I could have happily stared at her just like that forever, but I knew tomorrow had to come and tonight would be gone. Tomorrow would come with all its tension, worries, and concerns with the lie I held over me.
I knew exactly how she felt indeed. I didn’t just want to hold onto tonight. I didn’t want tomorrow to come either.
* * *
Olivia
* * *
I stirred and moved my head.
It felt light, like when I slept too much. I opened my eyes to see the inky black Japanese character for earth tattooed on Sam’s neck.
I couldn’t remember him getting that. Must have been last week with Coop. Coop had something similar.
I closed my eyes again, snuggling against him as I decided to go back to sleep. Today was probably going to be one of those busy days where everything was upside down, and all I wanted to do was lay in bed with my man all day. All day, with no stress. Today was…
What was today? I couldn’t remember.
I frowned at the momentary fog that blurred my memory then opened my eyes again in an instant as reality came flooding back.
Reality, truth, and…last night.
Oh God, I slept with Sam… All night.
What time is it?
It was bright outside. Bright like it was late morning. I made a move to get up but stopped when I looked at the beautiful man lying next to me. My fingers were knitted through the silver chain around his neck that held his dog tags. Just like I used to.
His arms were around me, cocooning me in the sanctuary of him. A place where I’d always felt like I could just be me. A place where I had happiness.
Last night we felt like the guy and the girl who were so into each other it was like the world stopped every time they were together. But…time had passed. Things had changed and we weren’t those people anymore.
Last night though…
Did it mean anything?
Did last night mean anything?
I couldn’t just pretend it didn’t happen. And right now I couldn’t deal with thinking about what it meant. Not here, anyway.
I released the chain and slipped out of his grasp, careful not to wake him. Him waking up would not be good right now with me in this conflicted state.
I dragged on my wet clothes that were crumpled in the corner by the bed and padded across the floorboards out to the living room.
Observing the place in the daylight showed how beautiful it was. He had that less-is-more look that made the house look classy. I was so wrapped up in him last night that I didn’t get to really look around at the bungalow-style home he’d chosen. It was so him.
A wooden clock on the wall displayed the time. It was eight thirty. Thank God. It was still late for me, but at least it was early enough to get home, sort out my hair, which I was sure looked like a rat’s nest, and try to unscramble my poor brain.
I grabbed my purse and looked back to the bedroom, stopping in my escape to the door.
This felt wrong. Leaving felt wrong.
I was the one who didn’t want last night to end, or for things to change, and yet I was leaving. If I stayed I didn’t know what I’d say, or what he would say.
What if last night was just a fling for him?
No… I was right to leave. I couldn’t organize my thoughts here.
On that thought, I left.
* * *
Of course the day had to be made more awkward than it already was when Marcus came to see me the minute I stepped in.
Even if last night with Sam was just for last night, I knew there was no way I could continue to see Marcus. No way. I knew Jada could do that, basically balance two guys because she wasn’t serious about either.
That wasn’t me. I couldn’t, and I thought I was entilted to say that my situation was very unique. Sam wasn’t just any guy.
Marcus smiled when he saw me.
“Your hair looks nice like that,” he complimented, beaming up at me.
My hair was in a high, messy bun I tried to make look nice for work. It was nice of him to say that, but if he ever saw what it looked like down I doubted the compliment would be the same.
“Thank you.”
“I just came to see how you were after yesterday?”
“Yesterday?” I didn’t know what he meant.
“You never take leave like that. It’s fine, of course, but I just hoped there wasn’t an emergency or anything to worry about.”
I straightened up and shook my head. “Oh no, I just needed the time.”
“That’s fine.” He looked me over and squinted. I seriously hoped he couldn’t tell from looking at me that I’d had wild sex last night. I really hoped not.
“I hope I didn’t miss anything.”
“No. There’s a potential trademark infringement case coming your way.”
“Cool. That sounds like me.” I stood up and brought my hands together, walking around the desk so I was closer to him. “Marcus, can we talk a minute?”
He grimaced, but smiled at the same time. “I think I know what you’re going to say. You don’t think us as a couple is a great idea, do you?”
I felt awful, but this was something that had to be done. “It’s not that. I think that sometimes when two people are such good friends, maybe they’re just supposed to stay that way.”
That was the best way to put it.
He nodded. “Yeah. I think I may be inclined to agree with you. So is that what we are, good friends?”
“I’d say really good friends because I know most days I can’t get by without you.”
He smiled and tilted his head to the side. “That means a lot to hear, and same here. It’s the same for me too. I’m here for you if you need me, Olivia. You…um…look like something’s up. This week has been weird.”
He didn’t know the half of it. “Yes, this week has been very strange, and something is up. But I’m okay.”
His eyes filled with concern when I said that. “What’s up?”
I didn’t want to go into too much detail. In fact, I definitely shouldn’t. It was the worst idea in the world to tell him who Sam was and reveal more of my past with him than I should.
“I promise you it’s nothing I can’t handle, but if things get too difficult I’ll come to you.” I nodded.
“Okay, I’ll hold you to that. Just grab me if you need me.”
“I will.”
He gave me a reassuring nod before leaving. When the door closed I pulled in a deep breath, relieving my constricted lungs. I didn’t realize I’d stopped breathing.
It was nice to know he was there if I needed, nicer that I hadn’t upset him.
What wasn’t nice was that my stomach was still in knots over Sam.
Clearly, I still felt the same about him, even though I knew I shouldn’t.
I absolutely shouldn’t. Accepting that and giving in would get me in trouble.
Heartbreak had come for me last time I thought I had my life figured out.
I thought I had it all figured out. From the very minute details to the big stuff. I was twenty-one. I guess it was a big thing to have figured out at twenty-one. A little too good to be true.
That night we walked back from the woods, when I was sixteen, set the path in motion, and the night he first kissed me when I was eighteen sealed the path. Both were significant memories for me. Memories that made me think I knew what I wanted with my life. I never considered then that life was full of surprises that could jump out at you at any given time. One day things could be all set, and then turned upside down the day after.
Back then I always thought I’d have Sam.
It would be worse this time with so much uncertainty.
At least the one thing I knew that was similar to last time was that Sam would be leaving. And knowing didn’t help.
Chapter 13
Olivia
13 years ago…
“I’m telling you nothing comes without consequences,” Coop stated, flicking his hand wi
th emphasis. “Being a Marine is way cool, but they don’t tell you everything.”
I wished he would just shut up.
We were all sitting around the table for dinner. It was a special dinner Dad made because Sam would be leaving for the Marine Corps Recruit Depots in three days for his thirteen-week training program.
Except for the times when he’d been in juvie, which was so many years ago, this would be the longest that he’d been away from us.
“They tell you everything, Coop.” Sam gave him a pointed stare and went to tuck his hair behind his ear in that habitual way I found sexy, but there was no hair there.
He’d had it all cut last weekend, shaved off to nothing, and I cried like it was mine.
The man still looked gorgeous and the lack of hair only accentuated the deep angles and planes of his face. Strangely, it made his eyes seem brighter in hue too.
Dad came into the living room with a tray of cinnamon rolls. He looked so proud of himself. It was evident, too, that he was proud of Sam. Proud of how he’d turned his life around. Proud that he was going to be a Marine.
“Yeah right. You think they would give you the whole 411 on what to expect?” Coop cleared his throat in an exaggerated manner and put on his reporter voice. “Be all you can be. Fine print: May cause death, mental illness or loss of limbs.” His large brown eyes widened and my heart tensed.
My heart tensed and squeezed at the warning because he was right.
“Boy, stop that nonsense,” Dad chided. “Your Uncle Brody left for active duty at nineteen and is still there today. It’s been over thirty years. He’s fine.”
“Is he?” Coop raised his brows. “Dad, don’t you remember what happened on that camping trip?”
Normally I would have laughed. I would have laughed until my sides ached when anyone brought up that story, but it wasn’t funny today.
Coop and three of our cousins went on a boys-only camping trip with Uncle Brody. The boys all thought it was going to be a fun trip where they’d go on all sorts of adventures because Uncle Brody was known for all the missions he’d been on. However, he turned it into some survival training excursion.
First he took the boys to the wild planes of British Columbia instead of Yosemite Park where they thought they were going. Then he insisted they only catch food they would only find in the wild that was easy to get their hands on, e.g. bugs, insects, and reptiles. Toward the end he allowed them to catch birds. Not fish, though, because he knew Coop could fish and that would be too easy. It was a week of hell. Then to top it all off, he ate a live rat in front of them.
Coop came back traumatized and sick. Very sick from eating bugs and mentally traumatized from watching Brody eat the rat. He told everyone what happened to him in his search for sympathy, but we all found it hilarious.
Sam laughed, looked over at me, then stopped when he saw that I hadn’t as much as cracked a smile.
I looked at him, too, but looked away, afraid that Dad or Coop would see straight through me and I’d reveal myself. Reveal how worried I was, reveal my feelings for Sam.
“Boy, that man was crazy long before he became a Marine.” Dad chuckled.
“Dad, that was extreme crazy,” Coop insisted. “The. Man. Ate. A. RAT. A live one. Lord Jesus.”
Dad shook his head, set the tray down and went back into the kitchen.
We were on dessert, but I hadn’t touched my main. Granted, there wasn’t much on my plate so it looked like leftovers. I doubted anyone would have noticed since Coop had been the life of the evening, expressing his opinion on the Marines and how it was a bad idea for Sam to go.
He’d been like that the whole time. Right from months ago when Sam enlisted. It was a shock to everyone who wasn’t Dad, because he’d told Dad and gotten him to write a reference for him because of his colorful juvenile records. To Coop and me, though, it was a big shock.
Me mostly. Coop was just throwing bullshit out there because, really, what he wanted to say was that he would miss Sam too much and didn’t want him to leave.
“You will end up like Brody.” Coop leaned in.
“He doesn’t sound so bad,” Sam chuckled.
“You think traumatizing your family doesn’t sound bad?”
“Well, since you guys are my family and I traumatize you all the time, there’s nothing new really. I’m going to be fine. This is going to be a new adventure for me. Something good.” Again Sam looked at me. Those words were for me.
I allowed myself the few seconds to look back to him. He knew I was worried sick. He also knew that, while I was happy for him and this new adventure that was definitely a good thing, I was also thinking about us.
Us…
Maybe that was laughable since there was no us. The only thing that had come from that little conversation two years ago was nothing.
Although…
He hadn’t had a girlfriend in that time. I didn’t know if that was just me going on the basis of what I saw, because I knew Sam and Coop got up to a lot that I didn’t know about and would never know about. But that was what I saw. My naïve, teenaged mind highlighted what I’d seen and jumped to the assumption that he’d kept himself free for me. Reality, however, jumped in, peaking its head through the haze of a dream I still fantasized about with this man and told me otherwise.
I was older than I was then. I was eighteen now, nigh on nineteen. I’d be going to Harvard in September. I wasn’t a kid anymore.
I waited for something to happen on my birthday. Some big thing, whatever that was, but nothing happened, and maybe that was what it was going to be.
Nothing.
“Okay, let’s do this,” Coop said a little too loudly. We both returned our focus to him. “Let me give you a rude awakening. One that will wake you right the hell up from this G.I. Joe fantasy of yours. The news gives you the truth. But movies, they give you the dayuuum truth.”
“Coop, are you kidding me? You think you get the truth from the news and movies?” Sam frowned and tensed his wide shoulders. “Movies are make belief, Coop. Don’t be a prick.”
“Sam, movies, especially war movies, are a great depiction of what happened in real life. It’s what makes them so good. They even get accounts from the people who lived through it to make it more real. Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Black Hawk Down, Saving Private Ryan. God, even Forrest Gump. Liv, back me up.”
He always called me Liv when he wanted to get on my good side. It was Olivia when he was mad at me. He’d full-name me when he was seriously pissed.
“I have nothing to say,” I answered. It was actually the first thing I’d said all evening.
Coop grimaced at me and knitted his thick dark brows together. He looked like Dad when he made that face. Exactly like Dad. Mama used to say, “like an angry Billy Dee Williams.”
“Nothing to say? Can’t you see I’m trying to talk some sense into the man? Three days, Liv, that’s how long we have. You let him go, that’s it.” Coop raised his hands.
Sam rolled his eyes and punched Coop in his shoulder. “Stop scaring her.”
“This is reality. I’m trying to save you from being well and truly fucked.”
“Coop!” Dad bellowed from the kitchen. “Mind your language in front of your sister.”
God… I groaned inwardly. Dad treated me like I was eight, not eighteen. As if I hadn’t heard people swearing before.
“Come on, Liv.” Coop ignored Dad. “You watched Forrest Gump. Remember how you cried when Bubba died, and you were bawling when Dan got his legs blown off. Couldn’t even watch the rest of the film. Think of how devastated you’d be when Sam dies. Blown to smithereens or some shit. We won’t even be able to identify his body. And all they’ll do is send someone to us with his dog tags. You seen da movies.”
That was it. That was literally it. I couldn’t take it anymore.
No more. The tears I’d been holding back since Sam told us he was going to the Marines pierced through. One ran down my cheek.
“Ex
cuse me,” I quickly said before the rest came and moved out to the corridor. I hated crying in front of the guys. Hated crying full stop.
“What? What’d I say?” Coop was saying as I left the house. He could be so clueless sometimes.
So damn completely clueless.
I needed fresh air. The fresh night air hit me like a blast when I stepped outside. It had been raining earlier so it was a little colder than usual for July.
I rushed to the back garden, allowing the tears to fall, and they fell heavier when I got to my little bench in the rose garden Mama and I made when I was little.
I didn’t sit. Instead I slumped against the huge trunk of the willow tree, pressing my face into the rough bark as I cried.
I hadn’t cried like this in a very long time, and not to this intensity. In fact, I didn’t think I’d cried like this since Mama died. It was the thought of Sam dying that crippled my soul. Fear knotted my insides, twisting everything up worse than macramé. Fear, stark and vivid. Fear that made me shake and shiver at the frightful images that swept through my mind.
Coop could be a clueless ass sometimes, but it wasn’t like there wasn’t some element of truth to what he’d said. Movies were movies. Works of fiction based off true stories in a lot of instances.
All that Coop had said could indeed happen. It could happen. I had the greatest respect and admiration for anyone who served their country, for their sacrifice and their determination. But there were so many aspects to the great vision that were downsides. People talked about them, so it wasn’t exactly like Coop said, where there was a fine print and you could be surprised when you heard the bad stuff.
Knowing, however, didn’t make it any easier.
When I told Sam to be good and try to not be bad all those years ago, I didn’t expect this.
He didn’t steal that car and literally whipped himself in shape. It was for this, though. He wanted to be a Marine.
Dear Olivia Page 11