Oh, shit. I turn and run up the stairs, and the smoke is already pouring out of my door. I go inside and see the problem. In my rush, I forgot to blow out the candle I was using for melting my shoe polish, and my World History report that I got back second period fell off my desk and caught on fire. I stamp it out, cursing the whole time, but the damage is minimal, just some charred ash on the floor. Breathing heavily, I grumble, looking down. I hear a cough behind me, and Mel Riordan's standing there, his face grim. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, I just fucked up. No harm, no foul.”
“I wish,” Mel says, sighing. “Captain Campos saw the smoke. Sorry, Aaron, I’ve gotta write you up on this one. You know the rules. No candles or open flames in the barracks.”
I sigh, nodding. “Gimme two minutes to get this at least a little cleaned up before I come down and join everyone else?”
He nods, turning and walking away.
* * *
“Five hours?” Cho asks, handing the form back to me. “Damn. You didn't even cause any damage. Well, except to your history paper.”
“Yeah, but Campos said that I could have burned down the whole fucking barracks,” I grumble, balling the paper up and throwing it in the trash. The work detail form is done in triplicate, like most things in the Army. The white original, which goes in Captain Campos's file that he keeps on everyone, the yellow copy, which the company admin desk keeps, and then my copy, pink. “Never mind the floor is hard tile and our walls are concrete and granite. We live in a fucking fallout shelter!”
“Well for once, I'm glad that you’re the one getting in trouble for shit going down in our room and not me,” Cho jokes, leaning back. “Chill, don't get in a bind about it. That's one Saturday, and this is an A weekend anyway. Besides, you burned one of your passes already last weekend with that trip to New York. What, you're gonna lose all your triathlon conditioning by missing one ride?”
“No,” I growl, turning to my laptop. Nobody knows about Lindsey. I don't need that sort of attention, and Cho thinks I went down to the city by myself to just hang out. “Just . . . oh, fuck it, you're right. One weekend, and I can do something else afterward.”
“That's the spirit,” Cho says with false good cheer. I wonder how much of that cheer is because he's gotten used to spending weekends under some sort of restriction, or if he's trying to hide a lot of anger and being pissed off at the Academy system because of it. “Anyway, I'm heading over to E-4.”
“Who's over there that you know?” I ask. “Math study session?”
“Yeah, that’s it . . . studying,” Cho says, grinning. “Actually, what I plan on studying is Glenda's legs.”
“Who?” I ask, surprised. I didn't know Cho was seeing a girl.
“Glenda Bell. I started talking to her last time I had hours. It rained, and they had us up in the sixth floor of Washington Hall, just sitting. She's a foreign language major, and I asked for some help with my French.”
“You don't take French,” I note, pointing at the Portuguese textbooks above his desk.
“Like that matters?” Cho replies, laughing. “She thought it was cute, or at least she didn't throw me out of her room. Anyway, see ya.”
Cho disappears, and I laugh, shaking my head. I’ve gotta admit, the man's got style, even if he does get told to get lost most of the time. The man strikes out with women constantly, not that it stops him.
Speaking of women, I'm not looking forward to what I've got to do next. I close my door and pick up my phone. “Hello?”
“Lindsey? It's Aaron.”
“Oh!” Lindsey says, and at least she sounds happy. I still have no damn clue where to go after last night when I'm broke as fuck, but maybe I can talk to her about that later. “How's it going?”
“Not that great, actually,” I admit, sighing. “I kinda fucked up and got myself busted. We're going to have to cancel our Saturday ride. I got hours.”
“Ouch,” Lindsey says, sounding genuinely disappointed. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, I just made a stupid mistake. It’s just one day. But the work detail runs from one to six, and I'm not allowed to leave post until that's cleared out. With sunset like a half hour later, we couldn't even get started,” I add. “Sorry.”
“That's okay, really,” Lindsey says, and in her voice, I hear acceptance and forgiveness that I didn't quite get from my roomie's attempt at humor. “So Saturday's out.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “What about Sunday? You and I, the bikes, and we could head out for a while . . .”
“Sorry, I've got work that day,” Lindsey says regretfully. “But what about Monday?”
Monday? I've got to wait until then? “Monday?”
“I understand,” Lindsey says, lowering her voice to a sexy, kittenish purr. “If it helps, it’s been on my mind too.”
I groan, my cock twitching in my shorts. It's like it finally realized its purpose again other than helping me piss in the toilet. And now that it's been inside Lindsey, it wants back there again, and as quickly as possible.
There’s a moment of silence, and Lindsey laughs softly. “Sorry. Okay, well, maybe you can give me a call tomorrow night. We can call it Friday phone date night.”
“A phone date night?” I repeat.
“Gimme a call about eight. We’ll talk then,” Lindsey says.
* * *
Marching down to Flirty Walk along with the rest of the work detail crew, I'm somewhat glad that I did get work detail this weekend. The sky overhead is gloomy, and it's already threatening to rain. It's no weather for bike riding with Lindsey. I hope it holds off, if for no other reason than I hate working in the rain. And besides, I know the firstie who is running the details. I had a few run-ins with him before. He'll run us into the ground in anything short of a nor'easter.
“So where are we starting out, anyway?” someone asks, and the firstie turns around, walking backward.
“We're covering the first half of Flirty, from the north arch to Sheridan's bench,” he says, earning some groans from the guys whom I take it are working off longer slugs than what I got. Hey, better for them to be doing this than the poor damn fools who got caught with DUI or some other sort of alcohol offense. The Supe not only puts a letter of reprimand in their permanent file that stays with them after they graduate, but he makes them march tours Old Corps style, dress uniform and rifle on the shoulder. Give me work details any day of the week.
“Shit, man, we covered that three weeks ago!” someone else says. “Seriously, I could fuck a chick in the middle of that section and not even get dirty doing it!”
“That's because the only girl you fuck is Rosy Palm,” someone replies, earning laughs. Okay, so cadets aren't exactly the most politically correct group of people, especially if it's an all-male group. Most of us are young, come from 'old fashioned' backgrounds, and there are more than a few good ol' boys in the Corps. I wouldn't trust my sister around most of the Corps. If I had a sister.
“Cut the chatter,” the detail leader says, and we quiet down some. “Either way, Sergeant Major wants that section done, so we'll work it for five hours.”
We get down to Flirtation Walk, officially the only point on post where cadets are allowed to engage in public displays of affection, a roughly half-mile dirt trail that gives you a view of the Hudson River, and make a quick ad-hoc formation around the arch at the trailhead. “Okay, groups of three or four, fan out and keep busy!” the leader says. “If Sergeant Major comes down here and sees us fucking off, none of us are getting credit for these hours.”
Great idea, but after an hour, I'm understanding the earlier joker's comment about Flirty being clean. With only cadets and their guests allowed to use the trail, there isn't a lot of stuff around to police up. After about two or three attempts at just walking the trail and picking up trash or tossing sticks out of the way, the leader, feeling the threat of losing his credit, loses it. “Fine, fuck it! Pick up the waste wood and pile it at the arch, along with any oth
er trash!”
“How big of wood are you talking here?” someone asks, and he gives us the finger. “Ah, bigger than that. Gotcha.”
I wander back onto the trail, and soon enough, I find something worth venting my frustration on. A downed tree, obviously not waste wood, but a tree a good four inches around and maybe twenty feet long, lies in the bed of leaves that makes up the sides of the trail. I look around and see Will Washington, one of my classmates, and call him over. “Whaddya say, man?”
“Fuck it. He wants wood, I'll give him wood,” Will says, laughing. “Speaking of which, you should have seen the woodbringer that I saw yesterday.”
“Woodbringer?” I ask, and Will nods. “What's a woodbringer?”
“You know, hottie, piece of ass, get my drift?” he says, laughing. “Anyway, I was up by the PX after class, picking up some protein powder. And man, this PFC I saw . . . holy shit, the ass on this girl!”
“Nice?” I ask, thinking that there's no way that Will's PFC has anything on Lindsey.
“Fuck yea!” Will says. We take a grip on two of the bigger branches still sticking out from the trunk and lift, grunting a little. It's not that heavy, but it is awkward, the weight's just a bit off. “Tell you what, I'd think of giving up cadet status and enlisting if I thought I could have that honey blonde hair on my pillow at night.”
“So you got spank bank material?” I tease, and Will laughs as we start down the trail toward the arch. We both know the rule. The enlisted are off limits by the USCC rules, and all the officers are senior in rank to you. Either you play within the gray lines—there are some good looking female cadets—or you go outside the service. Just the way it is. “Well, she got a name?”
“Let me think . . .” Will says, his voice drifting off as he tries to find the answer. I can't help it, I laugh. “What?”
“You’re all hard up for this girl,” I say, setting the tree down and adjusting my grip before lifting again, “and you don't even have a name?”
“What the fuck are you two doing?” the detail leader says. He's talking with the Sergeant Major, and I can tell he's pissed. He thinks he's going to get his bonus hours, and we maybe fucked up his game. The Sergeant Major looks amused, and he raises an eyebrow behind his old-fashioned big ass rectangular glasses. “Seriously?”
“You told us to bring the trash wood up to the arch.” We drag the tree out of the arch and dump it onto the pile of waste wood that's been growing. “So, we brought some.”
“What the hell am I supposed to do with a fucking tree?” he asks, and I shrug.
“Don't know. We just brought the wood as ordered.”
He looks like he's about to rip into our asses, but the Sergeant Major speaks up. “Okay, you two, carry on. And try to keep the wood to under body-length from now on.”
Will and I nod. As we leave, the Sergeant Major speaks up, loud enough that we can overhear. “Learning point. Soldiers who feel like they're getting jerked around are going to find ways to stretch your orders to piss you off or amuse themselves. Sometimes both. Now, where are you going to get the handsaws to chop that thing up?”
Will and I keep it together until we round the curve of the trail before laughing. He offers me a fist, and we bump knuckles. “That was fun. Better stay away from the firstie, though.”
“Yeah,” I agree, checking my watch. What the hell, only two hours to go now. We're past the halfway point. “So you remember the name yet?”
“Sort of,” Will says. “I mean, she was half turned away from me. I never even got to see her eyes. But she had her name tag on, it was Mor . . . Mor something. Maybe Moreland, Morehouse . . .”
“Morgan?” I ask, a knot building in my stomach.
“Coulda been,” Will says. “Why, you know who I'm talking about?”
“Not sure, really,” I reply, picking my words carefully. If I say yes, I get questions that could lead to a lot more hours pulling sticks out of the woods. If I say no, I could be potentially lying, an honor violation that could get my ass in even a bigger sling. And I might be in enough trouble. I don't need to be fucking with the Honor Committee. “You know how it is, though, man. Lot of people named Morgan around the country.”
“Yeah, I know. Let's go find some damn trash somewhere.”
* * *
I finish my lift. I don't lift here in the basement of Grant that often, but it's Saturday night. I didn't want to go to the pool after the work detail, and I'm confused.
Lindsey? A Private First Class? I mean, the way Washington described the girl he saw fits Lindsey to a T. Blonde hair, amazing legs, face like an angel . . . and her last name is Morgan.
I remember that she had an enlisted sticker on her car. This whole time, I thought that she was someone's daughter. There just aren't a lot of twenty-one-year-old enlisted people running around post. West Point tends to draw on older soldiers, at least the ones who interact with the cadets. And some of the older Master Sergeants and Sergeant Majors could have a twenty-one-year-old daughter living with them.
But what if the car isn't her parents’ . . . but hers? What the fuck am I supposed to do? I mean, I know what the rules say. I’m not supposed to fraternize with enlisted. And I've done a lot more than just fraternize. FUCK!
I can't think about this any longer. I need to get out of here. I'd go down to Grant Hall and grab some food, but with twelve bucks to my name, I'm stuck. At least the mess hall has decent food today, and they weren't dicks about making us wear dress gray for dinner tonight like you're supposed to on weekends. I grab my sweatshirt and leave the weight room, heading upstairs and going outside. Maybe the cold air can help. The night is black and chilly, the area floodlights glowing orange-yellow as I walk back and forth, trying to get my damn head right.
“You know, you won't get bonus hours to bank for next time walking here,” Mel Riordan says, sticking his head out of the window to his room. With the way Grant Barracks is laid out, he's got one of the few rooms at ground level, being the First Sergeant. “What're you doing running around?”
“Too much energy I guess,” I answer, bouncing up the two steps to reach his level. “Work details aren't shit compared to what I normally do on Saturdays.”
“Yeah, I heard that,” Mel replies. “That triathlon shit, no thank you. Gimme boxing or wrestling any fucking day. At least the pain's over quicker, and you can beat the fuck outta what's causing the pain. You can't exactly beat up your bike.”
“Good point,” I tell him, smirking. Last semester, Mel was the spirit sergeant, and he did pretty good at it. At least, staging a fake 'pro wrestling' match including a roof dive for Army-Navy week was the sort of shit that makes guys into legends for a few years. “Then again, I don't take concussions in the water.”
“Hmph. So, what's got your head rattled?” Mel asks. Two plebes from E-1 come out of their division and jet past, tossing us quick greetings like they're supposed to before bouncing down the steps to wherever they're heading. “Jesus, how many more weeks before that shit's over for the year?”
“Five,” I tell him. “Come on, you like the smacks calling you First Sergeant all the time.”
“Yeah, yeah. Honestly, I'd like it if they just left me the fuck alone at night so I could get my work done,” Mel says, waving it all off. He's a lot like me. He sees the rank issues at the cadet level as playacting more than anything else. “Hey, you want in? Seriously, you don't need to freeze your ass off.”
“Nah, it's all good,” I tell him, taking a seat on the bricks and leaning on the wall. “Too hot inside, especially your division. You'd think they'd fix the fucking heaters at some point.”
“Why do you think I've got the damn window open?” Mel gripes. “Can't get them to fix this shit until summer, Captain Campos tells me. Of course, by then, fixing the damn heat is the last thing on anyone's priority list, so come next December, we get to fucking bake in here again. Tell you what, Campos wants me to be CO next year at any point, and I'm turning it down for second sem
ester. I can't be cooking out right before graduating.”
“Yeah . . . well, there is that,” I reply, sighing. “Hey, Mel, you mind if I ask you a personal question?”
“Yeah, sure. Whatcha need, Padawan?”
Mel and his damn Star Wars references. That's what you get when you stick a guy like him in a battalion that calls itself The Empire. “Just . . . tell me, man, you got yourself a girl? I mean a serious girl, you know.”
Mel shakes his head, shrugging. “I had one, back when I was a plebe. She Dear Johned my ass right about Labor Day. Since then, nah.”
“What's stopping you, if I can ask?”
Mel laughs and looks around. “You remember where the fuck we live, dude? The Corps is mostly dudes, and I don't swing that way. There’s not a lot of pickings around here. By the way, tell your roommate when you get a chance—that girl he's going to see all the time is getting passed around her barracks like a Blu-Ray. Just saying, she's playing him if he thinks he's exclusive with her.”
Poor Cho. Jesus, poor fucker can't catch a break. “You sure about it?”
“Let's just say I went over to work on a project with one of my boys, and she came out of the room wiping at her lips and my boy's roomie had a very satisfied look on his face,” Mel says. “Can't swear to more than that. But to your question, why . . . I guess part of it is like I said, lack of opportunity. But the bigger part is that I'm just not ready for a real relationship. I could get to the city three weekends a month if I wanted, at least without this First Sergeant shit. But if I'm going to do that, why not just play the fucking field, man? Six million women in New York City, maybe a million in our age group or close to it. That's a lot of pussy to sample.”
I hum, nodding. “I guess. But what if you met that one girl, you know? Like, the one that you just really feel?”
“Oh, you mean like Becky?” Mel says a little bitterly. “She was my girl back in high school. We dated all the way from my sophomore year until she wrote me that fucking email. Hell, at least back in the day, when they wanted to break up with you, they had to pay for a fucking stamp. She just had to send me an email, telling me that she and one of my former teammates just happened to hook up when I was sweating my ass off here and barely getting time to beat my meat in the toilet. Then plebe year . . . fuck it, man. I'm a dedicated bachelor until I graduate. Then I'll have a job, money, and you know girls be all over the blue suit. Hell, why settle for Hudson Hookups when I could get stationed at Schofield in Hawaii and get me a hot Hapa?”
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