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“Well, she meant it as a compliment, I’m pretty sure. She liked you a lot. She has photo albums full of pictures of you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. That’s how I found out about you joining the air force. Just recently, I was showing baby pics of Matt to his fiancée Zara, you know, to tease him. We got really into it, so we kept going, right up until our teenage years. So many photos of you and Jake, and Emma, of course.”
He ran his finger lightly over the skin of my wrist. “How is Emma? She and Jake got married, yeah?”
“Oh. No, actually. They broke up not long after the accident.”
“Shit, I wasn’t expecting that. Those two were perfect together.”
“Yeah, it surprised everyone, not gonna lie. But neither of them has ever talked about it, so no one really knows what happened. Just that Em went out of state for college, went to Cambodia with Doctors Without Borders as soon as she graduated, and was barely seen in Esperance for years.”
“Wow. She never got together with anyone else, then?”
“No. She was engaged for a little while to someone she worked with in Asia, but she broke it off. I caught up with her around Christmas of that year, and she said he just wasn’t right for her. She said she tried to force a spark, but it wasn’t there, so she thought it was best to end it.”
“And Jake?”
“Dates a bit, but nothing very serious, from what I can tell. Emma is back in Esperance now, because her father isn’t well. She’s become good friends with Zara, so we see much more of her now than we used to, through Matt and Gabe. I think there’s something still there for Jake. He watches Emma a lot when he thinks she’s not looking.”
“Oh, man. That sounds hard.”
“Right? I’ve tried to nudge them together as much as I can, but Matt and Gabe think I should just leave it. Maybe Gabe knows something I don’t, but I’ve always thought they were made for each other and I really think if they could just spend enough time together to clear the air, maybe they could reconcile.”
Our first course came before he could reply, which gave me more time to think about the accident and its aftermath. “What about you and Jake? You left town as soon as you found out he was going to pull through. Did you stay in touch?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because we both agreed that we were bad for each other, and that someone would get hurt if we continued on the way we were. Fuck, someonedidget hurt. He did! I went to see him, he was lying there all beaten up, bruised and bloody, more worried about Emma than himself. I told him I was leaving to join the air force, we wished each other all the best, and that was that.”
“Wow. So he lost his best friend and the love of his life in the space of a week.”
“God, when you put it that way, I guess he did. But of course, I didn’t realize he intended to end things with Emma when he and I had that conversation.”
“Poor Jake.”
“Yeah.”
There was a long pause. The dish in front of us was some weird concoction of tuna and mushrooms that Dante pushed at with his fork, lost in his memories. I felt the silence growing between us and, seeking to relieve it, said, “What part of this is the ponzu, do you think?”
He gave himself a little shake, coming back to the present, and gave me a smile. “Who knows? Let’s see how it tastes.”
“Let’s.”
After that, we kept the conversation to lighter, safer topics. I asked where he thought he might be posted next, he asked about my new house. I pulled up the internet listing and showed him photos, describing the furniture I’d already ordered and how I was going to decorate each room. We talked about my work, the challenges of working in a shared office space and how much I was looking forward to having a whole house to myself, with a dedicated room for my business.
While we talked, we ate a lot of weird, interesting food, which led to Dante talking about some of his experiences posted overseas. I loved the way it was all so casual and comfortable. I also loved how he kept sharing his food with me, because that was something else Richard never did.
“You know, Richard was shorter than me,” I blurted out, seemingly out of nowhere, because of course Dante wasn’t privy to my random inner musings.
But he just said, “Yeah?”
“Yeah, he was kinda weird about it, to be honest.”
“In what way? Here, you gotta try this.” He dropped some wagyu steak on my plate.
