‘The Longest Ride’ Chapters 7-9

They walked leisurely, neither of them needing to talk. Sophia replayed the events of the day in her head, glad that she’d come. From what she could tell, Luke shared her sense of peace and contentment as well.

As they neared the house, Dog darted ahead toward the water bowl on the porch; he lapped at it between pants, then collapsed onto his belly.

“He’s tired,” she said, startled at the sound of her own voice.

“He’ll be fine. He follows me when I ride out every morning.” He took off his hat and wiped the perspiration from his brow. “Would you like something to drink?” he asked. “I don’t know about you, but I could really use a beer.”

“Sounds great.”

“I’ll be back in a minute,” he promised, and headed into the house.

As he walked away, she studied him, trying to make sense of her undeniable attraction to him. Who could make sense of any of this? She was still trying to figure it out when he emerged with a pair of ice cold bottles.

He twisted off a cap and handed her a bottle, their fingers brushing slightly. He motioned to the rockers.

She took a seat and leaned back with a sigh, her hat tilting forward. She’d almost forgotten that she’d been wearing it. She took it off, setting it in her lap before taking a sip. The beer was icy and refreshing.

“You rode really well,” he said.

“You mean I rode well for a beginner. I’m not ready for the rodeo yet, but it was fun.”

“You have naturally good balance,” he observed.

But Sophia wasn’t listening. Instead she was staring past him at the little cow that had appeared from around the corner of his house. It seemed to be taking an inordinate interest in them. “I think one of your cows got loose.” She pointed. “A little one.”

He followed her gaze, his expression turning to fond recognition. “That’s Mudbath. I don’t know how she does it, but she ends up here a couple of times a week. There’s got to be a gap in the fencing somewhere, but I haven’t found it yet.”

“She likes you.”

“She adores me,” he said. “Last March, we had a wet, cold streak and she got trapped in the mud. I spent hours trying to pull her out and I had to bottle-feed her for a few days. Ever since then, she’s been coming around here regularly.”

“That’s sweet,” she said, trying not to stare at him but finding it hard to avoid. “You have an interesting life here.”

He took off his hat and combed his fingers through his hair before taking another sip. When he spoke, his voice lost some of the customary reserve she’d grown used to. “Can I tell you something?” A long moment passed before he continued. “And I don’t want you to take this the wrong way.”

“What is it?”

“You make it seem a lot more interesting than it really is.”

“What are you talking about?”

He began to pick at the label on his bottle, peeling the paper back with his thumb, and she had the impression that he wasn’t so much searching for the answer as waiting for it to come to him before he turned to face her. “I think you’re just about the most interesting girl I’ve ever met.”

She wanted to say something, anything, but she felt as if she were drowning in those blue eyes, her words seeming to dry up. Instead, she watched as he leaned toward her, hesitating for an instant. His head tilted slightly, and the next thing she knew, she was tilting her head, too, their faces growing closer.

It wasn’t long, it wasn’t heated, but as soon as their lips came together, she knew with sudden certainty that nothing had ever felt so easy and so right, the perfect ending to an unimaginably perfect afternoon.

 

Chapter 8

Ira

Where am I?

I wonder this for only a moment before I shift in the seat, pain providing me with an answer. It is a waterfall, white hot, as my arm and shoulder explode. My head feels like splintered glass, and my chest has begun to throb as if something heavy has just been lifted off me.

Overnight, the car has become an igloo. The snow on the windshield has begun to glow, which means that sunrise has come. It is Sunday morning, February 6, 2011, and according to the watch face that I have to squint to make out, it is 7:20 a.m. Last night, sunset occurred at 5:50 p.m., and I’d been driving in the darkness for an hour before I went off the highway. I have been here for over twelve hours, and though I am still alive, there is a moment when I feel nothing but terror.

I have felt this kind of terror before. Strangers would not know this by looking at me. As I worked at the shop, customers were often surprised to learn that I had been in the war. I never mentioned it; and only once did I talk to Ruth about what happened to me. We never spoke of it again. Back then, Greensboro was not the city it would eventually become—in many ways, it was still a small town, and many of the people I’d known growing up were aware that I’d been wounded while fighting in Europe. And yet they, like me, had little desire to discuss the war after it ended. For some, the memories were simply too unbearable; for others, the future simply held more interest than the past.

But if anyone had asked, I would have said that my story was not worth the time it would take to listen to it. If nonetheless pressed for details, I would have told them that I’d enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps in June 1942, and after being sworn in, I boarded a train filled with other cadets bound for the Army Air Corps Reception Center in Santa Ana, California. It was my first trip out west. I spent the next month learning how to follow orders, clean bathrooms, and march properly. From there, I was sent to Primary Flight School at Mira Loma Flight Academy in Oxnard, where I learned the basics of meteorology, navigation, aerodynamics, and mechanics. During this time, I also worked with an instructor and was gradually taught to fly. I flew my first solo there, and within three months I had accumulated enough hours in the air to move to the next stage of training at Gardner Field in Taft. From there, it was off to Roswell, New Mexico, for even more flight training and then back to Santa Ana, where I finally began my formal training as a navigator. Yet even when I completed the training there, I still wasn’t done. I was sent to Mather Field near Sacramento, where I attended Advanced Navigation School, to learn how to navigate by the stars, with dead reckoning, through the use of visual references on the ground. Only then did I receive my commission.

It was another two months before I was sent to the European theater. First, the crew was sent to Texas, where we were assigned to the B-17, and then finally to England. By the time I flew my first combat mission in October 1943, I’d been training stateside for almost a year and a half, as far from action as someone in the military could possibly be.

This is not what people would have wanted to hear, but this was my experience of the war. It was training and transfers and even more training. It was about weekend passes and my first visit to a California beach, where I laid eyes on the Pacific for the very first time. It was having the chance to see the giant sequoias in northern California, trees so large they seemed beyond comprehension. It was about the feeling of awe that overcame me when soaring over the desert landscape as dawn was breaking. And it was also, of course, about Joe Torrey, the best friend I ever had.

We had little in common. He was a Catholic from Chicago, a baseball player with a gap-toothed smile. He had trouble stringing a single sentence together without cursing, but he laughed a lot and poked fun at himself, and everyone wanted him along when weekend passes were handed out. They wanted him to join their poker games and to cruise downtown with them, since women also seemed to find him irresistible. Why he often chose to spend time with me has always been a mystery, but it was because of Joe that I ever felt included at all. It was with Joe that I drank my first beer while sitting on the Santa Monica Pier, and it was with Joe that I smoked the first and only cigarette of my life. It was Joe that I spoke with on those days I particularly missed Ruth, and Joe would listen in a way that made me want to keep talking until I finally began to feel better. Joe, too, had a fiancée back home—a pretty girl named Marla—and he admitted that he didn’t particularly care what happened in the war as long as he was able to get back to her.

Joe and I ended up on the same B-17. The captain was Colonel Bud Ramsey, a genuine hero and a genius as a pilot. He’d already flown one round of combat missions and had been assigned a second. He was calm and collected under the most harrowing circumstances, and we knew we were lucky to have him as our commander.

My actual war experiences began on October 2, when we raided a submarine base in Emden. Two days later, we were part of a squadron of three hundred bombers converging on Frankfurt. On October 10, we bombed a railway junction at Münster, and on October 14, on a day that became known as Black Thursday, the war came to an end for me.

The target was a ball-bearing plant in Schweinfurt. It had been bombed once a few months earlier, but the Germans were making good headway in repairs. Because of the distance from base, our formation bombers had no fighter support, and this time the bombing run was anticipated. German fighters showed up at the coastline, dogging various squadrons all the way, and by the time we were within striking range, flak bursts had already formed a dense fog over the entire city. German rockets exploded all around us at high altitude, the shock waves shaking the plane. We had just dropped our payload when a number of enemy fighters suddenly closed in. They came from every direction, and all around us, bombers began to fall from the sky, enveloped in fire as they spiraled toward the earth. Within minutes, the formation was in tatters. Our gunner was struck in the forehead and fell back into the aircraft. On instinct, I climbed into his seat and began to fire, loosing close to five hundred rounds without doing any appreciable damage to the enemy. At that moment, I did not think that I would survive, but I was too terrified to stop firing.

We were strafed by enemy fire on one side and then the other. From my vantage point, I could see gigantic holes being ripped into the wing. When we lost an engine to enemy fire, the plane began to shimmy, the roar louder than anything I’d ever heard before as Bud struggled with the controls. The wing suddenly dipped, and the plane started to lose altitude, smoke billowing behind us. The fighters closed in for the kill, and more flak tore through the fuselage. We dropped a thousand feet, then two thousand. Five thousand. Eight thousand. Bud somehow managed to straighten the wings and, like a mythological creature, the nose of the plane somehow began to rise. Miraculously, the plane was still aloft, but we were separated from the formation, alone above enemy territory— and still the flak pursued us.

Bud had turned us toward home in a desperate bid to make our escape, when flak shattered the cockpit. Joe was struck, and instinctively, he turned toward me. I saw his eyes go wide in disbelief and his lips form my name. I lunged toward him, wanting to do something—anything—when suddenly I fell, my body losing all its strength. I couldn’t understand what had happened. At the time, I didn’t know I’d been hit, and I tried and failed again to get to my feet to help Joe when I felt a series of sharp, stinging burns. I looked down and saw large blooms of red spreading across the lower half of my body. The world seemed to telescope around me, and I passed out.

I don’t know how we made it back to base, other than to say that Bud Ramsey performed a miracle. Later, at the hospital, I was told that people took photographs of the plane after we landed, marveling that it had been able to stay airborne. But I didn’t look at the photographs, even when my strength had returned.

I was told that I should have died. By the time we’d reached England, I’d lost more than half my blood and I was as pale as a swan. My pulse rate was so low that they couldn’t find it in my wrist, but they nonetheless rushed me into surgery. I wasn’t expected to survive the night, or the night after that. A telegram was sent to my parents, explaining that I’d been wounded and that more information would be forthcoming. By “more information,” the army air corps meant another, later telegram informing them of my death.

But the second telegram was never sent, because somehow I did not die. This was not the conscious choice of a hero; I was not a hero and remained unconscious. Later, I wouldn’t remember a single dream or even whether I’d had any dreams at all. But somehow, on the fifth day after surgery, I woke, my body drenched in sweat. According to the nurses, I was delirious and screaming in agony. Peritonitis had set in and I was rushed into surgery once more. I do not remember this, either, or any of the days that followed. The fever lasted for thirteen days, and on each successive day, when asked about my prognosis, the doctor shook his head. Though I was unaware of it, I was visited by Bud Ramsey and surviving crew members before they were assigned to a new plane. Meanwhile, a telegram was sent to the home of Joe Torrey’s parents, announcing his death. The RAF bombed Kassel, and the war continued.

The fever finally broke as the calendar turned to November. When I opened my eyes, I didn’t know where I was. I couldn’t remember what had happened, and I couldn’t seem to move. I felt as though I’d been buried alive, and with all my strength, I was able to whisper only a single syllable.

Ruth.

+++

The sun grows brighter and the winds have grown sharper, yet still no one comes. The terror I felt earlier has finally passed, and in its absence, my mind begins to wander. I note that being buried alive in a car by snowfall is not unique to me. Not too long ago on the Weather Channel, I saw a clip about a man in Sweden who, like me, was trapped in his car while snow gradually buried him alive. This was near a town called Umeå, near the Arctic Circle, where temperatures were well below zero. However, according to the broadcaster, the car became an igloo of sorts. Even though this man would not have survived long if exposed to the elements, the temperature inside the car could be tolerated for long periods, especially since the man was dressed appropriately and had a sleeping bag with him. But this is not the amazing part; what was amazing was how long the man survived. Though the man had no food or water and ate only handfuls of snow, the doctors said his body went almost into a sort of hibernation state. His bodily processes slowed down enough for him to be rescued after sixty-four days.

Good God, I remember thinking. Sixty-four days. When I saw the segment, I could barely imagine such a thing, but obviously it has taken on new meaning at the present time. Two months in the car, for me, would mean that someone would find me in early April. The azaleas will be blooming, the snow long since gone, and days will already begin to feel like summer. If I’m rescued in April, it will probably be by young people wearing hiking shorts and sunscreen.

Someone will find me before then, of this I’m sure. But even though it should make me feel better, it doesn’t. Nor am I comforted by the fact that the temperature is nowhere near as cold or that I have two sandwiches in the car, because I am not the Swedish man. He was forty-four and uninjured; my arm and collarbone are broken, I’ve lost a lot of blood, and I’m ninety-one years old. I’m afraid that any movement at all will cause me to pass out, and frankly, my body has been in hibernation mode for the past ten years. If my bodily processes slow any further, I’ll be permanently horizontal.

If there is a silver lining in any of this, it’s that I’m not hungry yet. This is common for people my age. I haven’t had much of an appetite in recent years, and I struggle to consume a cup of coffee and single piece of toast in the morning. But I am thirsty. My throat feels as though it has been clawed with nails, but I don’t know what to do.

Though there is a bottle of water in the car, I am afraid of the torture I will feel if I try to find it.

And I am cold, so cold. I have not endured this kind of shivering since my stay in the hospital a lifetime ago. After my surgeries, after the fever broke and I thought my body was beginning to heal, a fierce headache set in and the glands in my throat began to swell. The fever came back, and I felt a throbbing soreness in the place where no man wants to feel it. At first, the doctors were hopeful that the second fever was related to the first. But it wasn’t. The man next to me had the same set of symptoms, and within days, three more in our ward became ill. It was mumps, a childhood disease, but in adults it’s far more serious. Of all the men, I was hardest hit. I was the weakest and the virus raged through my body for almost three weeks. By the time it ran its course, I weighed only 115 pounds and I was so weak that I couldn’t stand without help.

It was another month before I was finally released from the hospital, but I was not cleared to fly. My weight was still too low, and I had no crew to speak of. Bud Ramsey, I learned, had been shot down over Germany, and there were no survivors. Initially, the army air corps wasn’t sure what to do with me, but they eventually decided to send me back to Santa Ana. I became a trainer for new recruits, working with them until the war finally came to an end. I received my discharge in January 1946, and after taking a train to Chicago to pay my respects to Joe Torrey’s family, I returned to North Carolina.

Like veterans everywhere, I wanted to put the war behind me. But I couldn’t. I was angry and bitter, and I hated what I had become. Aside from the night over Schweinfurt, I had few combat memories, yet the war stayed with me. For the rest of my life, I carried wounds that no man could see but were impossible to leave behind. Joe Torrey and Bud Ramsey were the best kind of men, yet they had died while I had survived, and the guilt never quite left me. The flak that tore through my body made it a struggle to walk on cold winter mornings, and my stomach has never been the same. I can’t drink milk or eat spicy food, and I was never able to regain all the weight I lost. I have not been in an airplane since 1945, and I found it impossible to sit through movies that dealt with war. I do not like hospitals. For me, after all, the war—and my time in the hospital—had changed everything.

+++

“You are crying,” Ruth says to me.

In another place, at another time, I would wipe the tears from my face with the back of my hand. But here and now, the task seems impossible.

“I didn’t realize it,” I say.

“You often cried in your sleep,” Ruth says to me. “When we were first married. I would hear you at night and the sound would break my heart. I would rub your back and hush you and sometimes you would roll over and become silent. But other times, it would continue through the night, and in the mornings, you would tell me that you could not remember the reason.”

“Sometimes I didn’t.”

She stares at me. “But sometimes you did,” she finishes.

I squint at her, thinking her form is almost like liquid, as if I’m staring at her through shimmering heat waves that rise from the asphalt in summer. She wears a navy dress and a white hair band, and her voice sounds older. It takes a moment, but I realize she is twenty-three, her age when I returned from the war.

“I was thinking about Joe Torrey,” I said.

“Your friend”—she nods—“the one who ate five hot dogs in San Francisco. The one who bought you your first beer.”

I never told her about the cigarettes, for I know she would have disapproved. Ruth always hated their smell. It is a lie of omission, but I long ago convinced myself that it was the right thing to do. “Yes,” I say.

The morning light surrounds Ruth in a halo. “I wish I could have met him,” she says.

“You would have liked him.”

Ruth clears her throat, considering this, before turning away. She faces the snow-caked window, her thoughts her own. This car, I think, has become my tomb.

“You were also thinking about the hospital,” she murmurs.

When I nod, she emits a weary sigh.

“Did you not hear what I told you?” she says, turning to me again. “That it did not matter to me? I would not lie to you about this.”

“Not on purpose,” I answer. “But I think that maybe, you sometimes lied to yourself.”

She is surprised by my words, if only because I have never spoken so directly on this matter. But I know I am right.

“This is why you stopped writing me,” she observes. “After you had been sent back to California, your letters became less frequent until they finally stopped coming at all. I did not hear from you for six months.”

“I stopped writing because I remembered what you’d told me.”

“Because you wanted to end it between us.” There is an undercurrent of anger in her voice, and I can’t meet her eyes.

“I wanted you to be happy.”

“I was not happy,” she snaps. “I was confused and heartbroken and I did not understand what had happened. And I prayed for you every day, hoping you would let me help you. But instead, I would go to the mailbox and find it empty, no matter how many letters I sent.”

“I’m sorry. It was wrong of me to do that.”

“Did you even read my letters?”

“Every one. I read them over and over, and more than once, I tried to write so you could know what happened. But I could never find the right words.”

She shakes her head. “You did not even tell me when you were to arrive home. It was your mother who told me, and I thought about meeting you at the station, like you used to do when I came home.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I wanted to see if you would come to me. But days passed and then a week, and when I did not see you at the synagogue, I understood that you were trying to avoid me. So I finally marched over to your shop and told you that I needed to speak to you. And do you remember what you said to me?”

Of all the things I’ve said in my life, these are the words I regret the most. But Ruth is waiting, her tense expression fixed on my face. There is a fierce challenge in the way she waits.

“I told you that the engagement was off, and that it was over between us.”

She arches an eyebrow. “Yes,” she says, “that is what you told me.”

“I couldn’t talk to you then. I was . . .”

When I trail off, she finishes for me. “Angry.” She nods. “I could see it in your eyes, but even then, I knew you were still in love with me.”

“Yes,” I admit. “I was.”

“But your words were still hurtful,” she says. “I went home and cried like I had not since I was a child. And my mother finally came in and held me and neither of us knew what to do. I had lost so much already. I could not bear to lose you, too.”

By this, she means her family, the family that had stayed behind in Vienna. At the time, I didn’t realize how selfish my actions were or how Ruth might have perceived them. This memory, too, has stayed with me, and in the car, I feel an age-old shame.

Ruth, my dream, knows what I am feeling. When she speaks, it is with a new tenderness. “But if it was really over, I wanted to understand the reason, so the next day, I went to the drugstore across from your shop and ordered a chocolate soda. I sat next to the window and watched you as you worked. I know you saw me, but you did not come over. So I went back the next day and the day after that, and only then did you finally cross the street to see me.”

“My mother made me go,” I admit. “She told me that you deserved an explanation.”

“That is what you have always said. But I think you also wanted to come, because you missed me. And because you knew that only I could help you heal.”

I close my eyes at her words. She is right, of course, right about all of it. Ruth always did know me better than I knew myself.

“I took a seat across from you,” I say. “And then, a moment later, a chocolate soda arrived for me.”

“You were so skinny. I thought you needed my help to get fat again. Like you were when we met.”

“I was never fat,” I protest. “I barely made weight when I joined the army.”

“Yes, but when you got back, you were all bones. Your suit hung from your frame like it was two sizes too big. I thought you would blow away as you crossed the street, and it made me wonder whether you would ever be your- self again. I was not sure you would ever again be the man I once loved.”

“And yet you still gave me a chance.”

She shrugs. “I had no choice,” she says, her eyes glittering. “By then, David Epstein was married.”

I laugh despite myself, and my body spasms, neurons blazing, nausea coming at me. I breathe through gritted teeth and gradually feel the wave begin to recede. Ruth waits for my breathing to steady before going on. “I admit that I was frightened about this. I wanted things between us to be the way they had been before, so I simply pretended that nothing had changed. I chattered about college and my friends and how much I had studied, and that my parents had surprised me by showing up at my graduation. I talked about my work as a substitute teacher at a school around the corner from the synagogue, but also mentioned that I was interviewing for a full-time position that fall at a rural elementary school on the outskirts of town. I told you also that my father was meeting with the dean of the Art History Department at Duke for the third time, and that my parents might have to move to Durham. And then I wondered aloud whether I would have to give up my new job and move to Durham, too.”

“And I suddenly knew I didn’t want you to go.”

“That is why I said it.” She smiles. “I wanted to see your expression, and for just an instant, the old Ira was back. And then I was no longer frightened that you were gone forever.”

“But you didn’t ask me to walk you home.”

“You were not ready. There was still too much anger inside you. That is why I suggested that we meet once a week for chocolate sodas, just like we used to. You needed time, and I was willing to wait.”

“For a while. Not forever.”

“No, not forever. By the end of February, I had begun to wonder whether you would ever kiss me again.”

“I wanted to,” I say. “Every time I was with you, I wanted to kiss you.”

“I knew that, too, and that was why it was so confusing to me. I could not understand what was wrong. I could not understand what was holding you back, why you did not trust me. You should have known that I would love you no matter what.”

“I did know,” I say. “And that was why I couldn’t tell you.”

+++

I did eventually tell her, of course, on a cold evening in early March. I had called her at home, asking her to meet me in the park, where we had strolled together a hundred times. At the time, I wasn’t planning to tell her. Instead, I convinced myself that I simply needed a friend to talk to, as the atmosphere at home had become oppressive.

My father had done well financially during the war, and as soon as it was over, he went back into business as a haberdasher. Gone were the sewing machines; in their place were racks of suits, and to someone walking past the shop, it probably looked the same as it did before the war. But inside, it was different. My father was different. Instead of greeting customers at the door as he used to, he would spend his afternoons in the back room, listening to the news on the radio, trying to understand the madness that had caused the deaths of so many innocent people. It was all he wanted to talk about; the Holocaust became the subject of every mealtime conversation and every spare moment. By contrast, the more he talked, the more my mother concentrated on her sewing, because she couldn’t bear to think about it. For my father, after all, it was an abstract horror; for my mother—who, like Ruth, had lost friends and family—it was deeply personal. And in their divergent reactions to these shattering events, my parents gradually set in motion the largely separate lives they would lead from that point on.

As their son, I tried not to take sides. With my father I would listen and with my mother I would say nothing, but when the three of us were together, it sometimes struck me that we’d forgotten what it meant to be a family. Nor did it help that my father now accompanied my mother and me to synagogue; my intimate talks with my mother became a thing of the past. When my father informed me that he was bringing me in as a partner in the business— meaning the three of us would be together all the time—I despaired, sure that there would be no escaping the gloom that had infiltrated our lives.

“You are thinking about your parents,” Ruth says to me.

“You were always kind to them,” I say.

“I loved your mother very much,” Ruth says. “Despite the difference in our ages, she was the first real friend I made in this country.”

“And my father?”

“I loved him, too. How could I not? He was family.”

I smile, recalling that in later years she was always more patient with him than I was.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“You can ask me anything.”

“Why did you wait for me? Even after I stopped writing? I know you say that you loved me, but . . .”

“We are back to this? You wonder why I loved you?”

“You could have had anyone.”

She leans closer to me, her voice soft. “This has always been your problem, Ira,” she says. “You do not see in yourself what others see in you. You think you are not handsome enough, but you were very handsome when you were young. You think you are not interesting or smart enough, but you are these things, too, and that you are not aware of your best qualities is part of your charm. You always see so much in others—as you did in me. You made me feel special.”

“But you are special,” I insist.

She raises her hands in delight. “This is what I am talking about,” she says, laughing. “You are a man of deep feelings, who has always cared about others, and I am not alone in recognizing that. Your friend Joe Torrey sensed it. I am sure that is why he spent his free time with you. And my mother sensed it as well, which was why she held me when I thought I had lost you. Because we both knew that men like you are rare.”

“I’m glad you came that night,” I say. “I needed you.”

“And you also knew, as soon as we fell into step at the park, that you were finally ready to tell me the truth. All of it.”

I nod. In one of my final letters, I’d briefly told her about the bombing run over Schweinfurt and Joe Torrey. I mentioned the wounds I’d received and the infection that had followed, but I hadn’t told her everything. On that night, however, I started at the beginning. I related every detail and I held nothing back. On the bench, she listened to my outpouring of words without speaking.

Afterward, she slipped her arms around me and I leaned into her. The emotions washed over me in waves, her whispered words of comfort unleashing memories I had tried too long to bury.

I don’t know how long it took for the storm inside me to subside, but by that point, I was exhausted. Yet there was one thing remaining that I had not revealed, something that not even my parents knew.

In the car, Ruth is silent. I know she is replaying what I said to her that night.

“I told you that I got the mumps while I was in the hospital—the worst case the doctor had ever seen. And I told you what the doctor said to me.”

Ruth remains quiet, but her eyes start to glisten.

“He said that mumps can cause sterility,” I say. “That’s why I tried to end it between us. Because I knew that if you ever married me, there was a good chance that we would never have children.”

 

Chapter 9

Sophia

“And then what?” Marcia asked. She was standing in front of the mirror and applying a second coat of mascara while Sophia recounted her day at the ranch. “Don’t tell me you slept with him.” As she said it, she examined Sophia’s reflection in the mirror.

“Of course not!” Sophia said. She crossed one leg beneath the other on the bed. “It wasn’t like that. We just kissed and then we talked some more, and then when I left, he kissed me again at the car. It was . . . sweet.”

“Oh,” Marcia said, stopping in her attempt to dab on some mascara.

“Don’t hide your disappointment. Really.”

“What?” she announced. “The way you looked just now makes me think you wanted to.”

“I barely know him!”

“That’s not true. You were with him, what? More than an hour last night, and six or seven hours today? That’s a lot of time together. That’s a lot of talking. Horseback riding, a couple of beers . . . if it was me, I might have grabbed his hand and just dragged him inside.”

“Marcia!”

“I’m just saying. He was seriously hot. You noticed that, right?”

Sophia really, truly, didn’t want the whole “hot” thing to start up again. “He’s a nice guy,” she said, trying to head it off.

“Even better,” Marcia said, giving her a wink. She applied a glossy coat of lipstick before reaching for a hair clip. “But okay, I get it. You’re different than me. And I respect that—I really do. I’m just glad you’re done with Brian.”

“I’ve been done with him since I broke up with him.”

“I could tell,” she said, gathering her rich brown hair into a sleek ponytail and securing it with a glittery hair clip. “You know I talked to him, right?”

“When?”

“At the rodeo, when you were off with Mr. Hottie.”

Sophia frowned. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“What was there to tell? I was just trying to distract him. The Duke guys hated him, by the way.” She adjusted a few strands that she had artfully loosened from the ponytail, then met Sophia’s gaze in the mirror. “You have to admit, I’m the best roommate ever, right? Convincing you to go out with us? If it wasn’t for me, you’d still be moping around our room all day. All of which makes me wonder when I’m going to get the chance to meet your new stud.”

“We didn’t talk about getting together again.”

Marcia’s face was incredulous. “How could you not talk about it?”

Because we’re different, Sophia thought. And because . . . she didn’t really know why, other than that the dizzy way the kiss made her feel obliterated all practical thought.

“All I know is that he’s going to be out of town next weekend. He’s going to be riding in Knoxville.”

“So call him. Invite him over to the house before he leaves.”

Sophia shook her head. “I’m not going to call him.”

“And if he doesn’t call you?”

“He said he would.”

“A lot of times, guys just say that and you never hear from them again.”

“He’s not like that,” she said, and as if proving her point, her cell phone began to ring. Recognizing Luke’s phone number, she grabbed it and jumped up from the bed.

“Don’t tell me that’s him, already.”

“He said he would call to make sure I got home safely.”

Sophia was already bounding to the door, barely noticing her roommate’s surprise or the words she muttered to herself as Sophia slipped into the hallway. “I’ve really, really got to meet this guy.”

+++

On Thursday evening, an hour after the sun had gone down, Sophia was finishing up her hair when Marcia turned toward her. She’d been standing at the window and watching for Luke’s truck, making Sophia feel even more nervous than she already was. She’d vetoed three of Sophia’s outfits, had lent her a pair of gold, dangly earrings and a necklace that matched, and as she skipped toward Sophia, she didn’t bother to hide her excitement.

“He’s here. I’m going downstairs to meet him at the door.”

Sophia let out a long breath. “Okay, I’m ready. Let’s go.”

“No, you stay in the room for a few minutes. You don’t want him to think you were watching for him.”

“I wasn’t watching for him,” Sophia said. “You were.”

“You know what I mean. You need to make an entrance. He needs to see you coming down the stairs. The last thing you want is for him to think you’re desperate.”

“Why are you making this so complicated?” Sophia protested.

“Trust me,” Marcia said. “I know what I’m doing. Come down in three minutes. Count to a hundred or something. I’ve got to go.”

She fled, leaving Sophia alone with her nerves, her stomach feeling topsy-turvy. Which was strange, since they’d talked on the phone for an hour or more the last three nights, picking up each conversation exactly where they had left off. He would usually call around dusk, and she’d talk to him from the porch, trying to imagine how he looked at that moment and replaying their day together endlessly.

Spending time with him at the ranch was one thing. That was easy. But seeing Luke here? At the sorority house? He might as well be visiting Mars. In the three years she’d lived here, the only guys who’d ever come to the house—aside from brothers or fathers or boyfriends from back home—were either frat boys, or recently graduated frat boys, or frat boys from other colleges.

She’d gently tried to warn him but wasn’t sure quite how to tell him that the girls in the house would probably regard him as an exotic specimen, a subject of endless chatter as soon as he left. She’d suggested meeting him off campus, but he’d said he’d never been to Wake and wanted to walk around. She fought the urge to race downstairs and hurry him out the door as quickly as possible.

Remembering Marcia’s insistent advice, Sophia took a deep breath and gave herself the once-over in the mirror. Jeans, blouse, pumps: pretty much what she’d worn the last time they’d been together, but upgraded. She turned first one way and then the other, thinking, That’s all I can do. Then she gave a coy smile and admitted, But not bad at all. She checked her watch and let another minute pass before exiting the room. During the week, men were allowed entrance only to the foyer and the parlor. The parlor, which boasted couches and a gigantic flat-screen TV, was where a lot of her sisters liked to hang out. As she approached the steps at the end of the hall, she could hear Marcia laughing in an otherwise silent room. She walked a bit faster, praying that she and Luke could escape without being noticed.

She spotted him right away, standing in the center of the room next to Marcia, hat in hand. As always, he was wearing boots and jeans, his outfit completed by a belt with a shiny, oversize silver buckle. Sophia’s heart sank as she realized that he and Marcia weren’t alone in the parlor. In fact, it was more crowded than usual, but eerily silent. Three frat boys, dressed in cargo shorts, Polos, and Top-Siders, gaped at Luke in the same way Mary-Kate did from the opposite couch. Likewise Jenny, Drew, and Brittany. Four or five more girls huddled silently in the far corner, all of them trying their best to figure out the unexpected stranger in their presence.

But as far as she could tell, their scrutiny had no effect on him. He seemed at ease, listening as Marcia chattered on, her hands gesturing flamboyantly. As she reached the entrance to the parlor, he glanced up and saw her. Breaking into a grin, his dimples flashing, he conveyed the impression that Marcia had vanished and that he and Sophia were the only two people in the room.

Sophia took a deep breath and stepped into the parlor, feeling everyone’s attention swing to her. On cue, Jenny leaned toward Drew and Brittany and whispered something. Though they’d naturally heard about her breakup with Brian, it was clear that none of them had heard about Luke, and she wondered how quickly Brian would find out that a cowboy had come to pick her up. On Greek Row, word would get around fast. She could already imagine any number of them dialing their cell phones, even before she and Luke reached the truck.

Which meant that Brian would find out. It wouldn’t take much for him to guess that it was the same cowboy who’d humiliated him the weekend before. He wasn’t going to be happy about it, nor would his frat brothers. And depending on how much they’d been drinking—on Thursdays, everyone started early—they just might get it into their heads to exact revenge. Suddenly queasy, she wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before.

“Hey there,” she said, doing her best to disguise her anxiety.

Luke’s smile deepened. “You look fantastic.”

“Thank you,” Sophia murmured.

“I like him,” Marcia chimed in.

Luke glanced at her, startled, before turning back to Sophia. “Obviously, I had a chance to meet your roommate.”

“I was trying to find out if he had any single friends,” Marcia admitted.

“And?”

“He said he’d see what he could do.”

Sophia motioned with her head. “You ready to go?” she asked.

Marcia was already shaking her head. “No, not yet. He just got here.”

Sophia glared at Marcia, hoping she’d pick up on her cues. “We really can’t stay.”

“Come on,” Marcia cajoled. “Let’s get a drink first. Thursday night, remember? I want to hear about riding bulls.”

Off to the side, Mary-Kate’s expression was pinched as she put the pieces together. No doubt Brian had returned to the table last Saturday, regaling everyone with stories about how he’d been jumped by a gang of cowboys. Brian and Mary-Kate had always been friends, and when Mary- Kate grabbed her phone and rose from the couch and left the parlor, Sophia assumed the worst and didn’t hesitate.

“We can’t stay. We have reservations,” she said firmly.

“What?” Marcia blinked. “You didn’t tell me that. Where?”

Sophia blanked, unable to think of anything. She could feel Luke watching her before he cleared his throat. “Fabian’s,” he suddenly announced.

Marcia swiveled her attention from one to the other. “I’m sure they won’t mind if you’re a few minutes late.”

“Unfortunately, we’re already running late,” Luke said. Then, to Sophia: “Do you have everything?”

Sophia felt a surge of relief and adjusted the purse strap on her shoulder. “I’m ready,” she agreed.

Luke took her elbow gently as he led her toward the door.

“Nice meeting you, Marcia.”

“You too,” she said, bewildered.

Opening the door, he stopped to put his hat back on. He wore an amused expression as he adjusted it, as if to acknowledge their confusion about the whole thing. With a grin, he stepped out with Sophia on his arm.

As the door swung shut behind them, Sophia heard the burst of excited chatter. If Luke heard it, he appeared to pay it no attention. Instead, he led her to the truck and opened the door, then walked around the front to his side. As he did, she noticed a row of eager faces—including Marcia’s—at the parlor windows. She was debating whether to acknowledge them with a wave or simply ignore them when Luke crawled in, closing the door with a thud.

“I’m guessing you’ve made them curious,” he said.

She shook her head. “It’s not me they’re wondering about.”

“Oh, I get it,” he said. “It’s because I’m skinny, right?”

She laughed, and with that, she realized that she no longer cared about what the others were thinking or doing or saying about them. “Thanks for covering for me in there.”

“What’s going on?”

She told him about her concerns about Brian and her suspicions about Mary-Kate.

“I wondered about that,” he said. “You mentioned that he’d been watching you. Part of me was expecting him to burst through the door any minute.”

“And yet you came anyway?”

“I had to.” He shrugged. “You invited me.”

She leaned her head back against the headrest, liking the way he sounded. “I’m sorry that I’m not going to be able to show you the campus tonight.”

“No big deal.”

“We can do it another time,” she promised. “When he doesn’t know you’re here, I mean. I’ll show you all the cool places.”

“It’s a date,” he said.

Up close, his eyes were a clear, unalloyed blue, striking in their purity. She plucked at an imaginary piece of lint on her jeans. “What would you like to do?”

He thought about it. “Are you hungry?”

“A little,” she admitted.

“Do you want to go to Fabian’s? I’m not sure we can get in, since we don’t really have a reservation. But we can try.”

She thought about it, then shook her head. “No, not tonight. I want to go someplace a little off the beaten track. How about sushi?”

He didn’t respond right away. “Okay,” he offered.

She regarded him. “Have you ever had sushi before?”

“I might live on a ranch, but I’ve left it every now and then.”

And? she thought. “You didn’t answer my question.”

He fiddled with the keys before slipping the right one in the ignition. “No,” he admitted, “I’ve never had sushi.”

All she could do was laugh.

+++

Following Sophia’s directions, they drove to Sakura Japanese Restaurant. Inside, most of the tables were occupied, as was the sushi bar. While they waited for the hostess, Sophia looked around, praying she wouldn’t bump into anyone she knew. It wasn’t the kind of place regularly frequented by students—burgers and pizza were the favored foods of college students everywhere—but Sakura wasn’t totally unknown, either. She’d come here occasionally with Marcia, and even though she didn’t recognize anyone, she nonetheless requested a seat on the outdoor patio.

Heat lamps glowed in the corners of the patio, casting a blanket of warmth that took the edge off the evening chill. Only one other table was occupied by a couple finishing their meal, and it was blissfully quiet. The view wasn’t much, but the soft yellow glow from the Japanese lantern overhead gave the place a romantic feel.

After they took their seats, Sophia leaned toward Luke. “What did you think of Marcia?”

“Your roommate? She seemed nice enough. Kind of touchy, though.”

She tilted her head. “You mean like, irritable?”

“No, I mean she kept touching my arm when she talked.”

Sophia waved it off. “That’s just the way she is. She’s like that with every guy. The world’s biggest flirt.”

“Do you know what the first thing she said to me was? Even before I entered the house?”

“I’m afraid to ask.”

“She said, ‘I hear you kissed my best friend.’ ”

No surprise there, Sophia thought. “That’s Marcia, all right. She pretty much says whatever she’s thinking. No filter.”

“But you like her.”

“Yeah,” Sophia conceded. “I do. She’s kind of taken me under her wing when I’ve needed it. She thinks I’m a little . . . naive.”

“Is she right?”

“In some ways,” Sophia admitted.

She reached for the chopsticks and broke them apart. “Before I came to Wake, I’d never even had a boyfriend before. In high school, I was kind of a nerd, and with work, I didn’t have a lot of time to go to parties or anything like that. I mean, I wasn’t a hermit and I knew what people did on the weekends. I knew there were drugs at school and sex and all that, but it was mainly rumors or whispers that I’d overhear. It’s not like I ever saw any of it happening. During my first semester on campus, I was pretty shocked at how open everything was. I’d hear girls in the dorm talking about hooking up with guys they just met, and I wasn’t even totally sure what that meant. Half the time, I’m still not sure, because it seems like different people mean different things. To some, it’s just making out, but to others, it means sleeping with someone, and to others something in between, if you know what I mean. I spent a big chunk of my freshman year trying to unscramble the code.”

He smiled as she went on.

“And then, Greek life in general isn’t quite what I expected. There are parties all the time, and to a lot of people, that means booze and drugs or whatever. And I’ll admit that I drank too much a couple of times, and I ended up sick and passing out in the bathroom at the house. I’m not proud of that, but there are people on campus who do that every weekend, all weekend long. And I’m not saying it’s because of Greek life at all. It’s in the dorms, in off-campus apartments, everywhere. But I’m just not that into it, and to a lot of people—Marcia included—that makes me naive. Added to that, I’m not part of the whole ‘hookup’ culture, and a lot of people think I’m some kind of prude. Even Marcia thinks that, a little. She’s never understood why anyone would want a real boyfriend in college. She always tells me that the last thing she wants is anything serious.”

He reached for his chopsticks, following her lead. “I can think of a few guys who would be very interested in a girl like that.”

“No, don’t . . . because even though she says that, I’m not sure it’s true. I think she wants something more real, but she doesn’t know how to find a guy who feels the same way. In college, there aren’t that many guys like that, and why would there be? When girls just give it away for nothing? I mean, I can understand why you’d sleep with someone if you love them, but if you barely know them? What’s the point? It just cheapens it.”

She fell silent, realizing that he was the first person she’d ever admitted all this to. Which was strange. Wasn’t it?

Luke toyed with his chopsticks, picking at the rough edges where he had broken them apart, taking his time to consider it. Then, leaning into the lamplight, he said, “Sounds kind of mature, if you ask me.”

She raised the menu, a bit embarrassed by that. “Just so you know, you don’t have to get sushi if you don’t want that. They have chicken and beef teriyaki, too.”

Luke studied his own menu. “What are you going to have?”

“Sushi,” she answered.

“Where did you learn to like sushi?”

“In high school,” she said. “One of my best friends was Japanese, and she kept telling me there was this great place in Edgewater where she went when she was homesick for good Japanese food. You can only eat at the deli so many times before you start to crave something new, so I went with her one day, and I ended up loving it. So sometimes, when we were studying, we’d get in her car and drive to Edgewater—just this little nondescript place. But we became regulars. And since then, I get these cravings for it every now and then. Like tonight.”

“I get it,” he agreed. “In high school, when I was competing in 4-H, I’d go to the state fair and I always had to have a fried Twinkie.”

She stared at him. “You’re comparing sushi to fried Twinkies?”

“Have you ever had a fried Twinkie?”

“It sounds disgusting.”

“Yeah, well, until you try one, you’re not allowed to comment. They’re good. Eat too many and you’ll probably have a heart attack, but every now and then, there’s nothing like it. Way better than fried Oreos.”

“Fried Oreos?”

“If you’re trying to find a suggestion for your family deli, like I said, I’d go with the fried Twinkie.”

At first, she couldn’t formulate any response at all. Then, with a serious tone: “I don’t think anyone in the Northeast would eat such a thing.”

“You’d be surprised,” he said. “It could be the next big thing up there—people lining up all day long.”

With a tiny shake of her head, she turned to the menu again. “So 4-H, huh?”

“I started when I was a kid. Pigs.”

“What is it, exactly? I mean, I’ve heard about it, but I don’t know what it is.”

“It’s supposed to be about citizenship and responsibility and all that stuff. But when it comes to competing, it’s more about learning how to choose a good pig when it’s little. You check out its parents if you can or pictures or whatever, then you try to pick the one that you think has a chance to be a good show pig. You want a firm pig with a lot of muscle and not too much fat and no blemishes. And then, basically, you raise it for about a year. You feed it and care for it; in a way, they almost become like pets.”

“Let me guess. You named all of them Pig.”

“Actually, no. My first one was named Edith, the second one Fred, the third one was Maggie. I can go down the list if you’d like.”

“How many were there? Over the years?”

He drummed his fingers on the table. “Nine, I think. I started when I was in the third grade and I did it until junior year in high school.”

“And then, when they’re grown, where do you compete?”

“At the state fair. The judges look them over and then you find out if you won.”

“And if you win?”

“You get a ribbon. But win or lose, you still end up selling the pig,” he said.

“What happens to the pig?”

“The same thing that usually happens to pigs,” he answered. “They’re sent to the slaughterhouse.”

She blinked. “You mean you raise it from when it’s little, you name it, you care for it for a year, and then you sell it so it can be killed?”

He looked at her, his expression curious. “What else would you do with a pig?”

She was dumbfounded, unable to respond. Finally, she shook her head. “I just want you to know that I have never, ever met anyone like you before.”

“I think,” he countered, “that I could say the same thing about you.”

 

From The Longest Ride by Nicholas Sparks. Copyright © 2013 by Willow Holdings, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Grand Central Publishing, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc., New York, NY, U.S.A. All rights reserved.