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  “Why would you want to see the gun?”

  She points at the screen. “Why are you looking at gun videos?”

  “Because being properly prepared means being properly armed. When the zombie apocalypse happens, you need to be able to shoot their heads off,” I joke.

  I expect an argument. Instead, she cocks her head and says, “That has a certain logic to it.”

  “It does?”

  “And if there’s a gun safe in the house...” She frowns.

  “I know what you’re thinking. Kids, weapons–but Dad always secured his guns.”

  “Guns? As in plural? James has guns?”

  “The antiques, and one handgun, but Dad took the handgun when he moved.”

  “Why on earth would James have a handgun?”

  “He told me it’s because he grew up in Southie, and when he started his business some of his buildings were in really unsafe neighborhoods. He got in the habit of packing.”

  “That makes sense, too.”

  “I have to admit, Amanda, I’m surprised you’re not freaking out more.”

  “I’m more freaked by the gun video than I am by the gun itself.”

  “I was just starting the video. Just watched a few seconds of it. Was about to turn it off just as you walked in.”

  She squints at the screen. “That says you’re at the three-minute mark.” Judgmental, accusing eyes meet mine.

  Damn her farsightedness.

  “It was more informative in the beginning. Then it deteriorated into nudity and stupidity.”

  “You make it sound like an oopsie. This is not a wrong-click error, Andrew!”

  “It’s pretty close.”

  “You know what?” she asks, setting my amygdala on alert. I am now being hunted. When a woman says, “You know what?” in the middle of a heated argument, you’re prey.

  “What?”

  “You’re worried about guns.”

  “Not worried. Just scoping out the scene and thinking ahead.”

  She waves her hand. Uh oh. “You know what?” and a hand wave means that whatever’s coming next is bad.

  “I think you’re onto something,” she says.

  “You do?”

  “I do.”

  We nod at each other for longer than we should.

  “So,” she says with a long sigh, “tomorrow I’ll schedule us for classes.”

  “Classes? For what?”

  “If guns are that important to you, I think I should actually shoot one.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Her smile widens. “We’re taking a Massachusetts gun-safety class.”

  Wasn’t expecting that. “We’re what? You want to waste an entire day of our honeymoon on that?” I look at her hands, reconsidering on the fly. “Have you ever fired a gun?”

  “No.”

  “Ever held one?”

  “No. Which is precisely why we’re taking a class.”

  “We?”

  “Do you have a license to own firearms?”

  “I do.”

  “When was the last time you took a safety course?”

  “A while ago.”

  She shrugs. “I can go alone.”

  The image of her alone in a room that is ninety-five percent men, with most of them likely heterosexual and all of them on a testosterone kick of some kind, makes me rethink.

  Fast.

  “I’ll join you. Need a refresher course.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Then it’s settled. You’ll never, ever watch gun porn again.”

  “I wasn’t watching gun porn!”

  “Then giving it up will be easy.”

  “You’re never, ever going to stop making fun of me about this, are you?”

  “Do you still hum the Mission: Impossible song whenever Declan enters a room?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s petty.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “I love petty. You might call me the Petty Queen. My middle name is Petty.”

  “Your middle name is Hortense.”

  “You love pointing that out. You know what I love, Andrew?”

  “Torturing me?”

  “Well, yes, but that’s not what I meant.”

  “What did you mean?”

  “I love that we’re both reasonable.”

  “That’s what you love?”

  “Reasonable human beings are in short supply.”

  “Then I’m glad I married one.”

  Chapter 7

  Amanda

  The gun-training facility is in a brick building, nestled in an office park. We could just as easily be visiting a financial planner, a small software company, or a Meals on Wheels office for elderly assistance.

  In other words, this is not what I’d envisioned.

  In my mind, a gun-safety course would be held at a gun club, down a long, dusty, unpaved road leading to big, open fields with targets in a straight, unending line. People would walk around with noise-cancelling earphones, wearing guns on their waistbands, popping open cans of Coke and talking about aim while smoking unfiltered Camels and cracking jokes about tits and ass.

  Instead, when we walk in, the counter at the front makes me think I’m at the Registry of Motor Vehicles.

  Until I see the guns in the glass display case.

  “Gina registered us online,” Andrew says as we get in line. He starts to scowl.

  “No VIP option?” I tease. Andrew’s not accustomed to waiting in lines. Ever.

  “Not on our timeline. Gina managed to get us in today.”

  “It’s only been two days since your YouPorn incident.”

  He looks around the room, only his eyes moving, his face impassive. “Shhhh.”

  “Why are you shushing me? Because you watched gun videos on YouPorn?” I raise my voice intentionally.

  A few snickers greet my words.

  And then: “Hey, man, you see Ricky Rimfire’s new series? Top of the line. Almost as good as Full30 videos.” A man behind us nudges Andrew. “Good stuff. You here for the advanced Lethal Force class?”

  Ever watch a man go from stoic to smug? I have. A few too many times.

  Like right now.

  There’s a special quality that infuses his very being, a dominant male awareness that makes him stand taller, arms wider, all of him highly attuned to competition. Make no mistake: when you have this many men in a gun-safety training center, you’re getting your daily RDA of Smug.

  Vitamin S is plentiful here.

  A playful hand goes to my shoulder as Andrew smirks and says, “Taking my wife. Her first time.”

  “A gun virgin?” the guy half purrs, half growls. “Nice. My old lady’s a used-up gun whore.”

  I look up at Andrew and bat my eyelashes. “Just think, honey. Someday I can be a used-up gun whore, too. Life goals!”

  He winces as the word whore comes out of my mouth.

  He’d damn well better.

  “Everyone’s gotta start somewhere, man,” Andrew says to the guy, using a voice that makes me think my husband has been microchipped and is currently being controlled by a character from Santa Clarita Diet, who is about five seconds away from being eaten by Drew Barrymore.

  We reach the counter. “Amanda McCormick,” I say to a dude in a red polo shirt with a logo for the training center on it.

  “Hey. Nice. Only three women in today’s class and you’re one of them.” I get the creeper voice. Women know that one.

  Maybe I was wrong about the tits and ass after all.

  He nods at Andrew, who stares him down. The guy’s eyes flit to my left hand. He frowns and is allll business suddenly.

  “Ok, then, Miss McCormick, we’ll–”

  “It’s Mrs.” Andrew corrects him.

  “Right. Let’s get you both in class.” We’re handed a small packet of papers and directed to a hallway to the left. On the walls around us, I see gun cases, gloves, and all kinds of gun-related retai
l products.

  The offices smell like floor mats. You know the kind. The big, thick, black floor mats you find at the entrance of almost every store, but especially in automotive-related places. That thick petroleum scent triggers some part of my brain that tells me this is serious, rough work.

  A generation ago, I would have said men’s work. But we’re not in the 1980s now, are we?

  Although it feels like the 1950s here.

  As more and more people trickle in, Andrew and I go to the vending machines to the right, choosing a water for me and a soda for him. He’s taking it all with an equanimity that surprises me. It hits me that we’ve never spent significant time together in a situation he doesn’t control.

  This is suddenly an even more interesting venture.

  Everyone else seems to be slowly headed down the hallway, so we follow the crowd, shuffling along. Andrew’s dressed in a navy polo shirt and jeans, a leather belt and blue sneakers. I’m wearing a short-sleeved, gauzy, pink cotton top Shannon’s mom insisted I buy a few years ago on a mystery shop, and white jeans with wedge espadrilles. No open-toed shoes, we were told.

  Something about live-round shooting.

  We file one at a time into a standard rectangular room with long folding tables on either side of a wide middle aisle. I count six rows of tables, six chairs at a table. There’s no assigned seating, so I follow my natural inclination and head for the front row.

  “What are you doing?” Andrew grabs my arm. I halt.

  “Getting seats.”

  “In the front row?”

  “That’s where I always sit in classrooms.”

  “Why?”

  “Because then when I have questions, the teacher calls on me first. And I can interact more. See their facial expressions and–”

  “Oh, God, you were a brown nose, weren’t you?”

  “A what?”

  “Teacher’s pet.”

  I perk up.

  “Thank you!”

  “That’s not a compliment.”

  “Then screw you.”

  “Already did this morning.”

  “Don’t get all cocky about it happening again.”

  “Did you call me cocky?”

  “I did.”

  “Be careful with that word.”

  “Why?”

  Before he can explain, the instructor walks in. I grab his hand and pull him to the front table on the left. Normally, I’d sit on the end near the aisle, but in grudging respect for his stupid objections to the front row, I pull us closer to the wall.

  “Welcome to the Basic Firearms Safety Instruction course. Today we’ll spend our time together covering firearms basics, laws regarding gun ownership and use, and at the end, you will fire live rounds on our shooting range. Unlike other safety courses, we have you handling guns and using them–under supervision–on the range. By the time you’re finished with this course today, you will have a certificate you can take to your local town hall that allows you to apply for a gun permit. Massachusetts has some of the strictest gun-licensing laws in the country.” He pauses theatrically to take a sip of water.

  A few guys grunt, the sounds close to boos from an unhappy crowd.

  “Without this course, you cannot apply for a license. We are here to help you.”

  The grunts stop.

  An assistant offers handouts to everyone. Pens are provided in a pile in the middle of the table. Andrew stretches to grab two, giving the guy next to him one of those head nods men give each other. I wonder if it’s some Neanderthal evolutionary signal.

  I won’t kill you if you don’t kill me while I reach for this mammoth bone.

  Nod.

  In a classroom setting, I am the ultimate systems manager. Andrew may be a master at power dynamics, negotiation, and plain old sociopathic corporate navigation, but he’s not the same kind of rational systems mapper I am.

  Walk me into any situation and I am wired to figure it all out, fast. Not from the frame of power structures, like Andrew.

  From the perspective of operational flow.

  I see tables in front with guns, the magazine clips sitting next to them. I look up at the video screen, the PowerPoint set up and ready to go. An attendance sheet floats forward from the back of the room. All the details register in my mind, puzzle pieces that get inserted into categories, working together to form the process that takes us from chair warmers to holders of gun-safety instruction certificates.

  And then my mapping gets brutally interrupted by a hand on my inner thigh.

  “What are you doing?” I hiss out of the corner of my mouth.

  “Saying hi.”

  “Your fingers are verbal now?”

  He walks two of them even deeper into the valley my thighs form under my pubic bone. “They have a language of their own.”

  I kick his ankle.

  He’s too smart, anticipating my move. A low chuckle sends ripples through me as I fight the desire he’s intentionally inciting in me.

  “You’re seriously playing sex games in a gun-safety course?”

  “Why not? It’s our honeymoon. Shouldn’t it be about sex?”

  “You’re the one who turned sex into guns!” I huff.

  My baiting isn’t working. He’s long past being upset by the reminder of Bubba and YouPorn. I’ve miscalculated. Oh, the sexy smile that spreads across his face, eyes filled with dirty thoughts about what he wants to do to me the next time we’re in bed.

  Or in the backseat of our car.

  Or up against the wall in the courtyard outside this building...

  “They need to turn the air conditioning up in here,” I inform him, pointedly moving my legs away from him.

  He doesn’t move his hand. It lingers. I clear my throat, grab the bottom of my chair, and pull myself up and to the left.

  That forces his hand. Literally.

  And gets me an irritated glance from the instructor.

  Instantly, I’m transported back in time to third grade, the year I had the only male teacher in my elementary school.

  Older men make me uncomfortable. Not creepy uncomfortable. Just... anxious. I don’t understand how to relate to them. My dad left when I was five, and Mom never remarried. I could always talk to Shannon’s dad, but Jason’s different. He’s kind and a natural teacher, with so much patience, you’d think God hand picked him for Shannon’s mother.

  Because you need nine lifetimes of patience to be married to her.

  Being glared at by an older man who is an authority figure triggers every people-pleasing cell in my body, a full-blown panic explosion that turns my blood into tears and my heart into a cantering gelding.

  The man is not happy with my behavior.

  Neurons chatter with each other at breakneck speed, humming at frequencies that eventually make every atom inside me quiver with something close to fear, but not quite. It’s not shame. Not regret or remorse or abject humiliation. It’s the visceral knowledge that I’ve done something wrong under the authority of a heavily-armed man who represents an entire class of people I do not understand.

  But should.

  It’s the should that is so crazymaking.

  Then again, isn’t it always?

  Andrew grabs my hand and squeezes, giving me a concerned look. “What’s wrong?”

  “The teacher glared at me.”

  He starts to laugh, a mocking tone that makes me cringe. He stops abruptly and leans in, his body heat a comfort he cannot understand. “You’re shaking.”

  “Am not.”

  The instructor clears his throat and this time, he glares at Andrew.

  Who pulls his head back, broadens his shoulders, and raises his eyebrows in the universal gesture of You got a problem with me?

  The instructor looks away and continues talking.

  Victory manifests in strange ways when it comes to nonverbal conflict.

  The next hour is spent touching guns. Rifles, handguns, revolvers. Big guns, little guns, magazine clips, bu
llets. We’re expected to have a tactile relationship with the weapons, as if we’re not just learning how to manipulate these inanimate objects, but are supposed to gentle them with our touch, like the metal has a skittish nature and needs to be reassured.

  We also have lots of downtime as we go up to the gun tables in groups of six.

  “What kind of license do you have?” I ask Andrew during one of the quieter stretches.

  “Handgun.”

  “Then I want that kind, too.”

  “Depends on your town.”

  I scan the printout for Weston.

  “Actually, honey, don’t even worry about it,” an older man behind me says. I turn to follow the source of his voice. “As long as your husband has a handgun license, you don’t need one.”

  Snorts emanate from three men around him.

  “Bullshit,” one of them says, a grizzled-looking guy with a scraggly beard. As he speaks, I see deeply stained, crooked teeth. Our eyes meet, his filled with a crackling intelligence. “She needs to carry. I won’t let my wife and daughters leave the house without carrying. They have conceal permits.” He gives Andrew a challenging look. “You got your conceal permit?”

  “No.”

  He scoffs. “Why not?”

  “Because we have a bodyguard everywhere we go who is armed,” I explain, not thinking about how that’ll sound until Andrew gives me an incredulous look that says So much for fitting in.

  “And I’m the fucking queen of England!” one of the guy says in a falsetto British accent.

  It takes everything in me not to laugh.

  Andrew puffs up, rolls his eyes, and pointedly ignores the guy.

  For all eternity.

  The rest of the classroom portion involves short videos, more PowerPoints, a detailed discussion of local towns and the relative ease of getting a handgun permit in each, and a hands-on demonstration of revolvers, rifles, and handguns that makes me glad I’m taking this course.

  I could do without the politics, as the instructor makes pointedly negative comments about various gun laws, but one thing we all agree on is this:

  Gun safety is paramount.

  “All right, folks,” the instructor says, clapping his hands together and rubbing them with glee and a smile. “Time for the fun part: live-round shooting.”

  Every time the course moves on to the next phase, I’m reminded of how socially programmed we are in formal school settings. Gun-safety class isn’t high school or middle school, no, but it has an order, and it involves a group of people taking lessons. We shuffle out of the room, clutching purses and notes, and assemble in a rag-tag line down the hall.