I stuck my thumb onto the meter, and waited. Eighty. Good. Even though I’d been doing this for months now, I still waited on every glucose score like I was waiting on the lottery. But it was more like most tickets were winning tickets, and you were dreading when you lost.
“No, no, no, not sexy,” I assured Toby, thinking of Luke as I had found him before I left, head lolling on his shoulder as he slept. I had wheeled him gently against the wall, putting one of Mom’s old throw pillows behind his head. I would have moved him to the couch but I didn’t think I could do it without him being awake. “Plus we barely know each other.” I thought of our e-mails and Skype calls and wondered if my words were entirely true. There was the night before he deployed, too. . . . But, then again, I didn’t know the Luke who’d come back, the man who would stare out the window for hours, not talking, bristling every time I approached.
“Then why would you trust him? That’s what I don’t get.”
“T, I was desperate. You saw what happens when I get low blood sugar. It could happen again, and I just can’t afford another visit to the ER or”—I held up my meter—“any of this stuff on my own.”
He paused, picking up Lorraine, drumming her back. “Yeah,” he said, staring into space. “Yeah, I remember.”
“He also needs money, I think. I don’t actually know.”
Toby jumped on that. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I thought it was best that I didn’t ask too many questions about his situation. Mind you”—I held up a finger, because Toby was starting to protest—“this was before I knew I had to live with him.”
He glared at me, brows furrowed. “So you didn’t plan to live with him.”
“No! Toby, no. Like I said, we have to keep up the ruse until he gets officially let go from active duty. It’s for you and Nora just as much as me,” I added.
“Because you can use your extra time for the album?” Toby said.
“Exactly.”
“I don’t know, Cassie.” His pace had slowed again. “I mean, we’re serious, right?”
“Yes. And I like it a lot.”
He smiled at that. I knew he would like that.
He set Lorraine down on the ground. “Honestly. Honestly, tell me something.”
“Honest,” I said, scooting forward on the couch, giving him my full attention. At least I could give him that right now. That seemed to be what he wanted. It was cute, almost childlike.
“You agreed to marry him,” he said, putting one finger out. Then he put out another. “And now you have this guy sleeping on your couch, in your home. And you expect me to just believe that you two don’t have a thing for each other.”
My chest tightened. A thing? Sure, Luke and I slept together once, and now we did things like watch each other go through various medical procedures and fight at our best friend’s funeral. We couldn’t have a thing if we tried. “Um. No, no, we don’t. How can I explain this?”
“Yeah, explain it.” He stood in front of me. “Please. Before I start fantasizing about beating this guy up.”
“It’s not complicated,” I said, even though it was. But there was no way to explain it that Toby wouldn’t misunderstand. I swallowed. “I want you, and that’s it,” I said, knowing how vague that sounded, and stood up to wrap my arms around his neck, kissing him hard enough that he’d forget.
Luke
I was running through green hills on packed earth that formed a circular track. Up and down, up and down, and Jake was there in one of the valleys, lying with Hailey and JJ on a blanket. They called to me with faraway voices: Yes, go, yes, go.
Suddenly, Jake yelled and I could hear him better. “They’re picking us off from the northwest hill.”
Which one is the northwest hill? I shouted.
A gun sounded right next to my ear.
I opened my eyes.
I was lying on Cassie’s couch.
Still dark. I reached behind me to the table next to the couch, feeling around the ashtray and roach clips and guitar picks and diabetic-candy wrappers for the edge of the lamp, working toward the lamp cord.
I needed distraction. I needed to slow my heartbeat down.
Cassie had stacked her magazine subscriptions next to me on the floor. SPIN, featuring a girl with buckteeth and braids—read that one; Rolling Stone from September, August, July, and June—read those. I knew more about the evolution of David Bowie’s career than I’d cared to.