Something Like Normal (10 page)

Chapter 9

It’s a calm day on the water, so the waves aren’t too big. Moss seems to have found his sea legs—and a beer.

“I’m catching a shark today,” Kevlar announces as Gary distributes the fishing rods. We’re trolling on a school of tarpon, but Gary says there’s a chance we could see some sharks. “A black tip or a lemon—or a
hammerhead
,” Kevlar says. “Yeah, a hammerhead would be sweet.”

He pivots the fishing rod back, about to cast, when Gary stops him. “Slow down, son, you’re not going to catch anything without
bait
.”

“Except a buzz,” Moss says.

“Nah,” I say. “He’s already caught one of those.”

Kevlar gives us the finger, while Gary uses a live pilchard—bait fish—to bait the hook for him. Harper baits her own.

I move up behind her, my mouth next to her ear and my hand on her hip. The sunscreen makes her smell like summertime. “You are officially the coolest girl in the world.”

She shivers, but plays it off by rolling her eyes at me. “You’re just now figuring that out?”

“I’ve had my suspicions.”

Harper turns to face me and places her hands on my chest. I ignore the fact that they’re covered in fish slime because, well—it’s Harper. And she’s going to kiss me. “Travis?”

“Yeah?”

“Go away.” She gives me a shove. “I have a shark to catch.”

Kevlar cracks up. “Ooh, Solo.
Denied
.”

“Hey, Kenneth, aren’t you going to introduce me to your date?” I reach into the live well and pull out a pilchard for my own hook. “Oh, wait. You don’t
have
one.”

He takes a long drink, then burps. “Harper could set us up with a couple of her friends.”

As I cast my line, I consider hooking Kevlar up with Lacey Ellison. He could finally get laid. I glance at Harper.

“Don’t even think it,” she says, not taking her eyes off the water. “I have no control over what my friends do with random guys they meet in bars, but I’m not pimping them out to the Marine Corps.”

This makes me laugh. “I guess that’s fair.”

Today is a good day. Sunshine. Beer. Fishing. And Afghanistan is as far away as it belongs. I don’t need therapy. I just need more days like this.

Moss catches the first fish, a flashing silver tarpon that lights him up with happiness. They’re great game fish, tarpon, but not much for eating, so Gary takes a picture of Moss holding up his catch before they release it back into the Gulf.

“Solo?” Moss asks, casting out a fresh line. “They have these kinds of fish up in North Carolina?”

“Sure,” I say. “We can go anytime you want, man.”

He gives me that Buddha smile. “Cool.”

“I’ve got something,” Harper says, a little while later, when the line on her reel starts peeling off fast. The muscles in her arm flex as she tries to crank it in and I can tell it’s something big.

“Tarpon,” Gary says, but she shakes her head.

“It seems like it’s going deeper,” she says. “Maybe a shark?”

“Well, then sit down in the fishing chair,” he says. “And hang on.”

Whatever she’s hooked into is running. It’s not like in the cartoons, when the fish takes off swimming and the boat goes zipping along behind it. But sharks are strong and the boat starts pointing in the direction of whatever is on the other end of Harper’s line.

After a couple of minutes the drag stops spinning and Harper starts cranking it in. She’s strong, but the pressure on the rod is pretty intense.

“You doing okay?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she says. The loose hairs escaped from her pony-tail are damp and sticking to the back of her neck. “I could use some water.”

Kevlar brings her a bottle, and to keep the sun out of her face I give her an old Brewers ball cap I got when we lived in Green Bay.

With the boat following Harper’s shark, Kevlar has to settle for cooler fishing, which doesn’t bother him at all. He’s already half in the bag. Moss, on the other hand, is content to watch Harper fish. Like he’s committing it all to memory.

For about thirty minutes it goes like this: the drag peels off as the shark runs, taking as much line with it as it can; the drag stops and Harper reels in, taking back as much of the line as she can. It’s tedious and her arms tremble from the effort.

“Do you want some help?” I offer.

“No.” She gives me a grim smile. “But thanks.”

It’s no surprise she turns me down; she’s probably better at fishing than I am, anyway. And that’s kind of hot.

Forty-five minutes, maybe an hour, pass before the shark starts getting as tired as Harper. In the shade of the Brewers cap, she’s fighting not to cry, and part of me wants to take the pole away to give her a break, but she’s too stubborn for that. One step forward, two steps back, she slowly reels it in. The drag zings out each time the shark thrashes against her, trying to throw the hook, and she struggles to gain it back.

Then—like in the last second of an arm wrestling match where the weaker of the two gives up—the shark just stops fighting. Harper makes up a yard, then two, then ten.

“Looks like it’s done,” Gary says. “But beware, it may start thrashing again when it gets to the boat.”

At first the shark is only a dark shadow deep in the water and we can’t tell what it is, but as it gets closer to the surface we can see the distinct shape of a hammerhead. And it’s a monster.

“Jesus,” Kevlar breathes. “How are we going to get that thing on the boat?”

“That fish is ten, possibly twelve feet long, son,” Gary says. “It’s not coming on this boat.” He turns to Harper. “Keep reeling.”

The hammerhead breaks the surface and goes nuts, thrashing and flailing, churning up the water around it. I look back at Harper and grin. “You’ve got him.” The corners of her mouth curl up a little, but it’s hard to tell if she’s smiling or grimacing as she tries to beat the last bit of fight the shark has left. Finally, he surrenders and lies over on his side, just floating there. Spent. One end of his ugly head sticks up out of the water, his beady black eye looking almost bewildered. Like he’s wondering what the hell just happened.

Kevlar leans over the side and touches the shark. “That is so fucking cool.”

“If you want a picture, now is the time,” Gary says. “And make it quick because we need to let it go.”

Moss takes the rod from Harper so I can snap a picture with the camera on my phone. Gary hands her a pair of clippers to cut the wire leader that will set the hammerhead free. There’s no way to pull the hook out from between those razor teeth. It will stay there until it rusts away. “Do you want to name it? Some people like to do that.”

“No, that’s okay.” Harper snips the leader and the shark slowly swims away, his dorsal fin sinking below the water before the fish disappears completely.

“That was awesome.” I move beside her and slip my arm around her waist. Her whole body is quivering with exhaustion as she leans into me, closing her eyes. I kiss her forehead and it’s damp with sweat.

After fishing a couple more hours—Harper went into the cabin and slept the whole time—we drop Kevlar and Moss at their hotel, then drive up the island to her house.

“I’ll give you the grand tour,” she says as I follow her onto the front porch. “It won’t take long, since you can stand in the living room and see everything.”

Harper throws open the door and stops in her tracks. I crash into her from behind, grabbing her around the waist to keep from knocking her down. On the couch, just over her shoulder, Harper’s dad and a dark-haired woman are making out. They jump apart, fumbling with their tangled clothes. Her lip gloss is smeared at the side of his mouth and they look so… busted.

“Okay, this is embarrassing,” her dad says as they stand. They’re holding hands. “Harper, this is Alison Redding. Alison, this is Harper and her friend Travis.”

“Not exactly how I envisioned this moment.” Alison’s smile is bright, genuine, as she reaches out to Harper, who is immobile within the circle of my arm. I’m not sure she’s even breathing. “But it’s nice to finally meet you.”

Harper doesn’t say anything. She breaks away from me and goes into her room, slamming the door. Leaving me holding the big bag of awkward.

Her dad blows out a breath and scratches the back of his head. “I should go talk to her.”

“It would probably be better if you didn’t,” I say. “Let me.”

“I don’t think…” He glances at her door, as if I’d try something with his daughter right now, then he sighs. “Yeah, okay.”

I tap on Harper’s door. “Hey, it’s me.”

Her face appears in the open crack, her eyes damp.

“Can I come in?”

She opens the door wider and I’m in her bright yellow room, standing beside her bed. I have to admit, my preferred course of action would be to drag her beneath the blankets and do things that would take her mind off her dad. Except that’s not what she wants right now. And considering everything I’ve put her through, it won’t kill me to shut up and listen.

“When he told me she was thinking about coming to visit, I thought that meant they were, you know, talking about a future visit.” Harper drops down on her bed. “I didn’t think it meant
now
, like…
that
.”

I sit beside her and look around the room. Hanging on the walls are brightly colored paintings of cartoon-like sea creatures. Red turtles. Purple seahorses. Green goldfish. Orange dolphins. They’re kind of cool. I wonder if Harper’s mom painted them. “Who is she?”

“They were engaged.” She rubs her eyes on the back of her hand. I offer her the sleeve of my fish-scented T-shirt and she turns her face into my shoulder. “He broke it off when he met my mom.”

I suck at this. Being a guy is way less complicated sometimes. “Maybe, um, you should talk to him?”

“No. I’m not ready.” She wipes her eyes on my sleeve. “Let’s just stick to our plans.”

“Okay.”

She opens her bottom dresser drawer and hands me a red towel. “There’s a shower out back with soap and shampoo. Be sure to close the curtain all the way or the old woman across the canal will call the sheriff.”

“Sounds exciting.”

I’m reaching for the doorknob when she crosses the small room and pins me against the door, kissing me the way she did at the Waffle House this morning. Damn.

We’re both a little breathless when she pulls away.

“Thank you, Travis.”

Her dad and Alison are waiting at the kitchen table as I pass through, the red towel strategically placed to hide wood. He nearly knocks the chair over as he stands up. I can’t even imagine a dad who cares the way Harper’s does. “Is she okay?”

“She’s mostly confused.”

“I was kind of hoping Harper would join us for sushi,” he says. “So she can get to know Alison.”

“I wouldn’t.” I don’t tell him the image of them making out is probably still burned onto her retinas. “She thought this was a theoretical someday event. She needs some time to wrap her head around it.”

“Thanks, Travis.” He shakes my hand. “You’re a good man.”

I doubt he’d say that if he knew I was on my way to take a cold shower.

Chapter 10

A mountain of broken crab legs, empty oyster shells, and peeled-away shrimp skins rises up in the middle of a table on the hotel balcony overlooking the Gulf. We’ve eaten a ton of seafood we had delivered from Pincher’s Crab Shack, and if the number of Corona bottles with squeezed-up limes at the bottom is any indication, we’ve killed a case of beer. We’re all a little sunburned and more than a little drunk. I wonder why Kevlar has not passed out yet.

“The night is young and downstairs is a bar full of young, nubile women.” He comes out of the bathroom wearing a plaid cowboy shirt and jeans so new I wonder if the tags are still attached.

“Look at you,” I say. “Going to the rodeo there, Kenneth?”

“Damn straight.” He grins. “Gonna find me a woman, grab on, and—” He bucks his hips like he’s riding a bull and waves his cowboy hat in the air. “Woo-hoo!”

Moss laughs. “My money says you don’t last the full eight seconds.”

I hit him with a fist bump.

“Fuck you guys,” Kevlar says. “Tonight’s the night. I can feel it. Who’s in?” I glance at Harper, and he groans. “Solo, I never expected these words to ever come out of my mouth, but you, my friend, are whipped.”

I point my beer bottle at him, squinting one eye as if I’m aiming. “Don’t make me come over there and kick your ass.”

“I’m just sayin’.”

“Yeah, well, let’s examine the facts, shall we?” I say. “I am here with a girl, who happens to be insanely hot”—Harper goes pink—“while you are dressed like a Tennessee douchebag in the hopes of possibly getting some trim. Harper could turn me down tonight, tomorrow night, and the night after that, and I’d
still
have a better chance of getting laid, you inbred hilljack.”

We glare at each other until Kevlar cracks a smile and then starts giggling. Soon all of us are cracking up, except Harper, who looks mystified.

“You guys are so mean to each other,” she says, which only makes us laugh harder.

It’s true. We say the most offensive stuff to each other. Racist. Homophobic. Insulting each other’s moms. Sometimes, every once in a while, it leads to knock-down-roll-around-on-the-ground fistfights, but mostly we laugh because we don’t mean it. Any one of us would take a bullet for the other.

“So are we partying or what?” Kevlar asks, packing some Skoal in his lower lip.

Moss shrugs. “I’m in.”

“Yep,” Harper says.

Kevlar tries to drape his arm around her shoulders as we walk down the hall to the elevator, but it’s kind of difficult considering she’s about four inches taller than him. “You know,” he says, “it ain’t too late to kick Solo to the curb.”

“Why do you guys call him that?” she asks.

“You know how in
Star Wars
, just before the garbage masher walls are about to start closing in, Han Solo goes, ‘I got a bad feeling about this’?”

Harper nods.

“Well, it’s pitch-black night in the ’Stan,” Kevlar says. “And we’re boarding helos that are going to drop us in the middle of West Bumfuck, where God knows who is going to be shooting at us, and out of the blue Stephenson goes, ‘I got a bad feeling about this.’”

“We were scared shitless,” Moss adds. “But every time one of us would repeat it, we’d start laughing all over again.”

I remember the nightmare feeling when the helos left us there in the black unknown, covered in our first layer of dirt, unable to walk away. Unable to change our minds and go home.

My joke wasn’t prophetic. We raided a couple of houses, rounded up a handful of suspected bad guys, and by the time the sun came up, we felt like cowboys—and I was permanently Han Solo.

I move between Kevlar and Harper, putting my arm around her.

“They also call me Solo,” I say against her neck, making her shiver, “because I always get the girl.”

She side-eyes me. “Han Solo was kind of a tool.”

Kevlar giggles and spits tobacco juice into the mouth of an empty beer bottle. “She does have a point.”

“He’s the one who ran interference against the Empire so Luke Skywalker could blow up the Death Star,” I protest. “He’s a hero.”

“He’s a scoundrel.” Harper smirks at me as she presses the down button beside the elevator doors, and I smile back because she knows her
Star Wars
.

“You like me because I’m a scoundrel,” I say, quoting the movie. “There aren’t enough scoundrels in your life.”

The elevator dings and the doors slide open. Harper looks at me, then at Moss, then at Kevlar—and laughs. “So not true.”

The club downstairs is surprisingly full for August. Only none of the women here are young or nubile. It’s full of middle-aged people in tropical clothes, rocking out—if you can even call it that—to a Jimmy Buffett tribute band called the Floridays.

“Lots of fine, fine ladies here tonight, Kenneth,” I say. “Which one’s it going to be?”

“If I wanted a cougar, I’d do your mom.”

“Why? Getting tired of your own?”

He ignores me. “This place sucks. Where else can we go?”

We walk to the Shamrock.

Harper’s friends are in residence at a table near the bar. Lacey squeals and makes an instant beeline in our direction, her cowboy boots tapping on the floor as she walks. I glance at Kevlar to see if he’s checking out her tiny denim skirt, but his eyes are locked on Amber, whose hair is now dyed a shade of red a lot like… his.

“Dude, no.” She’s Tour de France. He’s training wheels. He’s so not ready for Amber Reynolds.

“Dude, yes,” he says.

“Harper! Travis!” Lacey reaches for us, pulling us to her table, but her smile is directed at… Moss? Not that I have a problem with that, because he’s good-looking for, you know, a
guy
. It’s just that this is not the way I expected it would go down, if it went down at all. “So are you going to introduce us to your friends?”

I make the introductions, then head to the bar and order a pitcher of beer. While the bartender is pouring, I look back at the table, where Lacey curls herself around Moss’s bicep and a nervous-looking Kevlar is talking to Amber. Crazy.

Harper joins me.

“So, are we in a parallel universe?” I ask. “Because I have no idea who that guy is.”

“He
is
pretty drunk,” Harper says. She glances down at the floor, then up at me. That shy thing gets me every single time, even when Paige did it and I knew it wasn’t real. But Harper… it’s not a calculated maneuver to get me hot. It’s authentic. And still incredibly effective. “Do you, um, want to go for a walk?” she asks.

This could be an invitation to go for a walk or it could be for something more. Either way, I’m in. Even if it means walking to Bonita Springs and back. “Sure.”

“We’ll be back in a while,” I say as Harper puts the pitcher on the table. I reach into the pocket of my jeans and pull out a three-strip of condoms. “Be safe. Have fun. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

Kevlar looks up at me with a shitty grin. “So that means your mom’s a go?”

I smack the back of his head, then thread my fingers through Harper’s. “We’re outta here.”

We cross Estero and cut down one of the beach access lanes, where we leave our flip-flops behind. The sand is cool and damp between my toes as we walk toward the fishing pier and beach shops.

“So what’s up with the pocketful of condoms?” she asks. “Did you think you were going to need that many tonight?”

“I bought them for Kevlar. Just in case.”

Harper slants a skeptical look my way. “Really?”

“I guarantee the one he carries around in his wallet expired a long time ago,” I say. “So I picked some up at the beer store this afternoon because I knew he wouldn’t think of it until it was too late.”

“That was kind of… nice.”

I laugh. “Yeah, well, I’m kind of a nice guy.”

“Did you keep any for yourself?”

“Nope,” I say. “Should I have?”

She shakes her head. “Is that okay?”

I shrug. “I’m not in any rush.”

We pass through Times Square, stopping to watch a magician performing for a handful of German tourists. After we buy twist cones at the Dairy Queen, we head back up Estero until we reach her street. “Do you want me to walk you home?”

“I don’t want to go home.”

“Harper—” I start to tell her that she should face what’s bothering her, but what business do I have telling her what to do when I have no idea how to face what’s bothering me? “Okay.”

“It’s just—if we get down there and her car is still in the driveway…” Harper trails off. “I don’t have a problem with Alison, but a little warning would have been nice, you know?”

I nod. “That’s what I told your dad.”

“You did?” Her face and voice go soft, and she kisses me right there on the street corner. Until a passing car honks and someone shouts that we should get a room.

“Do you want to go back to the hotel?” I ask.

“What if the room is… occupied?”

I shudder at the mental picture of Kevlar and Amber, and Harper grimaces as if she’s imagined the same thing.

“Yeah, never mind,” I say. “Let’s go to my house.”

The sun is bright through the slats of the blinds when I open my eyes the next morning. The clock on the bedside table says I’ve slept later than I can remember sleeping since before I went to boot camp. And I feel good. Rested. Like I’ve—

I’ve slept all night.

No insomnia. No nightmares. No pills.

No Charlie.

“Hey.” Harper’s voice is husky with sleep beside me, her arm across my chest. Paige never spent the whole night—she always snuck out before my mom woke up—and I’ve never brought anyone else here.

Last night I did things with Harper that I leapfrogged when I was fourteen and having sex with Paige in the horse barn behind her house. It’s not that I regret it. I don’t. It’s just—being with Harper is like getting a do-over.

“Hey back,” I say. “You give good sleep.”

“Is that what the boys have been saying about me all these years?”

“Yeah, I read it above the urinal in the locker room.”

She yawn-laughs. “What time is it?”

I pick up my cell phone. “Almost ten.”

“Oh, no!” Harper scrambles out of my bed and re-knots her hair. “I’m going to be late for work.”

My mom is in the kitchen when we go downstairs. Her eyebrows shoot up when she sees Harper, then she pins me with a death ray stare loaded with silent scolding.
Travis Henry Stephenson, you better not have been doing what I think you were doing. Not with a sweet girl like Harper Gray.

“Harper,” she says. “What a surprise.”

“Yeah, um—nice to see you, Mrs. Stephenson.” Harper’s face is pink with embarrassment, even though she’s got nothing to be embarrassed about.

“Long story,” I say. “We’ve gotta go.”

I drop Harper off at the Waffle House and meet up with Kevlar and Moss at the beach. Moss is asleep on a lounge chair, but Kevlar is propped up with a beer in his hand. I’d laugh at his Afghani-tan—tanned face and neck, white everywhere else—but I have one, too. Charlie was the one who dubbed it the Afghani-tan.

“You missed one helluva night, Solo,” he says. “We went to this strip club called Fantasy’s. Did you know Amber is an exotic dancer?”

It doesn’t surprise me. Taking off her clothes for money is within her skill set. I peel off my T-shirt and fish a beer from the depths of the icy cooler. “Dude, she’s a
stripper
.”

“Don’t be a hater just because your girlfriend is a goddess,” Kevlar says. “Amber is a very amenable girl, if you get what I’m sayin’.”

“What you’re saying is you probably paid sixty bucks for three lap dances, then came back to the hotel alone to liquidate the inventory.”

“Fuck you.”

“Did you or did you not close the deal, Kenneth?”

“I don’t think I want to tell you now.” He crosses his arms over his scrawny freckled chest, all huffy, and turns his nose up, pretending to ignore me.

“Kevlar, man, I thought we were BFFs,” I say. Moss doesn’t open his eyes, but a chuckle rumbles out. “I still have my half of the necklace, and last night I wrote in my diary, ‘Dear Diary, Kenneth is my BFF. I hope he gets laid, because it’s a special night when a man loses his virginity and contracts a sexually transmitted disease at the same time.’”

“Hey! I used a condom.” A shit-eating grin breaks out on his face and I know he wants to rattle off every detail, but just… no. I don’t need
those
nightmares, too.

“Aw, Moss, our little boy is all grown up.” I shake my can. “We should celebrate.”

“Solo.” Kevlar jumps off his chair. “No.”

He runs down the beach and I chase, but he’s not faster than I am. I catch him, put him in a headlock, and spray beer in his face. “Congratulations, dude. It’s about damn time.”

We hang out on the beach for a couple of hours, until my friends have to head back to North Carolina. I sit in the room with them while they’re packing.

“Wish I was going back, too,” I say.

“Had all the family you can stand?” Moss asks.

They don’t know that Peralta “suggested” my extra leave. Or that Charlie, the only person I could talk to about any of this, is part of the reason I’m here. “Yep.”

“I love my mother,” he says. “But after about four days I had all the mothering I can take.”

“Don’t cry, Solo.” Kevlar comes out of the bathroom carrying all the little soaps and shampoo bottles. “We’ll see you next weekend.”

“What’s next weekend?”

“Kevlar, man, you didn’t tell him?” Moss smacks Kevlar in the back of the head, then rummages through his bag. He pulls out a cream-colored envelope and hands it to me. “We all got them. If you had your mail forwarded, you’ll probably be getting it any day.”

Inside is a matching cream-colored card. An invitation.

In memoriam

LCpl. Charles Thompson Sweeney

The honor of your presence

is requested at a memorial service

Saturday, the fourteenth of August

at five o’clock in the evening

The White Room

1 King Street