Page 52 of The Destined SEAL
Harper sighs and closes her eyes. “Which track?”
“Whatever one you let me on.”
Harper makes another shot and wipes her brow with the back of her hand. “I need to go wash my hands and see if they need any help in the kitchen. If we can pick up snacks, I’ll go to the tower with you.”
I go down on my knees and press my hands together. Harper turns around and smiles when she sees me.
“Friendship track, Benny.” The smile leaves her face slowly. “Dinner truce?” she says.
“Thank you,” I reply.
Then she leaves.
I have all of Harper’s secrets. Even the ugly ones she doesn’t want another soul to hear. She has more of mine. Although our parents don’t know the extent to which our lives are entangled, we both know they sense the shift in the atmosphere. They didn’t bring up anything untoward. That’s the first time they’ve been polite.
We filled up an entire shopping basket at the 7-Eleven, and she’s made me hold the enormous bag as we climb the ladder up the old water tower. It’s walking distance from our house, and we spent countless hours here as children. It was safe here. We could talk about anything we wanted, away from prying ears and parental eyes. A no judgment zone. We haven’t been back since I brought her here to tell her I wanted to enlist in the Navy instead of going to Harvard.
Harper climbs slower than she did back then, her feet more tentative on the rungs than they were all those years ago. I try to keep my eyes away from her short shorts, but when she brings her foot up to the next step, I slip and see a glimpse of her hot pink panties.
“Pink,” I shout.
“Oh my gosh. Stop looking! I should have known better! I have Jenny Megly to thank for your obsession with female underwear.”
“I’m only obsessed with yours,” I toss back, laughing to punctuate my old-school game. “I love when you wear short shorts.”
Harper speeds up after groaning a frustrated sigh. We go all the way to the top and sit down on the metal ledge, our legsdangling out of the lowest barrier. The pink and orange horizon in front of us is beautiful. “I forgot how pretty the sunset was from here,” Harper says, catching her breath. Leaning forward, she folds her arms on the metal bar and puts her chin on her wrists. “We probably had no clue how pretty it was back then,” she amends.
“It’s always been this beautiful,” I say, speaking to the side of her face.
Looking at her, looking at the sunset, brings back all of the memories. Mrs. Rosehall is right. I’ve never truly looked at Harper in this honest light.
“Tell me something, Benny. Anything worth saying.”
Her gaze doesn’t waver. It’s unflinching in the direction of the sunset. “Okay,” I say, trying and failing to form the words I want. “I’ll tell you what I think you need to hear.”
She nods. “Probably a good place to start.”
“This is my punishment for my evil, lying crimes of the heart. You know how I hid from the truth, you did it too. I have to live with this for the rest of my life, and Norah and Robin paid the price for my bad decisions.” She looks at me but then thinks better of it and looks away again. I go on, “They were innocent in all of this.”
“I’ve thought about this a lot because of Marcus and Darren and everything,” Harper says, voice a whisper. “You can’t blame yourself. It was an accident.”
I shake my head, a lump forming in the back of my throat.
Harper’s gaze locks onto mine. “You can’t control everything. It was an accident. It didn’t happen for any reason other than she was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” she remarks.
I’ve thought about this, too. “No. It’s never just an accident. Things happen for a reason. Everything does. Nothing is happenstance. The world is too cruel for that. The things I’ve seen? I know for a fact there are no true accidents.” I look up atthe sky, a broken man bargaining with someone who took away the only things more important than my own life.
“What if everything is one big accident? If you’re saying nothing is an accident, I’m telling you maybe everything is. Me sitting next to you, holding your hand, is because of an accident. Maybe your mom forgot her birth control pill. Poof!” Harper says, twinkling her fingers like magic. “You’re here. An accident. My dad accidentally got a job, and we accidentally moved next door to you. We became friends by accident, and you fell in love with Norah by accident. We never told each other just how we felt about each other because, you guessed it, an accident. We both know Robin was an accident, so there’s no arguing there. Darren accidentally drank too many drinks that night, Ben. Everything is an accident. If there’s one thing you can trust, it’s that I’m here for you. I’ll always be here for you. Not by accident, either. Because I want to be here for you. Because I love you.”
Harper’s words strike a chord, stirring the cold place inside my chest. I’ve considered every possibility, and she could be right. I’m not ready to admit that, though. Scooting closer to her, our legs touch. I hold her hand on top of my leg, and we watch the sun vanish together. There are silent breaths and tiny sniffles, but no words. “I love you too,” I whisper. “Thought that’s important, you know.”
“This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. Our chance is gone, regardless of how much we love each other. You know that, right?” Harper says as she squeezes my hand.
“How can you say that? Look at what happened to make circumstances for us!”
She nods. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”
I tell her to explain, and I know she will, but the silence between us spans on for longer than is comfortable. “You’ve always lived life unapologetically,” Harper says.
