by Alexa Davis
"We were out in the mountains, on a rescue mission," he began as he looked over my shoulder at the wall behind me. "Opie was on the headset, he wasn't supposed to engage unless it was absolutely necessary. He was my responsibility."
I nodded not completely understanding what he was telling me, but knowing that it was important in light of the trip tomorrow.
"I have to go tell his parents that he died a hero," he said as he lifted his hand and rubbed his eyes. "I have to tell them that I failed to protect their son."
I knew that nothing I could say would help at this moment, so I got up out of my chair and walked around the small table to where Ryan sat. I put my hand on his head and pulled him to me and then just held on. At first, he was stiff and resisted my touch, but after a few moments he relaxed a little and hesitantly rested his hands on my hips as he pressed his face into my abdomen. I could feel him holding back, but it quietly leaked out. I could feel him breathing deeply, but he didn't make a sound. Instead, he put his forehead against my stomach and breathed slowly and deeply. Ryan shook slightly as he gripped me tightly, and I winced knowing that in the morning, I'd have bruise marks the size of his fingers marking my hips.
"It's okay," I whispered as I stroked his head. He let go of my hips and wrapped his arms around me. I stood solid and still stroking his back and head wondering if I was doing the right thing. Everything about him felt strong and solid as I fought to keep my own breathing under control. I wanted to pull his face up so I could look into his eyes and know whether I would ever get to kiss him. I couldn't stop thinking about his hands in my hair and how his lips would feel pressed against mine. I felt guilty for wanting to turn this private moment of grief into something more physical than it already was, but I couldn't help it. Ryan Powell did something to me that I couldn't explain, but that I knew was unlike anything anyone else had made me feel.
"Are you okay, Ryan?" I asked when I felt his breathing return to normal.
"I'm okay, thanks," he said not looking up. My heart broke looking at him and I had the urge to drop to my knees and make him look at me, but I decided it would be too invasive, so I walked back around the table and sat down.
"So, in other words, tomorrow is going to be rough," I said as I picked up my beer and sipped from the bottle.
"A little," he said with a wry grin. "In many ways it's going to be rougher than dealing with my father. At least he said he didn't want the public display of mourning."
"Your father didn't want a funeral?" I asked shocked to learn this.
"Nope, he hated that stuff," Ryan said shaking his head. "He was a military man who felt that funerals were a waste of money and emotional energy. He always said he wanted to be taken out to sea and tipped overboard."
"But he was a Marine, wasn't he?" I asked.
"Yeah, he wasn't that big on military pomp and circumstance," Ryan said. He stood up, grabbed his beer and walked to the edge of the balcony. "I don't know what happened to him in Vietnam, but whatever it was, it had to have been pretty awful. My mother always said the military had sent home a different man than had gone to war. I guess that's true of any of us, though."
"I can't imagine how challenging it must be to maintain your sense of self in the middle of fighting for your life," I said quietly. "My father never talked about his time in the service. Ever."
"It's like you're trapped," he sighed. "You want to share, but how do you live with the guilt of sharing things that are beyond even your own understanding with the people you love?"
"It's like trying to explain color to someone who is blind, I imagine," I said.
"Only it's also knowing that telling them about colors will be painful for them because they won't be able to understand," he said. "I know I should talk about this stuff, but who do I talk about it with?"
"You can tell me," I said.
"Yeah, sure," he scoffed. "That would be incredibly appropriate and not at all weird."
"Well, you can," I shrugged as I ate a little more off of my plate. "I'm not some delicate flower who is going to break because you tell me about something awful or horrifying."
"Uh huh," he nodded and I could tell his mind was off somewhere else.
"Well, the offer stands," I said as I stood and started gathering dishes. Ryan moved to help, but I shooed him away saying, "The one who cooks doesn't have to do dishes. House rule."
"But I didn't cook, I just walked down the block and picked it up," he replied.
"Same intent," I assured him and took everything back into the kitchen. I wasn't going to try and force him to tell me what was going on, but I wondered if he were to open up would it make it more likely that we'd...I shook my head at the thought and laughed. I had offered him a shoulder to cry on, thinking about how to seduce him as a result was totally inappropriate.
As I washed the dishes I couldn't help but remember the way his arms had felt wrapped around my waist and how the feeling of his cheek pressed against my stomach made me ache for more. And yet, he'd made it fairly obvious that he wasn't particularly interested in anything more than being roommates, so I needed to clear those thoughts out of my mind.
I picked up my phone and noticed that there was a call from an unidentified number on the screen and a voicemail. I hit play and listened to a man I had never met say, "Miss Frost, this is Commander Arvin Donnelley, U.S. Naval Recruitment Headquarters in New York City. I need to speak with you about a matter of utmost importance. Please return my call at 555-7435 at your earliest convenience." I had no idea who this man was or what he could possibly want with me, but I was fairly sure that he was no longer in the office. I'd call him in the morning.
Chapter Fifteen
Ryan
After dinner, Echo sat down with her computer and tried to puzzle out the code my father had left for her, but after an hour of getting nowhere, she gave up and decided that it would be wise to wait until the next message arrived. As I watched her working, I thought about how much my father must have trusted her to have left his entire life's work in her care. He had not been a easy man to live with, and his trust was something that took a long time to earn, but once it was, it was solid.
I watched her working and smiled as she frowned at the screen and bit her lip when the codes didn't turn up the information she wanted. She'd gathered her long blond hair in a loose ponytail at the back of her neck as she worked, but a loose strand kept falling forward causing her to pucker her lips and blow it out of her way in a manner that was both cute and incredibly sexy. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. Truth be told, I wanted to kiss her, but I wouldn't. And I couldn't get the feeling of her hands on my head out of my mind nor could I forget about how soft she'd felt when I'd held her against me. I reminded myself that she belonged to someone else, and that I had no desire to alienate her with my unwanted advances. I needed her help, and if that meant that I had to take more than one ice cold shower a day to keep my desires under control, then I would.
I stepped out onto the balcony and dialed Eva's number. It rang several times and then went to voicemail, so I left her a message asking about the status of my father's autopsy report. I asked her to get back to me soon knowing that she would probably ignore my call and that I'd have to go to her mother's to track her down.
"Everything okay?" Echo asked when I came back inside.
"Yeah, I was just trying to get ahold of Eva," I said as I tossed my phone on the coffee table. "She's probably at the yacht club getting blasted with her rich friends."
"She sounds like a piece of work," Echo said looking up at me as she rubbed her eyes.
"Oh, she is," I nodded. "I have no idea why my father married her. She's not particularly bright, and she's completely narcissistic. She's nothing like my mother was."
"Maybe that's the whole point," Echo said looking back down at her computer screen as she sighed and said, "I give up. None of this stuff makes any sense."
"I thought that, too," I replied.
"That it makes no se
nse?"
"No, that my father married Eva precisely because she's nothing like my mother," I said.
"Do you remember her well?" she asked hesitantly.
"Very well," I nodded. "She was kind and smart and beautiful, and she knew how to calm my father down when he'd fly into one of his rages."
"She sounds like she was amazing," Echo said looking up at me with soft eyes.
"She was," I affirmed.
"You must have loved her very much," she said as she tilted her head to one side and smiled warmly.
Looking at her, I wanted to walk over to the table and lift her up out of the chair so that I could kiss her deeply. Instead, I simply nodded and looked away afraid that she'd see desire written across my face.
"My mother was a kind person, too," she said as she closed the computer and stood up. "She used to take us girls on some amazing adventures when we were young. I know now that she did it to keep us out of my father's way when he was unable to control his depression and anger, but at the time it felt like such a grown-up thing when she'd take us to the city to have tea and cookies, or to browse in the stores on Michigan Avenue."
"My mother covered for my father, too," I said. Echo looked at me expectantly, but I didn't know what else to say. I didn't want to betray my father's memory and cause her to see him as someone different then the man she knew, but I did want her to know about my mother.
"It's okay, you don't have to tell me anything you don't want to," she shrugged. I could tell she was a little hurt by my withholding of information, but I felt trapped, and so I said nothing more. She looked at me for a long time before she nodded and said, "I'm heading to bed, then. What time do we need to leave in the morning?"
"By nine, to get to the funeral on time," I replied.
"I'll be ready," she promised as she climbed the twisty stairs and went silent.
#
I finally fell asleep sometime after midnight, but it was fitful and I was awake again before dawn. I'd hung my dress blues on the shower rod the night before hoping that most of the wrinkles would be gone by morning and that if they weren't, that a hot steaming shower would do the trick. Echo had understood the futility of this, and had pulled out her ironing board and iron before going to bed and left them sitting in the kitchen.
At four in the morning, I stood pressing sharp creases into my dress pants with a hot iron as I thought about what I would say to Opie's parents. He'd talked about his family a lot, in fact, so often that I frequently threatened that if he didn't shut his pie hole, I'd fill it with my boot. He'd always gotten a laugh out of that, as he'd tell me how much he loved the taste of overcooked leather.
"Fuck!" I yelped as the edge of the iron made contact with my fingers. I quickly ran them under cold water in the sink and stood cursing myself for not paying attention to what I was doing. Once the initial pain had subsided, I finished my task and set the iron on top of the fridge to prevent further injury.
"You okay down here?" Echo yawned as she descended the stairs and walked into the kitchen.
"Yeah, fine. Sorry I woke you up," I said sheepishly.
"No, I was up before you started scorching your skin," she grinned as she pulled out a tube of burn ointment from a drawer and handed it to me. "Coffee?"
"Love some," I said as I moved out of her way and tried to pretend that I hadn't noticed that she was wearing only a thin pink nightgown and that there was nothing underneath it. She'd piled her hair on top of her head in a messy bun making her look even lovelier than she had the night before. "I'm going to shower, okay?"
"Have at it," she said as she measured coffee grounds into the filter and flipped the brew switch. "It's going to be a few before this is ready."
In the shower I looked down and muttered, "Please behave today," as I looked at my stiff shaft jutting out at an angle from my body. I wanted to take care of it, but I knew that if I did, it would only make things worse. It was better to let myself suffer then to encourage the idea that some real relief was immanent.
Fifteen minutes later I was standing on the balcony watching the first rays of light begin to wake the city as I sipped the first of many cups of coffee I was sure I'd be drinking that day. Echo had wrapped a throw from the couch around her and was sipping her coffee with her eyes closed, as if she was drinking in the very essence of the day.
"So, where are we headed?" she asked startling me for a moment.
"To the Bronx," I replied. "Opie — er, John Michael was from a big Irish family. He was one of the middle ones, so there will be lots of younger kids there, eight, I think."
"Wow, that's a big family," she said her eyes widening.
"He had five older siblings," I said watching as her eyes got even wider.
"I can't even imagine," she said shaking her head.
"From what I understand the funeral will be held at Saint Frances and then we'll all go back to the house for the memorial," I said.
"No one goes to the burial?" she asked.
"His parents will go and probably some of the close relatives," I said. "But the outsiders will wait at the house until they get back. At least that's what John Michael told me an Irish funeral in his family would be like."
"I see," she said as she stared out at the street. "It's such a horribly sad thing to have to do. Bury a child."
"Agreed," I nodded not knowing what else to say. She turned and looked up at me and my heart began to pound. Her messy hair and sleepy eyes looked so sensually inviting, and all I wanted to do was scoop her up and carry her inside where I could pull her hair free and push her nightgown up so that I could explore the naked body underneath it. Instead, I swallowed hard and looked down into my coffee cup.
"There's more if you want it," she said mistaking my sudden interest in my cup for a desire I wasn't feeling. She stood up and said, "I'm going to go shower and get ready so we can be on time."
"Good call," I said as I turned and looked out over 13th Street and wondered how long I could maintain my mask of neutrality before the cracks began to show. I decided that after today's ordeal it would probably be a good idea to start looking for another place to stay.
Chapter Sixteen
Echo
We arrived at the church not long before the funeral mass was to begin. It had taken the whole cab ride to the Bronx for me to calm down after first seeing Ryan in his full dress uniform. He looked was crisp and professional, and the uniform looked like it had been tailor made for him from the way it emphasized his broad shoulders and cut in slightly at the waist. His crisply creased pants touched the top of his highly shined patent leather shoes, and made me wonder how he'd gotten them that shiny.
On the left side of his chest he wore his ribbons and a pin that looked like a fork going through an eagle, and when I'd asked him about it, he smiled and said, "It's the SEAL trident. I'll be using it during the funeral."
"To do what?" I asked.
"You'll see," he said. "I'd hate to spoil the surprise."
In his uniform, Ryan exuded a silent authority that I hadn't seen before. It was incredibly sexy, and when he gave me the once over before we left the apartment, I felt myself blushing as he nodded his approval.
I'd chosen a plain black wrap dress that showed off my figure but had a respectable v-neck and a pair of black stiletto pumps that were comfortable enough for sitting or standing, since I didn't know how much of either we'd be doing. Around my neck, I fastened a silver chain from which hung a small silver medallion of Saint Philomena that my mother had given me when I turned twelve. I hadn’t worn it for years and figured that if there was ever a time to wear such a thing, this was it.
We didn't talk much during the cab ride. I got the feeling that Ryan needed time alone with his thoughts in order to figure out what he was going to say to John Michael's parents. I left him alone and looked out the window watching the city scenery rushing by and wondering why Ryan had wanted me to accompany him to something so personal and private.
At the church
, he got out and signaled to me to wait so that he could come around and open the cab door for me. It was a chivalrous gesture, and one that I wasn't used to, so when he took my hand and pulled me up toward him, I looked into his eyes and felt a wave of emotion sweep through me.
"Thank you," I said as I quickly looked away and then took his offered arm and walked into the church. The outer sanctuary was filled with people milling about as they waited to be escorted to their seats. There were a few other men dressed in military uniforms standing around the edges of the room, and when Ryan entered they gathered together in a small group shaking hands and exchanging stories about where they'd been stationed before returning to New York.
When we were finally escorted into the sanctuary, we were seated toward the back. I was relieved to be able to watch the mass from a distance rather than participating in it. I breathed deeply as I looked at the flag draped casket that sat just below the altar. Inside it was one of many young men who'd lost their lives as they served their country. The tragedy of it was further underscored when John Michael's family was escorted up the aisle to the front pew. His mother wept openly while his father sat in stony silence as the altar boys led the priest up the center aisle to begin the mass.
It was a long mass and by the time the priest got to the homily, I was starting to feel overwhelmed by the low moaning and intermittent sobs that were coming from the front pew. Ryan reached out and took my hand in his, squeezing softly to reassure me as the priest talked about memories of John Michael as a young altar boy and how the Morgan boys could often be found hiding behind the priest's vestments listening to portable radio on Yankee game days. A light wave of laughter ran through the congregation as they acknowledged the tragic celebration of a life ended too soon.
At the very end of the mass, the priest called on the members of the various SEAL teams to come forward. Ryan squeezed my hand one more time before he stood and stepped out into the aisle to join his brothers. I watched as they marched forward in formation, stopped, saluted and then each SEAL took reached up and removed the Trident pin from his dress coat. Then one by one, each man walked up the casket, laid the Trident on top with the pins facing down, and with a strength that came from somewhere deep inside the grief and love, pounded the pin into the top of the coffin with a striking blow of the fist. Like the rest of the congregation, I gasped as I heard the first fist hit, but as I watched each man, I realized that it was an act of love and devotion to brotherhood. I made a mental note to ask Ryan about it later.