Zander chuckled at the memory, and the bar tender sent him a curious look, but he just shrugged it off.
"A bullet with your name, a ticking time grenade,
You better run away, run away, run away
Either way you're screwed, there's nothing you can do,
You better run away, run away, run away."
Another memory began to come to mind, but he quickly pushed it away because he started to think about that day. Instead, he focused on a couple dancing happily to the music. Despite the true sadness behind the lyrics, Kacey had decided to keep the song friendly and catchy with lots of rhyming, repeating, a cheerful beat, and a backtrack of whistling after each time she sung the chorus.
But when a bit more light flashed on the couple, he began squinting and noticed what appeared to be some faded cuts on the girl's arms. She had a bright smile on her face, but there was a bit of a sad look in her eyes, and the man had the same look. They held each other close, and Zander noticed their wedding rings which surprised him a bit because the girl appeared as if she could be only eighteen or nineteen while the man looked to be in his early twenties. They seemed pretty young to have been married.
And yet they still seemed perfectly content. The girl, who had long, red hair, leaned her head on the man's chest and smiled softly as she closed her eyes. The man kissed her on the head gingerly and ran a hand through his own thick, black hair. Zander couldn't help but laugh lightly because of how far the man had to lean down. There was a clear height difference between the two, but neither of them seemed to mind.
When he began focusing on the faded marks along the girl's arms again, the bartender noticed his staring and gave him a light nudge on the shoulder, asking if he was alright. Zander looked up at him and told him, "Yeah, I'm fine. Thanks." But he couldn't help wondering what had happened to the girl. Did someone hurt her? Did she inflict the pain on herself?
It appeared as if she had healed for the most part no matter how she had ended up getting hurt, but Zander though back to the somber look in her eyes and asked himself, Do I look like that to people?
He always tried to avoid thinking of Stevie, but he knew that when he talked to the women whom his friends had set him up on dates with that he had to have some sort of glum or troubled look because they always questioned if everything was alright. Did he look like that? Like he had convinced himself that he was healed, but deep down he knew that he really wasn't? That he was broken?