by Ann Collins
The room was almost completely dark, save for the streetlight that shone dully through the blinds. It must be the middle of the night. Dyson stood up and didn’t move for a long moment, looking around the room. He recognized every shadow, every curve and angle of the things in the room. He lived by the adage that he learned in the military, that there was a place for everything, and everything had its place. In combat, a soldier needed to be able to reach out and grab his boots or gun at a moment’s notice. He had to be able to do it without thought, because you never knew when there would be incoming fire, or nighttime raids, or clever bombers, or…
“Or something worse,” he whispered, and then dropped back onto the bed with a sigh. It was only the middle of the night, but he knew he would be up for the duration. This always happened when the nightmares came.
The nightmares had started even before he came back from Iraq, when he was still over there – out of the fighting, but in the brig. He would lie on the hard bunk in the lonely cell, trying not to listen to the strained laughter and solemn discussions that took place just outside his barred window. He would lie – perfectly still, but wide awake, trying to understand why he was the one locked up, why the man who had stood up for the defenseless would find himself forced to defend himself against serious legal accusations. How was it possible that Dyson was in a cell while every other man who’d been there that night still walked around free?
And when he finally drifted off to sleep, he would remember the things he had seen that day, the things he had tried to stop. He would dream of the screams, and sometimes he would see the eyes of the young woman, the one who seemed to wilt the moment the dark coverings were pulled from her, so that her hair and her lips and everything else was exposed. Though she was distraught about her physical exposure, she knew that the worst was yet to come.
Dyson sat on the edge of the bed and tried not to think about her. Instead, he tried to think about the satisfying feeling of the butt of his gun on the head of the man in front of him, the relief when his former friend slumped to the ground, unconscious and no longer a threat. He tried to remember how it felt to slam the other soldier against the wall of the hut, how the building shook as though it would come down, the dust and sand sifting down over them all in a fine powder. He tried to remember the rage, the fury, the disbelief turning to a need for revenge.
He had known it was going on, of course. They all did. They had all heard the rumors. But no one wants to believe the worst of their brothers, especially when those brothers are the same ones who have your back when you are out in the middle of insurgent territory, the same men who would bring hellfire down on anyone who dared draw a bead on you. It was almost impossible to view a man who would lay down his life for you as someone who could be despicable. It was hard to believe you would need to protect someone else from those who had vowed to protect you.
Dyson lived with the sure knowledge that anyone could change in an instant. It was just a matter of putting them in the right circumstances.
Dyson walked through the darkened house, not bothering to turn on a light. He knew the place like the back of his hand. He walked to the kitchen table, pulled out the chair and sat down. Though he couldn’t see them in the darkness, he knew that before him on the table was a stack of unopened envelopes. Most of them contained bills that he would barely have enough money to pay. One of them held a letter from his mother.
The address was written in the careful hand of someone who had to put a great deal of effort into making the letters look right. It was the handwriting of a child, and he supposed that his mother was like that now – much like a child, when most of the world’s edges were softened and the hardships were few. She was in a residential care facility that took good care of her, and so he didn’t feel as guilty as he thought maybe he should, but he still felt as though he had thrown her to the wolves. Friendly wolves, of course, but she should have been with him. He should have been able to take care of her.
Dyson knew that when he opened the letter he would find long pages of careful script describing how she spent her days, and reminding him about things he had forgotten but she never would, like the days when he was a little boy and life was good. His father had passed away a few years ago, after Dyson had been deployed but before he came home in disgrace. If there was any blessing in disguise in his father’s death, it was that his dad never knew what had happened over there. He had died filled with pride in his only son.
Dyson’s mother, however, was too far-gone into dementia to notice what happened. She just knew that there had been some “trouble” with the “boys” over there, and Dyson had come back home early. She hadn’t asked questions, so he had no need to tell her lies. He was grateful for that, because if she had ever asked, he would have lied through his teeth without a second thought. He wasn’t a dishonest man, but he wasn’t cruel either, and his mother deserved to stay in her childlike cocoon, shielded from the ugly truth and the pain it would cause.
Dyson sat in the darkness thinking about his mother, and suddenly he smiled, realizing that thoughts of his mother had finally pulled him out of the last vestiges of the nightmare. She was making things right, just as she had always done. Pleasantly surprised to discover that he actually felt sleepy, Dyson was grateful that he’d be able to get a few more hours of sleep.
He rose from the chair and went to the sink, where he found the glass he had used earlier that night. He rinsed it, filled it, and drank slowly as he opened the blinds above the sink and looked out at the midnight world. The streetlight highlighted the trashcans neatly lined up on his side of the street, ready for pickup with the first light of dawn. He looked at the neatly cut lawn, at the fence that stood sturdy and straight. It was in sharp contrast to the neighbors’ place, where the trash was set out haphazardly in bags and the lawn was a week overdue for mowing.
The military had changed him, for better or for worse. He was a military man through and through, no matter what the official papers said.
And what he had done? He would do it again, every time.
Dyson walked back to the bedroom and fell into the bed. He thought it might take some time to drift away, but he was asleep in minutes.
Chapter Four
Kayla knew she should be paying attention, but damn, how many times would he go over the same boring thing?
She was sitting in the lecture hall, just one of about two hundred anonymous students in the Intermediate Accounting class. The professor had obviously been down this road many times, his monotone making it clear that he was just as bored as they were. Kayla studied him as he talked. His eyes never quite touched any of them. His tie was perfectly knotted but a little askew, and his hair was neatly combed, with the exception of one stubborn patch in the back that resisted his efforts to tame it.
She tried to create some sort of world in her head for him, a place where he was more than a professor and was instead a lover, someone whose tie was askew because he had just had a quickie on his desk before coming to the classroom. But the more she looked at his sour expression, the more she realized he probably hadn’t been properly laid in months, if not years. Passion couldn’t possibly be his strong suit.
She wondered at what point a professor became burned out. Five years? Ten? There were only so many ways a person could teach the same thing, right? Intermediate Accounting didn’t change much from semester to semester. If Kayla was bored, all she had to do was think about how bored the teacher must be, and suddenly her situation looked one hell of a lot better. Not more interesting, but a little less bleak. She only had a few more weeks of the class; the professor had a lifetime.
She went back to her notes, trying to keep her mind from wandering. The problem was that she already knew most of this stuff – she had been working with numbers for so long that many of the intricacies of accounting now just seemed like common sense to her. She had always had the ability to put things into logical, reasonable order. Numbers were just a natural extension of that. The
class was a required one, otherwise she would gladly have skipped it.
But Kayla – more than a lot of the other students in the room – knew the value of the education she was getting. Nothing made you appreciate a class like having to earn every penny that it cost. Kayla dutifully corralled her wandering thoughts, sharpened her focus, and took more notes. She wrote a few lines and then glanced over at the guy beside her. He was sound asleep, his mouth wide open, and she was still waiting for him to start snoring. It had been twenty minutes already, and she was sure he would start to make noise any minute now.
The girl on the other side of him glanced at Kayla. They grinned at each other. The girl then gave the guy a gentle nudge with her elbow. He took a deep breath, exhaled with a sigh and kept right on sleeping. Kayla was tempted to kick his foot to see what happened, but she somehow managed to control the urge.
The professor was now silent, shuffling through papers. He handed the papers to a girl and a guy in the front row, and then they started passing them along the seats and back down the aisles. Handout time always meant a quiz was coming up in the next class. Kayla made a note of that in her calendar as she waited for the papers to get to her.
“Since when are maintenance guys so hot?”
The question came from a girl behind her. Kayla looked up to see a man in the front of the room, helping the professor move the projector into place. He wore the usual uniform of the school, a navy blue shirt and slacks with black shoes. He was neat, but otherwise unremarkable from a distance. The cap emblazoned with the university’s mascot covered a shock of dark hair. She stared at him for a moment with that strange feeling that she had seen him somewhere before, but she wasn’t quite sure where…
He turned just slightly, lifting the projector, and she had a flash of a man in the boxing ring, sparring hard with his partner, sweat running down his face.
A thrill of excitement shot through her, completely and totally unexpected in its force. She shifted in her chair, pressing her thighs together to relieve the sudden pressure that seemed to make her breathe harder and faster. It was an intense reaction to have to a man she barely knew, but there it was.
“Wow,” she whispered, shaking her head even as she continued to stare at him. This guy was turning up everywhere! She had to admit to herself that he certainly improved the view.
She busied herself with looking at the paper that had just come down her aisle. The numbers seemed to swim before her eyes, and her attention was drawn back to the man at the front of the room. She knew she needed a distraction.
She kicked the foot of the guy next to her and watched with satisfaction as he bolted upright, looked around with confusion, and then blinked at her with sleepy eyes. The girl beside him snickered loudly. Kayla handed him the stack of papers and he looked at them with confusion.
“Take one and pass it on,” she whispered, and he did what he was told, still half-asleep. He looked at the paper, looked at her, and settled back in his chair. Kayla watched as his eyes started to drift closed again.
“Jesus, would you look at that guy?”
Kayla turned to Jasmine, who was sitting right beside her and paying far more attention to the maintenance guy than the paperwork. Jasmine was usually just as no-nonsense as Kayla was, so to see her concentrating on anything but numbers during class was a real surprise. But wasn’t Kayla guilty of doing the same thing? The projector was still not ready to go, and she found she didn’t mind the delay in the least.
She kept looking at Dyson. How was it that he kept turning up everywhere she was? She hadn’t had even a glimpse of him in all this time she had been in this college town, and suddenly, bam. He was everywhere.
“I see him,” Kayla whispered back. “How could I miss him?”
“You see that ass?”
“I see it.”
“You see those arms?”
“Mmmm-hmmm.”
“Those aren’t just guns. Those are whole artillery units.”
Kayla giggled. “I wonder how he fits into that shirt.”
Jasmine took a deep breath and put her hand to her face. “Lord have mercy.”
“So much for numbers, huh?”
Jasmine sighed. “I need to get laid.”
Kayla was looking at Dyson’s ass when he abruptly finished with the projector and turned around. His abrupt turn, coupled with Kayla’s inability to take her eyes off him meant that when he turned, her eyes were focused directly at his crotch. She heard him chuckle from her spot on the fifth row and slowly looked up, her face already coloring with heat. He was staring right at her. She was caught red-handed – or red-faced, as it were.
He put his hands on his hips and grinned at her. “Following me again, sweetheart?”
The lecture hall was relatively quiet, but that comment seemed to cut through it like a knife, leaving it entirely silent. A pin dropping would have sounded like a nuclear bomb. The fact that it was a maintenance guy flirting openly with a student was even more unusual – maintenance guys didn’t talk much, and they certainly didn’t flirt. Every person in the place looked her way – even the teacher turned around to see what had caused the commotion. Kayla’s heart was pounding so hard she was sure everyone around her could hear it.
Jasmine’s mouth dropped open, and then she started to laugh. Quietly, carefully, but loudly enough that other people caught the bug and started to snicker. Kayla could almost hear their thoughts:
Kayla? Really?
She’s such a goody two shoes that she doesn’t even notice men!
What does he have to do with Kayla?
She’s the one who gets his attention? Oh, God, what a lucky bitch!
“Don’t worry,” Dyson said softly, with a half smile for his audience. “You’ll see me again later.”
Kayla rolled her eyes, but he was already headed toward the door. There was a big grin on his face, as though he was proud of himself for all the attention, and amused at having shifted the spotlight to her. Kayla wanted to melt into the floor when Jasmine leaned over and hissed, “What the hell? Really? Why didn’t you tell me about you and Mr. Guns?”
“There’s nothing to tell!” Kayla hissed back, flustered and amused all at the same time.
The girl in front of her turned and looked at Kayla, then gave her a wink of commiseration. Kayla shook her head, and the girl gave her a thumbs-up. Even the guy who was sitting beside her half asleep a moment earlier was now looking at her with interest.
“What?” Kayla snapped, and everyone who had been staring at her turned away with a giggle and a smirk. She busied herself by looking through notes she had already read a dozen times. She was trying to act nonchalant even as she blushed so hard she thought her face might spontaneously combust.
“You know how to pick ‘em, honey. He’s hotter than a firecracker,” Jasmine said.
She was just a little too loud, and the professor cleared his throat meaningfully as the class calmed down. The lights dimmed and the projector kicked on, while everyone in the room focused on the screen. Pretending to ignore everything except the projector, Kayla could still feel their thoughts headed in her direction, most of the two hundred students wondering who the maintenance man was and how he was connected to quiet, shy Kayla, the girl who kept to herself and never caused a fuss.
***
Class was over forty minutes later. Though she still got some looks of interest as everyone prepared to leave, most of the students were already thinking of other things. Kayla neatly organized and packed up her notes and books before she followed Jasmine and headed for the crowd at the door. Patiently waiting to exit the classroom, Kayla asked Jasmine about her weekend plans and failed to notice that the now-well-rested student who’d napped through class had failed to hold the door, letting it fall closed before Kayla was through it. Jasmine, irritated at the guy’s lack of manners, pulled hard on the door and managed to bump Kayla’s arm in the process. Watching her notes spill from her folder, Kayla sighed as she and Jasmine bent to
collect the papers.
When Kayla saw the black shoes step toward her, she knew exactly who had stopped to help her. She lifted her eyes to meet Dyson’s gaze and noticed Jasmine’s jaw hanging open. !
“Careful now,” he said, and gave Kayla and Jasmine the kind of smile that said if he were wearing a hat, he would tip it. “Don’t want to get these out of order.”
Jasmine grinned at Kayla, clearly charmed by Dyson. “Well look who it is,” she said. “Maintenance man to the rescue.” Jasmine leaned over close to Kayla and whispered, “Your boyfriend’s hot.”
Kayla blushed furiously and hoped that Dyson hadn’t over heard her friend.
“Bye now!” Jasmine trumpeted, and everyone turned to look in their direction. That meant everyone saw Kayla on her knees, her face flaming red with embarrassment, while Dyson stood over her with a cocky smile on his face.
“I would like to kill you,” Kayla said softly, and Jasmine laughed as she walked away. Kayla knew Jasmine would give it an hour and then blow her phone up with text messages, wondering who the dude was and how the hell did Kayla find him and did he have a brother she could steal and tell her more, please?
Finally Kayla looked up at Dyson. He offered his hand to help her up. She looked at it for a moment, noticing for the first time the tiny scars that marked his skin. It was a cut here, a cut there – the signs of a man who knew how to fix things, the mark of a man who worked with his hands. She rose to her feet and let go of his hand as soon as she was standing upright.
“Dyson,” she said, trying her best to sound formal. “How are you?”
He had changed out of the navy blue uniform and was now wearing what her mother would have called “street clothes.” He was dressed in comfortable jeans and a t-shirt that had seen better days, but was obviously well loved. He wore a thin gold chain around his neck. The scent of his cologne was just right, and somehow it surprised her: she hadn’t expected a man like Dyson to be wearing cologne that made him smell like some model out of a fashion magazine.