Waiting for You(28)

“I guess the hardest thing is feeling like I’m from another planet.”

His answer surprised her. “What do you mean?”

She watched him trying to put his thoughts into words, and she wondered if he’d ever talked about this before. “I don’t really know how to be normal anymore. This kind of normal,” he added, gesturing around them.

She wasn’t sure she understood, and it must have showed in her face, because he kept groping for words. “For the last ten years, my normal wasn’t anything like your normal. My life…” he shook his head. “It wasn’t this. And it’s hard to get used to this again. Soldiers dream about going home, but…” he paused. “Sometimes I feel like I don’t belong here anymore.”

Her heart ached in her chest, but she knew better than to show obvious sympathy. And what could she say? She couldn’t say she understood how he felt, or anything that trite. Because she didn’t understand. Not really. She could grasp it intellectually, but not viscerally. Not without being in war zones for ten years.

She asked a question, instead. “Do you ever talk about what it was like? To your family, or anyone?”

He shook his head. “Not anymore. War is…hard to explain. To someone who hasn’t been there. And if you’ve gone through it, you don’t want to explain. You just want to go home, to be with your family. But then you do go home, and you realize that even if you did want to talk about it, there’s nobody around who would understand.”

There was a sharp pain in her throat. One of Jake’s hands was on the table, fisted, and after a minute she reached out to cover it with hers.

They stayed like that for a little while. Jake’s eyes were down, and he seemed to be looking at her small hand on his much larger one. Then he turned his hand over so they were palm to palm, and closed his fingers over hers in a warm grip.

She’d always loved Jake’s hands. They were big and strong and callused, but she knew how gentle his touch could be.

After a minute she knew it was time to break the contact. She was too aware of him, too conscious of his skin against hers. So she pulled her hand away as casually as she could and took a sip of root beer.

“So, is it my turn now?”

She looked up at him. “Your turn?”

“To ask a question.”

“Of course,” she said quickly. “You can ask me anything.”

“Why are you still a virgin?”

It was the last thing in the world she wanted to talk about—especially with Jake Landry. It was the last thing she would have talked about, too, if it was any other time and place. But she couldn’t get out of it now, after Jake had answered her questions.

She’d said she didn’t want to talk about her personal life with him, but she was the one who’d started down that road tonight. And could she really set rules like that if they were going to be friends—real friends? Friends talked about their personal lives.

After a long moment Jake said, “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I shouldn’t have—”

“No, it’s fine. I don’t mind.” She took a deep breath. “You know how you talked about not feeling normal? I feel that way too, sometimes. Because in this day and age, it’s not normal to be a twenty-seven-year-old virgin.”

She tried to keep her tone light as she gave him a shortened version of the stories she’d told Beth that day at lunch. He listened quietly, and she was glad he didn’t get all defensive on her behalf, especially when she talked about Kevin.

Then he asked the same thing Beth had. “But what happened after college? You’ve dated since then, haven’t you?”

“Sure, I’ve dated. Just not anybody special. And the thing is…” she hesitated, looking down at the table and playing with her straw wrapper. “The thing is, the older you get without it happening, the easier it is for it not to happen. Because you’ve waited that long, and so it seems stupid to have sex just for the sake of having it, you know? Not that I wouldn’t consider having a one-night stand,” she added, not wanting to sound like a prude. “I would, if it was the right one-night stand. If there was really great chemistry, and…all that.”

Which was coming closer to the stuff she really didn’t want to talk about. Specifically, the fact that she’d been ready to have a one-night stand with Jake.

She cleared her throat. “Of course I’d rather find someone I could be serious about. But I don’t mind being single, either. I mean, I’m open to finding the right person, or whatever…but if I don’t, that’s okay, too. I don’t feel like I need a man to feel complete, or anything like that.”