Back to You

by Jessica Scott

  And Laura was worth it. Whatever it took, he was willing to do.

  * * *

  “Beer for lunch is always an indicator that things have gone to shit,” Nicole Carponti said as she sank into the booth next to Laura. “You should look happy and instead you both look like you’re attending a funeral.”

  Giving her friend a weak smile, Laura sipped her Heineken. “Yeah, well, it’s been somewhat of a banner week, all things considered. We saved you some fries.”

  Nicole swiped a fry through a pile of ketchup and mayonnaise then sighed dramatically. “Who do I need to arrest?”

  Across from them, Jen quirked her eyebrows, raising her beer in a salute. “No one. For now. You missed all the wedding planning fun.”

  “I know, I tried to break away but work… Here, this ought to cheer you both up,” Nicole said, tossing a brightly colored catalogue on the table in front of them.

  A brilliant pink penis with a smiling face literally waved up at them from the cover of the magazine.

  Jen choked and tossed a napkin over the picture before Laura fully registered that it was a penis wearing a jaunty little pair of Easter bunny ears. “You can’t have that in here!” Jen hissed, her voice somewhere between laughter and pure horror.

  Nicole pulled the napkin off. “We’re in a sports bar for lunch. It’s not like there are any children around.”

  Laura peeked inside and saw something that looked anatomically impossible. “Now where on earth would you put all of… never mind. I really don’t want to know.” She sighed then sipped her iced tea.

  Nicole tapped her finger on the page. “That one looks damn near lifelike.” She tipped her head. “It looks real.”

  “That is creepy in so many ways,” Jen said, flushing.

  Laura cracked a wry grin. “There is a shortage of real penis in my life.” She covered her mouth at Jen’s horrified expression. “What. It’s true.”

  “Speaking of real penises, how is having Trent home?” Nicole asked, swiping another fry.

  “He still hasn’t come home so there was no penis involved in this homecoming,” Laura said. The humor in the random penis comment dissipated in the thick mayo. Damn Trent for ruining a good joke and he wasn’t even there.

  “Are you ready for this?” Jen asked. “You looked pretty upset the other night when you left.”

  “I have to be, don’t I?” Laura said. She rolled the tip of a fry in the mayonnaise. “I’m scared,” she said after a moment. She looked up at her friends. “What if I can’t do this? What if I can’t pretend to love him because…”

  “Because you still do?” Nicole finished.

  Laura swallowed the lump in her throat. “Yeah.”

  “Then you do the very best you can and you hope that its enough,” Jen said.

  “And then we’ll have him killed,” Nicole said. “Instead of ‘Good-bye Earl’ it’ll be Good-bye Trent.”

  Laura covered her mouth and laughed. “You’re both terrible.”

  “I still think this whole happy family for the court-martial thing is a bad idea,” Jen said quietly.

  “I know,” she said. “But this is something I need to do.”

  “Why?” Nicole asked, her voice harsh.

  Laura hesitated. “Because Trent told me he would finally sign the papers when it’s all over.”

  “It doesn’t sound like that’s what you still want,” Jen said, twirling a fry in the ketchup.

  “I’ve been waiting for him to let me go for almost a year.” Laura shrugged and stared into the green glass of the beer bottle. “It might not be easy, but yes, it’s what I want.” At least, that’s what she thought she wanted. Seeing Trent, knowing he was around, in the building at work… He was right there and yet he might as well have been across the ocean.

  She didn’t know how to tell them about the kiss that had rocked the foundation of her world all over again.

  Despite everything, he was still so far out of reach. “I just wish everything wasn’t so difficult.”

  “Maybe ending your marriage isn’t supposed to be easy.”

  “Ouch.” Laura winced as Nicole’s words scored a direct hit. “Thanks a lot.”

  “That’s not how I meant it,” Nicole said quickly. She closed her hand over Laura’s and squeezed gently. “I meant that maybe what you’re going through isn’t anything other than normal divorce guilt.”

  “I think it’s more than that,” Laura said. The words she needed lodged in her throat. She didn’t want to admit the thing that kept her awake, worrying about a man she was trying not to love anymore. “There’s something wrong,” she said after a moment. “He gets really tense around the kids.”

  “I noticed that the other night,” Jen said softly. “And it’s actually really common. A lot of soldiers have trouble unwinding after deployments and Trent has been gone a lot.”

  “Does Shane?”

  “Sometimes,” Jen said. “Sometimes he just sits and listens to music. And I just sit with him. I don’t talk or anything. I’m just there.”

  “I’d like to be there for Trent,” Laura said. “But he’s done nothing but shut me out since his first deployment. The distance… the coldness… it’s too much.”

  Nicole took a sip from her beer. “Vic was taking an anti-anxiety med when he first got wounded. It made a big difference in helping him reset.” She frowned, absentmindedly tearing at the label on her own beer bottle. “He told me once that things were more complex back home. That sometimes everything here is just overwhelming. The anxiety meds helped quiet some of the noise so that he didn’t spend all his time pissed off and snapping at people.” She blinked and lifted her gaze to Laura’s. “And it worked for him. After a while, after he got used to missing an arm and his new normal, he stopped taking them.”

  “So maybe it’s not that Trent can’t be around you guys, maybe it’s just that he needs time. Time that he hasn’t taken for himself yet.” Jen was a nurse. She knew what she was talking about, right?

  “That could be true,” she said quietly. The truth was, she’d suspected this all along but Trent had never given her a chance to do something as simple as sit with him. Just let him lean on her a little bit. He never gave her the chance to be there for him. She wasn’t some fragile snowflake that was going to melt at the first sign of trouble. She wanted to feel… needed.

  “Did you ever think that maybe he finally gets it?” Jen said. “That maybe he knows he needs to figure out a way to be home? To be a good husband and a father.”

  “Sure,” Laura scoffed quietly. “And maybe we’ll have miraculous, earth-shaking sex, the sky will open, there will be white doves and singing, and my life will suddenly be perfect.”

  “Actually, that’s not a bad idea,” Nicole said.

  “What, the doves or the singing?”

  “The sex. Maybe you guys should have sex to see if you can work through this.” Nicole smirked. “You know, start with a blow job and work your way into couples therapy.”

  Laura laughed and some of the pain squeezing her heart loosened. Across the table, Jen snorted and barely managed not to spray liquid all over them.

  “If only things were that simple,” Laura said when she stopped laughing.

  “I think we’re supposed to try and convince you to give him another chance.” Nicole swiped a French fry. “But I’m not going to push you toward a man who doesn’t make you happy. You deserve better than that.” Nicole waved at someone over Laura’s shoulder and she turned in time to see Trent and Carponti and Shane walking toward them.

  Jen quickly flipped the magazine over as the men approached but Carponti caught the movement and leaned over, swiping it without missing a beat as he bent to kiss his wife. “This is what you people do during lunch?” he said, flipping through the catalog. “Seriously?” He held up a centerfold of something called the White Rabbit. “Does this get you horny, baby?”

  “You weren’t supposed to be here for another forty-five minutes,” Nicole
said, snatching the magazine away.

  Carponti reached for it again, and Nicole burst into giggles. He succeeded in grabbing the magazine and started to flip through it. “Oh, now that’s interesting.”

  “And that’s my cue to leave,” Jen said with a soft smile up at Shane as she slid out of the booth.

  “What, you don’t want to try—” Carponti laughed but Nicole elbowed him in the ribs, silencing whatever he’d been about to say. “Ow!”

  “I’ll call you later,” Nicole said as Jen slid from the booth.

  After Jen left with Shane, Nicole and Carponti stepped over to the bar, and Laura found herself alone with her husband. If she hadn’t known better, she would have sworn it was a conspiracy.

  Knowing Nicole and Jen, it probably was.

  Laura glanced at her watch, trying to ignore the heat creeping up her neck. There was something both awkward and darkly arousing about being caught with a sex toy magazine by her husband. She bit her bottom lip and reached for her purse. “Day job beckons. I’m going to walk over to Home Depot before I go back to work.”

  She stood, avoiding Trent’s gaze, and made to leave. He stopped her with a simple hand on her arm. She stiffened but didn’t pull away—they’d agreed to put on a happy face in public but she didn’t know how to do that or what that meant. Too bad it was forced enough that she needed to keep reminding herself of that.

  “Need help?” he asked softly.

  She lifted her eyes and met his gaze. Behind the glare of his glasses, his eyes were dark and serious. It was such a simple thing he was asking but there were layers of meaning in his words.

  She could have said no. She could have brushed past him and kept walking away from him like he’d done to her so many times in the past. Instead, she swallowed the nervous lump in her throat.

  And took a chance.

  * * *

  Things were all twisted up inside him and for once, the feelings weren’t related to anxiety and stress. It was something new, something he’d forgotten: arousal and fear mixed into a potent, explosive cocktail swirling in his blood.

  His wife had been looking at sex toys.

  He didn’t know what to say to that knowledge. It was something they’d joked about back when they’d still joked. It was something they hadn’t talked about or done in a very, very long time, and thinking of his wife touching herself, pleasuring herself… the image was powerful and erotic.

  He supposed he should be grateful she was looking at magazines instead of hitting up one of the local meat markets that passed for bars and nightclubs in Killeen. Far too many of his soldiers had come home to find that their wives had let a man—sometimes more than one—take their place at home. And Texas law being what it was, if their wives had let someone move in, they had no legal right to force them to move out.

  It could be worse. Somehow, that was small consolation as the dark and erotic images took hold of his imagination.

  Laura walked a few feet in front of him, her eyes glued to an image on her phone. They’d crossed the parking lot from the sports bar to the home improvement store in a companionable silence that had felt like it was laced with something more profound. Now her head was bowed, her brow knit in concentration as she scanned the shelves looking for some mystery part for the dishwasher.

  She still didn’t have on her rings. He wouldn’t bring it up. He could wait. He needed patience if he was going to do this—convincing his wife that he could do this, that he was serious about coming home and staying home.

  About being there for her when he hadn’t been before.

  This was the most important thing he’d ever do.

  “What are you looking for?” he asked. He stuffed his hands in his pockets. He couldn’t stand feeling so useless.

  “I’m not sure,” she said absently. “I’m looking for a clamp that looks like this but I don’t see it.” She shifted until he could look over her shoulder at the small image of a white—or maybe it was grey—clamp. He couldn’t really tell. He was utterly distracted by the soft golden curl brushing against the gentle slope of her neck.

  She stilled then, and silence washed over them like a thick blanket, as if she could feel his gaze on her. She lifted her eyes from the phone and looked at him. For a moment, the world fell away and they were alone, the kind of alone that made him want to reach out and touch her. The kind of alone that a man craved with his wife.

  Her lips parted for a moment and he felt the tiny huff of her breath against his cheek. He swallowed, his mouth dry. “I don’t see that part,” he said softly, after glancing at the shelves around him. “Maybe we should ask someone?”

  She raised both eyebrows, her expression softening. “Sure.” Her throat moved as she pressed her lips together and took a step away.

  “So how was lunch?” he asked as he followed her to the end of the aisle. “Other than the vibrator shopping and all that.”

  A slow flush crept up her neck and Trent fought the urge to smile. On one of his first deployments, she had e-mailed him a video of herself. There had been nothing more erotic than watching her fingers slide down her stomach to the sweet juncture of her thighs on that grainy video. Just that once, he’d managed to coax her into doing it.

  The memory had stayed with him forever.

  “It was fine.”

  He swallowed, his mouth dry, wondering if the video was still saved in an e-mail file somewhere.

  Her cheeks pink, she turned down another aisle, tracking the errant part like a homing missile. He smiled at her back, a feeling of triumph fluttering against his heart. She could pretend all she wanted, but there had been a time when things were simpler between them. A time when they might have joked about vibrators just like Nicole and Carponti did.

  A time when he might have spent hours on the phone with her, content just to hear her voice.

  “I heard from Rebecca Story the other day,” she said as he walked up behind her. He recognized her attempt to change the subject. It did nothing to alleviate the small victory he’d just won. “You didn’t mention Story was back in Iraq.”

  “Yeah, he just left.” Trent pushed his glasses higher, feeling that awkward distance spreading between them.

  “He went straight from the National Training Center back to Iraq? Trent, he hasn’t been home in months. Rebecca is worried.”

  “She’s probably filling her time with shopping and eating out all the time. She’s just pissed that he put her on a budget.”

  “They fight all the time.” Laura looked away. “Why don’t they just get divorced?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he blames himself for being gone so much.” He heard the unspoken accusation in her words. But for once, he opted not to fight. “He’s fine, Laura. He needs to be with his boys.” The old argument between them stood like stagnant pond water, reeking and stale.

  “His wife doesn’t count? Maybe they’d get along better if he wasn’t gone so much.”

  Trent breathed in deeply, searching for a way out of this familiar territory. He studied her then, her hair neatly pinned out of her face for work, drifting at the base of her neck. Her eyes were guarded and wary.

  He’d hurt her every single time he’d left. Even now he was hurting her by defending Story, another man who’d chosen his “boys” over his family.

  He could not make it up to her. He had no way of taking away the hurt he’d inflicted.

  But maybe, for once, he could try something different.

  He took a single step closer and lifted his hands slowly, afraid that she would step away. But she just cocked her chin, pressing her lips tightly together as he cupped her shoulders in his palms.

  He tried to think of a way to put it into words, the compulsion—no, the need—that had sent him back into combat again and again. That burning desire to make a difference, to bring just one more kid home.

  He’d yielded to it too often as the war had dragged on with no end in sight. It was only now that he’d fully confronted the reality o
f what he’d done to his wife, to his family.

  Gaining that trust started with a single, whispered truth.

  “I can’t explain why he needs to go,” he whispered, praying she would hear what he could not say. Not because he did not want to but because it was true: He could not explain.

  * * *

  Laura looked up into her husband’s eyes as her own filled with unshed tears. No matter how many times she swore she would never cry over this man again, somehow there were always more tears.

  With that quiet admission, she knew they were no longer talking about Story and his wife. “It’s not right, what he’s doing to his family.”

  She saw the regret ripple across Trent’s face, a physical pain, and she knew her comment had struck home. There was no victory in landing that blow. She was tired of all the hurt they kept causing each other.

  Trent cleared his throat roughly, lowering his hands. “That’s between Rebecca and Story, Laura. You can’t interfere.”

  “Maybe the army should interfere. Stop these guys from running themselves into the ground with exhaustion.”

  “Maybe the army is too deep in the fight to care,” Trent said softly.

  They stood for a moment at that unrelenting impasse: an immovable object up against an unstoppable force. She didn’t know what to say. The army was supposed to care about the soldiers that fought the war. Wasn’t that why she had her job? To help the army reach out to families.

  Maybe Trent spoke the truth but that only meant she’d bought into the convenient lie. Wasn’t she the family readiness liaison so she could make a difference to one spouse? One soldier downrange who didn’t have to worry about his wife back home. Wasn’t that why she did her job? Or had she simply bought into the convenient lie, too?

  She glanced over Trent’s shoulder and spotted the part she was looking for over Trent’s shoulder and picked it up, comparing it with the picture on her cell phone. “Found it.”

  When she glanced up, she found him watching her, his dark eyes intense behind those glasses that she loved so much. When he returned from basic training he’d been wearing what he’d fondly dubbed birth control glasses or BCGs. Thick, black rims and even thicker lenses. On their first day back together, they’d picked him up a pair similar to the ones he was wearing now. Wire rimmed and dead sexy.