Headlights(10)

“So?” she says.

“You haven’t been back here,” I say.

“Yeah. I dunno, it always kind of felt like our place.” She says this, again with that smile, and I know better than to let it affect me. I know.

“No new ink,” she says, eyes running over my arms. I look down at what she can see in my T-shirt. I shake my head, but it’s a lie. Just nothing new on my arms. She doesn’t need to know that. Maynor.

“You changed your name.” I can’t hold her eye, saying it. I sweep the room. A couple dancing on the open floor in front of the bar, the guy in a faded Rockies hat, the woman in cowboy boots and a skirt. We used to come here like that. Pearl snaps and dress boots, Josie in a short dress, out for a night on the town. Live band twice a week. Her soft laugh as she’d tuck her head into my shoulder on a slow song.

When I turn back, she’s watching me. She drinks from her glass, presses it to her lips. The surreality of this entire day pressing in. Sitting across from someone who was there for such a significant portion of my life, was not only there but was instrumental in the making of me. Someone who knows everything about me, who I know everything about. And yet … There’s a gap. I know nothing of the last four years of her life. How is that even possible?

“Of course I changed my name,” she says. “Wouldn’t you?”

I shrug, look away again, search for something to take me away from this conversation and this day and those fucking images in the files and Pete Noland staring up at the ceiling. I squeeze my eyes shut. When I open them, her expression has shifted. She’s angry.

“What the fuck are you thinking, Daniel?”

“What?”

“Murphy said you’re going back on active duty. You’re seriously gonna go back there?”

“Josie, come on. I don’t need—”

“I don’t care what you need. Clearly you don’t either, because getting back in fatigues isn’t it.”

“You always liked me in my cammies.” I shouldn’t flirt with her. What am I—

“You’re running.”

“I’m not running.”

“Bullshit. You hated it over there. It fucked you up, and I cannot fathom why you could possibly want to go back unless it’s just to d—”

“Josie,” I say.

“So that’s it,” her voice quit. “You’re trying to end it. You’re trying to—”

“Josie,” I say again. My heart racing.

The dancing couple step closer in to each other. Leslie flips on the pink and red twinkly lights that run across the ceiling throughout the bar. I think maybe I just need to stand up and leave.

“Sorry,” Josie says. And then, “You know what, though, I’m really not. Is this … Are you trying to punish me? Punish us all by going over there and letting someone kill you? That’s what this is, right?”

“Believe it or not, this isn’t about you.”

“Daniel—”

Pete Noland sitting in the chair. Jack in my apartment.

I press my palms to my eyes. “This is … not the day I thought it was going to be,” I say. To my ex-wife. To my ex-wife with her maiden name, in our old seat at our bar. So much for flirting. I down the whiskey.

We sit for a while in silence. Leslie brings us another round. I don’t touch mine. The couple sways to Willie Nelson. You were always on my mind.

When Josie speaks again, her voice is gentler, but she’s not letting it go. Like always. “Getting yourself killed won’t fix anything.”

“Says the fed.”

“I’ll have you know I haven’t been shot at in about”—she checks her watch—“five hours.”

I give her an imitation of a smile. Her eyes catch on it, then she looks away.

And I see it there. For half a second. She looks young, and I can see her back at the beginning. Us meeting when we were just kids at Quantico and I was fresh off my last tour. I was fucked up, and she got me through a lot of it, the night terrors, the flashbacks. We joked and told everyone our getting together and FBI training was pretty much just like Starship Troopers—her favorite movie—chaos and long steamy group showers among taut and toned cadets (sadly very untrue), and camaraderie over a shared enemy. But the enemy was theoretical, some mob boss. Or they were real, but we hadn’t met them, just online work, remote. I hated Starship Troopers (aside from the shower scene), but I never told Josie that. The way they all cheer when the enemy bugs feel fear. These kids, who inflicted that pain. Who created that fear. Which I guess is the point of the whole thing.

The divorce rate for the average American couple is 50 to 60 percent. For FBI agents, it’s 70 to 80. It’s rare for us to get married, rarer to stay married. But when we both got assigned to Denver, of all the offices in the whole country, it seemed like fate. Especially because being assigned to a field office in your hometown is pretty much unheard of, and we were both from Colorado. So it felt like we were the kids to break the odds. Like the world somehow wanted it for us.

Like John and Annie in Take Me Ho—

“So,” she says, “all it took was one conversation with Jack Murphy to bring you back?”

“Haven’t changed my mind,” I say. I reach for the new glass, down it. “I’m still going.”