I have to know what it is.
“I shouldn’t have come. If he didn’t tell you, he must not have been serious about it.” Roy takes another step away, but I’m out the door already, grabbing his right forearm between both of my hands. It’s only at this point that I remember that the only thing I’m wearing is one of Brent’s old t-shirts that comes down to about mid-thigh.
“What did Brent not tell me?” I’m biting my lips, looking up at Roy’s blue eyes.
He hesitates, and then takes a deep breath. “Roy made me promise something. I laughed him off, but then he went on that patrol and—” He closes his eyes and takes another breath to steady himself. “He seemed pretty serious about it, so I promised myself I would at least check in on you, but now I see it was all stupid.”
“What was stupid?” I’m practically shouting now.
In a defeated voice, Roy says, “Brent made me promise that if something happened to him that I would look after you.” He pulls the duffle bag up his shoulder from where it had slipped. “So here I am.”
Chapter 2
Roy
Sitting in Brent’s old apartment, sipping at a cup of eucalyptus tea his sister just made for me, I now understand why he never showed any of the guys in the unit a picture of her. If he had, I wouldn’t be the only one here, trying to convince her that her brother’s dying wish was for me to watch over his sister. It’s just that he failed to mention she looked nothing like him. Which in her case is a very lucky predicament.
“We met in basic,” I say. I glance at her, but not for long. Instead I let my eyes take in the room. It’s hard to believe a girl lives here. The entertainment system contains at least three gaming consoles. There are vintage Army posters framed on the wall. And the leather sofa might have come straight out of every guy’s dream of a man cave.
“So you watched over him from the start?”
“Me watch over Brent?” I shake my head. “No, he was the one watching over me and the other guys. Kind of like a big brother in a way.”
Penny’s eyes drop down my body and then back up again. “Brent a big brother? He barely weighed as much as me. You must have had fifty pounds and six inches on him.”
“True, but he didn’t let that stop him. Did he ever tell you about the eyebrows incident?”
“No,” she says and leans forward. “What happened with his eyebrows?”
“Well,” I say getting into a story I’ve perfected after a hundred retellings. “This was towards the middle of basic when the drill sergeants were really hitting their stride. Ours was this surly bastard who would have made Satan say, ‘Maybe you want to pull it back a bit’.” We were all way past burned out, but he kept nitpicking about little regulations. You know, stuff like uniform discrepancies and beds not made tight enough to bounce a quarter off of.
“Well, your brother seeks to remedy this in a way only he could. No one saw him do it, but he shaved his eyebrows off late one night. He’d pilfered a sharpie from somewhere and drew new eyebrows on before morning assembly. Only he drew them on about an inch too high.” Here I raise my own eyebrows to imitate Brent’s perpetual surprise.
“The next day at assembly, as the drill sergeant was walking down the line, inspecting each of us, the moment he stood in front of your brother, well, he just stopped. His face was blank, but there was no way he wasn’t holding back the biggest guffaw of his life. In fact, he couldn’t even continue the inspection, so he let us go off to the mess hall without a single punishment doled out.”
“Brent did that?”
“That he did. But I didn’t even get to the best part. He ended up redrawing his eyebrows each night, each time slightly different. That drill sergeant never could stand in his presence for long. So thanks to Brent, we didn’t have to run an extra ten miles wearing full gear each time our drill sergeant happened to have a blow out with his old lady the night before.”
Penny lets out a little tinkling laugh. “I don’t know why it’s hard to believe. I mean, that sounds exactly like the sort of stupid idea Brent would have.”
“If it’s stupid and it works, is it really stupid?” I regurgitate one of Brent’s favorite sayings.
The joy falls away from Penny’s face at these words. I wonder if she’s heard him say the same thing. Her eyes turn to the American flag folded into a triangle sitting on a bookshelf. After a steadying breath, she says, “I miss him.”
I could say the same thing, but it would sound cheap now. Besides, I can’t begin to imagine what she’s going through. Brent might not have shown any of the guys a picture of his sister, but he sure as hell let us in on his sad life. Why does it always have to be the class clowns who have the most tragic backstories?
A cat appears from a room with its door slightly opened. It’s a calico with ugly mottled brown and black and white coloring like a turtle’s shell. He stretches out his front legs, yawning and showing off his sharp teeth. After a sniff at my boots, he rubs against my ankle, and then leaps up on the arm of the sofa bedside Penny.
“Cute cat,” I say. “What’s his name?”
“Her name is Camaro.” Penny smiles as the cat rubs its cheek against Penny’s. “My friend, Jen, heard this little guy crying one chilly morning. Found him curled up around her Camaro’s exhaust manifold. Her dad’s allergic so she handed him off to me.”
“Camaro,” I repeat the name with a slight chuckle.
“So Brent wanted you to watch over me?” she asks, her attention fully on the cat, but her words directed at me. “He never did get the message that I’m not a kid anymore. Always thought of me as his kid sister who needed protecting.”
“It’s what brothers do.”
Penny perks up at this. She must see it as a chance to probe into my personal life. It’s not like I’ve given up any details up to now. “Do you have siblings?”
“No,” I reply. “Thank god for that. My parents didn’t need to screw up more than one kid.”
“Where do they live?”
“Down in Florida. A couple of Parrot Heads, listening to Jimmy Buffett and pretending they’re carefree hippies.”
Penny wrinkles her eyebrows in the cutest way possible. “And where do you live?”
As much as I’ve been trying to focus on Brent and what he wanted, we’ve finally come around to this topic. The moment Penny opened the door, I decided I wouldn’t ask her the question that had been on my mind the whole drive to her place. But it seems we’re edging into that territory whether I like it or not. “I’m just off of my last tour. Lived with my parents before I enlisted, so I’m a bit in between places at the moment.”
It was stupid for me to come here. I should never have come and stirred up all these shitty old feelings for her.
While I’m of an exit strategy out of this mess, Penny comes right out and makes the suggestion I thought would be a step too far.
“Why don’t you stay here?”
Chapter 3
Penny
Even as the words fall out of my mouth, I wonder where they’re coming from. Not that I have to consider their origin for long. My brother trusted Roy, so I should too. If Brent thought Roy would be a good influence on me, and giving him a place to crash is going to keep him around, I don’t see any reason to send him on his way. And if anyone asks, that’s exactly the answer I’ll give for inviting Roy to live with me. I’m keeping the truth to myself.
Because the truth is that I don’t just want Roy here just because he’s a connection to my late brother. I need him to stay because I know exactly what I’ll do if I let him walk out the door. There’s no doubt I’ll fall deeper into my agoraphobia, refusing to interact with the outside world, and sinking further and further into depression until I eventually remove myself from this world so determined to eradicate my family.
Perhaps Brent knew I would end up like this if something happened to him. That’s why he had Roy as his insurance policy.
“I couldn’t impose on you like that,” Roy says, tho
ugh I can tell through his formal language that he definitely could. In fact, he’s leaning forward as if he’s been waiting to hear this exact proposition.
“There’s an extra bedroom. I mean, besides Brent’s room. Staying there would be a bit weird, I think. But really, I have all this space and it’s not like I’m doing anything with it.”
“Three bedrooms?”
“Brent was planning on having roommates, but then our parents…well, after that, I moved in with him. We just never got around to having a roommate or using that room. I can barely afford the place, but I just can’t stand to let it go.”
Roy leans back on his chair and looks up at the ceiling. He exhales loudly through his nose before looking at me again. He opens his mouth to say something but snaps it back quickly. Then he’s standing, as though electricity has suddenly run through his body, straightening him out. “I really can’t,” he says and makes for the door.
He’s leaving.
The man I ‘ve only just met, a man I’d never even spoken to until half an hour ago, is going to flit out of my life in the same manner he appeared. It should be easy to let him walk out. We don’t know each other, but we have a connection. For whatever reason, Brent wanted him to look after me.
“Wait,” I say and reach my hand out to grab his wrist as he walks by.
He stops but doesn’t turn around. Instead, he keeps his eyes on the door when he says, “I promised your brother I would look after you, but if I move in here, you’ll be taking me in, not the other way around.”
“I knew Brent better than anyone,” I reply. “So I feel pretty confident when I say this is exactly what he hoped would happen.” Roy says nothing, but he doesn’t pull out of my grip either. I take that as a sign that he’s still listening. “Brent knew if something happened to him that I would be alone. Now, I don’t know you, but Brent did, and for whatever reason he chose you as his sort of proxy.”
“Maybe he made the wrong choice,” Roy answers. “I’m not fit to take care of anyone. Hell, I can barely take care of myself.”
“He chose you,” I repeat. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you were the wrong choice.” I feel his fingers clench. “But that doesn’t change the fact that you were his first choice. And I trust my brother’s intuition. So why don’t you stay here? At least for a while.”
My speech didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but Roy finally turns around. I still haven’t loosened my grip on his wrist. I’m hoping my touch tells him what I couldn’t put into words: I don’t want to be alone anymore.
He looks around the room, his eyes coming to a stop on the folded flag. He blinks slowly, probably remembering the promise he made to my brother. Then his gaze falls to me.
“For a while.”
Chapter 4
Roy
The first week is exactly as awkward as I expected. At least when I’m in my room I can imagine that I’m simply in the barracks. But the moment I step out, I’m unable to escape the fact that I’m living in a house alone with my best friend’s sister.
It’s the morning of the fifth day, a Sunday, when I wake up first. Today, I’ve decided that it’s time to stop creeping around the house like I don’t belong here. It’s time to stop avoiding Penny. So, I’ve cooked up the one thing I know how to make: French toast and bacon.
The coffee machine has just finished brewing when Penny appears in the doorway of the dining room, rubbing her eyes and yawning. She’s wearing a t-shirt much too large for her. I can only imagine that it once belonged to Brent. Underneath, it’s abundantly clear that she’s wearing no bra. The tips of her nipples are pushing through ever so slightly. I tear my eyes away from her chest before she can notice I’m staring. Then I step behind the breakfast bar to hide my cock poking through my pajama bottoms.
“Hungry?” I ask, my tone a bit too high.
Thankfully, she doesn’t notice.
“Is that French toast?” She sits down at the table where I’ve already got cups of orange juice sitting out. After pouring out two mugs of coffee and filling our plates with far too many carbohydrates, I place a bottle of syrup on the counter and sit down. By now my cock has calmed, but then I’m sitting across from her, unable to look anywhere but at her cute, sleepy face.
“Eat up,” I say and turn my attention to the food in front of me.
We eat in a comfortable silence. After each finishing our French toast, her chewing on a piece of bacon, me sipping at my coffee, Penny finally speaks up.
“Do you have any plans for the weekend?”
It’s the dead of summer, the humidity heavy and the air conditioning on twenty-four hours a day. Tomorrow is July 4th, which means barbecue parties, cheap domestic beer, and families congregating in the park for the grand fireworks show following a patriotic rendition of the Star Spangled Banner by the local radio show.
“I’m getting out of town.”
“Not much of a party person either, huh?” Penny asks.
“More of a ‘set up camp far away from any living soul and wake before dawn to fish’ kind of guy.”
“In this heat?”
I nod and turn the question back on her. “What about you?”
“Oh, well, you know how popular I am. After spending all day prettying myself up, I’ll have to choose which parties I grace with my presence.” She swishes her hair behind her in a silly attempt at acting. After two seconds of blinking her eyelashes heavily, she loses her rigid posture, laughing and rolling her eyes at herself. “Back in reality I’ll probably just end up binging some stupid sitcom I’ve seen a thousand times already, drinking boxed wine, and maybe painting my toenails if I feel adventurous—and flexible—enough. No tents or early morning fishing for me.”
The image of me inviting myself to her little lock-in sounds glorious. The truth is that she’s spot on about the weather being terrible for any outside activities that aren’t within a five-minute walk of an air-conditioned sanctuary. But staying in town simply isn’t an option for me. Not until the celebrations have died down and the nights resumed with their usual quiet.
After breakfast, Penny withdraws to the bathroom where the sound of the shower soon emanates. I trek to the gym for my daily workout, followed by lunch at this sandwich place that also offers protein shakes. Then the afternoon in a café with my laptop, perusing job boards for a company interested in an ex-soldier with PTSD and no university degree.
The day is long, hot, and drawn out by incessant thoughts of Penny. I can’t count the times that I’m pulled away from my computer screen with thoughts centering on her. Wondering if I should have just rejected her offer to stay in the extra room. Pondering over what kind of future I have in a town where I have no roots. Toying with the idea of heading back to the beach and opening the deep sea fishing tour boat I used to talk nonstop about before I ended up at the recruiting office.
After yet another unsuccessful day, I return back to Penny’s place about an hour before dusk. Plenty of time to grab my gear, make a few sandwiches for the road, and be well away from the town before tomorrow’s festivities. I’m tucking a six-pack of beer in my pack, one zipper away from lugging everything into the car and taking off. That’s when the first explosion hits.
It’s a few houses down. A sharp crack that fills my ears, leaking through my auditory system and soon firing across brain neurons, calling forth images and sounds and smells of the other side of the world, in a place not nearly as placid as the town I now find myself. Where blood and sand mixed far too often, and I could watch the optimism in the medics’ eyes fade more with each passing week and each passing body that came through their doors.
Muscle memory takes over. I rush into Penny’s room, hoping to confirm that she’s secure, completely forgetting that she’s still in the shower. But when the second explosion blasts louder, deeper, and closer than the first, I dive into the nearest crevice that offers even a modicum of safety.
Chapter 5
Penny
After forcing myself to t
ake a walk, I ended up back home half an hour later in a sweaty heap. So for the second time since waking, I hopped in the shower. After finishing up with ten seconds of icy-cold water, I start drying off, pondering over what I should watch to pass the time tonight. Then something falls against the wall between the bathroom and my bedroom. I place the hairdryer down, check that the towel is wrapped tight around my chest, and peek outside to investigate.
As the steam billows out the door, and the cooler air of the house flicks up my skin, leaving goose bumps in its wake, I look inside my room, fully expecting to find that Camaro has knocked the lamp from my bedside table for the twentieth time. But the cat isn’t in my room looking guilty. Instead I find Roy hunkered down on the other side of my bed, crammed in the corner between the dresser and the wall.
My immediate thoughts jump to him being the type of pervert who gets off on smelling used panties, since that’s where I tuck away my basket of dirty laundry. I’m just gathering together a foul retort with plenty of expletives, but before I can release the torrent of disgust and fury, a firework erupts outside, lighting up the dim sky with a burst of red sparkles.
Roy’s reaction to the sound is sudden and violent. He curls up somehow tighter, slamming into the side of the dresser, knocking down several framed photos. They tumble down with a crash on the hardwood floor, the shattering glass only serving to rile Roy up further. He’s got both of his hands over his head. It reminds me of the tornado drills we had back in elementary school, when the teachers would have us line up against the concrete hallways and tuck our heads under our heads.
A Sweet, Sexy Collection 1: 5 Insta-love, New Adult, Steamy Romance Novellas (Sweet, Sexy Shorts) Page 22