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He laughs. “I won’t.”
I admire him across the table. It’s almost strange seeing him somewhere other than the office or standing in the shadowed corners of Red Brick. This is just… Clive Snow. Casual, coffee-drinking Clive Snow.
“Well, enough about me and my friends,” I say. “I want to know about you.”
“About me?” he asks.
“Yeah.” I glance around. “Here we are. Talking over coffee for the first time. It kind of feels like a first date.”
He nods, smiling. “A little.”
“You want me to trust you, right?” I ask. “I want to, too.”
“What do you want to know?” he asks, staring into his coffee.
I shrug. “Where are you from?”
“Here,” he answers. “Born and raised.”
“Oh, yeah? Where did you go to high school?”
“Amundsen.”
I blink. “Me, too.”
He leans forward. “Yeah?”
“Class of 2005.”
“I was 2010.”
“We just missed each other, then.” I laugh. “So, that makes you…”
“Twenty-five,” he answers.
I bite my lip. “I remember twenty-five.”
“Not too long ago for you.”
“Feels like a million years,” I say, chuckling. “What’d you do after you graduated?”
“I tried more school for a semester or two,” he says. “That didn’t work out, so… I joined the Army.”
“Ahh,” I raise my cup, “now here’s the good stuff.”
Clive shakes his head. “That didn’t work out, either.”
“What do you mean?”
He pauses. “I went through basic and then they chucked me onto a plane to some desert first chance they could.”
“Afghanistan?” I ask.
“Iraq,” he corrects. “A few months later, I was injured and they tossed me right on back home.”
I hesitate. “Must have been some injury, then.”
“It was enough to discharge me for good.”
