“Wow.”
“It’s a lot,” she said. “It’s going to take some getting used to.”
“Do you have that written down?” I asked, holding up my notebook. “For our biographies?”
We paused when the waitress returned.
Cassie gave me an apologetic smile as she took the steaming cup. She waited until the woman left to start speaking again. “I’ll be honest.” She looked back and forth between Frankie and me. “I’m kind of ill prepared.”
“What do you mean, ill prepared?” I rested my hand on my notebook, where I’d spent an hour trying to make my handwriting neat enough to read, combing through all my memories and mistakes, trying to decide what was relevant and what was not. We’d decided e-mail was not a good idea, because it left a record.
Cassie looked chagrined. “I, just, didn’t write it all down. I’m sorry.”
My chest clenched. “Come on. We’re doing this today. What else took priority?”
“I’m sorry!” she said louder. “Until, like, an hour ago I wasn’t sure I could go through with this.”
“Okay,” I said slowly, feeling my heart bang. I tried to breathe. I was getting angry, but that wouldn’t help the situation.
Frankie put a bite of eggs Benedict in his mouth. “Y’all could just talk,” he said with his mouth full. “Like normal humans.”
Cassie and I looked at each other. She appeared to hold the same sentiment that I did: No, thank you.
“How about you just read what you have, and I’ll respond? Here,” she said, gesturing for the pen and notebook. I tore out a page for her. “Go ahead with your first one.”
The heat was starting to subside. I cleared my throat, and read. “My name is Luke Joseph Morrow.”
Cassie started writing her answer as she said it. “Cassandra Lee Salazar.”
“Lee, huh?” Frankie said. “I didn’t know that.”
“It was my dad’s mother’s maiden name, I think.” She looked at me, her brown eyes stone. “Oh, um. I don’t have a dad.”
“Are you going to keep your last name, or—？”
She knit her eyebrows together, looking back up to me. “Of course I’m going to keep my last name.”
I held up my hands. “Just asking.”
She smiled at me across the table, closed red lips, sarcastic. “I will pretend to be married to you but I’m not going to sit at home knitting a blanket until you come back.”
“I never said anything about knitting.”
“He’s just trying to be cautious, Cassie,” Frankie said, in a much nicer voice than I could manage right then.
“Then how about you take my last name?” she muttered.
I couldn’t tell if she was serious or not. “I don’t want to do that, no.”
Frankie looked at his watch. “We should keep this moving if we don’t want to wait in a long line at city hall.”
I read, “I am a private first class in the Sixth Battalion, Thirty-fourth Red Horse Infantry Division, United States Army.”
From all that, I watched Cassie write the word “private.”
She looked at me, sipping her coffee. “I play keys and sing lead vocals for The Loyal, a band I started here in Austin.” She smiled a little, glancing at Frankie before she wrote it down.
I looked at my sheet. “My favorite food is salami on crackers.”
She giggled. “Sorry. I don’t know why that’s funny. Mine”—she wrote—“is my mother’s tembleque.”
We went back and forth.
I run six miles a day.
About twice a month I sign up for yoga classes then cancel.
I like RPGs. Fallout and stuff.
I like to read critical theory and trashy magazines about celebrities.
I don’t really like to read. I wasn’t good at school. I liked Huck Finn, though. And Where the Red Fern Grows.
I like records. Vinyl.
Me, too. My dad had some growing up.
Things as big as My mom died to small things Cassie said couples know about each other even after a short time, like I wear boxers to bed. Cassie preferred a tank top and underwear. She pointed to all of her tattoos. Right forearm, some sort of lion with wings. A sphinx. Traditionally female in myths. Symbol of wisdom. Left forearm, the cycle of the moon. Upper right arm, flowers, apparently the same kind that grew in her mother’s yard. Upper left, a black star, for David Bowie.
I showed her a scar on the back of my head. I told her it came from my father, by accident. I didn’t elaborate.