His laugh. Somehow it just seemed to fill in some of the cracks inside of her. There were so many but it felt good for once to not feel like she was apart.
“Nice view, huh?” she asked Carlos as they walked along the bike path close to Fullerton Avenue.
He nodded and then looked toward the city skyline. “I don’t think I’ve ever been here before.”
On their left, Lake Michigan looked calm and endless. Soon enough the water would be starting to freeze or possibly even covered with ice and snow.
“You should see this place in the summer,” Lacey said. “It’s where all the beautiful people come to ride their bikes and jog and show off their tanned, lean bodies.”
“So does that include you?” he said with a smile.
“I’m the one who usually is not paying attention and almost gets hit by a pack of bikers. They can be pretty dangerous.”
“Are we talking about the bikers who wear leather jackets or the ones wearing those little tight shorts?”
She couldn’t help laughing, herself. It was another thing that had been missing for quite some time. Something that she hadn’t even realized was gone until the sound of it reminded her.
“Are you going to go back to see your sister?” Lacey asked him.
He had already told her about the incident the other night. She had yet to tell him about the incident with the Chinese food. Lacey didn’t want him to think she was really crazy. Only slightly would do for now.
“I can just see my sister asking, ‘So how’d you meet her?’ Trying to be all sweet and friendly. I’d be like ‘Oh, we were both thinking about jumping off the same bridge. But you know, Lacey’s totally great.’ ”
“Sounds like a match made in Heaven to me.”
A blast of wind made her tuck her hands into her long coat. Carlos walked close to her, occasionally bumping into her arm. She liked the slight connection, the reminder that someone was so close to her, interested in her and listening to every word she said.
“Mind me asking why you became a Marine?”
Carlos shook his head. “The billboard.”
For a second she thought he was joking again.
“No, I’m serious,” Carlos said. “When I was a kid, I saw the billboard. You know, the uniform, the sword. If I could’ve signed up then, I would have been the first eight-year-old Marine. I loved being a Marine.”
“So what changed?”
His face stared out toward the skyline again.
“Me,” Carlos said.
“Got tired of being a hero?” she teased.
He chuckled and shook his head, his face still lost; he seemed to be searching for something in the distance.
“Funny thing about war. It shows you who you are, not who you wanna be.”
They walked for a few silent moments until reaching a stone bench that looked out over the water. Carlos sat down as if he might have been by himself, wanting a moment to just reflect and remember. Lacey felt awkward but sat down beside him, wondering where he had suddenly gone.
His body looked tight and rigid as he seemed to study the lake in front of them. Lacey noticed his hands grabbing his knees, then prying at them as if he were trying to screw them off. His fingers curled, the knuckles white, hands shaking even as he just stared off into space and didn’t say a word.
The demons that liked to knock at her door late at night surely did the same to Carlos.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Not really.”
A pause.
“Bad memory?”
He gave her a nod, still not looking at her, still not smiling. “Something like that.”
“I’m a good listener.”
The words hovered above them for a moment. Lacey didn’t know what else to say.
You’ve said that to guys before.
The silence followed those times, too.
He’ll talk when he’s ready. He might just need time. Give him time.
They still had time. They still had today, tomorrow as well. The other night, tomorrow had started to slip away and become an impossibility.
He gave me back tomorrow, so I can give him as much time as he needs.
Lacey started to say that it was okay, that she didn’t need to know, but Carlos spoke before she could.
“Early one morning, near a place called Sarbesha, we were stuck on a mountainside at about eleven thousand feet, about to get overrun. Then—out of nowhere—comes this chopper, cutting its way across the valley, chain gun blazing. Looking to pull us out. The pilot was a friend of mine. Big Korean guy named Sam. I can still see his face. He was calm and collected and just smiled at me.”
Carlos was looking at her now as he told the story, the intensity still on his face and in his eyes.
“But just shy of our perimeter, an RPG found him. Blew off his tail and took him down. I remember this huge fireball. Intense heat. Hot enough to melt the sidewalls of the fuselage. The crew chief and copilot were already gone, but up front, Sam was trapped in the cockpit. He was less than a hundred feet away. I wanted to save him. He came to save me. But I couldn’t. I just stood there. Watching. I was too scared.”
He let out a deep breath and then clenched his jaw. Lacey knew without even having to be told.
“He died.”
His eyes searched the sky, the background, the city skyline all while Lacey stared and wondered what she could possibly say. There was nothing to say. Not now. She might be able to understand his pain but not these memories. She just needed to listen, to sit alongside him and wait for him to continue.
“Now I see it—over and over and over again,” Carlos said. “It’s my punishment.”
She wanted to take off this coat of guilt Carlos wore the same way she always wished someone could do the same for her. It was like some thick, ugly, bulky coat that simply needed to be tossed. Yet as hard as one might try, you couldn’t take it off.
The wind made her shiver, then pull her arms close to her sides. The lake looked so wide and so empty.
Talk to him. Say something. Tell him what you’re thinking.
So she did.
“I don’t know what you did or didn’t do over there,” Lacey said. “What I do know is this: you saved me.”
She slipped her hand over his. Carlos didn’t react. He simply kept looking out over the water, the hurt inside as clear as the city beside them.
There were so many things she could have said. So many things she wanted to tell Carlos. But Lacey simply leaned her head against his shoulder and stayed there. Maybe—hopefully—those words would eventually come.