Page 40 of Walking Wounded

“Heaven help me. Will, would you like to get married?” she asked, laughing.

Finn aimed a finger at him. “Don’t answer that.”

Will slurped his milkshake. “Wasn’t going to.”

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Because it happened slowly, Will didn’t notice that his best friend was turning into a man until the transformation was complete. One day Finn walked into the Maddox front door, took off his hat, said, “Something smells good,” and he was a grown man, standing fully-realized on the foyer rug, each sharp corner of boyhood sanded smooth and firm. Cute had turned to handsome, in a sharp, lady-killer, rakish sort of way, mischief bright in his brown eyes. A cowlick on the side of his head had been tamed just enough to give his glossy dark hair an unruliness that Leena liked to run her fingers through. He was brown from the sun, and muscled from swimming and loading crates at the grocer’s where he was working that summer. Strong from hauling his father up and down the stairs, and from carrying Lillian on his shoulders.

“Mm, I’m glad I’m not the mother of any of these girls in town,” Will’s mother said. “He’s going to break all their hearts.”

But Finn only had eyes for Leena.

And Will…well, Will wasn’t sure what to make of the transformation, except now his tallness left him feeling more awkward than ever.

He wondered if Finn knew he was handsome when he looked in the mirror, because Will sure knew that he himself wasn’t – not by comparison. He was still gangly and coltish, and his black hair wanted to stick up in all directions. His jaw was too narrow and his ears too big, and his hands…don’t get him started on his hands. They were cartoonishly large.

One afternoon in late May, Will entered Mable’s Malts and found Finn sitting alone at their regular table, two shakes already sitting in front of him. Vanilla for himself, and Will’s favorite, strawberry.

“Where’s Leena?” he asked as he slid into the booth opposite his friend.

Finn shrugged. “Had to do something with her sister. It’s just us today.”

“Oh. Okay.” Will reached for his shake. “Thanks for this.”

Finn shrugged again, an easy smile breaking across his face. “I owed you from last time.”

“Aw, I told you not to pay me back for that.”

“Too late. Drink your pink shit and shut up.” He kicked Will under the table for good measure.

Will liked Leena, sure, but a tension in his stomach eased because she wasn’t coming. It was just the two of them, and the thought filled him with a slow-blossoming warmth. An unexpected-day-off sort of feeling. Like a holiday.

Sunlight fell in through the plate glass windows and gilded their spoons, their watch faces, the metal edges of the table. It cast deep shadows in Finn’s dimples. Found gold stripes in the ochre of his eyes.

The milkshake had pulpy chunks of fresh strawberries in it, and it had been blended to perfection, rich on his tongue. There was nowhere to be, no pressing business to attend to.

One of those idyllic early summer days people spent all year chasing.

Finn pushed his glass to the side and leaned forward, elbows on the table. He looked much older, suddenly, as his expression sobered. “So listen. I’ve been thinking about something.”

“Shit,” Will sighed, and slid his half-drunk shake to the side too. Finn thinking tended to wreak havoc on his appetite.

“No, no, hold on. It’s not a shitty idea.”

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s not!” He ran a hand through his hair and somehow managed to make it look better in the process. “I don’t want to go to college.”

“You gonna work at the grocer’s forever?”

“No.” Finn started to look a little nervous, but his voice was firm, sure, when he spoke. “I want to join the Marines.”

Will sat back and braced his hands on the table, needing to steady himself. The thing was, he should have known this was coming. Finn’s obsession with going to war had intensified over the years since James’s death. It wasn’t a boy’s obsession with toy soldiers, but something Finn thought about often, and deeply, that he’d furthered with research, hunched over library books about military history. What had happened to his father and half-brother should have driven him as far away from the military as he could get. Instead, their losses only seemed to fuel him. Will was convinced there was a small voice chantingbut I can make itin the back of Finn’s head. That, somehow, surviving would be the single greatest step he could take toward towing his family out of its own quiet grief.

Will knew better than to start an argument. It was all about convincing, not fighting. “What does your mom think about that?”

Finn blinked. “What’s she got to do with it?”

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