Life, Liberty, and Pursuit

by Susan Kaye Quinn

“Well, letters are nothing like the real thing,” he said.

  “Amen, brother.” Clayton leaned forward and clinked David’s Coke can. David frowned again. Clayton really needed to stop talking like that about his sister.

  * * *

  Eliza was wondering if there were any limits to Tea’s shopping endurance. She had been shopping all afternoon with Addison, and now they were out for round two. If David hadn’t been waiting on her couch at home, she wouldn’t have minded at all. Tea’s exuberance always swept her up.

  Tea flipped through another rack of fall clothes while Eliza held her selections. She just hoped Tea wouldn’t make her try things on.

  “Deferral, huh?” Tea mused as she pulled out a pair of chocolate brown slacks and held them up to Eliza.

  Eliza nodded. She knew that Addison would have briefed Tea and Clayton on her plans. “Maybe,” she said. “I’m going to call tomorrow, to see how hard it is to get one.”

  “You know David will be in heaven if you come to Monterey Bay, right?” Tea didn’t look at her, still eyeing additional choices in brown pants.

  “Um, yeah, me too,” she said quietly. She didn’t know what she would do if the deferral didn’t come through. Could she give up Princeton? She needed to be sure, and she didn’t know how she could. Ever since she had met David, everything had been turned on its ear. All her plans for life were being changed …

  “You know, I knew you two were right for each other from the beginning,” Tea said, holding two pairs of brown pants up to her. Eliza couldn’t see any difference between them.

  “You did?” Eliza looked askance at her.

  “Of course. All I ask is that you let me help with the bridesmaids’ dresses, because I refuse to wear anything with chiffon.” Tea put the pants back on the rack but was looking at Eliza out of the corner of her eye.

  “Tea!”

  “What?” She gave Eliza an innocent smile.

  “We’re not getting married!” she said.

  “Of course you are.” Tea patted her arm, unnerving her. Everything was rushing so fast.

  “I can’t even decide where to go to college!” she said.

  “What’s to decide? You’re coming to Monterey Bay,” Tea said.

  “But what if I don’t get the deferral?” She felt like Tea was leading her down some path she didn’t want to go. “Then I have to decide if I still want to go to Princeton, or if I’m going to give that up completely and go to Monterey Bay instead.”

  “And when you decide to come to Monterey Bay, you will have to be roommates with Addison and me,” Tea said calmly, still leafing through the racks. “It will be awful, but you really don’t have a choice there.”

  “It’s that easy, huh?” Eliza asked, shoulders slumping.

  Tea turned to Eliza, her blue eyes intense. “No, it’s not easy. But it is simple.” She took Eliza’s hand in hers and gave it a small squeeze. “Eventually, you and I are going to be sisters. Whatever you decide, it won’t change that.” She turned back to a rack of blouses. “You know, I think tomorrow I need to make my own phone call to Princeton, see if I can find some dirt on the admissions officer. I’m sure a little blackmail would go a long way.”

  “Tea!”

  “Don’t ‘Tea’ me! This is important. Desperate times call for desperate measures and all that. What do you think of this?” She held up an emerald collared shirt that looked too bright for Eliza’s pale complexion. Without waiting for an answer, Tea put it in the “try on” pile. Eliza shook her head, wishing things were as effortless as Tea made them out to be.

  * * *

  By the time Tea and Eliza had returned, the pizza guy had delivered dinner. David didn’t realize that they had plans for the evening until Eliza ordered them back into the car and drove them to an outdoor amphitheater. They spread their blankets out on the grass and sat down as the sun started setting, bringing a fiery red haze to the sky. Just as the sun dipped below the mountains to the West, the concert started, featuring a jazz pianist he didn’t recognize. Eliza snuggled next to him, her head leaned back on his chest and his arms wrapped around her. He gave her a small squeeze to let her know how perfect it was—the music, the warm evening under the stars peeking out of the indigo sky. He tapped the rhythm of the music on her hands, crossed underneath his. The light breeze blew tendrils of her hair into his face, tickling him until he smoothed it down and tucked it behind her back. He was trying to absorb it, commit it to memory: the smoothness of her skin, the softness of her hair, the sweetness of her smile when she leaned back to look at him. He wanted to recall this night when he was spending endless hours in class or countless nights without her. Before he knew it, the concert had ended, and it was time to return to Eliza’s house.

  He and Eliza said an extended good-bye that night. Clayton and Tea had already said their good nights and retired to their respective rooms. They were leaving early in the morning, with a fifteen hour drive to California ahead of them, trying to get to the Presidio quarterdeck before the nine o’clock check-in. He briefly thought of keeping Eliza up all night, quite willing to give up sleep to have a few extra hours with her. But he could tell she was tired, eyes drifting closed even during the concert. It had been a long day, and he would see her at the end of the week. After that … well, they would have to see. For now, it was enough to kiss her good night several dozen times and tell her he loved her a few more. It would hold him until then.

  * * *

  He was leaving. Even though Eliza would see him in a few short days, she had a flashback to the pier, that wordless good-bye that had ripped her heart out. She knew this was different. He loved her. She loved him. So why the hollow, aching feeling in her chest?

  She hadn’t slept much, with her own tossing and turning and Tea’s frenzied sleep. And here she stood at five o’clock in the morning in her pajamas, her hair some kind of atrocious mess, kissing the love of her life good-bye as if she would never see him again. She couldn’t help clinging to him, even as Clayton yelled from the car that he didn’t want to get cussed out by the intake officer because David had to kiss his girlfriend good-bye. David made no move to leave, in spite of Clayton’s repeated threats to come out of the car and physically drag him to it.

  “Can I call you?” Eliza asked.

  “I don’t know what our phone privileges are. I’ll call you if I can. Otherwise, I’ll see you Friday night, as soon as we get released on liberty.” His voice was hushed.

  “Promise you’ll call?”

  “Do you want me to write?” he asked. “I could send one letter, maybe, that would get here before Friday.”

  “Call and write.”

  “Promise.”

  “And think about me all the time,” she said. “And have dreams about me. Maybe daydreams, too.” He smiled at that, and she basked in the sunshine of it. How could she possibly live without that, even for a few days? No wonder her hands wouldn’t let go of him.

  “I really do have to go now. It won’t be pretty if Clayton gets out of the car.”

  She smiled and kissed him one last time. “Go.”

  And he went. She stood a long time in the driveway, bare feet on the concrete, watching Tea’s car slip away down the street and disappear around the corner. It was going dangerously fast, and she thought they probably would get there on time if they let Tea drive. She stood there until the silence of the early morning street made her feel even lonelier. She turned to go inside, have a good cry, and pray for Friday to come.

  * * *

  Fifteen hours in the car with Clayton and Tea. It wasn’t as bad as the first twenty hours out of Chicago, but only because David was used to their hand-holding, furtive whispers, and occasional kisses when they thought he wasn’t looking. But leaving Eliza was more difficult than he thought, and then he was trapped with the lovebirds. He couldn’
t decide which was worse: Clayton’s love-sick puppy gaze while he played with wisps of Tea’s red hair, or Tea’s face infused with an undisguised attraction when Clayton touched her. It seemed like he should avert his eyes from seeing all of it, which he did as much as possible.

  The early morning drive through the painted New Mexico desert was easy on the eyes and provided a reasonable distraction. Arizona was interesting as well, with red sand mesas and low winding mountains to traverse. When they hit the dirt brown of California, the bleak towns of Barstow and Mojave flew by with Tea at the helm. They were still racing the clock to get to the Presidio before check-in. The brown monotony was broken when they slipped into the artificially irrigated San Joaquin Valley. With endless rows of vegetables growing in swaths on either side of the freeway, sheltered from the coastal sprays and the desert heat by low lying mountains, it seemed like they were stuck in an endless loop of an agricultural film. They sped by tiny farming towns and concrete oases. The sun slowly sank, and it seemed they would make check-in after all.

  The last half-hour of their trip they skirted Monterey Bay, but the sun had set. They could smell the salt water, but not see it. David was looking forward to the confines of the Presidio. He needed the rigor of Navy protocol to keep his mind off the empty space inside where Eliza should be—and to endure the week while she decided if she would change her life just to be with him.

  Chapter 21

  A Campus with a View

  Love is sudden and fierce. One minute you’re living your life as you’ve planned it all along; the next moment you’re plunging into the murky depths of love and thrilling to the fall. Love is slow. It steals over you, seeping into your skin, your thoughts, the fabric of your life, until it becomes an inseparable part of who you are. But love is not just something that happens to you. It is a choice, a decision made with the conscious, rational part of yourself. Love is a deliberate action, and you have to live with consequences.

  These thoughts rumbled through Eliza’s head as she spent most of Monday moping. Not just a general sit-around-and-watch-a-video-and-eat-some-ice-cream kind of moping. This was a serious lie-in-bed-and-stare-at-the-ceiling-and-reread-David’s-letters kind of moping. It bordered on unhealthy. She did manage to call the Princeton admission office, and the very kind but bored sounding receptionist said she needed to write a letter with the reason she was requesting a deferral and fax it in. Simple, right? She had been staring at the computer screen for half an hour, trying to figure out what to write.

  Dear Princeton Admissions Officer,

  There is an extremely hot young Naval linguist in California that I would really like to get to know better, so I am requesting that you defer my enrollment for one year while I pursue my options there.

  Honest, but she didn’t think that was going to earn her the deferral that would make this decision easy for her. She held down the delete key until the truth disappeared. If she had the deferral, she wouldn’t have to make a choice. As Tea said, what’s to decide? Of course she would take the deferral. She would go to Monterey Bay for a year and all would be well. Maybe. And then?

  That was the question that nagged at the back of her mind. David was only in Monterey for two years. Then he would be deployed … somewhere. It could be anywhere in the world. He could be on some super secret floating command vessel, and she wouldn’t even know where he was.

  What about her life, her dreams? She was just beginning to figure out what those were. She thought she wanted to be a teacher, but she had only recently considered it. College was the time when you decided what you wanted to do. Maybe it was to train her to become a teacher, maybe not. Princeton was one of the best liberal arts colleges in the country. Whatever she did there, she would come out with a good start. If she went to CSU Monterey Bay … well, she knew Nicolas was right. She would be trading down. It was a fine school, but it wasn’t Princeton. She needed more time to figure everything out. She felt like she was making a decision she wasn’t ready to make.

  She and David also needed more time to figure out if they were going to work. Although she loved him desperately from nearly the moment that they met, she didn’t really know him. She discovered something new with each letter, call, and visit. She needed more time. This wasn’t just some kind of crush or fleeting attraction, although the way that boy could make her heart stutter continued to be monumentally unfair. Still, did she know him well enough to change all her plans just to be with him? What future could they have together?

  Fate wasn’t just a harsh mistress, she was an evil witch wreaking havoc in Eliza’s life and tearing her heart to pieces. Fate had brought David and her together on the boat, which seemed like forever ago but was only a few months, and now it seemed to be doing everything possible to keep them apart. It was wrong. But she didn’t know if going to Monterey Bay would make it right.

  She stared at the computer screen. She wasn’t at all sure if the deferral was the right thing to do, but she had to give it a try. She wrote a complete lie about pursuing academic opportunities at CSU Monterey Bay and faxed it into the admissions office, along with her cell phone number.

  She returned to moping. Her mom was coming home tomorrow, and she needed to get rid of her gloom before Mia arrived.

  * * *

  They were back in uniform, restricted to barracks or the library after classes, and still suffering through a lot of PT and drills. At least there were no RDCs in their face or early morning reveille. In fact, DLI felt more like school than boot camp, even with liberty restricted to weekends and no phone privileges at all during their four week “lock-down.” Clayton got them bunks together, but he rarely left Clayton’s side regardless. They were both studying Arabic, the second largest division of the Navy’s Center for Information Dominance Detachment after Asian languages. He and Clayton spent all their time in classes together, seven hours a day, plus two to three hours of homework at night. There wouldn’t be much point in having liberty as they never left the library.

  He continued to daydream of Eliza, and luckily, his nightly visitations resumed. The two nights he spent with the real Eliza, his dream Eliza had been strangely absent. She was back now, much to his relief, although Clayton probably regretted requesting the bunk above him.

  Their instructor, Dr. Karida, was a civilian and a native speaker. He was sure that made her language instruction more authentic, but he could hardly understand her. He thought knowing Polish would give him an advantage, but Polish and English were practically sister languages compared to the distant second cousin, twice removed, that Arabic seemed to be. His Basic Arabic course was filled with officers and enlisted of all ages and branches, as well as some government-type civilians. Two days in, he wasn’t the only one struggling. There were a number of female military and civilians in their class, some even attractive, but he was pleasantly surprised to see Clayton hardly noticed. He had his own daydream distractions now.

  They broke for lunch, grabbed sandwiches from the snack truck run by the Air Force guys, and sat in the open courtyard, enjoying the amazing California weather. Gone were the mugginess of Chicago and the furnace of Albuquerque, leaving only a gentle warmth, a light breeze, and the faint scent of the ocean. He wondered if they could study in the courtyard instead of the library tonight.

  He had written Eliza a letter the first night in the barracks, and then again yesterday, but anything he sent now wouldn’t arrive before she left Albuquerque. She would spend the weekend with him, but where would she be after that? He could send her a letter today, but to where?

  “How are you holding up?” asked Clayton, bringing him out of his thoughts.

  “Fine. You?” David knew his friend was missing Tea already. Although she was only a few miles away at Fort Ord, Clayton couldn’t contact her any more than David could call Eliza.

  “Bi khairiń,” Clayton said, using their newest conversational phrase, meaning G
ood. “Ready for Friday to get here.” David nodded and focused on finishing his lunch. In between classes and trying to decipher Dr. Karida, he had been thinking about the decision Eliza would be making this week. He hoped like crazy that the deferral came through. He wanted Eliza to come to Monterey Bay like he had wanted nothing before. He didn’t even know it was a possibility before this weekend, but now he was convinced they needed a chance to spend time together. Even if they were separated after that, if they had that time to hold onto—if he had that time to hold onto—anything would be bearable. Even now, apart for only a few days but uncertain what she was thinking, the separation was killing him.

  He threw away his lunch trash and pulled out his books. Yesterday, during their induction class, the commander had told them about a special training program. If they excelled during their first year of coursework, they might qualify to transfer to the Washington, DC, branch of DLI, as a part of the special Defense Attaché Office. Only a few students were selected each year, but it was a chance to train as a Defense Liaison, with a possibility of intelligence work in an embassy or consulate afterwards. It was exactly the kind of assignment he wanted, and it was a lot closer to New Jersey, where Eliza might be going to Princeton. He cracked open his books, determined to get a head start on his lessons for the afternoon. Besides, he needed a distraction from his thoughts about Eliza and her decision.

  “Aren’t we supposed to be on break?” said Clayton as he saw David diving back into their conversational Arabic text.

  “Iaa,” David said with a small grin. No.

  * * *

  Eliza’s mom had come home to help her pack, but Eliza knew that was only an excuse. Johnny was still wrestling somewhere in California, and Mia had come back just for her.

  Mia was in the kitchen again, trying a new recipe. Eliza smiled as she watched her haul out an old mixer that hadn’t been used in years. It looked as likely to short out and start a kitchen fire as mix whatever she was whipping up. Eliza tried not to drag around the house like a depressed puppy, but her head still swirled with thoughts of David and college. She waited until Mia had turned the mixer off before asking her—Eliza didn’t want her to lose any fingers.