We had the best six weeks to
gether, and then one day he was gone. Nothing. He vanished into thin air, and when I went to visit his house I was kindly and awkwardly told by his mother and little brother that he’d enlisted in the Marines and was away at training camp. His sweet mother didn’t realize who I was at first, until it clicked that I was the coffee shop girl. For a small town, Tank and I had kept our summer romance under wraps, perhaps a little too well. It was all I could do backing off their neatly white-trim-painted front porch without tripping to run back to my best friend Kate’s car, hot with humiliation. His mother chased me to the curb and asked if she could send Henry a message. I knew it had been too soon to meet his family. We pretty much snuck around those six weeks, just getting to know each other on humid summer nights in his apartment above his family’s garage. I had wanted that time for us, I hadn’t asked a lot of questions, and I hadn’t acted like a stage-five clinger even though I felt more. For all my efforts to play it cool, I got the surprise of my life that I really hadn’t been worth mentioning to anyone.
I mean, who does that? Who just disappears like that? It was the worst kind of ghosting I could imagine, because when he left, he took my damn heart with him. He stole an entire month of my life, where I wallowed in the dark. I lost ten pounds and my summer tan right along with my will to attend school this fall, leaving me with the task of finding a job. Luckily, pouring coffee and cleaning toilets didn’t take much skill, but it also only paid minimum wage, shooting my pride in the foot.
“Bea?” He catches my attention from the past. Big blue eyes I wish I could quit and warmth that radiates from his all too familiar chest that heaves with emotion.
I let my anger fly and sucker punch him in the gut. It’s unexpected for both of us, and Tank merely releases an open-mouthed grunt. My punch did absolutely nothing to him. He laughs at me and takes my hand in his, rubbing my sore knuckles. His stomach is even harder than I recall. Of course, he had on much less clothing then, and my belly quivers remembering those details.
“Talk, Honeybee. That’s all I want right now.” Tank pulls me gently outside the door and winks at my aunts, who stay perched in the window like cats clicking at birds, as if we can’t see them. Tank guides me further down the walkway, toward the tree-lined sidewalk reaching the mailbox at the end.
I snatch my hand back, cradling it against my chest. I glare at him hard with a look that hurts him more than my sucker punch.
“Bea,” Tank starts.
I push against his chest. Clearly I haven’t learned he can’t be budged.
“No. I’m not doing this with you.” I can’t stand the way his uniform makes his eyes glow bluer and how his short hair almost looks a different color with his deeper tan. I’m irritated at how well he fills out his uniform and how badly I want to peel it off of him.
“Doing what?” he prompts, looking me over.
I step back and keep my arms protectively over my middle. “You left me. You didn’t tell me anything. You didn’t even say goodbye. You ghosted me!” I force the words out, praying my voice doesn’t wobble. Wobbling is for the weak and I refuse to appear anything but strong around this man.
His brow furrows. “I said goodbye that night at the bar.”
I scoff. If he thinks for a moment that was sufficient closure, he’s dumber than a box of rocks.
He takes a step forward. I take one back.
“You made it sound like you were going back out to move your car. You said it so casually, as if you planned to see me the next day at the park concert. You made me think I was special.” I huff, out of breath from my word vomit. His expression changes to one of sympathy.
I think that feels worse.
“You know what, just forget it. Go back to wherever you were and leave me alone.” I brush him off.
“Honeybee.”
“Don’t you use that name with me,” I spit back.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Well, you could have started the summer off with ‘hey, I know we just met and all, but I’m leaving in a few weeks because I’ve enlisted in the military.’”
“I thought that goodbye would be enough.” Tank doesn’t come closer. Instead he rests his hands on his hips, I’m guessing so he doesn’t reach for me, and I wonder if I can run back inside the house before he catches me. He tenses, almost ready to pounce, and I think twice about running.
“That’s not a goodbye.” I rally myself and suck down the emotion to speak. “Tank, that was a sorry-ass excuse for goodbye and you know it.”
He steps toward me this time and I throw my hands up in the air so he backs off. I can feel the sets of eyes watching us out here, speculating. I remember how we sat at a large round table, Tank and I and two other couples, friends we’d all known mutually for years despite the two of us having never met until that summer. Rounds of drinks come to the table and a few games of pool are played—none of which constitute a goodbye.
He grumbles out a deep breath that somehow makes him larger. “I didn’t know it would be like that. I thought about you every day.”
My right brow cocks upward while my hip pivots defensively. “I find it hard to believe you meet a girl, spend six amazing weeks with her, and then vanish.” I snap my fingers.
“You thought they were amazing?” He smiles.
I sputter. “Seriously? That’s what you hear you me say?”
Tank circles around me, rubbing his shaved head like he’s fighting an internal war for words. Well, landmine this, buddy.