"And yeah, I was always a little angry with him for leaving like he did. I still am, in a way. But he showed up, and he invested in me. The summer trips were a birthday present, too. He'd let me do what ever I wanted, within reason. I learned how to drink around Dad, learned how to throw a mean right hook, how to ride a motorcycle, how to change a tire, how to change oil. I saw the country on the back of a Harley, in the company of my dad and a bunch of other amazing people." I paused to take a drink of my beer, which had started to go warm. "Mom never forgave me. We established a status quo, but I was taking care of myself from then on. She did the grocery shopping and paid the bills, but I was responsible for myself. I got a job when I was fifteen and bought a car with my own money when I turned seventeen."
"How are things now?"
I looked down and picked at the label of my bottle. "Well, Mom still lives in Elvira, Indiana, still works for the same dentist she has since I was in high school, still lives in the same house. I don't see her that much. I refuse to set foot in that town, not after what happened to Isaac, not after the way even the so-called 'good people' turned a blind eye to what Jimmy Price, Kevin Lyle, Patrick McKnight, and Reggie Kowalski did. Those are all the sons of city councilmembers, F-Y-I. They're the ones who killed Isaac and no one says anything. It's just this dirty little town secret, except it's not, like, someone's a secret drug addict or someone got someone else's wife pregnant. It was premeditated murder of an innocent kid. So yeah, I don't go back. I buy Mom a plane ticket every December and she spends a month with me in San Francisco."
"What about your dad?" Zane asked.
I sighed. "Two years ago, he was convicted of grand larceny, money laundering, possession of and intent to distribute schedule one narcotics, and possession of a firearm without a license."
"Oh." Zane blinked, processing. "So...he's behind bars for a while."
I laughed bitterly. "A while, yeah."
"So when you were on those trips with him...?"
Another bitter laugh. "Those were his vacations, too. The rest of the year he and his gang were...well, your average gangsters. Drugs, guns, hookers, the whole nine yards, and my dad was one of the ring-leaders. He kept it from me all through high school and while I was in the Army, and then one day, bam, I got a collect call from him. He was behind bars and wouldn't be getting out for something like twenty years, minimum. Turns out he'd been lying to me the whole time. I mean, I always kind of wondered where he got the money to send Mom, and how he could afford to just scamper off with me for three months and spend money on me like it was no big deal. The last week or so of our summer trips, we'd swing by Indianapolis before he took me home, and we'd go shopping. He'd buy me whatever I wanted and then we'd ship it all to Mom's house. He'd drop several grand at a time without blinking. Should've been a hint, but I was just..."
"A girl being spoiled by her dad."
I nodded. "Exactly. It was easier to not think about it, not ask any questions."
"I notice none of the charges he was slapped with are violent offenses."
I shrugged. "Yeah. I think he had others do that kind of dirty work when it needed doing."
"Do you ever visit him?"
"Nope. I will, eventually, but I haven't forgiven him yet. It's another betrayal, yet another way he abandoned me."
"Understandable." We both finished our drinks at the same time, and Zane pointed at mine. "Another?"
I shrugged. "Nah. You want to just...walk around?"
"Sounds good."
And that's what we did. Hand in hand, just strolling the boardwalk next to the cruise ships and fishing boats and sailboats, telling stories about our childhoods. Zane did a lot of the talking, which was fine by me; he had an endless stream of hysterical stories about his brothers.
And then things turned to our experiences in the military, and I told him a few of the antics my unit had gotten up, pranking each other mercilessly, and he talked more about his friend. Specifically Marco, the one who'd been killed. I had a feeling he found it cathartic to talk about Campy with me, since I would understand the strangely intense bonds you form with people in your unit, especially if you've seen combat, which I had, since I'd been a "Sixty-Eight Whiskey", a 68W--a line medic, meaning I went with the Joes on hazardous missions to provide trauma care.
We eventually ended up on a bench near the docks, looking out over the water as the sun set behind the mountains, and we were there when the moon rose, still talking.
I don't think I've ever spoken to one person for that long in my life. Even Isaac, we'd only get to see each other for a few hours at a time, and honestly, we didn't exactly spend a lot of time just talking--we were teenagers, after all. But this? With Zane? I just couldn't fathom ending the conversation. The thought never even entered my head. We sat, and we talked, and so many hours passed I lost track. And then, when the sky started to go hazy gray with oncoming dawn, he led us to a place called Pioneer Cafe that was open twenty-four hours on the weekends, and we ordered an early breakfast and talked until the sun was high.
Eventually, I was yawning and my eyes were burning, and even Zane, conditioned to long hours of being awake, seemed to be dragging.
"I need to sleep," I said, pushing away my now-empty plate.
Zane wiped yolk off his plate with the last of his toast and stuffed it in his mouth, eyeing me. "I have a suggestion," he said between chews. "Feel free to call me crazy."
"All right," I said, sounding as wary as I felt.
"Come back to my place with me."
I made a face at him. "Why would that be crazy?"
He quirked an eyebrow at me. "That wasn't the crazy part."
"So what is?"
"We go back to my place, we get in my bed..." He trailed off dramatically.
"Yeah..." I prompted. "And?"
He leaned forward, whispering conspiratorially. "And we just sleep."
I sank back against the booth, blinking at him. "That is crazy." I ripped up the remnants of my napkin. "Just sleep?"
He nodded. "Just sleep." His fingertip traced the bumps of my knuckles. "I don't work until four tomorrow, so we can sleep in. I'll make you breakfast--well, actually, Xavier will make you breakfast and I'll take credit."
I nudged my plate. "Isn't this breakfast?"
"Nope. Breakfast is whatever meal you eat after you wake up, regardless of what time it is."
"Oh."
He tossed a pair of twenties on the table and tilted his head at me. "So, Amarantha. What do you say?"
"I say...I like the way you say my full name, and I also say...let's go non-euphemistically sleep together."
Chapter 10
Zane
We walked back to the bar, still talking, this time about our favorite movies and actors.
I've never been much of a talker, never was one to stay up with the guys chewing the fat all night. Brock, Xavier, Bax, Cane and Cor, they can all talk till the cows come home. They'll talk your damn ear off if you let 'em, especially Bax. But me? I like to listen, like to sit back and watch. I'll talk when I've got something to say, but once I'm done, I just don't have any more words. But with Mara, there just always seemed to be something else to talk about. I think I told her more about myself and my life and my time as SEAL than I have anyone...maybe even everyone I've ever known put together. I told her shit I never even talked to Campy about, and that man was my best friend in the world. She just...brought it out of me.
The bar was dark when we got back, all the stools up on the tables. I led her upstairs to the apartment and, unsurprisingly, Xavier was at the kitchen table, some kind of thick textbook on the table, a laptop next to it, with a bunch of electronics bits and pieces and doodads and gizmos and gadgets spread out around him. He was reading the textbook at lightning speed, flipping pages every few seconds, and every once in a while he'd do something with the wires and motors and computer chips, tap at the laptop, fiddle a bit more, and then go back to reading.
Mara stopped at the tabl
e, watching. "What are you doing, Xavier?"
He blinked at her for a moment, as if registering that she was there and that he was expected to respond. He kind of goes into a trance when he's working like that, so he was a little slow on the uptake.
"Oh, hello Mara," he said, finally. "I'm, um, studying."
"Studying what?"
He flipped the textbook closed to show the cover. "Advanced Computational Mathematics."
She gestured at the laptop and robotics. "And all this?"
Xavier just blinked at her. When he was in his head like this, it always took him a while to re-gear into a socializing mindset. "Um, it's basic robotics, I just..." he glanced at me uncomfortably.
I laughed. "Boy genius here has focus problems."
"But...he's doing two super advanced things at once," Mara pointed out.
"Yeah, well, Xavier's focus problem is the opposite of everyone else's. He reads so fast and his brain comprehends so quickly that it's like...listening to the radio while driving for the rest of us. He has trouble sitting still and paying attention if he's not mentally occupied. So he has to do something to entertain all of his brain." I picked up a finished robot, a three-legged little thing, and showed it to Mara. "He builds these robots while he studies. They're simple little things that only do one or two things."
"I can answer for myself, you know," Xavier said, his voice sharp with sarcasm. He glanced at Mara. "But what he said is correct, even though he spoke for me."
Mara examined the robot; it was just a box with three tiny pegs for legs, one each on opposite sides of the cube, and then a third on the front forming a sort of off-kilter tripod. "So what's this one do?"
Xavier took it from her, set it on the table in front of his textbook, and flipped a switch on the bottom. The little box sat on the two primary legs with one edge touching the table, and then rotated backward flat to the table so it was sitting down, so to speak. When the legs and corresponding cube face were parallel to the table, it suddenly flipped into the air, did three somersaults, and landed again, then used the single "front leg" to push itself back into a sitting position, at which point it reared back and repeated the simple performance.
Mara laughed delightedly. "Oh my god, that is so cute!" She crouched to watch the little robot do its jump and flip, laughing every time it launched itself into the air. "And you do this just for fun?"
He shrugged modestly. "Sure. Just to keep myself busy while I'm studying."
She picked up the robot and turned it off, then examined it again. "You ever think about selling them?"
Xavier did the blank, blinking stare again, the one that made it seem like you'd spoken in Swahili or something. "Sell them? To whom?"
Mara laughed. "Anyone! Online, or downstairs in the bar? You put in one of those USB rechargeable batteries and put a cute little face on this? I bet you could get twenty or thirty bucks out of it."
Xavier stared at the robot like he'd never seen it. "That's, like, maybe five or ten dollars in parts. The most expensive part is the chip, and I get a wholesale discount from a supplier I know."
"Exactly. Huge profit margin, and you make them in your spare time."
Xavier turned the robot on and watched it flip. "You really think people would buy them?"
"Absolutely." She dug her wallet out of her purse and set three tens on the table, and then took the robot. "There. I'm your first customer."
Xavier poked at the money like he'd never seen a greenback before. "For real?"
Mara laughed again. "Yes, sweetheart, for real. This thing is amazing! I could watch it flip for hours while I'm doing paperwork. I know for a fact if I put it on my desk at work, before lunch at least five people would ask me where I got it."
Xavier pointed at a slot on one side. "It already has the USB battery, because that's just the easiest way of charging and being able to reprogram it."
"See? And everyone has a mini USB cord somewhere around the house, so there's no need to include one. I think you just make it look more like an animal or monster or something, just a little head and eyes or whatever, give it a cute name, and you're in business."
"A cute name?"
Mara nodded, tapping the robot on the head. "Like, I'll call this one Flipper. Like the old TV show about the Dolphin? Only this actually is just a flipper, so it's...stupid, but--"
"No, that's cute. I see what you mean." He was already on his laptop, tapping away. "I could design a basic starter website in like an hour. I'd just need a PayPal account, and some way of packaging them..." And then Xavier was gone, mentally, mumbling to himself, fingers clacking and flying on the keyboard.
I laughed and led Mara toward my room. "You know he has crates full of those things in his room? If he sits and studies or reads for three or four hours, he'll put together four or five of them. And they're all like that, simple, cute, funny, and endlessly entertaining. I think you just created the CEO of the next Apple Corporation."
Mara smiled at me. "It'll start there, and then he'll design a more complex one, and next thing you know, he'll be selling his IPO for half a billion."
"Exactly," I said, closing the door behind us.
"Is he always up at this hour?" she asked, glancing at my alarm clock, which read 5:48am.
I nodded. "He sleeps maybe four hours a night max. He'll go to bed at one or two and be up again ready to go at five or six. Usually, though, he goes to bed at three or four and wakes up at seven or eight." I shucked my shoes and jacket, setting them aside. "He's always going, doing, studying, reading. He's exhausting, is what he is."
There was an awkward moment, then. Mara stood just inside my room, the door closed behind her, her zip fleece in one hand, purse in the other, staring around my room, at the bed, at me, looking unsure.
Like, where do you start when it comes to just literally, physically sleeping with someone? How do you approach it? It's weird.
I slid off my socks and tossed them in the hamper near my closet, then approached Mara slowly. "Hey, look, this doesn't have to be weird or awkward, okay?"
She tilted her head to the side and made a face. "Yeah, well, it already is, isn't it? I mean, what do you wear to bed? Which side are you sleeping on? Do you brush your teeth before bed? How am I going to take off my makeup?"
"I usually wear nothing or just underwear to bed, but I can go with shorts if it'll make you more comfortable. I usually end up on the left side of the bed, but I'm fine with whatever you're comfortable with. We have a bunch of extra toothbrushes around, and Bast's wife has a bunch of girly makeup shit in the bathroom, so I'm sure if you poked around you'd find what you need." I grinned. "Anything else?"
She frowned. "I can't just poke around another woman's makeup, especially one I've never met. That's...it's...anathema."
I shrugged. "She won't mind--she's cool. Plus, she and Bast are in Baja on their honeymoon, so it's not like she'll ever know anyway."
"I'm not rifling through your sister-in-law's makeup collection. I'll just wash my face with soap and water."
"Suit yourself." I went to my bureau and pulled out one of my faded, worn, washed a million times Navy T-shirts, handed it to her. "You get changed while I find a toothbrush for you."
It had been weird at first, getting used to having a woman living with us. Dru had stuffed our once-bare medicine cabinet in the bathroom with all sorts of weird shit, and our bathroom towels were all folded all the time, and she'd bought a fancy toilet paper holder instead of just leaving the roll on the back of the toilet where it had been for as long as I could remember, and I had to remember to knock if the door was closed. And there were bras hanging from Bast's bedroom doorknob, panties on the floor of his room, tampon and pad wrappers in the bathroom garbage--and there was a bathroom garbage in the first place. She bought all sorts of food we never stocked, did the dishes for no reason whatsoever, vacuumed, dusted even--don't get me wrong, for an apartment filled with a bunch of bachelors, we were plenty clean. I'm former military, so I've go
t that stereotypical neat-and-orderly bug, and Bast had been in charge of the rest of us growing up and he hated mess and dirt, so it wasn't like we were a bunch of slobs. But we were dudes, and we lived a dude life in a dude's pad.
Then Dru moved in and all that changed. For the better, mostly, but she did yell at us when we left the toilet seat up in the middle of the night or missed the bowl. It's kind of impressive, honestly, how easily she fit herself into our life, surrounded by a bunch of guys. The other brothers lived over the studio a block or so down, but this was the home base for all of us, so often as not there'd be someone passed out on the couch or playing Xbox or making food, since Dru had taken over grocery shopping and kept this place stocked like a restaurant.
I changed into my shorts and then browsed in the medicine cabinet for a new toothbrush; I found one, and, conveniently, several little white packages that said "makeup remover pads" right beside them. After pissing, brushing my own teeth, and washing my hands, I snagged one and brought it and the toothbrush to Mara.
"Look what I found!" I said, showing her. "She's got like four of these packages in there, so I really don't think it's a big deal if you use some."
And then it registered what I was seeing: Amarantha, wearing my favorite Navy shirt, looking sleepy and sexy and gorgeous...and just so perfect and so right, so natural in my environment, lounging on my bed scrolling through her phone. The way she was lounging left it obvious that she wasn't wearing a damn thing under the T-shirt, which didn't help me in my determination that we were just going to go to sleep, and nothing else.
She looked up at me as I came in, and gave me that cute, quirky, lopsided grin. "Thanks. Taking off makeup without remover is tricky." She eyed me, then. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
The emotion I was feeling was hard to pinpoint. Soft...tender, possessive, comforted...all of those at once, and more I didn't have the words for.
I let my gaze linger. "Just...you," I said. "In my bed, in my shirt, looking incredible."
She blushed. "There you go with that flattery again."
"It's also just having you here, like this. It's...." I trailed off, hunting for the right words.
Badd Ass Page 14