Page 42 of Harper

He sighs. “I still don’t understand why you felt like you had to cut off contact between us.”

“And I still don’t feel like talking about it.”

“I been thinking about it a lot, and I was wondering…” he says. “Can I take a guess?”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“One guess. If I’m wrong, I won’t bring it up again tonight.”

Inside of me—deep inside—there’s a desperate longing to tell Joe the truth. I don’t like carrying around the secret of what I did. I don’t like keeping it from him. Even though I didn’t tell him at the time, I still lost him. Sometimes I think it would be a relief to come clean. Though it’s a one-in-a-billion chance and pure fantasy, maybe, just maybe, he’d figure out a way to love me anyway.

“One guess,” I whisper, my heart racing.

The Dyea Road turns from dirt and dust to pavement, signaling that we’re getting closer to Skagway.

“Remember that afternoon by the Lower Dewey? After we graduated? When you suggested we break up?” he asks.

“I remember.”

“So, you said we should break up, and when I asked if you were going to have sex with other guys, you said something about how you couldn’t imagine having sex with anyone else. You just wanted to be free.”

“We were so young, Joe. I wanted that freedom for both of us.”

“Yeah. That’s what you said at the time. But in fairness, I never wanted to be free of you, Harp.”

“Keep going,” I tell him.

“I’ve thought about that a lot over the years…you wanting to be, you know, free.” He gulps softly. “If you include the first two years of college when our relationship was ‘open,’ and the ten after, it was twelve years total, Harp. Twelve years of freedom.”

Where is he going with this? I’m following his words, but I haven’t figured out his “guess” yet.

“So, anyway…I want you to know,” he says, his voice a little choked, like what he’s saying aches a little. “You didn’t owe me anything during that time. Not your loyalty. Not your fidelity. Nothing. You were free…to do whatever you wanted, whatever you felt you needed to do.”

“Okay.”

“I want you to know that it doesn’t matter what you did or with whom. Or what the—you know, what the number is. It doesn’t matter to me. You were young and needed your space. I don’t know how many guys—or girls, for that matter—you, um, you slept with, but it’s fine. It’s okay. It’s in the past. I don’t want those people to stand between us now. You didn’t owe me anything during those years. And I wouldn’t think poorly of you if you’d—you know, um, experimented…sowed some wild oats. ”

It’s starting to come into focus now. I get it. I know where he’s going with this. And he’s so wildly off-base, I half-snort, half-cackle.

“Are you laughing at me? Don’t be a jerk, Harp. I’m being real here.”

“Joe,” I say, twisting my body to face him as best I can in the car seat. “You think I stayed away from Skagway for five years and didn’t talk to you for another five because I was…sleeping around? And, apparently, ashamed of it?”

“Um…well…maybe? I mean, we were each other’s first, right? Maybe you’re uncomfortable that you were with other people besides me? Especially if there were a lot of people. And—and maybe that makes it hard for you to be around me? I don’t know, Harper. I’m just grasping at straws.”

“And those straws suggested to you that I went whoring around the world for five years and couldn’t look you in the eye afterward?”

“I don’t know,” he says, good and sheepish now. “Maybe not, I guess.”

“Did you go whoring around the world over the last decade?”

“No. I was here.”

“Did you go whoring around Skagway?” I ask, Avery Wells’s name slipping through my mind even though Joe reassured me that he wasn’t with anyone.

“No,” he grunts.

“Then why would you think I did?”