Free Be Safe I Love You by Cara Hoffman Page B

laughed again. “She was so tired by the time the sun came out she could barely keep her head up. By the time Mom and Dave finished making the pancakes she was out.”
    “Ah,” Patrick said. “Look at her, she looks like yer mother.”
    “Now that was a beauty queen if ever there was one,” said Shamus.
    Holly smiled and flipped through more pictures, and they all stooped eagerly around her, quietly watching Grace’s Christmas morning unfold.
    “You got your Aunt Jean’s looks,” Patrick said, giving Holly a little squeeze, and she smirked so he gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “That’s a compliment,” he said. Lauren watched the soft way he looked at her friend, the quiet comfortable way he talked to her. “You didn’t know her in high school. You think we all looked like we do now? We didn’t. We were just like you,” he said. “I was just like Shane. I was handsome like Shane. I was taller ’n Shane. I tell you what, I got better grades ’n Shane, and that’s a fact.”
    “And you worked,” Gerry reminded him.
    “ And I worked,” Patrick said.
    “National merit scholar,” Shamus said, putting up his empty to be refilled.
    “And you served this country in the armed forces,” Gerry said.
    “Just like little Lauren Clay.” Patrick laid a hand on her shoulder until she shrugged it off. There was nothing about Patrick that was just like her. His Gulf War was not hers.
    “But the real thing is I had civic pride,” Patrick said. “Which noneayuh have.”
    “Noneayuh,” Shamus said in disgust.
    Holly shut her phone and walked back toward the kitchen and Lauren followed her. She took a big white cake out of the walk-in cooler, cut a slice, poured mugs of coffee, adding a shot of Jameson’s to each, turned on the ceiling fan, and offered Lauren a cigarette. They leaned against the counter sipping the hot bitter drink in the glow of the warming light and eating cold Christmas cake. White butter-cream frosting and sparkly red sugar sprinkles sweet and salty in their mouths.
    “So what were you doing over there?” Holly asked.
    Lauren shrugged. “Hanging out,” she said.
    Holly nodded respectfully. “Hanging out in a city or in like a desert place?”
    “I was at a FOB outside an oil field.”
    “What’s a FOB?”
    “Forward operating base,” Lauren said.
    “So is that like way in the middle of nowhere?”
    “Kinda.”
    “Do people live around there?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Did you get to save anyone’s life?”
    Lauren smiled. It was the opposite of what people wanted to ask when you came home, the opposite of what everyone thought.
    She shook her head and then sipped her coffee to wash away the sugary taste. “I saved millions from the inconvenience of taking public transportation,” she said. “And I saved a bunch of fucking money in my own bank account.”
    Holly said, “Well, the last part’s good, right?” She punched her in the arm. “The first part’s kinda good too.” Then she pointed to the door. “Who’s that skinny nerd?”
    Shane walked into The Bag of Nails wearing a rain-spattered windbreaker and carrying a plastic Stop & Shop bag filled with mail, which he handed to his Uncle Gerry. The Patricks patted his shoulders and back like they were checking for weapons and the bartender put up a beer, but Shane turned to leave and that’s when he saw her and Holly looking at him and laughing. She put her hand out for him to come hold, but he hugged Holly first before taking it. The three of them stood together like no time had gone by and they weren’t just some castaways from eighth grade honors biology. Like Shane hadn’t become someone, and she and Holly hadn’t become two kinds of no one.
    “Gerry’s this close to fighting Marty ’cause he called your girlfriend a dyke,” Holly told him.
    “Lovely,” he said.
    Lauren handed him her fork and he took several hasty bites of cake. Raised his eyebrows and nodded and then took another. He said, “Let’s get