I’ll Meet You There (36 page)

He leaned toward me and the tips of our noses touched. An Eskimo kiss. “Are you sure?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“Okay.”

He sat up and closed the laptop, put it on the floor next to him, then pulled his
shirt over his head. He took off his dog tags and set them on the bedside table. Then
we just looked at each other for the longest second in the history of seconds.

“Come here,” he whispered.

I reached for him, and he pulled me onto his lap, my knees aligning with his hipbones.
I closed my eyes for a second and thought of all the things that had brought us together:
a kiss on the cheek, a bomb, my mom leaving the till on the counter at Taco Bell.
So random, and yet being here made perfect sense.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he said.

I opened my eyes. “When you use that voice, I feel like I have to salute you.”

“That sounds a little kinky.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

“
Sky
.”

In my name, I heard everything I was feeling inside—the want, the uncertainty, the
overriding fear and bone-crushing happiness.

“I love you,” I whispered against his lips. “That’s what I’m thinking.”

“Yeah?” Those eyes, looking at me like I’m medicine.

“Yeah.”

This kiss was different from all the others we’d had. It was hungry, and full of heat,
but limitless. Like we both finally knew we could have as much as we wanted. I could
barely breathe, especially when his hands left my face and found their way up my shirt.
I pulled it over my head, and Josh’s lips followed the line of my bra until he’d taken
it off and thrown it on the floor.

“Now what?” I whispered.

“This is going to get tricky.” He cleared his throat. “I’m not really sure how…”

I moved my hand behind me and rested it on his prosthesis.

“Maybe we should start here.”

Something like panic crossed his face, and I pressed my cheek against his and whispered
in his ear. “We can stop, if you want.”

He shook his head and slid his hands down my arms. “I don’t want to.”

I smiled, and he reached up to pull the rubber band from my hair so that it fell in
waves around my shoulders.

“I’ve been wanting to do that all night.” He slid his fingers through my hair. “Beautiful.”

I slipped off his lap and stood up, pulling him with me. Then I reached for his belt
buckle, hesitating for a second, remembering how he’d pushed me away. He tilted my
chin up.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. His voice was just above a whisper, rough and low.

I’d never taken someone else’s pants off before, so I was clumsy and he had to help
me, which made us laugh.

“If we end up crashing onto the bed, just pretend it’s really romantic,” he said,
kicking them off his good leg.

“I don’t have to pretend.”

He reached down and pushed a button on his prosthesis, releasing the airtight cylinder
around his stump. “Mind if I use you for balance?” he asked.

“It’ll cost you.”

He grinned. “Hope so.”

He held on to my shoulder as he took it off and then leaned it against the wall, balancing
on his right leg. He gave me another uncertain look, and I kissed his hand where it
still rested on my shoulder. He sighed and let go of me and sat on the bed as he rolled
what looked like a few big socks off of his stump. It was thinner than I’d expected—he
was so muscular and thick everywhere else. The stump itself was rounded off, like
it’d been sculpted, and in the morning I would see how the skin at the bottom was
scarred and red. But it was a part of him, a part of this guy I’d known all my life
who had managed to make me fall in love with him in a matter of weeks.

He ran his hand over the stump, then he looked up at me, his face resigned, like he
expected me to be horrified.

“You’re not freaking out.”

I shook my head. “I only freak out when you ditch me.”

He looked like he wanted to say more, but whatever he’d intended to say died on his
lips the moment I stepped out of my shorts. He moved to the edge of the bed and pressed
his lips against my stomach, set his hands on my waist. I ran my hands through his
hair, down to the
Semper Fidelis
tattoo between his shoulder blades. His fingers slipped below the elastic on my underwear,
and I became this fluttering thing, so light I thought he’d have to keep holding on
to me so that I didn’t float right out of the room. His eyes stayed on mine as he
pulled down my underwear, and I think I started shaking because he took my hands and
kissed them and asked if we should stop, and I just shook my head and let him pull
me down onto the bed so that we were on our sides, facing each other.

I put my hand on his thigh, and he tensed for just a second. Then he wrapped his arms
around me and closed his eyes, holding on tighter as my fingers slid down his stump.
It was strange, seeing it, touching it. But now that I knew what had happened and
how he could have been the one who died instead of Nick, all I could feel was grateful.
That he was alive. That he came home. That we had found each other.

“Does it hurt?” I asked.

He shook his head, his eyes still closed.

“Hey. Look at me.”

He looked.

“The Josh I grew up around, with two legs and an ego that couldn’t fit through the
door? I didn’t love him. I didn’t even always
like
him.” One corner of his mouth turned up. “This is who you are. The real you.” I rested
my forehead against his. “And I want you so fucking bad.”

“Wow.” He leaned back a little. “You sure you’ve never done this before?”

“Shut up.”

Then it was just breath and touching and his eyes never leaving mine and his voice
whispering beautiful things I never would have believed a Mitchell could say. We laughed
as we tried to figure out how to do this together.

“A one-legged Marine and a virgin walk into a bar,” Josh whispered.

“You are
not
telling jokes about this,” I said, laughing into his shoulder.

There was some pain, which Dylan had told me would happen. It really wasn’t so bad—it
beat driving into a ditch, anyway. Josh asked me if I was okay about ten times.

“I’m fine—now stop asking me. That’s an order.” I tried to look stern, and he cracked
up.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Then there was that floating feeling again, only way more intense, and Josh’s Van
Gogh eyes on me the whole time, and I knew I’d never be able to collage this, not
in a million years.

I didn’t know there were so many ways to say
I love you.

The best part was falling asleep in his arms and knowing he’d be there when I woke
up. For the first time in Creek View, I felt like I was home.

JOSH

Last night with Sky was like my first firefight, when I didn’t know shit and I thought,
That’s it, I’m dead, I’m fucking dead
, but then when the shooting stopped and I realized it was over and I was alive and
had all my body parts, it was the greatest feeling in the world. I wanted it again
and again. I wanted it to never stop. Man, I’m turning into such a pussy, aren’t I?
I just didn’t know it could be like that. You were always trying to tell me that I
was missing out on the real thing, but I just thought you were whipped. Now I know.
Last night was the first night since you died that I didn’t have a nightmare. No waking
up, looking for my rifle. No boy with the soccer ball. No visions of you staring down
at me, with blood all over you. Just long, deep sleep, the feel of her warm body in
my arms, the sound of her breath as she lay on my chest. Truth is, I scared myself
yesterday—scared her too. Don’t know why I felt like I had to jump that train. I just
needed something, a rush or—life and death. That’s what I needed. Life and death,
standing right next to each other. That’s what it was over there for us, right? It
made everything matter, even though it sucked balls. Taking a piss was even important.
Like that time I went to the outhouse and one of those fuckers sent a mortar over
the wall and after I realized I wasn’t dead, I just lay down on the ground laughing.
But I can’t do that anymore—laugh at death or beg it to let us switch places. I need
to figure out why I got to live. I don’t know who made that IED, who buried it in
the ground so I’d step on it. I’ll never know. I used to think it was his fault you
died, whoever put that thing under the dirt, but more and more I wonder if it’s just
a circle, where everyone’s guilty, everyone has blood on their hands. End of the day,
it just feels wrong that the world is happening and you’re not in it. Feels wrong
that we’re not out there together right now, talking about our girls, playing chess.
Feels wrong that I might not have gotten Skylar if none of this had happened. Like
I had to trade you for her. I’m scared shitless, man. Because if I’m really gonna
do this, really live my life, I’ve gotta leave you behind. I can hear your voice right
now, even though you’re not here. I know exactly what you’d say:
Good luck. Shoot straight. Don’t get dead.

chapter thirty-three

The composer Stephen Sondheim said, “Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order
out of chaos.” As I ran my hand over the finished collage, I decided that he was right.
The mess of my life, of Creek View, of the summer, had been transformed into something
beautiful.

Marge’s collage wasn’t just a bunch of cut-up photographs I’d arranged on poster boards.
Somehow, between the night of the Mitchells’ party and the moment I saw Josh’s leg—
really
saw it—the collage had turned into a love letter to Creek View. Inexplicably, through
the act of photographing, cutting, arranging, and gluing, I’d begun to see my hometown
as a place of possibility. Of desire. Of different and unexpected kinds of love. It
was as if by really looking at the world around me, I could finally see myself.

I felt like God. I wanted to say, “It is good.”

The highway: it was where Dad had died, but it would also take me away from here so
that I could follow my dreams.

The Paradise: the sign itself was an uncut photograph so that it looked like a beacon
within the explosion of photo shards. It was whole, the heart of everything.

The strawberry fields and the trailer park, Chris’s house and the creek.

The train tracks and the field where we’d lit firecrackers on the Fourth.

Market and the old gas station, which always went together in my mind after that night
when I was hungry and I waited for the sunrise in the back of Josh’s truck.

The orchard where Marge told me about her son, the endless sky, and the sun blazing
like fire.

I smiled as I sifted through eighteen years’ worth of memories. True, there were a
lot of bad ones. But I was starting to realize that they had all brought me to this
moment, as if my sorrows and joys had conspired to birth me.

“That’s badass, Sky,” Dylan said. She was looking over my shoulder while she bounced
Sean on her hip.

“Thanks. I hope she likes it.”

“She’s gonna love the shit out of it.” Sean reached out, but she pulled him away.
“Don’t drool on Auntie Sky’s art.”

“Can you grab one side, and I’ll get the other?” I asked.

Dylan nodded, and we maneuvered all four feet of it out of my room and across the
patio and into the lobby. Marge was sitting at reception, waiting for Amy to come
in and take the graveyard shift.

“Is that what I think it is?” she asked, looking up. She had a stack of new tabloids
sitting next to her and a can of Diet Dr Pepper, with one of her colorful straws poking
out of the top.

“A decoration for the lobby,” I said.

We held it up so Marge could see it from a distance. It took her a second to figure
out what it was, but when she did, she covered her mouth and her eyes filled.

“Sky. It’s … wow.”

I blushed, and Dylan helped me set it on the table.

Marge stood up, and I wrapped my arms around her. “I wanted to say thank you, and
this was the only way I knew how,” I whispered. “I don’t know what I would have done
without you, Marge. I really mean that.”

She gave me one of her bear hugs while big, fat tears soaked my shirt.

“Right back at you.” She sniffed and hugged me even tighter. “I’m gonna miss the hell
out of you, sweet pea.”

“You too,” I said. I pulled back. “But I’ll be visiting all the time.”

“Don’t get your hopes up, Marge. You know she’ll be off somewhere with Josh. We’ll
be lucky to eat a meal with her,” Dylan said.

Marge laughed. “Don’t I know it.”

“Whatever.”

I rolled my eyes, but I knew she was right. Two weeks together, and already Josh and
I were saying words that, not long ago, would have freaked me out: words like
always.
My life was being planned in sentences that started with
we
instead of
I,
yet it felt like the most natural transition in the world.

A dog barked outside, and Sean squealed.

“I’m gonna check his water,” I said. “Be right back.”

I ran out to the side of the motel, where I’d chained the present I’d gotten for Josh
early that morning. He looked exactly like the bomb dog Josh had described his unit
having in Afghanistan—a black Labrador retriever.

“Hey, boy,” I said.

He jumped up and barked again, tail wagging. I checked his water and scratched him
behind the ears, and he licked my cheek.

Perfect. He was exactly what Josh needed.

I heard Josh’s truck roar up the driveway, and I took the Lab off the chain and held
on to his leash. He was strong, practically dragging me toward the sound of the truck.
Josh parked next to my car, and I waited for him to get out. His radio was crazy loud,
as usual. Audioslave pounded out his open windows, and he was singing along, totally
oblivious. I felt like I was seeing what he was like when he was in Afghanistan with
his buddies. It made me sad that he wouldn’t see most of them ever again and that
it would take years for me to piece together a picture of what the war had been like.
But we had time.