by Claire Adams
"You're back," he said.
"Yup. Glad to be back," I said. The look on his face was a blend of relief and happiness. He had never really been a fan of me joining the army; Mom had actually been more supportive than he had. Guess now that I was back in one piece and he could tell people his son was a vet, he was proud.
"Are you alone?" Tiffany asked.
"Yup. Nobody else was flying into Aberdeen."
"How was it?" she asked in awe.
"How do you think?" I shot back, jokingly.
"Was it scary? What did you do?" she asked. I sighed.
"Trained a lot. Got sunburn. Saw a lot of camels. What about you?" I asked lightly.
"That's not all you went there to do," she said, her brows wrinkling.
"Let's get him home before the interrogation, how about that?" my dad interjected. I was glad he did.
That was first on the list of things I wanted to do. The second was take a shower, third was pass the fuck out. I didn't have anything but a duffel with me because we had had to turn in all our issued equipment and weapons at the base.
"Could you at least tell us how your flight went?" she tried.
I laughed. She was just a year younger than I was so we were pretty close. She hadn't really cared about what me being in the army meant, but it looked like that had changed for her since I had been gone. We finally started out of the building to get to the car.
"It was good," I said.
"I have a hard time believing that," she challenged.
"Any word on how long you get to stay?" Dad asked.
"They don't really give us a schedule," I replied.
"So they can just come get you whenever they want?" Tiffany asked. Well...yeah. It was a job. The Armed Forces was my employer. I had signed a contract and everything.
"Pretty much," I said, resigned. That was exactly how it was. Going back was the last thing on my mind since I had just gotten home, but being realistic, another deployment was probably in the cards for me. I had lucked out with this one; shortish and not too many actual months spent in the combat zone. Fuck if I was going to let that ruin this for me. It was the furthest I had been from home and for the longest time. I was going to enjoy being here, especially since I wasn't sure how long I was going to get.
We talked throughout the trip back home, but my eyes stayed trained outside. Aberdeen wasn’t that big a town, but it was a big difference from the desert villages surrounding the airfield that had been my view for the past year.
I knew it was all in my mind, but I was expecting the house to look different. I hadn't lived there really since I had started college, but it had just felt like such a long time. I was waiting to see something that I totally didn't recognize. I felt so different coming back, so it just made sense in my mind that this place would have changed, too.
It hadn't. Our family home was right where it had always been. Two stories, two car garage, back and front yard, yellow exterior that Dad repainted every spring, gutters that it used to be my job to clean out when I was a kid. It was all the same.
"Here we are," Dad said as Tiffany pulled the car into the driveway. Home sweet home. For now. When I thought about home, this wasn't really it. I hadn't lived here for a while but I hadn't held onto my last place since being deployed. I was stuck here till I got a new place of my own. I opened my door and grabbed my luggage, following my father and Tiffany into the house.
Just like it was outside, the inside of the house was the same as it had always been. It was trippy, like I had never even left in the first place. It was sort of reassuring, too. It felt good knowing that some shit did stay the same, even when you didn't.
"You go on upstairs, Tiff's gonna get dinner started," Dad told me.
"I can help her."
"You get guest of honor privileges for one night. This will never happen again," Tiffany said to me, grinning.
"Your room's just how you left it. Go up there and settle in. I'll come get you when the grub's up," he said. I thanked him and started up the stairs. "Your mother would have been so proud of you coming home today. I wish she could see the man you grew into," he added.
I stopped and looked down at him. Five years ago was when she had died. She had been a big part of the reason that I had even gone through with it in the end.
"Thanks, I miss her, too," I said. I didn’t really want to talk about her. I knew he wasn’t really over the fact that she was gone. He smiled up at me and let me go.
Everything was where I had put it a year ago. The walls were whitewashed, and in some places, you could still see the little spots where the tape I had used to hang posters up back in the day had damaged the paint. I had a regular double bed, which wasn't that big, but bigger than the regulation beds we had used at camp. Most things after camp felt like a fucking luxury. I was glad to be back.
The first thing I did was take a shower so I could change out of my uniform. When there was a bunch of us and we were all in uniform, we all blended in, became one unit. Out in the civilian world, a guy in uniform stood out.
Before deploying, Dad had let me keep my clothes here at the house, along with stuff like my television and some gaming consoles, since he had space. The rest of the furniture I had used at my old apartment had all gone into storage.
It didn't feel like I had been gone long enough for this to feel new to me. It had just been a year. Some of the guys I had met were deployed on their second or third tours. All the stuff that seemed so normal, like having a closet and more clothes and belongings than you could carry on you at any one time felt new after not being able to have them while I was gone. It humbled the shit out of you. You couldn't feel like you weren't exactly the same as the other soldiers when you were in combat. It was a little like football in that way – but with much higher stakes and a million times more stressful.
I didn't know what was for dinner, but the smell coming from the kitchen when I came back downstairs was fantastic. The last thing I had eaten had been on the plane. When Mom had been around, she would do the cooking. Since she was gone, Dad had had to learn how to feed himself. Lucky for him, Tiff still lived at home and knew her way around a kitchen. The two of them were setting the table when I came back downstairs.
She had made individual chicken pot pies with a load of sides. I ate some of everything, and it was delicious. I took their questions as they came. Apparently, they had been paying close attention to the news just in case anything happened. They had been scared to death after the couple of bombing incidents that had made the news here, but that had never really been an everyday thing. I had to ease their anxiety about it.
Dad didn't stay long after dinner. He told us goodnight and headed upstairs. He never stayed up that late, even though it was a weekend. The food disappeared, replaced with coffee. I didn't want any since it was probably going to be a struggle getting back on US time. Tiff made herself a cup of dark coffee that she stirred about four sugars into.
It had always been easy talking to her. As adults, as fucked up as it sounds, losing Mom had made us closer. When it had happened, Tiff was the one person other than me who had really had that bond with her. She was the only person who really understood when they said that they understood.
"So how'd you keep yourself busy this past year?" I asked her.
"School, work, rinse, repeat."
"Two more years and you're out," I said.
"I don't know. I've been thinking about grad school a little lately," she said shrugging.
"Yeah? Why? Trying to stall on joining the real world?"
"Beth was in school till she was like, thirty, and look at her now," she quipped. Bethany was one of our cousins on our mom's side. She had two PhDs and our aunt had let her live at home till she had graduated. Fast forward a couple years and she was one of the youngest tenured professors at the University of Vermont.
"How is she?"
"Fine. We didn't all just sit around and wait a year for you to get back, Rome," Tiffany teased
.
"You know what I mean," I said back. A year was a long time, but also, it really wasn't. It was the difference between a minor child and an adult and enough time for the planet to make a trip round the sun, but more things were the same than were different. Dad was still working, she was still at school, and family we had nearby were fine. It was like I hadn't left.
"What about your friends?" I asked her casually.
"My friends? You didn't really know many," she quipped. What I didn't want to say was tell me how Veronica's doing. From what I could tell from her letters and talking to her while I had been gone, they hadn't stopped being best friends in the past year.
"What about that girl Grace?" I asked, grasping for any name I could remember.
"Gracie? She took a leave of absence. She got pregnant." I tried to think of another one of her friend's names. Veronica was always the closest friend that she had had, so I was coming up blank.
"Are you dating anyone?"
"Not really. I don't have a boyfriend if that's what you're asking," she said.
Fuck, she was going to make me do it. I didn't want to come right out and ask her about Veronica, but I had to know how she had been. I had never felt lonely while I was gone. I had gotten letters from my family all the time and even got to talk to them. It still wasn't enough, though. It had been a whole year since I had said a single word to Veronica, and I was just getting how fucking long that was.
Anything could have happened. A year was long enough to meet someone new and start a relationship. It was long enough to get pregnant and have a baby. It was long enough to forget about her, but I hadn't. I hoped secretly that she hadn't, either. If she had, then that would have been my fault – but it wouldn't change the fact that I still cared about her.
"What about Ron?"
"Veronica?" she asked, putting her cup down.
"Yeah. What's she up to these days?" I asked, trying to sound casual.
"I thought you'd never ask," she said grinning. "Last I saw her, she was great."
"Yeah?"
"She has a year before she graduates, her own place without a roommate… She's great," she said. Good. That was good but I could have guessed that myself. I could have heard that from anyone, my dad probably could have told me that. I wanted more.
"Is she seeing anyone?" I asked.
"You sure you want the answer to that question?" she asked.
Fuck, I should have seen that one coming. Ron was incredible, there was no way she would still be single. She was the kind of girl a lawyer fifteen years her senior would try to marry. She was the kind of girl a freshman would be begging to give him a chance; any guy would be begging for a shot with her. She was perfect. Smart, funny, ambitious, driven, and she was mine. Up until a year ago, she had been mine. Now some other guy got to say that.
"Who is he? Do I know him?"
"You don't. His name is Sean. I think he's a philosophy major or something. They met at school."
"How long have they been together?"
"Why do you have so many questions about your ex?" she challenged.
"She's your friend. I just figure I'm going to see her again. We were together for a long time."
"Yeah, and then you dumped her."
"You think I don't remember that? I'm not proud."
"It took you a year to realize that?"
"I thought I was doing the right thing."
"You have had an entire year to think about this and you still think it was the right thing to do?"
"I can't change what I did. I made that choice, and I had to stick to it."
"And continuing to lie to her? What about that choice? Why would you let her keep thinking you thought she was a burden to you?"
"That's not what I said to her."
"You haven't said anything different. All she knows is you loved her one day, and you were telling her it was over the next. You're my brother, so it isn't my place to say anything to her, but that was fucked up, Roman. And, it's wrong to pretend you really cared what those words you said did to her after all this time."
"I do care, Tiff. You think I liked dumping her? You think it got me off seeing her crying and breaking her heart? I felt like an asshole. It took everything inside of me not to go after her. I hurt her, but it fucked me up, too."
"And now you're back. What are you going to do?" she asked.
"I just want to know how she is, Tiffany. Don't tell me if you don't want to. I cared about her for a long time, and that didn't change after we broke up." She looked at me coolly from the other side of the table like she was debating whether or not to tell me about Veronica.
"She's had time to get closure. Don't do anything stupid and rip that scab off," she warned.
"Is she happy with that new guy?"
"I don't know what she sees in him, but there must be something. She seems to like him."
"That's not what I asked," I said.
"She's doing great at school, dating a new guy, and on her way to graduating with honors. Yes. She's pretty happy, Roman."
Fine. That was all I needed to know. That was good, I wanted her to be happy. After the way, we had left things and the last things we had said to each other, her being happy was all I could ask for. I just had to make sure. I had been that guy who got to make her happy so long, I just wanted to make sure that was still happening. Like I didn't fuck her up by accident after breaking it off with her. It sucked that she was dating but that wasn't my business anymore. At least she was happy...right?
Chapter Six
Veronica
I took a sip of my coffee. It was almost cold. After one of the servers had come to my table twice trying to take my order already, I had just given in and gotten a chai latte. I had tried to tell them that I was waiting for someone, but since I had been sitting here for thirty minutes with no partner in sight, I didn't believe myself, either.
Being late wasn't some kind of unforgivable crime. All Sean had to do was call me or text me that he was running late, just let me know in advance. Either that or he had to have a bulletproof reason why he was late once he got here.
What made it even worse was he was the one who had asked me on this date, the least he could do is show up. Sitting alone in a coffee shop was fine, I just didn't appreciate being stood up. I had rescheduled plans to accommodate this guy, and he didn't even have it in him to show up on time to a date he had asked me out on.
This was sort of just what I got though, wasn't it? It was just the same shit different day. He was always like this. Sean could be a nice guy sometimes, but then he would do shit like this and I had to wonder whether I could just stay home the next time he asked me out and see whether it even made a difference.
My phone lit up on the table next to my hand, just like he had heard me mentally talking shit about him. I picked up.
"Sean?"
"Veronica? Hey, where are you right now?"
"Where am I? I've been waiting for you for almost forty minutes, where the hell are you?"
"Listen, I'm not gonna make it for our date." I rolled my eyes. I wished I could be surprised by his behavior, but at this point, his flakiness was just expected. Just because I expected it, though, didn't make it any less infuriating.
"Why?"
"Huh?"
"Why won't you make it? You can't set plans with people and wait till the last minute to break them."
"Something came up, okay? Shit, what's the matter with you?"
"Don't call me making plans unless you know you can make it."
"What are you? On your period or something?" he asked.
I sighed and hung up on him. He was the one who had flaked on me and he was wondering why that would make me upset? What a loser. I drained my coffee and paid for it. I texted Tiffany when I got to my car. I had asked her to come to my place after I got back from the date with Sean, but there had been a change of plans.
Sean tried to call me back, and I ignored it. He had gotten way too much of my time to
day – I didn't want to hear it. In the beginning, he had tried to throw an excuse in here and there about why he couldn't make it when he flaked on dates, but it was like he had given up pretending to cover his ass. I could understand being busy, but the man was not busy unless he was getting paid for playing Mass Effect in his apartment all day. He didn't have a job that I knew of. I knew from the number of times he was absent in class that that wasn't what was eating all his time up, either.
I was less heated by the time I got to my apartment. Tiff had been on campus, so I knew she would probably be there when I got there. We walked into my building minutes after one another and took the elevator together.
"Sorry if this was sudden," I apologized as I unlocked the door.
"I know you're only early because Sean canceled," she said playfully.
"How did you guess?"
"Because I'm pretty sure you've never made plans with him that he actually followed through with," she said. The sad truth. I couldn't even fight her on it because of what had just happened.
"I would have hung out with you anyway," I said defensively. She plopped down onto the couch, and I followed suit. I only had one because the apartment was small, and I didn't need another anyway. It was a one bedroom near campus and I knew that once I didn't have to be near school anymore, I was moving away. Saving money on furniture meant I had more socked away to do everything I hadn't been able to while living here.
"I know that the real question is why you hang out with him."
I shrugged, thinking about it a little. He was a nice... Okay, not nice, but he was an okay guy. He wasn't bad to look at, having brown eyes, sandy hair, and a face that blended hard and soft just right so the result was masculine, but still almost pretty. He was tall, which was always a plus, and lean despite never taking a lot of time to work out... Was that it though? Was that all I could come up with in his defense?
"I like him," I said hollowly.