His blue eyes appeared to soften as he stared back at her, his lips curving in a slight smile. “It’s okay, you know. Most of us have felt that way, at one time or another. But we don’t have to stay jagged.”
Unable to speak, she waited, silently willing for him to explain.
“You see, my dear, all of those things that happen to us in life are simply polishing us so that when we finally come out of the storm, we’re smooth and beautiful.” He turned and grabbed his pole, giving it a little jerk and looked over the railing to check to see if he had caught anything yet.
She leaned against the railing as well, both of them giving flight to their inner thoughts. She did still feel beat down at times, that was true, but she knew that over time, since Carl’s death, she had come out stronger. She was not broken, she didn’t live her life that way. She was happy with Emily and happy with her job. She just hoped she was showing her daughter how to be strong as well. She had spent so much time moving forward, making sure her and Emily were going to be okay, that she had not realized that her edges were smoothed out in the process.
Interrupting her musings, Finn said, “I hope you can see my grandson, Aiden, as a piece of sea glass.”
Blinking in surprise, she jerked her head around and stared at his wizened profile.
He kept his eyes facing the water, but said, “People often underestimate him when they first meet him. Sometimes I think that comes from being the younger son. And by the time he came back from the war, he seemed determined to not let people see any pain inside. But I look at Aiden and I see a man who may have been tossed and turned, but has come out a good man with a kind heart. I know he’s seen as someone who’s not serious, but that’s just not true. He’s dedicated to his friends, his family, his job, and, with the right woman, he’ll be dedicated to her too. There’s no better man around.”
Letting that sink in, neither spoke for a few minutes as they stood side-by-side, forearms resting on the wooden railing.
Seeing his pole jerk, Finn grabbed it and began to reel in the fish. She had no idea what kind of fish it was, but it was certainly big enough that he was cackling about having caught his dinner. She laughed at his antics and for a second could see an older version of Aiden.
He unhooked the fish and placed it in his bucket, before facing her again. “Well, I reckon I ought to head home. Thanks for spending time with an old man.”
Her smile came from deep inside and she leaned forward, placing her hand on his arm. She moved in closer and kissed his rough cheek, saying simply, “Thank you.”
With a nod, he turned and picked up his pole, tackle box, and bucket. “You should take time and find some sea glass.” Winking, he walked back down the pier leaving her wondering if he was referring to the actual glass or Aiden.
13
That afternoon, Aiden sat in the counselor’s office at the Eastern Shore Mental Health Group’s clinic. He was stunned when, after confiding in Brogan that he was going to see a counselor today, his brother grabbed him in a bear hug, clapping him on the back.
He could have sworn Brogan had tears in his eyes when he had proclaimed, “Charles is the best, man. If not for him, I don’t think Ginny and I would be together.”
So now, here he was, sitting in the office, his eyes darting around. He noticed the seascape pictures on the wall and simple furnishings. Charles had a desk but was sitting in front of it facing him. It gave off a more casual vibe than talking to someone with a large desk in between them, making it feel almost like two friends having a chat.
Glancing down, he noticed his leg was jiggling, his knee bouncing up and down. Lifting his gaze, he said, “I guess I’m kind of nervous.”
“That’s not unusual,” Charles said, leaning back in his chair. “I’m just here to listen to what you have to say. My job is not to tell you what to do or what to change about your behaviors or your emotions, but to listen, to see where you are and where you would like to be. Then we’ll work out together how best to help you move forward in life.”
“So you just want me to start talking?” He chuckled, then winced, embarrassed to be laughing in the counseling office.
Charles grinned widely, and said, “Don’t worry about laughing. In here we can laugh, talk, cry…whatever you need. In fact, I have to say that laughter truly is some of the best medicine.”
Feeling his breathing ease, he leaned back in his chair, gathering his thoughts. “I was always the light-hearted kid. I liked to make people laugh. I even got a kick out of driving my parents crazy. If there was a dare, I did it. If there was a tree to climb, a fence to jump over, a bigger wave to ride, I did it.”
Charles remained quiet, a slight smile on his face and his hands clasped gently in his lap. His unassuming demeanor eased the way for him to continue to speak.
“My grades in high school were okay, but they were never going to be good enough for me to go straight into college. Me and the other Baytown Boys were pretty good at football and baseball, but I was never going to be the talented athlete that was going to get a scholarship. Everybody always asks when you're younger, ‘what do you want to be when you grow up’, but honest to God, I never really had much of an idea. Dad worked in the cement factory and my Pops owned his pub. I suppose of the two, I felt like Pops had the cooler job.”
“And the military?”
He shook his head, and said, “I could lie and tell you that I had an overwhelming calling to go into the military. I could tell you that I was a flag-waving patriot who felt like it was my duty to go and serve.” Lifting his shoulders in a slight shrug, he looked up at Charles, and confessed, “But the truth of the matter is, my friends and I just talked about how much we wanted to escape this little town. We wanted to see the world and we all made a pact that as soon as we finished high school we’d join up. My brother, Brogan, joined the Marines and when I graduated a year later I followed suit.”
“Did you find it hard to acclimate to the rigors of the Marines?”
Chuckling, he replied, “Surprisingly, no. I guess that sort of shocked everyone. But I had always been really close to my friends and my brother, so it was not hard to transfer that loyalty to my fellow Marines. A tour in Afghanistan made me long for this little town and when my tour of duty was up, all I wanted to do was come back home.”
“I think you’ll find that for most servicemen and women, that’s a very common emotion.”
He agreed. “Yeah, I’ve heard that from all my friends. Hell, I’ve even heard that from the older men who served in the military in prior wars when they tell their stories at the American Legion meetings.”
They were quiet for a moment, then he added, “I never had anything really bad happen to me over there, though. I know some of my friends did. I know my brother, Brogan, did. But I’d feel like a real pussy if I acted like my time in Afghanistan was more horrible than anyone else’s. I never lost a close friend. I was in some difficult situations but didn’t have an entire team wiped out. I mean, mostly we did what we were told to do and everybody in my squad came home unscathed.”
“So,” Charles prodded, “what is it that has brought you here today? What is it about your life that you think might need to be changed?”
“Ever since I came back, it’s been really important to me to make sure I’m living life to the fullest. Our grandfather deeded over Finn’s Pub to me, Brogan, and our sister Katelyn. It’s a job I like and I take the business seriously. Katelyn has always been the brains, so she handles most of the finances. Brogan has always been the steady one, so he handles the personnel. And me? I serve drinks, laugh with the customers, and flirt with the ladies. Well, I used to flirt with the ladies,” he corrected.
He cast his gaze upward, watching Charles’ face, but observed nothing more than a professional interest. Glad that he did not see a derisive expression, he continued. “Shortly after I came back, I quickly learned that a fling with someone living in town was not a good idea. All I wanted was fun and, even though I t
hought we were on the same page, eventually someone would get clingy. So,” he shrugged, “I found that the single women who vacation here made for the perfect one-nighter. I saw myself as just being young, unattached, and out to have fun.”
“If you’re looking for censure over your sex life, I’m afraid you’re not going to find it here,” Charles said. “But I get the feeling that there’s more to it than you just wanting to have fun.”
He leaned back in his chair, his memories tumbling and, as usual, he tried to battle them back to the recesses. “It was actually my Pops who told me that he felt like I was a very different person when I came back from the military. It’s true, I wake up with an occasional nightmare sometimes, but I just figured we all do. I never associated anything that happened over there with my…well, I’ve been called a Peter Pan by someone recently, implying that I didn’t want to grow up and just wanted to have fun. I guess that really stuck with me and got me thinking.”
“Do you see yourself as a Peter Pan?”
Scrunching his face as he pondered the question, he said, “Not really. I just never found anyone I really wanted to grow up for. I guess that sounds stupid, but as long as I was just having fun with the ladies, I didn’t think my behavior mattered.”
“And now you’ve met someone,” Charles stated.
His lips curved into a smile as he thought about Lia and Emily. “Yeah, I have. But she knows of my reputation and is naturally concerned about being with someone that she sees might not be serious. And for the first time, my previous behavior really stings.”
“Stings?”
“Yeah. What if everybody’s right about me?”
Charles nodded, then asked, “Let’s talk about the nightmares. Are you ready to talk about what happened over there?”
His voice low, he said, “I’ve never told anyone, ‘cause it didn’t really happen to me, I was just a witness.” They sat in silence for just a moment, before he added, “But yeah, it’s time I faced the connection between what happened there and who I am now.”
Clearing his throat, he began, “I was with my squad and we were doing what was supposed to be a routine check on a village. We had heard that there were insurgents nearby, but we were escorting some Red Cross volunteers to check on a village where illness had swept through. We entered the village, all was normal. They did what they needed to do and then we were escorting them back to base. Not difficult…no problems. It was then that we came across a freak accident. Another squad’s truck had hit a landmine and it had been blown to the side. Amazingly everyone seemed okay, except the driver. I happened to get to him first and could tell it was bad.”
Closing his eyes, he could see the events playing out in his mind as though watching a movie. “I wasn’t a medic, so I backed away, giving our medic and the Red Cross volunteers a chance to get to him. We called for a medivac, but knew it was going to take about twenty minutes for them to arrive. Our medic told me to stay up by the guy’s head, keep him calm, and just talk. Guess he knew me well enough, he figured the one thing I could do in any situation was talk. So I moved up next to his head and stayed close.”
He opened his eyes and looked at Charles, his breathing heavy, and realized it had been a long time since he had faced the events of that day and remembered them clearly.
“What did you talk about?” Charles asked
Shrugging, he said, “Just shot the shit. You know…sports, girls, what we wanted to do when we got out.”
“Tell me about that. Tell me about your conversation.”
He chewed on his lip for a moment, the memories slowly coming back to him. “I found out he came from Cincinnati, so we talked baseball for a few minutes. Said he loved to go to the Reds games. I told him I’d played in high school but wasn’t all that great. He tried to laugh through his pain and confessed that he wasn’t either. He told me he didn’t have a girl to go home to and I told him he was a lucky fuck to be able to go home and play the field. He grinned but I could tell it hurt. We talked about some of the shit we wanted to do when we got home. Hit the bars with our friends and go drinking. Pick up girls and run through as many as we could before we ever decided to settle down. Eat what we wanted, drink what we wanted, fuck who we wanted.”
Charles made no comment, but as he listened to himself, he shook his head in derision. “Jesus, listening to myself right now, what a bunch of stupid shit he and I talked about.”
“Did it seem to take his mind off his injury? Did it seem to take his mind off the fact that it sounds like he was dying?”
Charles’ questions had him sucking in his breath quickly, his eyes darting to the counselor’s. Letting out a long sigh, he nodded. “Yeah, he was dying. I didn’t realize it at first, just thinking that the medics were working to save his life, but after about ten minutes, I realized they were just trying to keep him out of pain.” He blew his breath out in another long sigh, suddenly feeling tired, as though he had run a long race.
“I think our conversation made him feel better,” he said. “Honest to God, if I had known he was dying, I probably could’ve thought of something a helluva lot more profound to talk about.”
“I don’t know. I think it sounds like what you and he had was a normal conversation between two men stuck together in time. As you say, just shooting the shit. Maybe the kind of conversation that you would have had if you had been stuck on a plane together or waiting in a long line for something. What you gave him, Aiden, was a few minutes of normal in a very abnormal time. What you gave him was actually very precious.”
Suddenly, tears stung the back of his eyes and he looked down at his hands and blinked furiously to keep them at bay. Unsuccessful, one dropped from his cheek and landed on his jeans. Without looking up, he accepted the proffered tissue that Charles held out. After a moment, he pulled himself together and looked up, the stain of blush heating his cheeks.
Charles threw up his hand, and said, “Before you apologize, don’t. It’s actually very important that you remembered and faced the traumatic incident from when you were in the Marines.” After another moment of silence, Charles asked, “How did things end with him?”
He inhaled deeply before letting out a long, slow breath. “I heard the sound of the medivac coming and knew they would be there in a moment. I bent closer so that he could hear me and told him he’d be going home soon. He looked up at me, held my gaze, and asked me to promise that when I got home, I’d do all the things that we talked about doing. And then he took his last breath just as the helicopter landed.”
“I’m very sorry that happened.”
Silence filled the room and he appreciated the time of quiet reflection that Charles was giving him. Blowing out another breath, he allowed himself to remember the young Marine.
“How did that experience parlay into your attitude when you returned home?”
“I swear this makes me sound like a prick,” he replied, “but I just felt lucky. That experience stayed with me for a while, but it slowly eased from my mind and by the time I came home, I was just glad to be home in one piece. I don’t remember consciously making the decision, and yet from the moment I got back to Baytown, I just wanted to do all the things he and I talked about doing. I felt lucky to be back home, in a place that I loved. I felt lucky to be back with my family. I felt lucky to be young and single and free so…I spent a lot of time drinking and fucking, figuring that was what I was supposed to do. I mean, it’s not that I didn’t enjoy it, don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t pressure or anything. I just think I put myself in a box and didn’t stop to question if that box still fit, if it ever really did in the first place.”
Charles leaned forward in his seat, his forearms now resting on his knees as he held his gaze. “If you had felt overwhelming guilt instead of luck, I would think that would not be very healthy. I think deciding to live your life fully is a much healthier choice,” he empathized. “Do you feel that you have been living life to the fullest?”
His brows snapped dow
n and he shook his head slightly. “Well, I thought so. Or I used to think so. At least until recently.”
“How do you view your lifestyle now?”
Shaking his head, he said, “I now look back and it all seems like I was just running away. That all those meaningless flings were nothing more than immediate sexual gratification, but they weren’t making me happy. Not really, not for long.”
“Meaningless can keep you from feeling. No feelings keep you from being involved and not being involved keeps you from feeling hurt when the ending is not what you’d hoped it would be or what you feel it should have been.”
Eyes wide, he nodded. “Exactly. I’d never considered that, but that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. I haven’t wanted to risk feeling so…out of control again.” He chuckled. “Ironic right? Most people would probably say my moving from one girl to the next is pretty out of control.”
“You know, Aiden, a lot of people seek counseling because their feelings are rather jumbled up inside of them. For many they need a lot of help detangling those feelings. But I think you have the solutions inside yourself, you just hadn’t verbalized them. You suffered a life-altering event while in the Marines. But I think that event is one of the reasons you decided to come back to your hometown, work with your family in a business that you enjoy and spend time with your family and friends. Part of living life to the fullest has been becoming involved in the American Legion and I know you work with the youth baseball teams. So, don’t forget all the wonderful things that you’re doing to live life to the fullest. That’s not being a Peter Pan. That’s truly enjoying a productive life.”
He leaned back in his chair, feeling like all his thoughts had been untangled. He had always been a a genuinely happy person, for the most part, even after Afghanistan, but there had been an unnamed tension when he got back that he just could not ease. Finally, he could breathe freely again. Charles was right. He just needed to name it, voice it, in order to let it go.
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