Page 7 of Challenged By the Next-Door Veteran

"Nobody does that," I say.

"Does what?"

"Moves."

She looks at me. The porch light is behind her. She looks like someone I would follow into a burning building if she asked me politely.

"Well," she says. "Someone should."

I stand up. I don't plan to. I cross the boards and sit at the other end of the swing, because it's neutral territory and because I'm tired of the six feet of cold between us.

The chains groan. The whole seat tips toward the middle, and her thigh lands against mine under the quilt, warm and soft and solid. She holds her breath. I hold mine. The swing steadies with our weight pooled in the center like water in a dish.

"I can move," she says.

"Don't."

It comes out lower than I mean it to. She doesn't. After a while, her shoulder settles against my arm, and neither of us mentions it.

"Can I ask about the arm?" she says. She doesn't look at it. She looks at the street. "You can say no. I'm only asking because I've been trying not to look at it for five hours, and I'm terrible at not looking."

I hold it out in the yellow light. The scar runs from my wrist to my elbow, thick and pale as a rope. The burn on the back of my hand gleams like wax.

"You can look."

"May I touch it?"

Nobody's asked in fourteen months. I nod.

Her fingers are warm and rough at the tips, paint-callused, a little stained. She starts at the wrist and follows the ridge with a touch so light it could be the wind. It's numb in some places. She crosses the numb with no change. Then somewhere near the middle my nerves wake up and send a flat white line of feeling up my whole arm.

I breathe in through my teeth.

She lifts her hand at once. "Too much?"

"No," I say. "Do it again."

She does. Slowly, with her eyes on my skin and her lower lip caught in her teeth. I'm aware of every inch of her pressed against my side. The heat of her. The cardigan's rough wool. Her breath moving against my shoulder.

I'm thirty-six years old. I've been in places where the air itself was a weapon. This is the most dangerous thing I've felt in a long time.

"Bad day," I say when she reaches my elbow.

"I figured," she says. "I'm not asking for the story."

"I know."

She keeps her hand there a second longer than she needs to. Then she curls it back in the quilt. The wind has dropped. Over the roofs of Larkspur Lane the sky is still black, and the stars are very sharp.

"Tomorrow's a big day," she says. "Today, I mean. Founders' Day. My ex is the guest of honor."

She says it lightly, like a woman setting a glass down on a table. Her whole body doesn't match her voice.

"I'll be fine. It's going to be fine."

"Sure," I say.

I don't push. I know that voice better than I know most things. I've been using it on every person who has asked how I'm doing for eleven months.