“It’s not half as hot as helmets, boots, and body armor, trust me.”

She tilted her head up at me. “I like hearing you talk about body armor. Not a lot of guys in my classes talk like you. I find it interesting.”

“You teasing me?”

“Just noting for the record.” She leaned gracefully against the tree. “I think Tim’s finishing up.”

I followed her gaze, noticing nothing different. “How can you tell?”

“See how he brought his hands together? That means he’s getting ready to say good-bye. In just a second, he’s going to put his hand out, he’ll smile and nod, and then he’ll be on his way.”

I watched Tim do exactly as she predicted and amble toward us. I noted her amused expression. She shrugged. “When you live in a small town like mine, there’s not much to do other than watch people. You begin to see patterns after a while.”

There’d probably been too much Tim-watching in my humble opinion, but I wasn’t about to admit it.

“Hey there…” Tim raised a hand. “You two ready to head back?”

“We’ve been waiting for you,” she pointed out.

“Sorry,” he said. “We just got to talking.”

“You just get to talking with anyone and everyone.”

“I know,” he said. “I’m working on being more standoffish.”

She laughed, and while their familiar banter put me momentarily outside their circle of intimacy, all was forgotten when Savannah looped her arm through mine on our way back toward the car.

Everyone was up by the time we got back, and most were already in their bathing suits and working on their tans. Some were lounging on the upper deck; most were clustered together on the beach out back. Music blasted from a stereo inside the house, coolers of beer stood refilled and ready, and more than a few were drinking: the age-old cure for the hangover headache. I passed no judgment; a beer sounded good, actually, but given that I’d just been to church, I figured I should pass.

I changed my clothes, folding Tim’s the way I’d learned in the army, then returned to the kitchen. Tim had made a plate of sandwiches.

“Help yourself,” he said, gesturing. “We have tons of food. I should know—I’m the one who spent three hours shopping yesterday.” He rinsed his hands and dried them on a towel. “All right. Now it’s my turn to change. Savannah will be out in a minute.”

He left the kitchen. Alone, I looked around. The house was decorated in that traditional beachy way: lots of bright-colored wicker furniture, lamps made with seashells, small statues of lighthouses above the mantel, pastel paintings of the coast.

Lucy’s parents had owned a place like this. Not here, but on Bald Head Island. They never rented it out, preferring to spend their summers there. Of course, the old man still had to work in Winston-Salem, and he and the wife would head back for a couple of days a week, leaving poor Lucy all alone. Except for me, of course. Had they known what was happening on those days, they probably wouldn’t have left us alone.

“Hey there,” Savannah said. She’d donned her bikini again, though she was wearing shorts over the bottoms. “I see you’re back to normal.”

“How can you tell?”

“Your eyes aren’t bulging because your collar’s too tight.”

I smiled. “Tim made some sandwiches.”

“Great. I’m starved,” she said, moving around the kitchen. “Did you grab one?”

“Not yet,” I said.

“Well, dig in. I hate to eat alone.”

We stood in the kitchen as we ate. The girls lying on the deck hadn’t realized we were there, and I could hear one of them talking about what she did with one of the guys last night, and none of it sounded as though she were in town on a goodwill mission for the poor. Savannah wrinkled her nose as if to say, Way too much information, then turned to the fridge. “I need a drink. Do you want something?”

“Water’s fine.”

She bent over to grab a couple of bottles. I tried not to stare but did so anyway and, frankly, enjoyed it. I wondered whether she knew I was staring and assumed she did, for when she stood up and turned around, she had that amused look again. She set the bottles on the counter. “After this, you want to go surfing again?”

How could I resist?

We spent the afternoon in the water. As much as I enjoyed the up-close-Savannah-lying-on-the-board view I was treated to, I enjoyed the sight of her surfing even more. To make things even better, she asked to watch me while she warmed up on the beach, and I was treated to my own private viewing while enjoying the waves.

By midafternoon we were lying on towels near, but not too near, the rest of the group behind the house. A few curious glances drifted in our direction, but for the most part, no one seemed to care that I was there, except for Randy and Susan. Susan frowned pointedly at Savannah; Randy, meanwhile, was content to hang out with Brad and Susan as the third wheel, licking his wounds. Tim was nowhere to be seen.

Savannah was lying on her stomach, a tempting sight. I was on my back beside her, trying to doze in the lazy heat but too distracted by her presence to fully relax.

“Hey,” she murmured. “Tell me about your tattoos.”

I rolled my head in the sand. “What about them?”

“I don’t know. Why you got them, what they mean.”

I propped myself on one elbow. I pointed to my left arm, which had an eagle and banner. “Okay, this is the infantry insignia, and this”—I pointed to the words and letters—“is how we’re identified: company, battalion, regiment. Everyone in my squad has one. We got it just after basic training at Fort Benning in Georgia when we were celebrating.”

“Why does it say ‘Jump-start’ underneath it?”

“That’s my nickname. I got it during basic training, courtesy of our beloved drill sergeant. I wasn’t putting my gun together fast enough, and he basically said that he was going to jump-start a certain body part if I didn’t get my act in gear. The nickname stuck.”

“He sounds pleasant,” she joked.

“Oh yeah. We called him Lucifer behind his back.”

She smiled. “What’s the barbed wire above it for?”

“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head. “I had that one done before I joined.”

“And the other arm?”

A Chinese character. I didn’t want to go into it, so I shook my head. “It’s from back in my ‘I’m lost and don’t give a damn’ stage. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Isn’t it a Chinese character?”

“Yes.”

“Then what does it mean? It’s got to mean something. Like bravery or honor or something?”

“It’s a profanity.”

“Oh,” she said with a blink.

“Like I said, it doesn’t mean anything to me now.”

“Except that maybe you shouldn’t flash it if you ever go to China.”

I laughed. “Yeah, except that,” I agreed.

She was quiet for a moment. “You were a rebel, huh?”

I nodded. “A long time ago. Well, not really that long ago. But it seems like it.”

“That’s what you meant when you said the army was something you needed at the time?”

“It’s been good for me.”

She thought about it. “Tell me—would you have jumped for my bag back then?”

“No. I probably would have laughed at what happened.”

She evaluated my answer, as if wondering whether to believe me. Finally, she drew a long breath. “I’m glad you joined, then. I really needed that bag.”

“Good.”

“What else?”

“What else what?”

“What else can you tell me about yourself?”

“I don’t know. What do you want to know?”

“Tell me something no one else knows about you.”

I considered the question. “I can tell you how many ten-dollar Indians with a rolled edge were minted in 1907.”

“How many?”

“Forty-two. They were never intended for the public. Some men at the mint made them for themselves and some friends.”

“You like coins?”

“I’m not sure. It’s a long story.”

“We’ve got time.”

I hesitated while Savannah reached for her bag. “Hold on,” she said, rummaging through it. She pulled out a tube of Coppertone. “You can tell me after you put some lotion on my back. I feel like I’m getting burned.”

“Oh, I can, huh?”

She winked. “It’s part of the deal.”

I applied the lotion to her back and shoulders and probably went a bit overboard, but I convinced myself that she was turning pink and that having a sunburn of any sort would make her work the next day miserable. After that, I spent the next few minutes telling her about my grandfather and dad, about the coin shows and good old Eliasberg. What I didn’t do was specifically answer her question, for the simple reason that I wasn’t quite sure what the answer was. When I finished she turned to me.

“And your father still collects coins?”

“All the time. At least, I think so. We don’t talk about coins anymore.”

“Why not?”

I told her that story, too. Don’t ask me why. I knew I should have been putting my best foot forward and tossing out crap to impress her, but with Savannah that wasn’t possible. For whatever reason, she made me want to tell the truth, even though I barely knew her. When I finished she was wearing a curious expression.

“Yeah, I was a jerk,” I offered, knowing there were other, probably more accurate words to describe me back then, all of which were profane enough to offend her.

“It sounds like it,” she said, “but that’s not what I was thinking. I was trying to imagine you back then, because you seem nothing like that person now.”

What could I say that wouldn’t sound bogus, even if it was true? Unsure, I opted for Dad’s approach and said nothing.

“What’s your dad like?”

I gave her a quick recap. As I spoke, she scooped sand and let it trail through her fingers, as if concentrating on my choice of words. In the end, surprising myself again, I admitted that we were almost strangers.

“You are,” she said, using that nonjudgmental, matter-of-fact tone. “You’ve been gone for a couple of years, and even you admit that you’ve changed. How could he know you?”

I sat up. The beach was packed; it was the time of day when everyone who planned to come was already here, and no one was quite ready to leave. Randy and Brad were playing Frisbee by the water’s edge, running and shouting. A few others wandered over to join them.

“I know,” I said. “But it’s not just that. We’ve always been strangers. I mean, it’s just so hard to talk to him.”

As soon as I said it, I realized she was the first person I’d ever admitted it to. Strange. But then, most of what I was saying to her sounded strange.

“Most people our age say that about their parents.”

Maybe, I thought. But this was different. It wasn’t a generational difference, it was the fact that for my dad, normal chitchat was all but impossible, unless it dealt with coins. I said nothing more, however, and Savannah smoothed the sand in front of her. When she spoke, her voice was soft. “I’d like to meet him.”

I turned toward her. “Yeah?”

“He sounds interesting. I’ve always loved people who have this… passion for life.”

“It’s a passion for coins, not life,” I corrected her.

“It’s the same thing. Passion is passion. It’s the excitement between the tedious spaces, and it doesn’t matter where it’s directed.” She shuffled her feet in the sand. “Well, most of the time, anyway. I’m not talking vices here.”

“Like you and caffeine.”

She smiled, flashing the small gap between her two front teeth. “Exactly. It can be coins or sports or politics or horses or music or faith… the saddest people I’ve ever met in life are the ones who don’t care deeply about anything at all. Passion and satisfaction go hand in hand, and without them, any happiness is only temporary, because there’s nothing to make it last. I’d love to hear your dad talk about coins, because that’s when you see a person at his best, and I’ve found that someone else’s happiness is usually infectious.”

I was struck by her words. Despite Tim’s opinion that she was naive, she seemed far more mature than most people our age. Then again, considering the way she looked in her bikini, she probably could have recited the phone book and I would have been impressed.

Savannah sat up beside me, and her gaze followed mine. The game of Frisbee was in full swing; as Brad zipped the disk, a couple of others went running for it. They both dove for it simultaneously, splashing in the shallows as their heads collided. The one in red shorts came up empty, swearing and holding his head, his shorts covered in sand. The others laughed, and I found myself smiling and wincing simultaneously.