Jovi looks like she's thinking hard about his statement. "Were you?"
"Yeah. It's family. It's big and it's messy and it's loud but there is no one who loves you like family. I never felt alone until I got here and had my own room."
Veer nods. "I agree. My grandparents are from India. Everything I grew up believing stems from the fundamental idea that we are all connected. The reading really speaks to the lack of connection in American life."
Kelsey swallows hard. "So what do you do about it? How can you apply this to your future as lieutenants?" She pauses and she's still avoiding looking at me. "How do you build your tribe?"
Veer looks at me. "Shouldn’t we be asking you that? You've actually done this, haven't you? As sergeants." I smile at the way he says the full word sergeant as opposed to abbreviating it to sarn't like anyone who has been in the Army for a minute does.
I take a deep breath. I figured we'd only get them to talk for so long before they put us on the spot. "There isn't a formula. You have to be genuine. You have to really care about your people. You can't expect them to assume risk without assuming the same yourself. You have to protect them, but that doesn't mean making life easy on them. You have to train them. And that's uncomfortable. But it's better to bleed in training than die in combat."
Kelsey tucks her pen into her fist. "I think the only thing I would add to that is to not trivialize things. Something that may be very basic to you may be a very big deal to someone else. Everyone has a different threshold. Protect your people but also hold them accountable. Don't let things slide. We have standards. You have to uphold them. That's part of your job."
She finally looks up at me. The bitterness in her eyes, the frustration, hits me in that moment. Everything we're talking about, both of us failed to do when we got home from Iraq.
The hypocrisy burns.
Kelsey
I knew the discussion was going to be rough after I read the chapters for class today. Reading about leadership and risk and bonding during war was far too real, far too potent a reminder of all the things I lost when I left the Army. All of it hit home, hard. Really hard.
It's never easy to look back and know you failed your soldiers. But I did. And I can't change it.
The guilt comes back every now and again. I think it's worse today because of…things. Things that involve Deacon and the memories of coming home to a home that wasn't.
"I'm not sure I can have this conversation right now," I tell him as he falls into step alongside me.
"Who said anything about talking?"
"So we're going to walk to The Pint in awkward silence?"
"Why not? We're both heading to the same place; we might as well, right?"
I glance over at him. His jaw is flexing so hard I feel bad for his teeth. "You still grind your teeth."
He relaxes his lips but it's not enough. The tight line of his neck doesn't relax. "Bad habit. They wanted to give me meds for it when I went for my last checkup at the dentist."
"You turned them down?"
"My inner hippie doesn't like taking medication unless I need to. Grinding my teeth doesn't seem like a big enough problem to suffer through pharmacy lines for. And my liver gets enough work every day."
I stuff my hands into my sweatshirt pockets and say nothing.
"I'm really glad that Iosefe brought up his background today," he says after we’ve walked a block without speaking. "I wish Ryan had been there to hear it."
"Yeah, I think Ryan could have really benefited from Iosefe's story." I make a noise. "It's funny how Ryan's got such strong opinions about what the military is like."
"He's watched Full Metal Jacket too many times." Deacon makes a noise that might be a laugh but I'm not sure.
"It's hard sometimes," I finally say.
"What is?"
"Looking back." I release a breath, clenching the back of my throat with a deep cleansing breath. “These readings about belonging were harder to read than I thought they would be."
"Why?"
"Because the author is right. Because I miss it. I miss the stupid pranks in the motor pool, I miss the three a.m. phone calls. I miss going to the field and listening to soldiers play stupid-ass ‘what if’ games. I miss all of it." I stop walking beneath a tunnel that's decorated with the emblems of clubs from around campus. There's no art for a veterans’ club. Because we don't have one. "Because what I did mattered. Because I had a fucking purpose. And then I went and fucked it all up because I couldn't sleep."
It's hard to meet his eyes. I'm trying so hard not to be a fucking coward these days. Trying to be the person I envision when I'm on the yoga mat.
Trying to pretend that everything I hope to be can ever outrun the person that I was.
"That is such a load of bullshit. Did you see the way those kids were looking at you when you were talking today?"
"They don't look at me the same way they look at you."
He shakes his head and steps into my space in the cool dark shadows beneath the bridge. "Yes, they do."
I back away, colliding with the chalk-covered stone behind me. I'm trapped. "There's nothing to tell."
"Why do you do that? Why do you downplay your own accomplishments?"
"I didn’t do anything special. I did my damn job, Deacon."
He moves into my space then. His hands are rough where they grip my shoulders. "You did more than that and you know it. The Army doesn't hand out Bronze Stars for Valor for showing up at head count at the chow hall." His mouth is there, just there, his body pressing against mine.
But this isn't sexual. This is more intense. Something more raw. Something primal.
"They just wanted to put a female face on the attack."
"Bullshit," he snaps. "Stop doing that. Stop acting like you didn't lead the defense after our perimeter was breached. Stop acting like you didn’t take over when the LT refused to get out from behind the tire he was hiding behind. Stop downplaying what you did."
I shove his hands away but he snaps them back into place.
I shove them off again and this time, he stops. "What do you want me to say? You want me to get up in class and beat my chest about what a badass I am? What kind of badass drinks herself to sleep every night if she can’t sleep? What kind of badass was so fucked up by everything that happened downrange that she took meds she shouldn't have and got herself thrown out of the Army? You want me to tell that story? Because that's not fucking heroic."
He's shaking his head slowly. "You don't see yourself the way I do."
"All you want to do is see me naked." My quip falls flat, like an egg cracking on the sidewalk.
He doesn't smile. "There's so much more to you than you give yourself credit for."
"I fell apart. For more than a year after you left, I fell down. And I couldn't get back up." The words break me, shattering like a lightning strike slashing down the middle of a tree, burning in my chest, squeezing my throat and blocking out the air I desperately need. “Heroes don’t fall apart.”
"But you got back up." He cups my face and I don’t push him away this time. A dark part of my heart needs his touch. Even if it’s only for a moment. I wish the heat from his palms, the abrasion from his fingertips, could warm the cold dead space inside me. "Why can't you see how that makes you strong?"
I cover his hands with mine. Then draw them slowly away from my face. "Because it doesn't. If I was strong, I never would have broken in the first place."
And then I'm gone.
Because that's what I do. I run. I always run.
I ran away from home. I ran away from the Army. Away from Deacon.
Away from the fragile peace I thought I'd found.
It was a futile hope. All of it.
I leave everything good behind because all I ever do is fuck things up.
21
Deacon
I let her go because I have to. I saw the fear in her eyes but laced in that fear, I saw the truth that she believed.
; It’s not an objective truth, not by a long shot. But it is the truth to her, the internalized belief that she never should have broken. That somehow, the bravest among us never break.
It’s the bullshit lie that the Army has forced upon us since basic training. That a warrior is brave and courageous and loyal and that because we fight the good fight, that we are the righteous.
No one tells the idealist privates about the sleepless nights. About the pain of losing our friends. About the last emails we received before we find out that one of our buddies died, not from an enemy’s bullet but from their own. Or from a prescription screw-up.
Or from just plain giving up on finding a purpose in this life after the war has left everything else flat and colorless.
I walk because I don’t want to be around people. The idea of being crammed into the campus bus strikes me with revulsion. It’s a painful thing to admit you don’t want to be around people.
It’s a short walk to The Pint, to the place where I can at least do something productive with the irritation built up inside me.
Eli’s inventory is going to be done in record time this quarter if I keep this up. I’ve managed to make my way through fifteen crates. Only forty-two more to go.
She's not at The Pint when I get there. I guess I would have been surprised if she had been. I start unboxing the expensive whiskey that Eli has made the cornerstone of his brand, trying to pretend that everything is fine. That I'm not worried sick about her.
It’s fine if I keep checking my email every few minutes, right? Totally normal. It's a long shot but I'm hoping Kelsey will play along.
I send her a note from the anonymous response email I used before I discovered it was Kelsey on the other end of the insomnia email chain.
Please don't shut me out. I can handle anything but that.
I hit send before I can talk myself out of it.
"Kelsey's not going to be here tonight," Eli says, sitting down on the bottom stair.
"I know."
He's watching me as I stack the Talisker neatly on the shelf, replacing the date with the grease pencil we use to keep things current.
Eli says nothing. Waiting.
I'm stalling, searching for the words that will give Eli enough information without violating Kelsey's confidence and privacy.
We all have demons we'd rather not share with the world. And while I was there when some of them were made, hers are not mine to share with him.
"We got into an argument today," I say finally.
"About what?"
"About her not being honest with the cadets about who she is."
Eli frowns, rubbing his hand over his mouth. "What does that even mean? It's not like she's got a secret identity as Wonder Woman or anything."
"She kind of does. She's got a fucking V device and she acts like she pushed paperwork in the Army." I slam a bottle beneath the counter. "We've got this little shit-stain cadet, Ryan. He's like a younger version of Caleb, if you want the truth. A latent ammosexual all hopped up and dying to go infantry with all that hoah bullshit they feed you officers. Oh, by the way, he's branch detailed so he's going to get his feelings hurt when he has to go be a signal officer. And he's spent a good amount of time in class arguing why women shouldn't be integrated into combat arms. And she's sitting there like she's not a living, breathing refutation of his argument and she doesn't say a goddamned thing." I release a hard breath. "It just pissed me off today, that's all."
"Well, that explains why you're extra sandpapery but not why she's not at work," Eli says, like I just gave him a shitty weather forecast.
"We argued about it."
He lifts one eyebrow and in that single gesture, I am reminded of how it felt to get called on the carpet for fucking up when I was a soldier. I sigh. "I may have yelled a little bit."
"Still doesn't explain why she's not here."
"I don't fucking know." I slam a crate into the corner and the wood splinters from the shattered edges. "I don't know. I don't know why she's afraid of really living. I don't know why she genuinely believes what she did was something trivial and not worthwhile. Or why she continually downplays who she is and what she’s capable of." I turn away from the man who saved me. Who saved all of us by bringing us together. By making us his tribe, whether we wanted to be or not. "I wish I did," I whisper. "I wish I could fix this."
“You and Kelsey are two sides of the same coin.” He gets up and his strong hand grips my shoulder. I look over at him, prepared to call bullshit. He shakes his head. "You just hide it better than she does."
"I'm fine."
"You don’t sleep sometimes. You have a bad habit of fucking anything that moves. And don’t think I don’t see how much more you’ve been drinking since Kelsey showed up."
"It's a coping mechanism. Better than mainlining black tar heroin."
“True.” He frowns. "Is that even a thing anymore?"
"I don't really know and I don't want to Google it to find out. I have enough problems sleeping."
“Look, all I’m saying is maybe by focusing on her issues you’re using it as an excuse to avoid unpacking all of your own.” He grips my shoulder, over the dog tag tattoo surrounded by the branches of the tree that spread across my pec, hiding scars I pretend aren’t there.
The crow on my chest pulses over the scars. “That’s some seriously mystic woo-woo mind reading shit you’ve got going on.”
He smiles quietly and he suddenly looks tired. “Maybe I’ve been listening to Nalini a little more these days.” He squeezes my shoulder and turns to the stairs. “Finish up whatever you need to do down here. But figure out a way through this with her. Because I don’t want to lose either one of you.”
I'm off balance by how easily he’s called me on my bullshit. I thought I had everything well-concealed. I don't miss work like Kelsey. I don't disappear for days on end.
But he's right. As much as I hate it, he's right.
I head upstairs, taking orders and making drinks, and making small talk behind the bar. I glance over at Eli as he leans across the bar to drop a cherry into Parker's mouth. It's a ridiculously sensual gesture, one that makes my body tighten thinking about Kelsey's lips around a bright red cherry.
But it's too late. My mind has already detoured away from the bar, to the warmth of Kelsey's bed, to the feel of her body pressed against mine.
I want to feel her breathing as she sleeps. I want to thread my fingers with hers and hold her against me, have the cool silk of her dark hair spread against my chest.
It's such a simple want and yet, it is infinitely complex.
The Army taught me how to plan. How to develop courses of action, how to accomplish an objective.
But here there’s no grand scheme, no grand strategy.
Just a deep breath and the courage to knock on her door long after my shift has ended.
To ask if she's okay.
Kelsey
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to find Deacon standing outside my door at two a.m.
"What if I'd been sleeping?" I ask, leaning on the doorframe. There are deep slashes beneath his slightly bloodshot eyes and a dark shadow along his jaw. The urge to pull him against me and draw him into my bed is pulsing through my body with every beat of my heart.
His lips pull into a faint half-grin. "Well, then I'd have to assume you found some other rando from the Internet and I'd be a little put out."
I curl one side of my mouth. "Maybe I just decided to smoke some weed and relax."
He frowns and looks at me sideways. "Did you really?"
I'm not sure whether his question contains judgment or curiosity. "No, but I've been seriously considering it. I was looking to see if there were any medicinal marijuana studies being conducted around here." I rest my head against the door. "And no, I wasn't sleeping."
He runs his hand down the back of his neck. "Look, can I come in?"
"It's two in the morning."
"Is that a no?"
I
smile faintly and step aside. "No; it's not a no."
He slides by me and I lock the door behind him. I'm not sure if he's going to stay or if he'll leave after her says whatever is on his mind.
The fact that he’s shown up after a long night at The Pint warms my blood with something sweet and erotic all at once. It's sexual but also something more. Something deeper.
Something…intimate.
"So, hey, I, ah, got you something." He pulls a small statue from his pocket. "I saw it and I…I don't know; I felt like you might like it."
My eyes widen as I take the small figurine from him. "It's Ganesh." There is a brilliant burst of light around my heart. "Do you know what he represents?"
"Not really." He looks embarrassed that he picked it without knowing anything about it.
"He's the Remover of Obstacles." I set the statue down on the counter and step closer to him, sliding my arms around his waist. "The first time we did a chant to Ganesh at Black Stone Yoga back in Texas, I was like, ‘this is really strange.’ The next day, I got a call that I was approved for an exception to policy on my GI Bill."
"That's a pretty cool coincidence."
"Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn't. But the shorter version is that I was able to start school." I shift. "And you giving me this… thank you."
He kisses my forehead, and I am ensconced in a moment of pure trust. "I'm glad you like it."
"A lot of people are wigged out when they find out I'm actually serious about the spiritual side of yoga, not just the fitness."
"They shouldn't be. It's none of their business."
"Yeah, well, we are in the South and people get a little funny about the Hindu gods and all that." I brush my lips against his again, needing the connection, the touch. "This is absolutely perfect. Thank you."
He nuzzles my mouth, urging me to open and I do, taking the sweetness of his taste into me. "Eli fed Parker a cherry tonight and I could not stop thinking about you.”
I hop up on the small island in the kitchen. "I'm confused."
Catch My Fall: A Falling Novel Page 17