On the ride over to Malone’s, I checked my emails.
He peered over at me as I tapped on my phone. “Wait until we’re stopped. You’re gonna get carsick.”
“No I won’t.”
“Yeah you will. You get nauseous when you look at your phone in the car,” he said.
“That’s only when you drive, because you drive like a lunatic,” I said, typing in an email about Pug Life sweaters on back order. “Braking, hitting the gas too hard, taking the turns too fast. And on top of that, you don’t even swear.”
He chuckled. “What does swearing have to do with driving?”
“If you’re not pissed off when you drive, you’re not really paying attention.”
I gave him side-eye and caught a dimple on his cheek. I smiled down on my screen. Then I swallowed. I did feel a little dizzy, actually. I set my phone on my lap and closed my eyes.
“I told you,” he said in the darkness behind my lids. “So stubborn, all the time.”
“No. Sometimes I’m asleep. And anyway, you don’t know my life.”
He laughed. “Yeah, actually, I do. I know all about you.”
I scoffed. “Mm-hmm.”
“What? I do. I know you can eat a whole sleeve of Thin Mints by yourself.”
I snorted. “Who can’t?”
He went on. “I know your favorite thing is having your back scratched after you take off your bra. You’re in a better mood when you go to bed at eleven thirty and wake up at seven than when you go to bed at twelve thirty and wake up at eight. You like purple. You love the smell of carnations but hate it when guys buy you flowers because you think it’s a waste of money…”
I opened an eye and looked at him. He was talking to the window, watching the road.
“You like to argue when you think you might be wrong. When you know you’re right, you don’t bother. You hate sharing your food, but you pick at my plate every time. That’s why I always order extra fries.” He looked over at me and smiled. “And you’d rather give me shit for my driving than admit you get carsick when you’re on your phone. See?” He arched an eyebrow. “I know you.”
My heart felt like it might crack in half. He did know me. He’d been paying attention to me. And I knew him too. I knew him inside and out.
I could tell what work had been like by the set of his shoulders when he came over, and I knew it helped him to de-stress to talk to me about a bad call. I always listened, even though sometimes they were hard to hear.
When he got quiet, it meant he was tired. He’d choose pistachio ice cream at Baskin-Robbins every time, but at Cold Stone he got sweet cream instead. I knew he liked Stuntman, though he’d never admit it. And he secretly liked it when I gave him shit. I could tell by the sparkle in his eyes.
And I also knew he hoped he had more sons than daughters. That he liked the name Oliver for his first boy and Eva for his first girl. He planned on teaching all his kids to hunt and had a collection of camo baby clothes. He wanted to build the cribs himself from wood in the forest around his grandparent’s house in South Dakota.
He wanted no fewer than five children, and he planned for nine. And he hoped all his kids got the signature Copeland dimples and cowlick.
I hoped for that too. I wanted him to get all the things he dreamed about.
Yes. I knew him. I knew him well.
* * *
We took first place in trivia. The prize was two Malone’s T-shirts.
Afterward, we sat in a dim cracked-leather booth at the back of the bar, nursing our beers with a basket of hot wings and Malone’s famous queso. A live band played “Wonderwall” on the beat-up stage. Malone’s was a dive. There’d already been two bar fights since we got here. It was good entertainment—better than the band.
I’d gotten twenty dollars’ worth of fake tattoos from a vending machine, and we were giving each other full sleeves and laughing at people in the bar.
“Okay,” Josh said, pressing a wet napkin to my forearm to stick a tattoo. “If you could turn anything into an Olympic sport, what would you win a medal for?”
I lifted the napkin and peeled off the plastic backing, looking at my new rose