Change

Any suggestions for titles would be much appreciated. Thanks!


“What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

I sit next to him, letting my feet dangle off the dock. His jeans are rolled up to his knees and he’s wearing that baseball cap again—the one that I love.

“When did you get here?” My toes skim the surface of the water before I submerge my feet.

“About half an hour ago.”

“Early.”

“Yeah.”

I hate it when he’s like this. He’s so handsome, so desirable, and so shut up. His brown eyes are staring out over the lake, unseeing. I wonder what he’s thinking about, but don’t bother to ask. My eyes wander to a random tree nearby and my brows furrow just barely.

It’s a pretty massive tree, with roots big enough to count as speed bumps and branches low enough to reach standing on your tiptoes. If we were still in high school, I would have begged him to climb it. But now, in our freshman year of college, everything is different.

I was so proud of him when he was accepted to West Point—the university of his dreams. He’d always wanted to go into the military, ever since we were kids. I can remember one time in middle school when we were here, at this dock, and he told me that he wanted to join the army when he was old enough so that he could fight away all the bad stuff in the world. Neither of us knew at the time that bad things weren’t always on the outside.

“How’ve you been?”

I turn my head to look at him, leaning against my shoulder just barely. “Fine.” I had always been fascinated by his dark brown eyes, paired with his now army-short hair. He was tanner than he had been when he left last June for basic training, but it suited him.

“You look good.”

“I thought the army was supposed to teach you not to be obsequious,” I say, trying out my new word.

“They tried. What did you do to your hair?”

“Cut it.” I lean my head back and swish my feet back and forth in the water. “Nice sunset.”

He ignores my change of subject. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you cut your hair?” he asks. I want to snatch his hat off, but figure he wouldn’t like that too much. My fingers curl on the edge of the dock.

“Because it was too long. You like?” I flip it over my shoulder in an exaggerated motion, teasing him. He hasn’t done much teasing lately.

“Yeah.” He sits up straighter, taking his weight off his hands and touches my hair with one hand. I thank God I straightened it today.

“Do you wear it wavy anymore?”

“Sometimes. It’s softer this way.”

“I know.”

One of his fingers brushes my scalp before he puts his hand back on the dock. There is a tingling up my spine all the way up to the back of my head where he just touched me.

We're friends. Just friends. We’d always just been friends, no matter what anyone said, and I’d liked it. But when he left for basic last June, I’d missed him as more than just a friend.

We e-mailed back and forth and talked on the phone when we (well, mostly he) found the time. Six months passed before we saw one another again, over Christmas break. He wore his uniform to his welcome home party, and when I saw him I knew nothing was as I thought. I walked into the room and he was standing in the middle, surrounded by friends and family. He was carrying his hat under his arm and white over gray had never looked so good.

He kissed my cheek that day. He’d never done that before.

That was over three months ago, and it's March now.

I slap my calf, which is being sucked dry by a couple of mosquitoes. “I hate those things. Were they bad during Beast?” I ask, referring to his six-week training period.

“Not too bad. They said it was one of the hotter summers, but it’s not too bad compared to Texas.”

“Is it still snowing?”

“Here and there.”

My eyes drift to his hands, lying flat on the dock. They’re large and strong and I find myself wishing he’d hold my hand. But that’s stupid. He’s still broken up about his ex, the girl he was with for almost a year. She was a cute girl, but mean as hell. That one probably should have gone to West Point, though I doubt that an M16 would be as potent a weapon as her damn mouth.

I don’t know why he stayed with her. She was a witch, through and through. A manipulative, selfish, spoiled brat who liked him only for his looks. I was jealous of her. He had been the perfect boyfriend, and she’d taken him from me. I had to cancel his going away party at the last second because he went to her ballet recital instead.

“I missed you,” he says suddenly, making me jump.

“No you didn’t. You were too busy to miss me.”

“There was a girl in my Beast platoon who reminded me a lot of you.”

“You like her?”

“Yeah, she’s cool.”

“No, do you like her like her?”

He turns his head just barely and I smile at the sight of his t-shirt. “No.”

“Tina, you fat lard! Come get some dinner!” I shout suddenly, lying down flat on the dock.

He laughs as he lays back too, the first laugh I’ve gotten out of him in the two days he’s been home, and it makes me laugh too. “Did you forget how to laugh while you were in the army?” I ask, my feet swaying rhythmically in the lake.

“I laugh a lot. I just haven’t found much to be happy about back home.”

His parents are getting divorced, his ex-girlfriend is dating his former best friend because they ended up at the same college, and his younger sister keeps getting into trouble at school.

“Maybe you’re not looking hard enough.” My parents are divorced, my boyfriend cheated on me last year and then took my younger sister to our senior prom, and my brother’s wife just had a miscarriage.

“It gets harder as I get older. Do you ever feel that way?”

His shoulder brushes mine and once again, I have to resist the urge to rip his baseball cap off his head.

“Sometimes. I got proposed to last week.”

“By who?”

“A guy in my history class. Professor Stratten was talking about how many of the great men and women and history had succeeded purely because they went after what they wanted without caring what others thought. So then this guy that I’ve talked to maybe twice gets down on one knee in the middle of the lecture hall and tells me that I’m the most beautiful female he’s ever seen in all his life and he wants me to be the one at his side, to bear his children, to love him until we die.”

He laughs and I smack his arm. It’s ineffective, thanks to months of frequent push-ups, but satisfying just the same.

“He was sweet.”

“He sounds like a schizoid.”

My chest shakes with laughter. “He is,” I say. “I found out later that he suffers from delusions, which would also explain why he called me Laila. College is so weird.”

“Yeah, it is,” he agrees, rolling over on his side and propping up his torso with his arm. I follow suit, and a wave of heat blankets me for a moment when my face comes so close to his.

“How’s your mom?”

I roll my eyes. “Fine. A week before I got home she was calling me three and four times a day to ask me when we were going to get together. It took a lot of self-restraint to tell her to get lost. I’m trying to remind myself that she’s really not so bad.”

“Sounds like Trinity is making you nicer. First you think a schizophrenic’s proposal is cute and now your mom has lost her title of 'bane of my existence' and her place as the only reason you’d ever commit suicide.” He grins at me, and I can’t stop the blush that creeps up my neck and tints my face.

“I’ll work on my cynicism,” I say with a little grin.

“You ought to. This sweet crap has got to stop. You’d never make it at West Point. The nice ones are almost always the first to go.”

“You’re making stuff up.”

“A cadet will never lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do. Cadet honor code. I live by it.” He raises one eyebrow at me. He’s still teasing, but I can tell he means it.

“Why did you really cut your hair?” he asks suddenly.

I shake my head, tucking a stray lock behind my ear. “I don’t like it when it gets too long.”

“What’s the real reason?” he asks, fingering a piece of my dark hair between two of his fingers.

“Mom likes it long.”

“I figured as much. You know, I really did miss you.”

He’s not teasing, not joking, not playing games. I reach up and lift his baseball cap off his head, plunking it onto mine.

“I missed you too.”

The first stars are appearing in the sky now, but I can't see them. My eyes are closed, and he's kissing me.