybe it’s the car.
“It happened when I came in to walk down the aisle,” I tell the window. “He was already at the altar, all the guests stood, and instead of smiling when he saw me he shook his head and walked out. In front of the two hundred guests he’d wanted to invite.”
It sounds simple when I put it like that, as if anything is over that fast. It wasn’t simple. It took hours: the confused guests, my aunts rushing me back to the dressing room, petting my hair and telling me that all men get nerves. Telling me that surely he’d see reason and come back and want to marry me after all, as if that were my concern. As if I’d still marry someone who talked me into standing in front of two hundred people to exchange vows and then ran.
The wedding wasn’t quite the worst part. The worst part was the next Monday, when we still had to work together and I had too much pride to call in sick.
Silas swallows hard, his hand still white-knuckled on the steering wheel. He takes a deep breath.
“You know, I can change our schedule,” he says, trying for light-hearted and not quite making it. “There’s still time to replace coffee dates with sniper vantage points.”
“I don’t want to go to jail,” I point out.
“We could get away with it.”
“Forensics are very good these days.”
He grins. He actually grins.
“This is Sprucevale,” he says. “Sometimes I’m amazed they’ve accepted the science of fingerprints.”
“Silas.”
“I could hide a body,” he says. “I wouldn’t even tell you where. Courtroom reasons.”
“I’m sure they’d still tie me back to it,” I point out.
We come out of the forest and there’s the fair: rides spinning and whirling above a yellow-green field, half-baked in the August sun. We park in the part of the field designated for cars, between two giant trucks. My glasses fog with the humidity when I hop out, and I have to wipe them on the hem of my dress.
When I put them back on, Silas is watching me, his hands in the pockets of his shorts. He’s wearing a blue t-shirt that’s a little snug around the arms and doesn’t quite match his eyes, the sun glinting red in his hair. He watches me as I walk toward him, feet whispering through the dry grass. Up close, under the brightness of the August sun, he’s closer than ever to having freckles.
“Ready to present selves to wider community as happy, functional couple?” I ask, and it gets a smile that reaches all the way to his eyes, his head tilting back slightly, a perfect, happy, golden picture. There’s a wiggle of pleasure inside me at the knowledge that I did that. My goofy joke.
“Ready if you are,” he says, and holds out his hand, and I take it.
* * *
“I can’t believewe missed the Prettiest Cow Contest,” I say an hour later, nodding at the whiteboard with the day’s events on it.
“You’re not supposed to call Miss Blue Ridge that any more.”
“I wasn’t!” I protest, shooting Silas a quick glare. “Look, it’s right there, Prettiest Cow—you’re a dick.”
He’s grinning at me, smile lines sunk into his cheeks, crinkles in the corners of his blue eyes.
“I would never,” I tell him, lifting my chin and looking back at the white board as I take another bite of cotton candy.