* * *
Ashley didn’t move. She just closed her eyes and waited for Dunk to signal the start of the run.
All during Dunk’s speech, Jim had watched the big idiot with the shaved head and the camo-print T-shirt pursue the woman. She’d kept moving away from him, yet he’d followed and followed again. From the smirk on the man’s fugly face, and from the color in Ashley’s cheeks, Jim knew that he was being a total tool.
Dunk had warned Jim about the guy. His nickname was Bull, and he and his friend Todd had attended SEAL World twice before. On a scale of zero to douche, he was a double-douche.
Each time he’d followed Ashley and said something no-doubt inappropriate or rude, Jim had expected her to turn around and lay into the guy.
But she didn’t. And she didn’t. And she didn’t again.
The whistle blew, and the woman took off—faster than almost everyone else.
She had runner’s legs—long and muscular. She looked and acted like a powder puff pushover, but in fact, she was strong.
Jim powered up his electric dirt bike and surged ahead to catch up with her. “Hey, Ashley,” he called, and she turned to look at him, her blue eyes shaded beneath her Red Sox cap. “Remember to pace yourself. Gonna be a long day.”
She nodded—so serious—and kept running.
* * *
Jim saw right away that Ashley hated her time at the shooting range. She tried to duck out of it, using her negotiating skills as an attorney to attempt to “opt out,” but Jim hardened his heart and didn’t let her do it.
So as he’d watched, she’d closed her eyes and she’d fired her weapon. She did about as well as could be expected—considering that she’d closed her eyes as she’d fired her weapon.
The O-course was a fiasco for her, too. She had little-to-no upper body strength, and most of the obstacles required strong arms and shoulders. But her brother Clark and his friend Kenneth had stepped up—helping her along.
They were the only ones out of the other twenty-five campers who hadn’t just blown past Ashley.
She’d killed it, however, on the pop calc quiz that the campers had been hit with immediately after lunch. She wasn’t lying when she said she had math skills.
By 1600, they were done. The campers had free time to clean up before dinner as Jim headed into Dunk’s office to help create the teams.
Thomas King and Lucky O’Donlon were already in there. Lucky was sprawled on the big leather sofa, while Thomas sat in a hard-backed chair. He rose as Jim came in, clearly offering him the seat.
“Jeez, King, I’m not your eighty-year-old grandpa,” Jim said, but then realized that, yeah, maybe he was, since the only other places to sit were that too-soft sofa—with his knees at their current level of agony, he’d need a forklift to pull him out of there—or the chair on castors behind Dunk’s desk. And no way was he taking Dunk’s seat.
“Of course not, sir,” Thomas said smoothly. “I was saving it for you, due to your temporary issues. See, with these arm rests…?”
Jim would be able to push himself back to his feet without embarrassing himself. “Thanks, man,” he murmured as he took Thomas’s seat.
“De nada, sir,” Thomas murmured back. “I got you. Your being here is saving my ass.”
From whoever that girl was, who’d obviously taken one look at the young SEAL with his handsome face, his BUD/S-hardened muscles, his ramrod straight posture, and his brilliant leader’s mind combined with the empathic compassion of a hospital corpsman… Whoever she was, the girl was no fool.
But then Rio Rosetti came in, with Dunk right behind him. As always, Rio was talking up a storm.
“He’s an asshole, is what he is, Senior,” he was earnestly telling Dunk. “And if he ends up on my team, I cannot guarantee he’ll survive the session.”
“Let me guess,” Thomas said dryly. “We’re talking about Bull Edison.”
“We are,” Dunk admitted.
Even Lucky made a face. “I say we rotate him and his idiot friend, what’s his name, Tom?”
“Todd,” Jim said in unison with Thomas and Rio.
“That’s not a bad idea,” Dunk said as he perched on the edge of his desk. “Tag-team ’em. We can all handle Bull and Todd for a few days at a time.”
Jim spoke up. “I’ll take ’em.”
They all turned and looked at him. Even Thomas couldn’t hide his surprise.
Jim shrugged. “I actually want them. Along with Ashley, Clark, and Kenneth. Five person team. The rest of you get six.”
Dunk laughed his surprise. “Man, I know you’re fucking nuts, but do you have to prove it so early in the session…? I mean, I was expecting some serious crazy from you, but not until around day three…”
“You do have the rep for owning some serious crazy, Spaceman.” Lucky used Jim’s SEAL-training-acquired nickname as he laughed.
“You actually want them, sir…?” Rio couldn’t believe it.
“I actually do,” Jim answered. “It’s gonna be like an afterschool special movie. Everyone’s gonna learn the shit out of this.”
Lucky was laughing his ass off.
“Learn what?” Dunk asked, starting to laugh, too.
“That… I don’t quite know yet,” Jim admitted.
Thomas was seriously concerned. “Lieutenant Slade, sir,” he started, “since you’ve never been an instructor here before, I would respectfully suggest—”
“No, no, no, nuh-no, Thomas, don’t stop him. This is gonna be so much fun to watch,” Lucky said, still laughing, but Dunk spoke up over them both.
“You want it?” he asked Jim. “You got it. But if I agree to this, my crazy swim-finned brother, you cannot quit. I own you for the next week. No ringing out.”
“Agreed,” Jim promised. “I’m here.”
Dunk grinned. “Bull’s gonna shit bricks and—oh, frabjous day—quite possibly never come back.”
“And then,” Jim said with a smile, “there’s that.”
* * *
Ashley found Clark and Kenneth hunched over the Space Invaders game.
Tonight’s dinner had been surprisingly good—a hearty roast chicken with potatoes and carrots, with a spinach and cucumber salad. She had, however, sat alone since her brother and his friend had gotten there early, inhaled their food, and vanished into the lounge.
It was actually interesting the way the other campers avoided eye contact. They looked past her or over her or through her as the tension in their shoulders shouted Please God, don’t let the creature with the vagina be part of my team.
Once, when she was a kid, she’d stumbled into her older cousin’s boy-cave in the basement of his suburban house. She thought she’d merely been going down to the rec room, but instead she’d entered a loudly proclaimed Boys Only territory. Shouting and screaming had ensued, and her father had pulled her aside to advise that she be more careful in the future, and not violate their “safe space.”
She’d learned to move about more quietly and not call attention to herself. She’d intended to do the same thing here—until she’d found out that she was part of a team.
There was no getting around that. She was going to seriously mess-up someone’s misogynistic day—unless Jim Slade delivered on his suggestion to create a smaller group with only Ash, Clark, and Kenneth.
Ashley poured herself a glass of wine from an open bottle of a very nice California Pinot Noir. As she started to input her PIN into the iPad attached to the bar, Jim appeared and stopped her.
“Tonight, the first one’s on the house,” he said, slipping onto the bar stool next to her.
“To help ease the pain?” she asked as she took a sip. The room was filling up around them, and the anticipation and anxiety was palpable. Or maybe she was projecting.
Jim smiled. “It’s really not going to be that bad.”
For him, perhaps… “So how exactly do we do this team-picking thing?” Ashley asked. “Is there a hat, like in Harry Potter…? Or is it more li
ke the humiliation of middle school gym class?”
“It’s definitely not that,” Jim said. “Although a talking hat would be pretty damn cool.”
She looked at him. “Books or movies?”
“Both were good, in Harry’s case,” he said, “but as a general rule, I prefer the written word.” He smiled again. “And see, that look…? The one you’re giving me—”
“I’m not giving you a look.”
“Yeah. You are. You’re good at hiding it, but it’s back there. It’s the Huh, I took you more for the reality-TV-watching type. In fact, I wasn’t sure you even knew how to read look. It comes from having a face like a pugilist.”
She took another sip of wine. “Nice word.”
“Didn’t want to use boxer and have you thinking that I think I have a face like a dog.” He grinned at her. “It’s not that bad, as far as faces go.”
It certainly wasn’t, but she would never tell him that. Instead, she hid her smile in her glass of wine.
“As far as how we select the teams,” Jim continued, “it’s already been done. Dunk’s gonna come in and read off the assignments. There’s gonna be noise; ignore it if you can—Dunk’ll shut it down. We’ll then meet in groups to assign a TL—a team leader.”
And there came Dunk, into the room followed by Thomas, Rio, and Lucky. Ashley felt her shoulders tense.
“It’s gonna be okay,” Jim murmured.
Ashley turned to him, unable to stop herself from asking, “Should I have quit?”
He laughed. “Only if you thought it would be fun for me to mock you endlessly.”
“Endlessly?” she asked. “I think it would’ve ended when I left in the morning.”
“And I’m pretty sure Dunk has your email address,” Jim said. “I definitely would’ve continued to mock you endlessly from afar.”
“Seriously,” she said. “I know that Dunk would’ve made an exception to his no-refund rule for me. My being here has to be a challenge for him—and for you and the other instructors, too.”
“There’s not a Navy SEAL alive who doesn’t love a good challenge,” Jim pointed out, leaning closer and lowering his voice as the room fell to an anticipatory hush.
“Good evening,” Dunk said. “Did everyone enjoy Lieutenant Slade’s chicken?”
Ashley turned to see Jim giving a pope-wave and laughed. “You cooked that dinner?”
“Such incredulity,” he said sotto voce as Dunk continued to speak, explaining how he was going to announce the teams, who would then break off into groups to get to know one another.
“Not that you cooked it,” Ashley lowered her voice to tell Jim. “It was crazy delicious, by the way—but that you somehow had time.”
“A man, a plan, and a roaster with a lid,” he whispered back. “Or in this case, when feeding thirty-ish people, an abundance of roasters with lids, and a team of sous chefs or grunts as we call ’em in the service—the carrot and potato peelers. I drizzled the olive oil and applied the spices and put the exact amount of water in the bottom of the pans. Everything mixed together and… Into the oven for two hours—with that lid, you cannot overcook, you can only make it better. There’s time to shower and even attend a meeting or two. Excuse me.”
Yes, Dunk had just requested his SEAL instructors join him at the front of the room for the team announcements.
As Ashley watched Jim Slade walk across the lounge—trying not to limp—she realized that maybe, just maybe, this next week wasn’t going to be as awful as she’d imagined.
She and Jim, along with Clark and Kenneth, might actually have fun and…
Theirs was the first team announced. “Lt. Jim Slade will be instructor for Team One, which includes Ashley DeWitt, Clark DeWitt, Kenneth Price…”
And there it was except, inexplicably, Dunk kept going.
“…Todd Grotto and Dwight “Bull” Edison.”
“What…?” Bull put voice to what they all were thinking, his what going up several octaves to High-Soprano-Land. “What the hell!”
Ashley was too stunned to speak. Todd and Bull were part of their team…? She looked over at Jim, but he was not looking at her, and with a sinking heart she realized his admonishment for her not to quit had probably not been entirely honest.
“Settle down there,” Dunk said as the men in the room who were not Bull or Todd murmured their relief. “Moving on to Team Two,” Dunk announced, but whatever he said after that, Ashley had no idea.
All she could think was, shit… shit!
CHAPTER FOUR
Ashley looked shell-shocked.
As Jim watched, she brought her still half-full glass of wine over to the table that he’d decreed as belonging to Team One. She sat down across from him, but the smart, funny woman he’d been talking to at the bar had vanished.
Bull and Todd were in the corner, having a heated but relatively quiet discussion with Dunk.
The three other teams were buzzing with both excitement and relief as they connected at other tables throughout the room.
“Dunk’s telling them that because we’re a five-man team—the other teams each have six; two campers dropped out this afternoon, so… Anyway, because there’s only five of you, he’s going to allow me to join you when you compete,” Jim explained as Clark and Kenneth sat down, too. “At least until there’re more dropouts to even things out.”
The two boys—both looking uncharacteristically grim—purposely chose chairs on either side of Ashley, ensuring that neither Todd nor Bull would be able to sit too close to her.
“That’s supposed to be a good thing?” Clark asked. “Dude, you hide the limp pretty well, but no one is fooled. Speculation abounds about the extent of your injuries.”
Kenneth, surprisingly, defended Jim to Clark. “Still, he’s a SEAL. This training is a vacation for him. Our paltry challenges are things he can do with both hands tied behind his back.”
Clark turned to his friend. “Yeah, but look at the rest of us. Out of you, me, and Ash, she’s the most athletic. Add in the rage twins over there…”
Across the room, Dunk was still listening to whatever Very Important Thing Bull was earnestly telling him. One possibility was that both Bull and Todd would decide to go home early. Jim hoped that wouldn’t happen—at least not right away.
“Can Lieutenant Slade do our paltry challenges with both hands and feet tied?” Clark asked Kenneth.
“Whose idea was it?” Ashley suddenly asked. She looked up, directly at Jim.
He knew what she meant—and that she wanted him to say it was Dunk’s idea to put Bull and Todd on their team. But he wasn’t going to lie. “It was mine.”
She nodded. “Okay. Wow. Your apology,” she said. “It worked.”
Jim didn’t understand. “Worked?”
“I was disarmed,” she admitted. “I thought… Well, my bad.”
“Ho, now,” Jim said. “I meant what I said. And you said you wanted to learn something.”
“I wanted to learn something new,” she told him, way too evenly. Why wasn’t she more visibly upset? She was rather freakishly calm. “I mastered getting my ass grabbed the summer before seventh grade.”
And… she wasn’t upset because apparently this experience was unfolding exactly as she’d expected it to unfold. Seventh grade was twelve, thirteen years old… Holy shit. “Boys can be idiots,” Jim started.
“These weren’t boys,” she informed him coolly. “They were grown men. Friends of my father’s. I learned to keep my distance.”
Christ. “You should’ve learned to tell someone—”
“Believe me, I did.” She took another sip of her wine. “I also learned that no one cares.”
“I care,” Jim said.
She laughed. “You sure have a funny way of showing it.”
“You could quit,” he pointed out.
“I could,” Ashley agreed.
“Incoming,” Kenneth murmured, and they both looked up to see that Bull and Todd had finished their conver
sation with Dunk and were stomping toward their table.
“Brace yourself for impact,” Clark muttered, “in three, two…”
* * *
“Team One,” Bull said, putting his glass of beer down on the table with so much force that the amber liquid sloshed over the sides. He looked directly at Ashley. “We’ll have to make the best of this, won’t we?”
She looked over to see Lieutenant Slade—their team instructor—watching her steadily from across the table.
“The girl and the gay dudes,” Todd said with a scornful laugh as he sat down. He was a slightly smaller, thinner version of Bull.
“Thank you, but… we’re not gay,” Kenneth said. “We’re just…”
“Hipsters?” Todd asked. “That’s pretty gay.”
“A)” Lieutenant Slade said in a tone that brooked no argument, “we will not use gay as a pejorative. And B) Ashley is a woman. Show some respect.”
Bull was still standing, and he grabbed his crotch as he told Ashley, “I got some steaming hot respect for you right here, sweetheart.”
“Enough. Sit. Now,” Slade ordered.
Bull sat but he still made kissing noises in Ashley’s direction.
And again, the SEAL was looking at her, as if waiting for her to do something.
But Ashley had found that nothing worked better than refusal to engage. Ignore and avoid. Although avoiding Bull was going to be impossible, since they were on the same team… That left ignore, so she calmly took another sip of her wine.
Lieutenant Slade finally spoke. “Okay. Let’s go around the table, introduce ourselves—where you’re from, what you do, and what you hope to gain from this session. Kenneth, why don’t you start?”
“Oh, uh, yes, of course,” Kenneth said. “Kenneth Price. Originally from the UK, little town just outside of London… College student, Boston University, English major… Hoping to gain… I want to say… life experience…?”
“Good. Thank you. How about you, Clark?” the SEAL prompted.
“Clark DeWitt. I’m Ashley’s brother and Kenneth’s roommate. Originally from New York. I’m here because I’d… well, I was thinking of maybe trying to become a SEAL someday.”
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