He had definitely aged out of homework, though, and now he was up against a deadline.
He’d hoped reading poetry would inspire writing it.
And his standards had risen. At the beginning, he’d expected to muddle through.
Now he wanted to impress the Poet. He scanned the poem titles on the website. “So much love. So little war,” he muttered. No matter how hard he tried, he could not come up with a subject fit to trot out in front of his classmates, much less the woman he’d spent too much time thinking about outside of the classroom. What would they write about? Love, the most popular topic. College freshmen and sophomores would still have confidence in love.
But his images were the opposite—fire and explosions—and entirely too much for innocent college kids from south Florida.
The Poet had shown them all kinds of works. Not one of them had included midnight raids or the ringing in his ears after a bomb had gone off.
“Nature. You could write about the beach or flowers or other simple things.” He stretched back to study the smooth paint, this time on his dining room ceiling, and heard the faintest shout of laughter. The timing was suspicious, as if his own conscience was amused at the idea of him stringing together a collection of words to pay homage to crashing waves. When it happened again, he decided he was listening to real laughter. Somewhere, there were real people enjoying themselves. Obviously, they were not trying to write poetry.
Jason checked the time on his laptop. Almost midnight. Somewhere close by, there were people who were also not sleeping, and, while they were not sleeping, they were happy-ish, instead of trying to chase very real memories away with weak poetic images.
He wasn’t dressed to go out and make new friends. He’d left off the prosthesis to give his skin time to breathe. All the walking he’d done on the treadmill—uphill and then with differing speeds—while Terry barked “Faster” in his face had irritated the skin as much as it had annoyed him.
He didn’t want to put it back on. Not tonight. And he didn’t want to drag jeans on, pin up the leg to prevent tripping himself on crutches. He couldn’t see the sense in going through all that hassle just to have company that would distract him when he should be sleeping.
It was late.
Staying right here was the smart choice.
Right?
Jason smoothed a hand over the red skin on his knee. The scars weren’t so bad, but he didn’t go out in public with them on display. He didn’t want to be a spectacle or deal with the attention that lit a fire under his simmering anger.
He’d always been in control. Until now.
One of the memories that kept floating back to the top while he tried to rest was of a parade in Rosette. He’d been five or six. Hopped up on sugar and running wild with the pack that always followed him, he’d nearly tripped a Vietnam vet walking the parade route. His mother had been able to yank him out of way of being swatted. The man moved slowly but swung his cane like a baseball bat. The anger—that was the part that stuck with Jason.
He’d never been able to understand it.
Until now.
He shook his head. “Lost some of your guts along with your foot, Ward.” After yanking his crutch closer, Jason stood and went to his bedroom. He pulled on a clean T-shirt. Shorts and a crutch would be fine. It was dark. How much would people see anyway? “Bunch of vets in this place. No one is going to be traumatized by your leg.”
In the two weeks he’d been at Concord Court, he’d met zero of his neighbors.
Chalk that up to the fact that he was always either at school, the medical center for rehab or inside his apartment. Unless they broke in and sat on the couch his mother had insisted on buying him, Jason would never meet his neighbors.
Unless a midnight walk was the right situation.
“You’ll never know if you mope at your kitchen table as if you’re scared.” The jeans he’d worn to his PT appointment were draped over the dirty-clothes hamper. Mad at himself, Jason tossed the shorts aside, plucked up the jeans and then went to sit on the side of his bed. Attaching his prosthesis burned as he’d expected it would, but it was becoming familiar. He’d finally mastered fitting the umbrella close enough before rolling on the liner. Jason attached his leg and eased to stand carefully while he waited for the pin to snap in place. “Oh, good.”
In the early days, he’d been sure he’d never get the hang of putting on and taking off his leg.
After Jason tugged on his jeans, he stood carefully, settled his weight and then walked toward the front door. His shoes were in a short, neat line; he stepped into the running shoes that hadn’t seen any running lately and studied the smooth surface of the door.
He could do this. Over the course of a military career, he’d introduced himself to new groups countless times. Why was opening this door as traumatizing as the first day of kindergarten?
Jason eased the door open and paused. Maybe he wouldn’t hear the laughter again. He could go back inside and do more memorizing of the ceiling paint in his new, comfortable home. He was already excelling at the “not writing poetry” goal.
A low murmur of conversation drifted by. “The pool.” That was the direction the noise had come from. Whether he was right or wrong, it was a perfectly normal destination for a stroll at midnight if a man couldn’t sleep. He could say he wanted to check out the foliage around the gated area in the bright light of the moon. Bougainvillea. Hibiscus. He even knew the lingo already.
He was on the verge of poetry while he drafted his solid excuse to walk where he wanted to walk even if the cool kids didn’t approve, but Jason shook his head and headed down the pathway to the pool area. As he turned the bend in the path, the conversation grew steadier, easier to understand, even if he couldn’t make out every word. Instead of intentionally softening his step for stealth, Jason kept up a steady pace even after the noise died down. As he expected, everyone involved in the poolside conversation had turned to watch his approach as he made it to the wrought iron gate that gave the place such a high-end appearance.
“Evening.” He slowed, ready to retreat with his almost reasonable excuse at the first impression that they didn’t want his company. In the darkness, he could count three guys and one petite woman settled at a table in the corner of the paved patio. A battery-operated lantern in the center of the table was the only direct light in their shadowed area.
“Couldn’t sleep?” one of the men asked before he motioned with one hand at an empty chair. “Us, either. Occupational hazard.”
As Jason fumbled with the latch on the gate, somebody turned up the glow from the lantern. The woman added, “Since the pool is closed at this hour and we’re not technically supposed to be out here, we try to keep a low profile.”
Jason moved carefully around the landscaping before easing down into the empty seat at the table.
“Boss isn’t here tonight. She had to go to some fund-raiser, so she’s staying at her father’s villa in Gables Estates,” the guy next to Jason said before he extended his hand. “Sean Wakefield. Handyman, on-call security, interim assistant manager and all-around favorite here at Concord Court. I was wondering when you’d join us.”
Jason shook his hand. “Is there a joining requirement? An initiation ceremony or something?” He stretched to shake the other hands offered around the table and noticed a dark, dog-shaped blob spread out at the bottom of the railing.
“That’s Bo. Dogs are not technically allowed by the pool, either. He’s in training to be a service animal. Need one?” Sean asked.
“A dog? No. Thanks, but I’ll meet Bo when he wakes up from his nap,” Jason said as he tried to place Sean’s drawl. “Is that Georgia I hear?”
“Yep. You, too?” Sean asked.
“Yeah, near Atlanta.” Jason was surprised how nice it was to find that touch of home. In the army, he’d listened to accents from all over the
world, and that drawl had lost some of its unique flavor. Here, it reminded him of fishing with his dad and a half dozen different football coaches.
“I was born with one toe on the Alabama line,” Sean said. “This is Marcus Bryant, Peter Kim, also known as Anchor because he’s the only one around here with a boat, and the little lady is Mira Peters.” The faint grumble that followed his introduction suggested the little lady didn’t appreciate his description.
“This little lady hits hard as a man, jarhead.” The words were brisk, but she didn’t move an inch.
“It was a term of respect, Mira, not an insult.” Sean’s drawl was thick. Too thick even for a Georgia boy. “Ain’t nobody here need you to prove how tough you are. Running with you is a pure misery, and I do not know why I do it.”
“I do. It’s because you’re afraid I’ll drag you out of bed if you don’t show up in the morning. You hate running with me when I’m in a good mood. Imagine how much worse it is when I’m mad. Nobody likes a quitter.” She drawled to match his.
Was this an argument they had often?
Jason waited for the flurry of trash talk to die down. “Occupational hazard, you said. Where do you work?”
Marcus answered, “He meant our previous occupation. Most of us were air force, although we have one proud marine. You?”
“Army.” Jason realized he didn’t have to tell them anything more. He didn’t have to explain what kind of work he’d done or where he’d been. Civilians often followed up the first question, the one about which branch he’d served in, with another getting-to-know-you request in order to fill in the awkward silence that could bloom. Before his injury, he’d struggled to answer those questions. No matter how much people appreciated his service, there was an awkwardness because they didn’t understand a thing about it. He’d never come up with a good way to get through that. Leaving the conversation had been his best maneuver.
“Good to meet you, Ward. Don’t call me Anchor. Yes, I have a boat. No, you can’t use it.” Peter reached behind him. The rustling ice followed by a snap told Jason a drink was headed his way. A cold bottle touched his hand as Peter said, “Have a drink. That’s the only initiation ceremony we need except for serving your country in some place you never want to see again, not even in your dreams.”
Not even in his dreams. Yeah. That was right.
Jason turned the bottle slowly in his hand. Not even in his dreams. If he were a real poet, there might be something to that arrangement of words. It spoke to him. If he were a poet, he might be able to expand them so that other people could understand them, too.
“So, you got a work detail?” Sean asked as if he hardly cared.
“No job yet. Decided to give school a shot. For my mother.” Mama’s boy. So what? She was all he had. He waited for the grief they were going to heap on his head.
The chorus of sighs that answered convinced him they understood how mothers could get things done.
“Yeah, I get that. You going to Sawgrass?” Mira asked. “I enrolled last fall. Got three more semesters before I can finally finish my Bachelor of Science.”
“Then what?” Marcus asked. “Nursing school?”
Her grumble was closer to a growl. “Because I’m a woman?”
He cleared his throat. “Because you were a medic. I should have asked about medical school. That’s what I meant anyway.”
In the dark and wide-open air of the outdoor pool area, tension should have been difficult to feel, but Jason was sure every man at the table had the uneasy sensation that violence was imminent. That prickle of sensation indicated something bad was coming. The first time he was deployed, somebody called it an itch, that restless itch that meant he better pay close attention because he was going to be forced to move out fast.
Instead, Mira let out a long, soft sigh. “No. No hospitals for me. I’m lucky to be here as it is. I’m going to be a teacher. Junior high. I’m going to dissect earthworms or teach the periodic table or the layers of the earth’s core or something that keeps me in a classroom. That’s all I ever wanted. Ever.”
They were quiet. Jason wasn’t sure why everyone else was silent. He understood how joining the military was one thing in a person’s head and a completely different animal in real life, a dream that twisted into a nightmare. It was a life-and-death difference for some people. A medic who’d been deployed to save lives in the desert would have lived through the worst war had to offer. Who could ever sign up for that even if she’d dreamed of being a doctor?
“My mother wants me to become an accountant.” Jason threw it out there, hoping it would lighten the mood. The pause followed by snickers around the table convinced him he might have found a few people who knew exactly where he was coming from. “And teaching has gotta be safer than patrols outside of Kandahar.”
“I don’t know, man. Junior high was hard in my day. Today it’s twice as dangerous.” Marcus, the guy who’d put his boot in his mouth with the nursing school crack, sounded thoughtful. “Teachers do not get paid enough.”
“And neither do soldiers.” Peter raised his bottle. “To that, we drink.” At the loud clink of glass bottles, he said in a low growl, “We drink quietly.”
“You said Reyna isn’t here tonight.” Mira turned down the lantern.
“She knows everything that happens here.” Sean cleared his throat. “And she signs my paycheck, so I try to be a little more...”
“Obedient? Well trained?” Marcus drawled. “Like your dogs?”
There was no grumble, but Sean set his bottle down. “Definitely, although my dogs have excellent manners and I am known to pee on the furniture now and then.”
The muffled chuckles around the table eased some of the tension in Jason’s shoulders. It was good to talk to people who knew exactly what he’d been through. They might have served in a different part of the world with a different job and a completely different threat, but they knew about military life and the loneliness and the fear that was hard to shake even in the safe and familiar quarters of south Florida’s comfortable Concord Court.
“Accounting, huh? Taking your first class this summer?” Mira asked.
Jason squeezed his eyes shut. “Actually, I decided to try creative writing instead.”
The silence around the table was the calm before the storm. He knew that much.
“How very ‘teen rebellion’ of you. Are you making up for lost time?” There was a thread of amusement in Sean’s voice.
Jason cleared his throat. “I wanted something easy. Someone told me it was the easiest class on campus. My plan was to take a class to show my mother I could do it and get on with my life. Whatever that is.”
He stretched out his leg and tipped his head back to study the sky. Light pollution and cloud cover hid most of the stars, but it was nice to listen to muffled city noise and know that he wasn’t alone.
“How’s that working out for you? Taking the easy road always sounds so good in theory. Then you give it a shot and figure out it only looked easy because all the hard parts were hidden away.” From Mira’s tone, Jason had a pretty good idea she knew what she was talking about. If he had to guess, that deep knowledge about how tricky the easy road could be was tied directly to her own discovery that being a medic was a world away from what she wanted for her life.
“Yeah. It’s working so well that I was supposed to be writing a poem tonight. Instead, here I am.” Jason sighed. “Easy class. Turn in the work. That’s all I have to do, and I’m going to miss my first deadline.”
Jason tangled his fingers together over his stomach and closed his eyes. It was so peaceful here he wondered if this might be the key to curing his insomnia. Sleeping outside. He’d done it before but not by choice. At least he wouldn’t end up with sand stuck to his face. He hated sand.
“Poetry. I can help you with that.” Sean tapped Jason’s shoulder. “Roses are red.
Violets are blue. Bo’s ears are floppy, and so is his tail.” He took a victorious swig of his beer.
“That doesn’t even rhyme.” Mira shook with laughter, but she kept it under control.
“Not all poetry has to rhyme. Isn’t that right, Ward?” Sean said. “He knows. The man’s a student.”
“That’s right, but it does have to make sense. What does a floppy tail mean? I guess they’re all floppy?” Jason stared harder at the dark, dog-shaped shadow that had not stirred while they’d been seated around the table.
“He’s asleep. His whole body is floppy right now. It makes sense.” Sean tapped his bottle to Jason’s. “You’re free to use that. No charge.”
Jason tried to imagine the Poet’s face if he turned in Sean’s poem. The first time they’d met, she’d been wholesome. Perfect. As if a spark of light glowed from the inside. He’d been the exact opposite, half a second from ruining the peace with his mother.
But when he’d watched her lecture about the iambic foot and rhyme schemes and the world of possibilities of blank verse or free verse, he’d seen that spark transition into something magnetic. Instead of a model-perfect collegiate professor, she’d been active and passionate about bending the rules to reinvent them.
Jason didn’t bend rules, but he wanted to.
When someone loved something as much as she did teaching her class, a man had the urge to step up his game.
Unfortunately, he had no poetry game. Zero. Less than zero.
“I may have to use your floppy tail. The only images I can come up with—” Jason stared up at the dark sky again “—aren’t poetic.”
“Right,” Mira softly agreed, “but they are truth.”
A Soldier Saved--A Clean Romance Page 5