I rose. The party was losing its appeal. I should run up to the fourth floor and take a quick picture with my phone and then go home and block out placement for the Alphi Phi photo. But mostly, I felt like going home. I tried brushing by Noah but he caught me by the arm.

“I’ve been waiting for you to call me.” Impatience was etched on his face.

“You’ll wait a long time, then, because I threw your number away.”

“Will you give me a chance to explain?” He rubbed a hand through his hair and settled it at the back of his neck. He leaned forward. “Can we get out of here?”

“You had a chance. You had two years of chances. I don’t know why you’re here, but it has nothing to do with me.” I tried to leave again, but the hand on my arm was immovable. He wasn’t hurting me, but he wouldn’t let me go either. I was never sitting in a window again.

“It has everything to do with you,” he said, his face intense, leaning down to make sure I heard him. An involuntary warmth began to spread through my body, and I tried to beat it back.

“Really? I don’t believe you.” I knew I sounded petulant, but I didn’t care. I just wanted out of there before I let him convince me otherwise. I suspected that if I gave him enough time, Noah could get me to believe pretty much anything.

“I know,” he replied. He sounded frustrated, and I could feel myself weakening again.

We stood there, staring at each other. The crowd of people streamed past us, now just streaks of color caught on low-speed film.

While the crowd had felt oppressive before, it now seemed a safe harbor. Within the mass of people, perhaps I could lose Noah or, even more importantly, myself. I just wasn’t equipped right now to deal with him. Since my previous attempts at disengagement had been unsuccessful, I tried a different tactic.

“I can’t deal with this now.”

“When, then?”

I felt like I was being interrogated, and the sense of injustice threatened to choke me. I wasn’t the one in the wrong. I should be asking the questions, setting the limits, defining our boundaries.

“I don’t know. Two years from now,” I said. Snideness creeping into my tone. Probably a guy who looked like him and kept a girl on the line for four years expected her to lie down and beg to be walked over. I looked down pointedly at his hand still encircling my arm. “You can let go anytime now.”

He released me immediately, and I headed for the stairs to collect Lana or maybe drink myself into oblivion with tequila shots.

I felt Noah’s body heat behind mine. He wasn’t going anywhere. But I could ignore him.

But a clearly tipsy Lana and an every drunker Amy were coming down the stairs as I reached the first landing. Jack was nowhere to be seen. New plan.

“You two ready to go?” I asked. Lana was wide-eyed and mouthed, “he’s right behind you” to me. Correction—Lana wasn’t tipsy. She was drunk.

“I know,” I said, “and you aren’t invisible to him. I’m sure he can see you.”

“Yup,” Noah affirmed.

“Oh no!” Lana said. “What about your cure?”

“Are you sick?” Noah asked, coming up to the landing, and looking at me intently.

“Not that kind of cure, silly,” Lana said before I could open my mouth. She was feeling no pain. She stumbled down the stairs dragging Amy behind her. “Cure for heartache.” Thanks Lana, I thought, as if I hadn’t been humiliated enough before.

“I’ll drive y’all home,” Noah said. “My truck is out front.”

“You can’t park on the street,” Lana said, poking one long fingernail into his chest. When her poke found no purchase, she began patting. “Wow, this is like marble. Amy,” Lana turned and held up their joined hands, “feel this.” At which point both girls proceeded to pat Noah’s apparently very hard chest.

He, at least, had the grace to look embarrassed by this. I had to hustle Lana out before her drunken state revealed something even more humiliating, although at this point, I wasn’t sure what that could be.

I pulled their hands down. “Come on, let’s go.”

Lana tugged back. “No, there’s another house party over on Forest. Let’s go there.”

This night was fast becoming a farce. I couldn’t shake Noah. I couldn’t get Lana to come home with me. Part of me wanted to just sit down on the floor and cry like a toddler, but I had already done that earlier today.

I let out a frustrated breath. “Where’s Jack?”

Lana and Amy turned in unison to look up the stairs. We all waited for a heartbeat but the upstairs hall remained empty. No help from that quarter.

“My big sister is at the party on Forest,” Amy offered. To the Forest party it was, then. Amy’s big sister in the sorority could watch over them.

I turned to Noah. “Guess we’re taking you up on the ride offer.”

He nodded and didn’t smile like he had won, which made the situation only slightly more acceptable. As we walked behind him, I noticed how the crowd just seemed to melt away from us, like he was Moses parting the Red Sea.

Outside, Noah stopped briefly beside the blond guy I’d seen with him in the library, who was now talking to three girls. This must be the infamous Bo Randolph. Noah didn’t introduce us, though, and instead shepherded us toward his truck sitting in the driveway of the fraternity.

I’m not sure how long the vehicle had been there, and its presence surprised me. “Are you a Delt?” Only members of the fraternity got to park in the driveway.

“No,” Noah shook his head. “Just know someone.”

He opened the passenger side doors and helped all of us into his dual cab pickup.

“There’s a lot of space in here.” I had never ridden in a pickup before and was surprised at how roomy it was. The vehicle smelled new.

“You just get this?” I asked him as he climbed into the driver’s seat.

“Smell give it away?” He honked twice to get a couple of people to move out of the driveway and then backed up.

“Hard to hide that new car smell.”

“I got it this summer. Bo told me he was done ferrying my ass around,” Noah said. I remembered Noah telling me once that they were always being counseled to not spend their entire earnings on a new car or a motorcycle or a boat when they were back on leave or just returned from deployment. Noah must have listened to them.

“So you didn’t spend all your money on new wheels the moment you separated?”

“Nope, had other plans.”

I refrained from taking the bait to ask more information, even though I was dying for it. After a few beats of silence, Noah said, “Not going to ask me about my other plans?”

“Not interested,” I lied, looking out the window. He made a couple of turns and then headed down Forest. Noah navigated the campus streets like an upperclassman and not some new transfer who had been in town only two weeks since classes started.

“You seem to know this area pretty well.”

When his answer wasn’t immediate, I knew he was going to tell me something that would make me angry again. By his sheepish tone, he knew it too.

“I’ve been here since June,” he admitted.

“In town?” I could hear the high-pitched screeching tone of my question and tried to swallow down my mounting emotions.

He nodded. He started to say something but then slowed the vehicle. “I don’t see any house party.” He turned slightly and called to the back, “Where to on Forest, ladies?”

Lana didn’t respond. When I turned around, I saw both of them had passed out. They must have had a lot of tequila shots.

There was nothing to do but to take them—and Noah—home.

Noah

Grace’s body was rigid in the passenger seat of my truck. She was strung tighter than a garrote wire.

The Marines had taught me a lot. I learned all the delicate pressure points on a man’s body. I learned to walk a hundred miles in full battle rattle, carrying a pack and ammunition heavier than the two girls in the back seat. I learned how to start a fire in the desert out of nothing more than a soda can, toothpaste, and the sun.

But the Marines had not taught me how to win over a girl whose heart I had broken. Most of the guys in my unit were the ones who had been cheated on. Sure, some of the guys may have forgotten their hometowns when the Air Force chicks or supply personnel arrived at a forward operating base, but most of us were lonely bastards.

I admit that the few times I imagined Grace and I getting together, there was a lot less space between our bodies. When I played this moment out in my mind, I figured I’d calmly explain what happened, and she’d listen intently. I’d apologize and then take her to a movie or two before showing her exactly why she should be with me. In bed.

Right now Grace would probably rather climb in bed with a rattler. I grabbed the back of my neck and squeezed the tight muscles there in frustration. Maybe I should’ve taken Bo up on his offer to strategize, but his relationship experience was as non-existent as mine. Getting advice from another Marine on how to handle a relationship was like asking another orphan how to handle your parents.

Ironically, the one person in my life who I felt comfortable enough confiding personal shit to and who might give me halfway decent advice was sitting in the passenger side of the truck, doing her best to ignore me.

I wrote stuff to Grace that I would never say out loud. Communicating with her had never been an issue before. But we were writing then. Letters only. Old school style, we agreed early on. I cast around for a reasonable explanation, one that didn’t make me out to look too much like a loser. My previous explanation, “I had to get my shit together,” didn’t seem like it would cut it.

I glanced at her in her shiny blue top with its bow I’d like to untie with my teeth. Her brown hair looked incredibly soft, and I wanted to dig my fingers into the thick strands. She looked expensive, like the china Bo’s mother used for company. Totally above my pay grade.

I was right to have waited and gotten everything in order before coming here. Grace had sent me The Odyssey once during deployment, writing that we could experience her English lit class together. As Odysseus fought his way back to Penelope, his faithful wife, he had to overcome obstacles from sirens to monsters.

Homer never said whether the obstacles were all in Odysseus’s mind, created from too much war, too much time at sea, too much time away from reality. But they could have been.

It’s a cliché among fighters that they are all trying to beat back their shithole childhoods. The military is full of guys whose dads were deadbeats at best and abusive monsters at worse. My own old man fell in between. He never raised a hand to me. Too lazy. His preferred method of punishment was making sure I understood that I had ruined his life.

My dad was mad at the world and had been since I killed my mom by being born. He hadn’t called me Noah since I was probably eight or nine. Shithead was his preferred name for me. Worthless was his favorite adjective. When he was drunk, which was often as his measly paycheck allowed, he liked to string them together with a few curse words. Noah, you worthless shithead, you’re not going to amount to anything more than knocking up some trailer park trash.

The Marines may have made me a man, but Grace made me human. No matter what I told her in my letters, she accepted it and wrote me back something funny or sweet. She made me realize I could have more if I wanted it. And I wanted more bad.

Chapter Four

Dear Grace,

I don’t think you’ll ever see me on YouTube, but there is shit-all to do around here, so guys will memorize songs and videotape each other performing. I have zero twerking ability. I guess if there’s ever some music video involving marching, I could participate in that.

I think the higher-ups like these videos because they make A’stan look fun, which it isn’t. But it’s good PR.

Some guys from MMA were here to entertain the troops. I talked to one of the managers, who said that a guy could earn six figures a year for beating someone else up in the ring. It’s not really boxing skills that matter, either, because a lot of the skills are kicking and hand-to-hand combat, which is something that we’re taught here.

It’s kind of a cool idea. Yeah, there are worries about concussions, but I think the pros outweigh the cons. Bo isn’t interested, but he doesn’t need to be either. He’s got plenty of family money. He told me that we both should go to college after we get out and that I could use the GI Bill to pay for everything.

What college did you say you were going to? Central? Mail me something about it the next time you send a care package. I think I should check it out.

Yours,

Noah

Grace

Noah navigated us to my apartment without asking for directions once. He parked in the small drive behind the house, and, before I could open my own door, he jumped out and came around to help me out.