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EIGHT
Jonah
I haven’t been able to stop smiling all week. Every day with Mabel just gets better and better.
“It’s nice to see you so happy,” Ledger says and I look up to see him standing in my bedroom doorway.
“Thanks,” I say, staring back down at the socks in my hand.
I was getting dressed to go meet Mabel for dinner and I must have been daydreaming because I never even heard him approach.
“When are you going to ask her?” he asks and I frown.
“Ask her what?”
“To marry you? Anyone with eyes can see that you’re head over heels in love with her.”
I blink. I wasn’t trying to hide how I felt about Mabel. I’m not sure that I could have even if I wanted to, but isn’t proposing a little soon? I don’t want to rush her and end up losing her or scaring her off.
Besides, I think that she should know that kind of man that she’s marrying before we get to that step.
She’s never brought up the hero stuff. Not since the first night anyway, and I know that I need to tell her. I don’t want her thinking that I’m some war hero like everyone else in town seems to think.
I’m just not sure how to start that conversation. Talking about reliving that day, I just don’t know if I’m ready for that. It still feels too raw, too fresh, but I’m not sure that that will ever change.
“I don’t know,” I tell Ledger. “Isn’t it a little too soon?”
“I knew that I wanted Tilly after a few minutes. Alder and Graham both asked their wives to marry them after a few weeks. Rhodes and Rory knew each other from emailing online, but Rhodes was gone for her from the first one. And Wells… well, Wells can be stubborn, but I know him and he loved Snow from the first meeting. Even he proposed after she was here for a few weeks.”
“It’s like a curse,” I try to joke and he just shakes his head.
“Or a blessing.”
He leaves me to think about that and I tug on my socks. I wonder if he’s right. Meeting Mabel sure does feel like the greatest gift that I’ve ever been given. Maybe I should stop overthinking things and do it. I love her and I know that I always will.
I’m about to pull on my shoes when my phone rings. I expect it to be Mabel or one of the guys since they’re the only ones who really call or text me, but when I glance at the screen, I see Reyes’s name there instead.
My whole body stops. I’m motionless, staring at his name and wondering what the hell I should do now.
Marco Reyes was with me in the Marines. He was deployed to Iraq with me and was there the day that everything changed. He’s actually the only one who survived besides me. He lost a leg and was shot up pretty badly. I had lost him when we both were sent to Germany for medical treatment and when I got sent back to the States, I was too afraid to call him up.
The phone rings again and I blink. I need to know what he wants. Maybe he’s calling because he needs help with something. Maybe that will help ease some of the guilt that I’ve been carrying around.
“Hello?” I answer right before the voice mail kicks in.
“Jonah, hey. I wasn’t sure that you were going to answer,” he says and he sounds exactly like the guy that I remember.
“Sorry, I was just getting dressed. How have you been?” I ask.
I can barely hear his answer over my racing heart. Memories that I’ve tried to bury resurface and I close my eyes, taking deep breaths in through my nose to try to calm down.
It doesn’t work.
I can still remember that day like it happened yesterday. It’s weird the little things that you remember. The glint of the sun off the hood of the Humvee, a single child’s shoe half buried in the sand on the side of the road.
“I just got back to the States and settled in,” Reyes says, interrupting my spiral.
“Yeah, are you back in Louisiana?” I ask him.
