Free New Title 1 by Jane Harvey-Berrick

gently.
     
    After a moment , I pulled free.
     
    “That ’s fine, thank you.”
     
    He continued to stare at me, his expression serious. I looked away, confused and ill at ease.
     
    “This café looks good,” I said desperately.
     
    I heard his soft sigh , but refused to look at him. Instead I strode into the café and found a table by the window.
     
    Sebastian followed more slowly, sliding into the chair opposite me.
     
    “Un espresso et un caffé americano, s’il vous plâit.”
     
    “Do you speak French, as well?” I asked, curiously.
     
    He shrugged. “Enough to get by. I never studied it.”
     
    “And the Dari? The Arabic? How did that come about?”
     
    “My first tour in Iraq. I was playing soccer with some of the local kids who used to hang around the Base. They taught me a few words and I just started picking up some phrases. My sergeant heard me talking to the kids and sent me on a couple of training courses. When we started pulling out of Iraq, they figured I should learn Pashto and Dari so I could be useful in Afghanistan. I found I could just hear it, all the different cadences.” He sneered. “Finally found something I was good at. Who knew.”
     
    I was shocked by his dismissive tone.
     
    “You were always good at lots of things, Sebastian. You picked up Italian really quickly.”
     
    “That ’s because I had an Italian girlfriend,” he said.
     
    “Really? When was that?”
     
    He rolled his eyes as if I was missing the obvious.
     
    “Oh, right,” I muttered, embarrassed. “And y ou taught me to surf, don’t forget.”
     
    He grinned, breaking the tension of his odd outburst.
     
    “Yeah, that was fun. Did you ever keep it up?”
     
    “I go quite often in the summer,” I said. “I bought a place in Long Beach and...”
     
    I ground to a halt, worried by his stricken expression.
     
    “Sorry,” he said, shaking his head, as if to cast off some grim thought, “It’s just… well, we used to talk about going to Long Beach and checking out the surf spots.”
     
    “I didn ’t have any other plan,” I said, quietly. “When I left you… when I left San Diego, I drove for eight days until I got to New York. That old Pinto I had, died crossing Verrazano Bridge. I got an apartment in Little Italy because I didn’t know anywhere else, and you mentioned it once. I lived there for eight years. You were right: I did like it.”
     
    He closed his eyes and let his head drop into his hands. He looked so vulnerable. How such ordinary words can hurt us, I thought.
     
    “God, Caro, when I think about how things could have been… it makes me a little crazy.”
     
    “I know what you mean,” I said, softly. “But there ’s no point thinking like that.”
     
    The waitress returned with our coffees. I stared into the dark liquid, losing myself in the wisps of steam.
     
    “I ’m glad you went there; I’m glad you did the things we said we’d do.”
     
    “Not all of them,” I amended.
     
    “Fuck, if only…”
     
    “Stop, Sebastian,” I said, forcefully. “No ‘what ifs’: what if we’d never gone to that Sicilian restaurant that night; what if Brenda hadn’t seen us; what if she hadn’t told your parents… there’s no point thinking like that. Like you said, it’ll just make us crazy.”
     
    “I know you ’re right, it’s just that…” He ran one hand over his hair in frustration.
     
    “Hey, stop,” I said, grabbing his fingers. “It is what it is. We can’t change anything.”
     
    He held on tightly, then rubbed his eyes with his free hand.
     
    “Mind you,” I said, “if I ran into Brenda again, I might have to give her a quick slap.”
     
    He smiled slightly.
     
    “Yeah, I ’d like to see that.” Then he frowned. “She felt really bad about what happened.”
     
    I released his hand, and leaned back in my chair.
     
    “You spoke to her about it – what she did?”
     
    I was amazed . And annoyed. Maybe even hurt. Brenda the