“Carter! Tell her about the time I got drunk,” Mark interjected. “And you had to resuscitate me.”
Amelia gave me an interested stare. I felt myself die of embarrassment. I wanted to hit Mark.
“What happened?” Amelia asked.
I coughed. “When my brother there was fourteen years old,” I raised a brow at Mark, who laughed. “He decided to steal my beer. And not just a can—no… a whole six-pack of tall cans. I didn’t know.”
Amelia was watching me intently as I related the story of Mark’s adventure at fourteen. I had found him passed out in the garage, with no visible marks. I had assumed he’d fallen off of the roof— the boys were always climbing up there.
“…and what did you do?” Amelia asked. Her hand was over her mouth. Her eyes were huge.
I grinned. “I felt to see if his neck was broken, and then I rolled him onto his side. There was a gas canister, and I figured that he might have breathed it. I opened his airway… you know, first-aid style… and started breathing in.”
“He was, like, doing CPR on me,” Mark chuckled. “Then Matthew came in and, well, enlightened him.”
Amelia smiled. I felt the touch of that smile like physical closeness. “You were an amazing brother,” she said gently. “Your parents must have been thankful that you were there to keep an eye on the kids.” She looked across at Mark, who was busy talking to Tanya.
“I hope so.” My throat tightened with emotion immediately. “My parents weren’t there—they died when I was twenty-two.”
“Oh.” Her face fell. Her eyes went big. She reached across the table, her hand resting beside mine. “That’s awful. I am so sorry. What happened?”
“They died. Car accident.” I could hear the tightness in my own voice. What could I say? It still hurt. “It was hard.”
“I’m sure. Oh, poor Carter,” she breathed.
I tensed as something inside my chest snapped. Like glass, the frozen tears I’d held in there were suddenly cracking. I made my hands into fists, focusing on the pain of my fingernails digging into my palms. I wasn’t crying here.
“It was tough,” I said. My voice was commendably still.
“I believe it,” her voice said. I was looking over across the bar, trying to get a handle on my sorrow. I hadn’t expected to talk about this tonight, especially not with her. But now I was being hit with the weight of my buried grief.
“Yeah. The boys were small,” I said. “Mark and Matthew. Eleven years old.” I chuckled.
“They must have been a handful,” she murmured.
“You can’t even imagine.” I grinned. I recalled my siblings, and my smile faded into a frown as I remembered how they too struggled after my parents’ deaths. Mark had gone moody and difficult, prone to outbursts of rage, inclined to spending hours out of the house in odd company. Matthew had gone quiet and distant, like a specter. Neither of them had expressed grief in words, not for years. Shock does that to people.
“You must have had to work to support them,” she said. It wasn’t a question, more a statement.
“Yeah.” I nodded. She was perceptive. “I joined the forces. It wasn’t bad.”
“You were in the military?” she sounded impressed. I shrugged.
“Yeah. It was all right. Came out lieutenant.” I shrugged again. “Pay was good.”
“That’s good,” she murmured.
We sat silently for a while. Our drinks had arrived. I took a big sip. She wet her lips. I looked away.
If I don’t watch myself, I am going to do something terribly uninhibited.
The drink was getting to my head, making my longing for Amelia hard to resist. Having her beside me was unbearably tempting. I could smell the now-familiar strawberry scent of her hair and her skin. I could see the light on her face and the texture of her mouth. I wanted to kiss her right there.
“You stayed with the army a few years?” Amelia asked, bringing my mind back from images of what I would love to do to her if we were alone together.
“Um, ten years. When I came out, I started the bike shop. We’ve been going for seven years now.”
“Good,” she nodded. “And it’s doing well?”
“Yeah,” I shrugged. “It’s a good thing for the boys, too.” I gestured at Mark. “They’ve had a chance to develop their skills, no matter what they decide to do later in life. A good beginning.”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “Do you think they’ll want to go to college?”
I shrugged. It was something I had wondered about myself. Mark and Matthew seemed content working with bikes. But I did wonder if they wouldn’t have liked a chance to do something else with their career and life. Mark, who chafed at my being boss, sometimes expressed discontent, I thought.
“I don’t know. But I guess they’ll decide eventually. I don’t think they’d feel obliged to stay if they wanted to do something else.” I looked across at Mark, who was busy telling Tanya a showy story about his exploits as a biker. I wanted to smile. No matter what, Mark flirted with every pretty girl he saw.
“Well, I hope they have a chance to pursue their dreams.”
Her voice sounded wistful. I noticed it immediately. It sounded like she had some regret herself. “You studied something at university? Accounting, maybe?” I guessed.
“Social science,” she said swiftly. “And I didn’t graduate.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.” She sounded sad, and she wasn’t looking at me, rather at the rings from beer-glasses on the table. I guessed there was a story there and I waited. When she still hadn’t said anything, I cleared my throat.
I turned to face her. “Maybe you can go back someday, finish up.”
She looked at me. I was surprised that, for the second time, her eyes were wide. This time, they had tears in them. I felt my heart stop.
“I would like that,” she whispered. “More than anything. It’s why I wanted to start work again.”
“Oh.” This time, I was unsure of what to say. I fished in my pocket to find a tissue. I passed it to her, I tensed. Her fingertips touched mine in the exchange and I thought I might actually die when I felt her soft skin. I was hopelessly hard now and felt extremely grateful for the table and the darkness.
I really don’t want anyone seeing me like this.
I finished my pint of beer, and I was already tired. I thought it was getting to my head because my vision had blurred, and I was sleepy.
“Thanks,” she sniffed. “Sorry. I just sometimes regret not sticking with it. Silly,” she sniffed again.
“No, not at all,” I said, surprised by the supportive way I said it. “Nobody should feel silly for having big dreams. Why else are we alive?”
She looked into my eyes with those soft, melting brown ones. I felt my heart stop. The bar was noisy, but, at that moment, there was no sound beyond our conversation. I felt like the whole world was empty.
“You’re right.”
She whispered it, and the words brushed on my soul like the softest touch. I was staring into her eyes, my soul falling as we gazed at each other. We had moved closer to each other, and I could smell her hair and see her soft lips, which were inches away from mine and begging to be kissed.