“Callum, you guys need anything?” Bo asked, directing his attention to the guy standing in the corner.
Callum shook his head, “Not today.”
“We’re taking you on that fishing trip after classes are over,” Bo informed him. A ghost of a smile whispered over Callum’s face.
“You okay that with Finn?” Callum asked.
“It’s all good,” Bo replied, neither confirming nor denying that he’d checked with Finn.
“You going to catch anything this time, Peep?” Callum asked.
“Nah, I’m the keeper of the cooler. Someone needs to make sure we have enough to drink. Noah can filet ’em, so as long as y’all catch enough fish, we’ll be good.” Bo’s drawl was accentuated.
Callum gave him a brief, pained smile and went back to looking out the window again.
“Hi, AM, Grace, remember?” I did, from when we ran the mayonnaise experiment. At my nod, she introduced the beautiful blonde I’d seen around campus. “And that’s my cousin Lana.”
Lana gave me a stiff wave. No one wanted to make small talk, so we sat there like the most miserable group of people ever, like we were all back in high school sitting outside the principal’s office.
Finally Finn came over and said, “Anyone want a smoke out back?”
The stampede to the door almost knocked chairs over. The porch actually did wrap around the entire house, but Finn led us down a path that led to a red barn. We stood around a picturesque white fence that overlooked large swath of pasture land and a pond beyond. The smell of hay and manure from the nearby barn was ameliorated by the sulphur of the matches used to light the blunts. Finn’s smokes weren’t cigarettes, but on a day like this, who could blame him. Bo, Noah, Grace, and I abstained, but the rest shared a few that were rolled in what looked like grape leaves; Bo told me later that they were cigar wrappers.
I noticed as the blunt was passed around that Callum wasn’t with us. “Where’s the guy that looks like Finn?” I asked Bo.
He raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “I’ll tell you later.”
But Finn heard us. “Callum feels like he needs to avoid me because his father is fucking my mother.”
Adam exhaled a stream of smoke and offered a succinct response. “Cousins.”
“My family’s fucked up,” Finn said, snatching back the blunt from Adam.
“Mine, too,” I said. “My mom’s the other woman.”
“My mom hates me,” Lana chimed in.
“My mom’s dead,” Noah deadpanned, and for some reason the black humor of us one-upping each other about our shitty backgrounds relieved some of the tension of the day and we all laughed.
Adam went back to the house and dragged Callum out. Someone rounded up some beer and chairs. We sat outside for a long time, even when the night got chilly, staring into the land behind Finn’s house. Bo’s arms were wrapped securely around me the whole time.
He wasn’t afraid of loving me despite his past, and life was so short that I needed to stop being afraid, too.
I AWOKE TO FIND BO SITTING at my desk and typing on my laptop, wearing his jeans and no shirt, impervious to the slight chill in the air. I lay there for a few moments and just enjoyed looking at his back, the one I’d spent so much time staring at during class last semester. Only now I got to look at what was under the near-transparent T-shirts he sported, and it was every bit as amazing as I thought it would be. He had a large black bird tattooed on his back, the wings stretching from shoulder blade to shoulder blade. On the right side, just above the wing tip, I could see an indentation, a little larger than a quarter but deep, like someone had carved out his skin with a spoon.
Looking around, I spotted his t-shirt lying at the side of the bed, discarded late last night. I pulled it on, as well as a pair of panties, the metal dog tags lightly brushing my skin as I moved. When I reached him, I traced the top of the bird pattern on his back, the part that I could see above the chair back, dipping a finger into the depression in his back.
“Bullet scar,” Bo said as I ran my finger around the edges, feeling the scar tissue bumpy against my fingertip.
“My God,” I gasped. “Someone shot you in the back?”
“We were on patrol and came under some fire. People scattered. They think the bullet may have ricocheted off a vehicle or something, because if it had hit me directly, I wouldn’t be here.”
Fear swept over me, and I leaned down to kiss it. “It looks so painful.”
“I’m not going to lie. Hurt like a bitch, but not when I was shot. Then I was too hopped up with adrenaline. It was later. Then I was pissed because I was sent home to recover.” Bo recounted this experience as if it was no different than picking up a latte at Starbucks.