by Gabi Moore
“For Christ sake, Adam, get up,” one of them laughed and kicked his foot. None of them were in any kind of uniform, but they were still all of a type: all tall, all broadly built over the chest and shoulders, with the same closely cropped haircuts as Todd. The oblivious one bent over the table twisted around to see what the fuss was. A cigarette clung to his lower lip and he took a moment to register my presence, then he quickly staggered to his feet and yanked up his trousers again, giving me a full view of his naked body and everyone else in the room a good laugh. A guy, dark haired and heavier set, was standing over him with something curious in his hand.
“What are you…?” I asked.
They all looked like a bunch of school boys busted lighting shoplifted firecrackers behind the bicycle sheds. The entire room buzzed with a kind of good-natured merriment, only the presence of so much exposed skin gave the whole thing a dangerous air, like I had stepped in just as the party was about to get out of hand. The stocky guy held up a glowing piece of metal and showed it carefully to me. I joined the group and had a closer look. It seemed to be a series of artfully bent and knotted paper clips, twisted around to crudely form a wonky anchor shape, with a little tale for a handle, which he held between his forefinger and thumb. The metal was glowing a menacing orange.
“This? Oh this is nothing. Just that it’s Adam’s turn to pledge allegiance to our squad. If he can stop flapping his dick at the guests for a second,” he said and waved the twisted metal around a little. The room was filled with indistinct laughing and cheering.
Jesus. It was only just gone sundown and I was pretty sure these people had been drinking for hours.
“Care to do the honors? Miss …what did you say your name was?” the stocky guy said, and handed me the glowing metal.
“It’s Ellie.”
“Well, Ellie, Adam here would just about cream his pants if a pretty girl like you were the one to do it, so go on, he’d love you forever, and I sure as hell am tired of looking at his hairy ass,” he said and laughed loudly, then gave Adam a playful slap on the rump. Everyone joined him in roaring with laughter, then Adam bashfully bend forward again into the same position, naked ass turned upwards, cigarette still miraculously clinging to his lower lip.
Everyone cheered.
Now I understood. It was a brand. I looked down at the twisted metal in my hand, unsure of whether to laugh or wince in horror. I saw a few dribbling candles perched on the table in front of me. The dozens of empty beer bottles strewn everywhere. It was some sort of hazing. Some drunken bonding ritual. This was the kind of thing you saw on the news, when kids died doing some dumb shit in a fraternity and then everyone wrung their hands at the state of the youth. The metal still felt hot in my hand. Everyone was watching for my reaction. I looked down at the pasty butt cheeks of the drunk boy in front of me. Approximately ten minutes ago I had felt trapped in the stuffy waiting room called ‘being engaged’ and now it was like I had stumbled in on another world. It was awful. And kind of gross. And really, really immature.
Then why did it suddenly feel like my vacation was finally getting started?
I smiled, handed the thing back and shrugged.
“No thanks. Anyway, I think it’s gone cold.”
“Aw, Ellie girl, no! And I was all strapped in and ready to go! Don’t leave me hanging,” said Adam, and flashed me the brightest, naughtiest smile. It wasn’t my imagination. They really were all hot.
“Bend over buddy, I’m going in,” said the stocky guy again and hovered metal over bare skin.
“Aw, fuck, Tom, I swear to god I’m gonna beat your ass if you dawdle with it. Just put it on and take it off again, don’t draw it out, don’t fucking linger…”
The crowd erupted into shouts and jaunts.
“This is going to hurt you more than it’ll hurt me,” the stocky guy said. The definition on his abs was truly astonishing. He was baby faced from the neck up, and vaguely human shaped tree stump from the neck down.
“Pipe down, or I’m just using the candle as is,” said the first guy, who got to work again passing the metal over the flame till it glowed orange again. I felt a hand touch the small of my spine, and turned to see Todd. He gestured his head to the side and I followed him to the back of the room, where he crouched down and rummaged in his jacket till he had found a box of cigarettes.
“Let’s get out of here before they get any more ideas, huh?” he said and gave me a saucy wink. While the crowd knotted around the spectacle, Todd and I slunk out again, leaving the bucket of ice on the table and quietly closing the door behind us. My back against the closed door, I took a deep breath of fresh outside air and found myself laughing.
“What the hell is going on in there?” I asked, still giggling, when I noticed for the first time that we were holding hands. I quickly yanked free and stopped laughing.
“Let’s go for a walk before they realize we’re gone,” he said.
Seemed like a good idea.
We walked off quickly down the corridor and back to the stern, and with swift fingers he pulled out a cigarette, lit it with a match, flicked the burnt match away and then gently handed me the cigarette. It wasn’t the kind of chivalry I was used to, but it thrilled me all the same. I took it and we walked on briskly.
“Very brave of you, running away before your friends could mutilate your butt cheeks,” I said, still laughing under my breath. It had been a long time since I had been in a party that wild, and all at once I realized that even though I hadn’t thought of it for years, I missed that kind of thing. The camaraderie. The energy.
“Before?” he said and widened his eyes. I looked at him and laughed.
“Oh my god. No way. They already…?”
He made a hilarious puppy dog face and pouted his lower lip out. I squealed with laughter.
“No! They already marked you! That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard,” I said, but I couldn’t stop laughing at the face he was making.
“Sadly so,” he said, and I had trouble tearing my gaze away from how twinkly his eyes seemed out here in the open air of the deck.
“On your …on your butt?” I asked and took another drag.
He said nothing.
“Oh my god, you’re actually blushing!” I said and poked his ribs.
“Shut up. No I’m not. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
We reached the end of the ship and came to rest at the railings again.
“Come on, show me.”
He snapped his neck so quickly to look at me I thought he’d give himself whiplash.
“Haven’t you seen enough bare butt for today…?” he said and took a drag, then flicked the stump over the edge and into the water.
“I want to see. I’ll trade you a cigarette.”
“You don’t have any!”
“Yeah, but you still owe me one, so...”
“He was laughing hard now. A good-natured, easy laugh that did strange things to the pit of my stomach. This guy was clearly a charmer. I bet he was the kind of guy that bedded a new woman every night. And yet, I was finding it hard to resist laughing along with him.
Then I saw him. A few yards ahead, walking in the crowd in the opposite direction: Anthony. He was dressed. Looking for me.
Shit.
I took one last hurried puff, tossed the cigarette overboard and gave Todd a nervous smile.
“Hey, um, I have to go,” I said, nervously noticing that Anthony hadn’t spotted me yet.
“Go? But what about my enthralling butt cheeks?”
I playfully slapped his arm. “I’m serious. I have a salsa class to go to. I’ll um …I’ll see you around,” I said and gestured to the ship. He looked a little hurt but nodded, his smile fading somewhat.
I ran up to Anthony and his face lit up a little when he saw me. Mercifully, he seemed not to have noticed whom I was talking to.
“You came after all,” I said. I hadn’t put in nearly enough enthusiasm into that line, and it came across
as the admonishment it was. But he nodded anyway and kissed me.
“Ellie, have you been…?”
I frowned.
“Just one, god, yes. But I was desperate. It was just one.”
His expression was so harsh I recoiled from it.
“Look, Anthony, if we’re getting snippy with each other, let’s talk about all the whiskey you put away before we came out here.”
He looked stunned. It was a low blow, I admit. But it was also true.
We walked on in silence to the room where the salsa class would be held.
I was the one with the filthy habit, you see, and he was the one who was under stress and needing relaxation. I was undisciplined. Untidy. Forgetful and immature. He was just a grown man enjoying his superior taste in fine spirits. It felt like a constant effort to remind myself that he had flaws too, that despite what he said, I wasn’t so bad. And unlike smoking, Anthony’s drinking hurt more than just him. I tried not to think about all that now. We were on vacation. He wouldn’t do anything, not with the walls as thin as they were and not with people to see any black eyes in the morning…
And so that was my evening. Anthony actually decided to come out and live a little just like I had wanted. Too bad the thing I felt like I wanted suddenly seemed like the worst thing in the whole world.
Chapter 3 - Todd
I’ve spent 20-day hour days running, swimming, and hauling my carcass through combat conditioning that at the time felt worse only for the fact that you got to survive it, sleep 4 hours and then repeat the same thing the next day.
I can do 37 pushups in a minute and can hold my breath under water for twice the time a normal man can. I can sleep on rocks and wake up ready to load a rifle, rappel down a mountain and disarm anyone I find on the other side. I was in the early stages of conditioning my body to be an all-terrain, all-purpose, finely tuned human machine capable of surviving and thriving in extreme combat situations.
But holy fuck if I still couldn’t handle my alcohol.
I groaned and decided not to open my eyes yet. My head wasn’t pounding so much as splitting at the sides where I felt sure my brain was trying to escape me and the abuse I’d put it through. My mouth was dry. I felt hollow inside, and dizzy even though I was lying down. And the burn. Dear god, the burn on my ass.
I groaned again, peeled open my eyelids and clawed at the bed sheets for support as I tried to raise my head. Even lifting my cheek off the pillow for a second gave me a sickening lurch in my guts so that I was sure I’d throw up if I moved again. I collapsed back down and squeezed my eyes tight. The light felt bright enough to be the sun exploding on my retina, but in all probability, it was only something like late morning, maybe 10:00 AM at most.
Digging deep, I hauled myself up, blinked hard and scratched the sleep from my eyes. I was in my room, half tangled in bed sheets. I was naked but still had one shoe on. A quick scan of my memory showed that my recollections of the past evening cut out sometime after I went back to the party with the squad.
I sat up straight.
The girl.
Now I remembered.
I looked down at my soft cock resting in my lap. I scanned the room. Nope. She hadn’t come home with me. I stood and cracked my neck. She had been keen, but not that keen. Still, it was an entertaining thought.
Then I noticed the bathroom door was shut. I heard the toilet flush and the faint flow of water in the basin. I wracked my brain to think of who could be in there, and just as I was gearing up to imagine it might possibly be her, out stepped Charlie, slamming the door and standing before me in nothing but a white pair of men’s boxer shorts.
“Fuck. It’s you.”
“Morning sunshine,” she said. “Got your beauty sleep?”
She sidled over to the bedside table, scratched around at some things there and plucked up a burnt out joint and a lighter. Then she plopped down next to me, feet spread wide, smile even wider, and got to work lighting it up.
“Christ, can you not?” I groaned and slumped back down into the blankets.
The relationship between Charlie and I is kind of hard to explain. In fact, I’d like to not have to call it a ‘relationship’ at all. When she first enlisted with our group, she was one of three women who were all low-key gunning to be the ‘first female SEALS’ and all that shit. Since they opened the whole playing field up last year, a few women had tried but nobody had made it through yet. No biggie. Most men don’t make it through either. Only Charlie seemed to take the whole thing personally, and had made it her full time life’s mission to prove to everyone how wrong they were to think she couldn’t do it. As far as I could tell, nobody hassled her even one bit, but she was always high strung, always looking to finish an argument nobody started, always lippy about something.
Anyway, we all thought she was gay, truly. The other two certainly were. But after they quit, she was the only one left and then she really went psycho. Don’t get me wrong, Charlie is hardcore. I’d trust her with anything, she’s solid, and I wouldn’t pick a fight with her any day of the week. The rest of the troop felt the same way. But that didn’t mean any of them wanted to risk treating her like a girl and ask her out or something.
I’m sorry, that’s crude, but you see, things got difficult. Maybe she wanted to show that she was just one of the guys or something. I don’t know why that meant she needed to sexually harass me 24/7, but hey, I’m a big boy, I guess I could take it. Funny thing is, she is kind of hot. Like, I can see it all there. The boxes are more than well ticked, if you know what I mean.
Through my gritty eyes I peered over at her on the bed and she just sat there, tits out, and you know, she was kind of pretty when she wasn’t going all out with her grating GI Jane bullshit. She had this tight, hard belly and one of those belly buttons that go straight up and down, like a little cut. She had blonde, wiry curls that she always pulled back into tight braids and knotted at the base of her skull, but when she let it loose like this, you could almost forget what an annoying ball-breaker she could be.
“Want some?” she said and extended the lit stump to me. I groaned.
“Don’t you ever sleep?”
She laughed.
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead, baby.” She took a puff, then killed the stump in a glass on the bedside table and started scrabbling around on the floor.
“Did you…?”
“Sleep in here last night? Sure did. That asshole Adam locked me out of my room and since your pansy ass was out cold, I came in here.”
“Did we…?”
She snorted as she laughed.
“Baby, if I decide to take advantage of you in your sleep, you’ll sure as hell know about it.”
I was not in the mood for this shit. I stood again, clutching the sheets at my groin and staggering over to the mirror to take a look at my roasted backside.
“So stupid. So, so stupid. How could I be so fucking stupid?” I moaned as I stroked trembling hands over the blistered burn in the shape of an anchor on my butt cheek. It had swollen and now looked more like an upside-down mushroom. It had seemed hilarious the night before. Now the pain and stupidity of it all was sobering me up fast. Charlie tilted her head to ogle me and nodded her approval.
“Can’t say it’s an improvement, bud.”
“Charlie? Can you just clear out of my room for a second? I just wanna sleep this off,” I said and tried to fold myself back into my bed.
She looked a little perturbed, her hip cocked sharply to the side.
“Look,” she said, a little snippy, “I didn’t come around here looking for you, you know.”
“Yeah, I know. Whatever, I’m just hung-over as hell.”
“I’m serious, Todd, you can stop acting like I’m about to corner you any second. Way to dent a girl’s ego.”
My brain felt like it had been dry roasted, crumbled and poured back into my skull.
“Relax, would you Charlie? I never said anything.”
“Your asshole f
riends are the ones who keep thinking it’s a good idea to set us up, not me.”
“Ok.”
“Ok what? You don’t have to be such a bitch about it. You know, any guy on the squad would kill for a chance to fuck the only remaining woman left on this year’s enlisting.”
I grit my teeth, sat up in bed and gave her a long stare.
“You know, dating isn’t a martial art, Charlie. I’m allowed to not want to, you know.”
She rolled her eyes as she threw on a tank top, without a bra underneath. She found her shoes and then turned to leave.
“I cannot believe I’m having such a dumb conversation,” she muttered.
I couldn’t either. Like I said, stuff between Charlie and me was weird, to put it mildly. She wasn’t wrong either. There were at least three guys on the team I knew who would drop everything this second to even get a glimpse of those small, fierce little breasts of hers. But that didn’t change anything for me. Maybe I’m not like most guys in this regard, but if it doesn’t feel right, I just don’t do it. And things with Charlie never, ever felt right. Charlie always seemed so angry. Always a little on edge. It would have been a funny thing to admit out loud, but I didn’t like feeling like a conquest to her. I knew we had a history, but that was all a long time ago.
“Hey, don’t be mad,” I said as she opened the door to leave.
“I’m not mad, why would I be mad?” she said and looked down at me in bed.
“Just …I’m just tired OK? I’ll catch up with everyone later. We’ll sit by the pool and stuff.”
She nodded and silently closed the door. I tried to bury my head into the pillows and sleep again, but it was no use. I stood up, swallowed a painkiller and splashed my face with some cold water. Maybe the abomination on my ass would scab up and heal. These days didn’t they have ways to fix stuff like that, with lasers or something?
I winced as I peeled on a fresh pair of shorts, then threw on a t-shirt, cracked my knuckles and gave the mess in the room one last look. It wouldn’t look like it to anyone else, but this was my own personal form of luxury at the moment. Once I got started down my military career, order and cleanliness would become the norm. But for now, I was saying a final farewell to my old life and as it happened, that old life came with a lot of mess.