Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 122097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
As she makes her way back across the parking lot to me, I have to take a moment. Because a week ago Lowyn McBride was a… well, I won’t say a distant memory. I have always regretted how things ended between us. But I had given up on the delusion that one day we might reconnect. I mean, really. How is it possible that she’s not married? And I know she doesn’t have a boyfriend because she let me come home with her the other night and the Lowyn I know would not have done that if she had a boyfriend.
I feel like I just fell into an opportunity.
She gets in the truck, smiling, jostling a little as she pulls her seatbelt across her chest. “OK. I’m hungry. I didn’t eat all day. Were you driving all day, Collin? Did you eat anything?”
Just like that. Just like… just like we are still the same people we were. Like no time passed at all. “I didn’t eat, no.”
“Good, then I won’t embarrass myself when I scarf my food down.”
I smile as I slide the Jeep into first, then pull out of the motel parking lot.
“Where we going? Is it barbecue? I’m maybe a little bit hungry for barbecue.”
“Lowyn, I can’t remember a time when you would ever pass up barbecue.”
“Some things never change.” She kinda sighs these words out. But she’s not looking at me. She’s looking out the window.
“We are going to barbecue. I know a place.”
She turns to look at me and giggles. “You know a place in Johnson City, Tennessee, do ya?”
“Just you wait.”
She giggles again. An easy laugh. One that takes me all the way back to junior high when I used to watch her before school when she was hanging with her friends. Rosie was around back then too, and Clover. “Hey, whatever happened to Clover?”
“Oh, she’s a fancy-fancy events coordinator up in that super-fancy-fancy hotel in Virginia. The Dixie Yonder. You ever heard of that place?”
You know what I like about people in these hills? The way they keep a conversation goin’ with a question at the end. I’ve been all over the world and in most places, people just want you to shut up. And maybe it’s just because we’re reconnecting, that could be it. But I think it’s just something we do in these parts. Keep the conversation going, I mean.
“I have not. But if you say it’s super-super-fancy, then it must be impressive.”
“Super-fancy-fancy.”
“I stand corrected.”
She laughs and so do I. Why the hell did I ever walk out on this one?
She turns her head and looks at me. I can just barely see this from the corner of my eye. “Collin.”
“What?” I glance over at her, then look back to the road because this little section of highway is kinda curvy.
“Where have you been?”
My breath comes out unexpectedly. “Shit, Lowyn. Where haven’t I been? All over.”
“Start from the beginning. I want to hear about all of it.”
“You really don’t.”
“No, I really do. I have been picturing you in my head all these years.”
I look over at her again. “What?”
“Sure. Of course. I mean… the way you left, and—”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“No. I mean, OK. That’s fine, apology accepted. But that’s not what I’m talking about. Not in a pining way. Just a casual, every-once-in-a-while way. Where is he right now? Thoughts like that on a Christmas Eve. And maybe a year later I’d say, what is he doing? And then, months after that, for no good reason whatsoever, I’d think, what does he look like? Almost the same, by the way. But older. And…” She pauses and when I look over again, she’s nodding her head. She smiles at me. “Nice.”
“I look nice, huh?”
“You do. So maybe it did drive me a little nuts after you left because I had lost something, ya know? Initially, I was a teeny bit desperate for news, so I would try to corner your daddy every once in a while, in those early years, to ask him about you. But he was less than forthcoming, if I’m being honest. You don’t have to tell me everything, of course, just paint me a tiny picture.”
I tap my fingers on the steering wheel, thinking about this. “A tiny picture… well, I went to basic. That was San Diego.”
“Oh, that sounds nice.”
I shrug that comment off. “Then…” I sigh. How much can I tell her?
“Then you got discharged.”
“Right.” I can tell her this part, because none of that’s classified anymore. There was a fucking congressional commission about the whole thing, so it doesn’t even matter. “Well, about that. First thing is, I did get dishonorably discharged—and so did Amon. But it was planned.”
“What’s that mean?”
“They kinda… picked us, I guess. Me and Amon. Reasons unknown. And put us in this special program. Not the SEALs or Rangers, but something kinda like it.”