by Tina Maurine
“Actually, why I called doesn’t make sense anymore… I didn’t really think this through. I just wanted someone I trusted to talk to, and you came to mind.”
“Okay… so, share. I can take it. Really. I’ve been doing better; it’s just your call caught me off guard is all.” I heard him shouting to someone off in the distance. “Hey, Craner says I need to wrap it up. We have inspections to finish before the birds can be signed off for flight, but they’re already on the schedule—so you know how it is—they work us to death.”
“Okay, well we can just say bye then…”
“Damn it, Tessa, out with it already. What? Did you meet someone? I can take it; besides, hearing about it might make it easier to get over you.” He laughed uncomfortably.
“Okay, Wes, okay.” I sighed in resignation. “So, have you ever noticed someone out of the corner of your eye—maybe not even such a little notice—but, you know… from your peripherals, from out of the crowd in front of you? You detect them, though and… They. Discover. You?” I paused. “Wes?”
“Yeah, Tess?”
“You okay? Maybe it isn’t fair for me to go on?”
“No, go on. I TOTALLY get what you’re talking about.” He sighed deeply.
“Well, it sizzles,” I pressed on, doubting this call more than ever. “There’s a heated cosmic exchange that takes place in the atmosphere that coexists, in that time, between the two of you.”
“Sure do. That’s how it was for me when I met you, but you were married to Teddy.”
Jeezus, I had no idea he felt like THIS about me! And now… now I’m going to tell him… Another shout sounded in the background. Wrap it up and be done with it. If he’s right, and it will help him move on, it’s well worth it. He can’t pine for me like this. It’s unfair. Rip off the Band-Aid, Tess.
“Well, that’s what happened to me today at the commissary. This open exchange left me feeling exposed, bared, naked and even a little emotionally raw. I just cannot get him out of my head. It was like… I don’t know… it was like he reached into my soul with his eyes and carved out a spot in my heart.” I laughed, “Okay, well maybe not quite like that, but it was fucking intense, Wes.” I could hear him getting even more flack in the background about still being on the phone, and he took it, like he always has. “Sounds like Craner is really being an asshole—maybe I should let you go?”
“Yeah, he is. It’s just there’s all these inspections to get signed off and we’re still down a person here in the shop… so we’re hustling double-time.”
“Well, thanks for listening…”
Again, Wes interrupted me. “Heya, Tess? Thanks for sharing with me, I mean, it wasn’t the best to hear, but I’m glad you thought of calling me. It’s nice to know I still cross your mind. For what it’s worth, you should go after this guy. That kind of connection doesn’t happen very often. Trust me, I know.”
“I know, Wes. Sorry.”
“Enough with the sorries! Hey, Craner’s ready to go off. I can see it in his eyes, even from this far. I’d better go.”
“Okay, and thanks again.” I cleared my throat, “Oh, and, Wes, it was really nice being able to talk like this with you. I’ve missed you and our hours of great conversation.”
“Yeah, me too. Bye, Tess.”
“BYE.”
I hung up the phone, his saddened voice still vivid in my ear.
I’ve no idea whose beater pick-up we climbed into, and I didn’t care either. It was just a means to an end… the bonfire.
“Jeezus, Tessa! Could it be any fucking colder?” I could hear most of what Sammie was saying, as we jostled and bumped along, but didn’t feel inclined to pull my face from the nest I’d created in my chunky scarf. It was dark and cold whenever I lifted my face from its warm cave, so I just huddled in the corner of the pickup bed and tried as best as I could to keep from getting tossed around. At last, we slowed, and I felt us turning. We came to a complete stop shortly after.
“Hey, baby girl, can I give you a hand?”
I looked up, wiping at my nose, and noticed we had arrived in some sort of aircraft graveyard; the place where all the decommissioned planes ended up. Let’s call it what it really was—a military junkyard.
I gave Ari my hand, and he pulled me to my feet. “Ready to go throw down?”
I looked up and smiled at him.
5’11”, maybe 160, half Italian, half African-American—simply gorgeous. I wonder what it means that he just doesn’t float my boat in THAT way. Still, in the time I’ve worked with AE2 Ari Benson—had him sign off on my shop qualifications when I hung out in the AE shop—I’ve found him genuine, laid back and fun. He’s such an easy person to get to know; I consider him a true friend, which is better than a crush any day.
“Hey, beeatches!”
I turned my head to where I’d heard Sammie’s voice, but found it too dark to see more than a few yards out. Sure enough, she bounded from that direction. “I didn’t know you’d leave me!”
“Hey, I looked everywhere for you and thought maybe you’d gotten on a truck in front of me.”
“Is that so?” She raised her eyebrow skeptically.
“It’s my story, and I’m sticking to it!” I laughed and jumped down from the truck. “Let’s go find us a drink!”
Just then, a huge explosion lit up the blackness in a bright flash, and then dimmed to a steady glow.
“HOLLA!!” Sammie blurted out rambunctiously. “Sounds like they just lit the bonfire—see the glow over there? Come on! Let’s go, hooka!” She was already drunk, but then again, so was I. Fuck, pretty much everyone had arrived already loaded. Ari joined us, and the three of us walked off in the direction of the bonfire.
“Sounds like someone threw a gas can on the fire.”
“It does, huh?” I smiled again, surprised Ari would know that kind of thing. He always seemed so… well… proper. He walked with us but kept his eyes on me.
“Watch out!” I shouted, just in time to keep him from smacking his face on an ordinance rack hung low from a wing of one of the haphazardly parked, decommissioned airplanes. If we hadn’t had our arms linked like the Three Musketeers, and I hadn’t jerked him, the rack would’ve pegged him right in the face.
“Shit, that was close! Thanks, baby girl.”
I squeezed his arm.
Suddenly, a weird feeling like I was being watched came over me. I stopped abruptly and jerked Sammie and Ari to a full stop as well.
“Hey!” Sammie complained. “What's up, Tess? I. Must. Get. To. The. Rum.” She lowered her voice an octave, and started to walk like a zombie saying, "Redrum... Redrum…”
“Knock it off, dork. You’re creeping me out; come here.”
She dropped her arms and came back to where Ari and I still stood. “What’s up?” she asked.
“Do you feel that?”
“Feel what?” Ari focused on me, trying to see what I was talking about.
“I don’t know. It just feels like someone’s watching us,” I whispered. We all looked around, but the bright glow given off by the nearby bonfire cast even deeper shadows over the parked planes, and the inky blackness behind them somehow grew even darker.
“I don’t see anything,” Sammie observed.
“Yeah, Tess, I don’t either.” Ari squeezed my arm, but this time it somehow felt… different. More… intimate, so I dropped it.
“Okay, never mind. I guess maybe I’m just drunker than I thought. You know me and my paranoia.” I laughed nervously.
“Oh boy, do I. This one time at band camp…” She and Ari laughed at the movie reference and took off toward the pickup parked closest to the fire, in search of more booze to further waste ourselves on. I heard her telling him all about how ridiculous I’d been earlier this week, when I’d been too drunk for my own good.
As they walked away, I reflected on how I’d had this feeling that I was being watched a lot lately. It had me on edge; it was creepy. Perhaps the creepiest part was I never felt
unsafe despite drowning in this paranoia. I just wanted to know who was watching me, and why they hadn’t come up to me.
The night wore on. I joined Ari and Sammie, claiming the Jack and Coke they’d poured for me; it was about six ounces of Jack and one ounce of Coke, if I had to guess. The first cup went down painfully slow. The second was halfway done, and now I was thoroughly enjoying it.
Probably a good forty or fifty of us stood around bullshitting. Someone had turned on the radio to Icelandic techno-beats, and a handful of people danced with light-sticks under the wing of a dead C-130. I stayed away, and it wasn’t the slightest bit hard either. If I never seen another one of those it will be too soon.
I'd just brought my cup up to my lips for another swig, when the feeling of being watched overcame me… AGAIN.
Seriously! What the fuck?
I held the cup up to my mouth, pretending to drink from it, but really using it to hide behind while I slowly turned back to face the fire.
There.
Looking through the fire were those deep blue eyes. He stood, his gaze pointedly focused on me as he held his beer. His intensity drew me in like a black hole, swallowing my paranoia.
Oh my God! It’s the guy from the commissary… the GUY with the eyes!”
Now I knew. It was him. He’d been watching me all this time. Instead of unease, a warm heat flowed up me from the ground, pooling in my belly. Butterflies swirled, and something akin to nausea threatened to overtake me.
The flames licked and danced before us. Their heat and brilliance amplified the chemistry that flowed between me and Mr. Intense Blue Eyes. The music faded to the background; the people talking around me became a blur. It seemed there was only him and me. Me and him.
“Tessa! Hey!”
I startled, jumping at Sammie’s voice. Looking at her, I wiped the slosh of Jack off my chin. “Been drinking long?”
I smiled absently at her, looking back to where he’d been standing. He was gone.
“Earth to Tessa…”
“Yeah, I’m here. Question is, are you?” A drunken giggle escaped past my lips. “What’s up?”
She motioned up towards the sky, “Some of us are gonna climb up on the wings and watch the northern lights. Wanna join us?” Slurring drunkenly, she took a final slug, downing the bottom of her beer.
“Yeah, sure. Sounds fun—cold but fun.”
She hooked her arm in mine and led me toward the group she’d been carousing with.
Really, I can’t tell you much of what happened the rest of the weekend. We partied with some security and Icelandic officers and at our BEQ, we ate A LOT, and I found my thoughts going back to the mystery man I had imagined on Friday.
Part of me knew I’d seen who had been watching me—this sexy, mysterious and solitary man. Another part of me felt sure he was a figment of my imagination.
I glanced out the window and could easily see the barracks across the street in the early dawn-like light. I stole a glimpse at the alarm clock I had perched on the window sill. It read 23:49. I had about four hours before I had to be at work, but the poetry I was writing felt like it just had to get out. I loved to write, but this was different. The words would not stop flowing. I wrote into the early morning. I wrote until my hand cramped; I felt like my hand was possessed. Eventually I closed my eyes when they wouldn’t focus any longer on the last words I wrote…
…gnawing, throbbing, abusing me.
where did it come from?
It blisters & scalds me—
this desire that possesses me.
Go! I do not want you to take hold of me.
Or is it too late?
I am completely possessed, deeply intrigued,
wholly consumed by desire.
Safe in the knowledge that it’s you.
It will always be…
Just You.
10
So, the next five weeks wore on.
Mundane, uneventful and unattached, my usual schedule had me getting up at 0330 so I could be at work at 0400. This allowed me a good two hours or so before I had to check in for muster with my First Lieutenant shop at 0600.
So, when my alarm went off this morning at 0330 on the dot, I did what I always do… swing my legs over the side of the bed and force my weary body to move.
“Sam? Sammie—are you up? You asked me to get you up to come in with me this morning.”
“Noooo,” she whined in a terribly sleep-deprived voice, “I’m so sorry, but I’m not going to make it.”
“Sam, you asked me to make you get up. Come on, let’s go!” I tried to be adamant, forcefully firm, but I totally understood. Just like her, I’m beat.
A loud sigh came from her side of the room, “Tessa, it’s not going to happen today—we have to scale it back a bit. I just can’t keep hitting it hard like we’ve been doing; it’s seriously killing me.” A groggy giggle sounded. “Seriously, Tess, if we don’t stop staying up half the night with the guys on our floor, pounding booze pretty much drinking every night, and then getting up at the butt crack of dawn to do extra work so we can get to our shops sooner, you’ll be writing my eulogy.”
God, I love her… this is the best way to wake up this morning! She’s too damn funny.
I checked my laughter. “10-4. Rodger that, Sam.” I shook my head, totally bummed that I wasn’t giving myself the extra two hours I needed desperately, as she crawled out of bed and went about getting ready.
But she is right. Day in and day out Sammie and I go to work, get off work, make dinner in the barrack’s kitchen and then drink. We drink every day—sometimes because it compliments dinner, sometimes because we’re bored. Sometimes we drink because work made us mad, but mostly we drink for fun and to pass the time. We drink in our room, in Sammie’s mech friends’ rooms, Sage Reeser’s and Ari’s rooms, the other guys’ rooms from my AE shop. I took a look in the mirror, Fuck, come to think of it… where don’t we drink?
Since we’d run into Ketts and Trigg not long after my night with Dane, they’d been coming over to our room and hanging with our friends Ace and Lucas… A LOT. They often crashed in our chair, which we’d named the ‘Blue Beast’, when they weren’t sacked out on the floor or sharing our beds—strictly in a platonic sense, at least with me. I’m not sure how much longer Sammie would have luck fending off Trigg’s advances though.
In spite of my reflection on our whole ‘to the excesses’ issue, it took me all of maybe fifteen minutes to have my coveralls and flight-deck boots on, my hair up in a bun, face washed, and teeth brushed, and an ‘Everything’ bagel toasted. I looked at my clock, 0348…
Damn, it’s been eighteen minutes! I have to hurry.
I had two minutes to be downstairs to catch the duty van I had called ahead to pick me up. I threw my FWJ over my arm, grabbed my backpack and bagel and scooted out the door.
I hastily ran down the hallway, hit the fire-door at the end and flew down the three flights of stairs, taking them two at a time. There’s no way I’m going outside to wait. It had been ridiculously windy the past week, even though the weather has just started to warm up, closer to 36 degrees Fahrenheit during the day, with about ten hours of daylight. We’d gained about four onto the six we’d started with when we arrived that frigid day back in February… not so long, but forever ago.
I glanced at my watch—0351. Fuck! Depending on the duty driver, I might have already missed it… especially if it is Airman Onnie. She loved being the duty driver because it afforded her some small amount of power, and she actually loved taking off if you weren’t on time. Even a minute late.
Talk about a serious fucking abuse of power.
Shaking my head, I opened the door, and sure as fuck, there went the goddamn duty van.
Fuck, fuckity, FUCK!
Just like I’d expected, the wind was howling, bringing the temperature down to probably about fifteen or twenty degrees. I looked around, hoping to maybe hitch a ride with someone; I really didn’t feel like walking, but of
course, who’s outside at four in the morning?
I tugged on the heavy metal BEQ door, and nearly fell over when it gave way easily.
“Ey, careful there.” His hand shot out to steady me, catching me before I fell back on the icy pavement.
My head snapped up while I found my balance and stared into those familiar lusty blue eyes. “Dane? What are you doing here?”
I’d bet I already know the answer… wonder who she is?
“‘Ey, sweet Tessa, it is ‘ye. ‘Ey wasn’t sure since ‘ey haven’t seen ‘ye in a while.”
“Yeah, hey… I’d really love to stay and chat, but I’m supposed to be at work right now, and the duty van took off because I was a minute late.” I spat out hurriedly.
“‘Ey, that fuckin’ sucks,” he slurred and patted my back through my parka. “If ‘ye need a ride, ‘ey can give ‘ye one.”
“Thanks, Dane. That would be awesome.” I looked around the lot, hoping I’d see someone a little less inebriated. “Which one is yours?”
“Ah, it’s da Audi over there,” he motioned with beer, “‘Ey shit,” he said laughing, “I’d better get rid of this! ‘Ye boys Ace and Lucas gave it to me.” He tossed the bottom of the beer in the smoke-pit trash can, not twenty feet from where he’d been standing, then jogged over to where I was shuffling through the lot to his car. We walked in silence. Upon reaching his car, he unlocked it with a chirp.
He gently nudged me out of the way, so he could open the door for me, taking my backpack from me before I slid into the car. He opened the trunk and tossed it inside before getting in.
“Thanks for taking me, Dane. It’s already after four, and that’s when I’d told my shop to expect me.”
He turned on the heater, and we waited for the car to warm up and windows to defrost. “Tessa, anything ‘er ‘ye. ‘Ye know that ‘ye and ‘ey are friends.” He shifted his weight so that he now faced me. “Believe it or not, ‘ey have missed ‘ye.”
I chuckled, “Dane, we’ve been around; it’s not like we don’t share the same friends. I was actually just talking to Sam about this, and she and I agreed we need to quit hanging out so much in everyone else’s rooms, pound back fewer beers a night, and maybe we’d get the rest that we need, instead of slogging through each day at work like zombies. Honestly? I have no idea how we’ve been partying this hard for as many weeks as we have without totally crashing—but I can feel it coming soon if we don’t slow down.”