Showing off the Goods

by Weston Parker

  “What happened?” I still hadn’t moved again, but I lifted one hand to brace myself against the door frame as I bowed my head. “Who is it?”

  I knew what that tone of voice meant. Just because I hadn’t heard it in a long time didn’t mean I’d ever forget it.

  He didn’t even try to soften the blow, but we’d all learned better than that. “Timothy. Over the weekend.”

  My heart constricted in my chest, and it felt like someone had vacuumed all the air in my lungs. I had to force my question out, though my ears were suddenly ringing so much that I could hardly hear my own voice.

  “How?”

  “He was in a bad wreck,” he said, sounding as torn up as I was feeling. “They did everything they could, but he didn’t make it.”

  “Fuck.” Shock kept me rooted to the spot for either an age or maybe mere seconds, but there was no way of telling which it was right now.

  “I’m flying out that way sometime next month,” Oliver said while I still felt like I’d had the rug ripped out from underneath me. “I’ll let you know when I know dates, but we’ll meet up. Have a drink on him. Sorry to be the one to break it to you.”

  I nodded, only realizing later that he couldn’t see me. I had to clear my throat several times before I managed to get a word out. “Sure. Yeah. It’ll be good to see you. Thanks for calling.”

  “Take it easy, bro,” he said. “I heard three hours ago, and you’re the first call I’m making. I’m shocked as shit, to be honest. Let me know if you need me, okay?”

  “Yeah. I will.” I already knew I wouldn’t, but I also knew that he expected me to agree.

  Oliver had been the self-appointed big brother of our unit. Even though he hadn’t technically been the oldest or the highest ranked, he’d always just been that guy. He still was. I knew I wasn’t the only one he made an effort to meet up with whenever he found himself within meeting distance of whomever.

  “You going to be okay?” he asked, his voice tight.

  “Yeah. It’s just hard to believe that after everything we went through overseas, it was a friendly behind the wheel who took him out.” I nearly choked on the words, trying my best to block out the memories that came with having to say them.

  “I know.” He sighed heavily. “Life, man. What can you do? It fucking sucks sometimes.”

  “That it does.” I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to fight against the onslaught of so many images tumbling into my brain that I really couldn’t deal with right now. “You going to be okay?”

  “Eventually, sure. Right now? I don’t know,” he admitted. “I was supposed to be flying out to see a client later, but I had to cancel. I’ve put in for some vacation days. I had them coming anyway, but I think I just need to spend some time with my family.”

  “Good idea.” I couldn’t imagine spending time with anyone right now, which was ironic considering how I’d spent the last twenty minutes or so before his call moping around because Colette had run out on me.

  And while I’d been getting my rocks off with her last night, my friend had been lying on a slab in a morgue somewhere. The thought of it was almost too much.

  I brought my fist to my mouth, biting down on my knuckles to keep in the scream wanting to rip out of me. The mental walls I’d put up to block out all the shit I’d seen were threatening to come crumbling down at any moment.

  “Keep well,” Oliver said. “I’ll check in with you again later, but I need to go. Lots more calls to make.”

  “Let me know if you need any help with the calls,” I said numbly. “Or if there’s anything else I can do.”

  “Sure thing.” He hung up after reminding me again to call if I needed him.

  From past experience, I knew he’d drop everything and go wherever he was needed, but I’d never do that to him. He was a business development manager now, and although his employer was pretty good about letting him take care of his old unit most of the time, he was also busy as fuck at work.

  A few times in the last several years since we’d been back, he and I had ended up having to go check in on some of our friends. Whenever it happened, I knew it was hell on his schedule to try to get everything reorganized. It was even more difficult for him than for me, and the cancellation clauses in the contracts I signed could be a nightmare.

  After the line went dead, I drifted out of my bedroom listlessly. I knew I’d been about to go somewhere, to do something, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember what it had been.

  All I could think about was Timothy. I remembered the first time I’d met him like it was yesterday. About a week after I’d arrived, he’d shown up. His green eyes had shone so brightly, and he’d been so full of life.

  As a fellow jokester, the two of us had hit it off immediately. I’d just seen him about a month or so ago. How is it possible that I’ll never see him again?

  As I thought back to what would now forever be our last night out together, I lost the fight against the other memories I had of him, and they rampaged their way into my brain. Rage gripped me over the fact that we’d gone through all that, dodged bullets, and minefields, and the most hostile environments known to man, only for him to be offed in a fucking accident.

  The unfairness of it all blinded me, and before I even know what was happening, I’d tossed my phone against the wall and trashed my kitchen. Glass shattered from the plates, dishes, mugs, and glasses that’d still been on my counter. I swept it all off with a single swipe of my arm.

  There was a pool of juice and coffee around my feet, and I punched a hole in a wall closest to me before I slumped against it in exhaustion. The sounds of long-ago and faraway combat assaulted my ears, and scenes I wished I’d never have to see again flashed in front of my eyes like I was right back in the hot zone.

  A loud scream pierced the air, and I knew it had to have come from me, but I was strangely disconnected from everything as I watched the past play out like the world’s most terrible movie behind my eyelids.

  Desperate to make it stop, I sank down against the wall and pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes. When it finally passed, I welcomed the calm, numb feeling of nothing. Timothy was gone, and it killed me that there was nothing I could do about it.

  It was better that Colette had left when she had. There were a lot of times I could block out the bad, but today obviously wasn’t going to be one of them. The last conscious thought I had before I sank into the oblivion of simply shutting off was that I was fucking thankful that I hadn’t been behind the wheel myself when I’d gotten that call—and even more thankful that Colette and April hadn’t been in a car with me.

  That could’ve been a complete disaster.

  Chapter 22

  COLETTE

  Thank God I don’t have any patients scheduled for the first half of the day. I was still feeling like hell warmed up by the time I slid in behind my desk.

  I doubted I’d have been able to do any good for anyone in the state I was in. Instead of my usual roster of patients, I had online training seminars booked all morning.

  After fixing myself an extra-strong cup of coffee from the station behind my desk, I logged in and joined the waiting room for the first seminar. I was a firm believer in keeping my skills and knowledge updated, but it wasn’t as easy to stay focused as it usually was.

  My first seminar was on the updated techniques in the treatment of patients diagnosed with schizophrenia. I’d actually been looking forward to it, but now I found my mind drifting to Paxton every other minute.

  While I’d freaked out after I’d woken up at his place, I’d had a couple of hours to think everything through after. Drinking too much had obviously been a mistake. There really was no two ways about it, but I’d also thoroughly enjoyed myself with him last night. It was a fact I couldn’t get around.

  The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had that much fun. Sure, the alcohol had played a definite role in that, but so had Paxton.

>   Waking up and seeing him preparing a full breakfast for us had unnerved me. I was woman enough to admit that it hadn’t even just unnerved me; it had flat-out scared me. I didn’t know what he thought he was playing at, or if he was trying to make up for the way he had left by being extra sweet to me now.

  If he thought some eggs and coffee were enough to atone for abandoning me when I needed him most, then he had another thing coming. But then I thought back to what he’d said that first night when we’d gotten together to work on the wedding stuff at my house. He’d made a point of telling me he’d been just a boy when we’d been together and how he’d grown up since.

  Logically, I could understand that. We’d both been kids. At nineteen, we’d felt like we’d had it all figured out and that we were legit grown-ups after having graduated, but I knew better now.

  While we’d known better at nineteen than at say, fifteen, we hadn’t had any real clue about the world. If someone had told me that back then, I’d have laughed them out of the room, but that didn’t make it any less true.

  Sure, some kids at nineteen had seen things that would still make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, but in general? A teenager was a teenager was a teenager. They thought they knew everything, but the benefit of hindsight was that I knew a lot now that I hadn’t known then. Enough to know that we hadn’t been nearly as mature as we’d thought we were.

  A lot of times over the years, I’d wondered if I’d really even loved Paxton as much as I thought I had. There had been a lot of nights when I’d thought I hadn’t. That I was simply looking back at our time together through the rose-tinted glasses of faded memories.

  I knew time had a way of making everything better, and while it hadn’t quite dulled the pain or dimmed the anger, I’d also learned to go on without Pax. Which was one of the big things that’d made me think that I couldn’t possibly have loved him as much as I’d thought I had.

  Having now spent some time with him again, I knew I’d been wrong. I’d perhaps loved him even more than I’d spent the last few years thinking I had. It wasn’t just a romantic love either. That old friendship between us was still there.

  Even now, after all the time that’d passed and the hurt we’d caused each other, that familiar kinship had still sparked right back to life. At this rate, I didn’t know if it would ever truly fade.

  I wonder if I should call him and apologize for this morning. After all the effort he’d gone to, I really shouldn’t have taken off on him like a bat out of hell.

  He hadn’t done anything last night that I hadn’t wanted him to do. In fact, from what I could remember, he’d taken really good care of me.

  Not just sexually. That was a given with him.

  It had been more than that.

  Paxton had been the one to decide it was time for us to leave the bar. He’d gotten me out of there despite my protests, had gotten our cab, and had been ready to give the cabbie my address if I wasn’t able to.

  After we’d gotten to his place, I remembered him getting me water. He wasn’t the one who’d stripped out of his clothes first either. From what I remembered, he hadn’t pressured me or even encouraged me at all. That had been all on me.

  Then, after, he’d gotten our towels, brought me some clothes, offered me a toothbrush, made me a bed, he’d convinced me not to leave at 3:00 a.m. Obviously, that would’ve been an incredibly stupid move.

  I was all but convinced that he’d let me sleep for as long as he could while still making sure that everything was ready for me to wake up, eat, and get April picked up and dropped off at daycare before either of us was late for the day. Those were a lot of things the old Paxton would never even have thought about doing. A lot of things that proved he now thought further than I’d given him credit for and really wasn’t a boy anymore.

  It was difficult to get my head wrapped around it, though. As the presenter of the schizophrenia course kept droning on in an extremely monotone voice, I kept trying to reconcile all the little things he’d done since he’d come back into my life with the person I’d known him to be once upon a time.

  He hadn’t flaked on me once, which was something he wouldn’t have thought twice about doing before. While he’d usually let me know if and when he’d gotten busy, there had still been plenty of time that he’d canceled last minute.

  Paxton now didn’t do that. When he said he was going to do something, he did it. He was also definitely more considerate, hardworking, and actually seemed to think things through nowadays. He was still a ton of fun—as my persistent headache today was proving—but at the same time, he was a lot more mature about it in some ways. It also seemed like he put work ahead of play, which was something I hadn’t known him to do.

  Maybe he’d been right back then about needing the military. I’d never quite understood why he kept saying it, and he’d never been able to find the words to tell me without pissing me off and the conversation ending with me storming away, but now I wondered if I should’ve listened. Then again, I didn’t think I would’ve been able to understand it then regardless of what he’d said.

  He wouldn’t have been able to predict how it would change him and help him grow, and I wouldn’t have understood why he felt like he needed it in the first place. At the end of the day, though, that was all in the past.

  In the present, I had to figure out whether calling him to apologize was a good idea. After my seminar ended, I logged in to the waiting room of the second one and was making some more coffee when my phone rang.

  Tierra? That was strange. It wasn’t like she never called me, and she’d said this morning that she wanted to have lunch with me, but it was usually Brett who I heard from.

  “Hello?” I said, muting the microphone on my computer and making sure the video was off when I noticed the seminar starting.

  “Colette? Hi,” she said, sounding much less cheerful than she had been just this morning. “I’m sorry to bother you at work.”

  “It’s no problem. I’m not in a session,” I said. “Is everything okay? If you’re calling about the suit fitting for the guys, I’ve got Brett and the rest of them scheduled with the tailor they chose tomorrow. I’ve made sure he’s very aware of the tight turnaround time, and I’m planning on finalizing the details with him this afternoon.”

  “Oh, no. It’s not that,” she said, and I heard the edge of worry in her voice. “I know you and Brett have the stuff you’ve got to get sorted well in hand. I also know you’ll get the things you’re working on by yourself done in time.”

  “Is something wrong?” I asked. “It’s great to hear from you. It’s just that you and I don’t really talk on the phone much.”

  “I know.” A soft chuckle slipped out of her, but even that sounded off. “Have you spoken to Paxton today?”

  “No,” I lied hurriedly, feeling terrible but also really not wanting to tell her that I’d woken up on his sofa. “Why?”

  “I can’t tell you. It’d feel like too much of a betrayal of his trust and his privacy,” she said. “I’ve got to go, but will you please call me if you hear from him?”

  “Of course.” My teeth sank into my lower lip before slowly releasing it while I thought. “I understand that you feel the need to protect his privacy, but is there anything I can do?”

  “No.” She sighed, her voice thickening more with every word she said. “I don’t think there’s anything anyone can do. Just call me if you hear from him, please?”

  “I will,” I promised. “Good luck with your afternoon. If you do think of anything I can do, please let me know.”

  She said she would, but it sounded like she was on the verge of tears. I didn’t know what was going on, but I had a feeling it was about more than just me leaving him before breakfast.

  Even though I knew I shouldn’t, I spent the rest of the afternoon worrying about him. I kept telling myself that he wasn’t mine to worry about and that he wouldn’t want me worrying about whatever was going on with him, but it didn’t
help.

  While it wasn’t unheard of for Tierra to call me, it really was out of the ordinary. I doubted I’d have heard from her if it wasn’t something serious. I didn’t know why she’d think he’d reach out to me instead of her, but it was bothering me that she obviously had thought that.

  Not because I was afraid she knew anything about last night. If he’d told her, I didn’t think she’d have called me about it, especially not to look for him. And she definitely wouldn’t have sounded so worried that she was on the verge of tears.

  No. This was definitely something else. It scared me all over again how much I cared about it. About him.

  Because if Paxton was in trouble, I suddenly knew I’d go to the ends of the earth to help him. That wasn’t something I’d ever thought I’d think again. But I wasn’t even just thinking it. I felt it all the way to my soul.

  If he needed me, I would be there. No matter what it cost me emotionally to become a rock for him again, I would do it. And that was fucking terrifying.

  Chapter 23

  PAXTON

  Some of the guys I’d been on tour with still lived in the city, and I swept myself up off the floor when I received a call from one of them. Jeffrey had been close with Timothy as well. As soon as I saw him calling me, I knew I had to take it.

  I also knew I had to get my shit together before I did. Oliver must have called him right after he called me, and I could hear that he’d had a similar reaction to the one I’d had. His breathing was still a little labored, and his voice still strained when I picked up.

  “You heard?” he grunted into the phone.

  “Yep.” I leaned my head back against the wall, eyes shut and knees drawn up to my chest with my free arm draped loosely around them. “You doing okay?”

  “Yep,” he repeated back at me.

  Neither of us went into any detail, but I knew Jeff had things a lot worse than I did. He’d stayed in for another tour after me, which had put us about the same number of years in total, but he’d never quite adapted back to civilian life.