Disarm

by June Gray

  “Do you remember what happened last night?” I asked her quickly.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t remember anything past that beer pong game.”

  My stomach dropped to my feet. “So you don’t remember what you said to me last night?”

  Her eyebrows drew together as she looked at me. For one moment, I thought she might remember, but she just shook her head. “No. What was it?”

  I kicked at the ground as I let her go. “It was nothing. You just said you were proud of me.”

  She grinned, punching me in the arm. “I am.”

  Jason and I took them to the airport. I watched her going through the security gate with a glob of disappointment lodged in my belly. I had foolishly thought that that was our time but even though I didn’t see it then, I know now it was for the best. I don’t know how we would have made it work; she was in L.A. and I was getting sent to Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio for training, and then after that, who knew.

  We were at different points in our lives. Still, it didn’t stop me from wanting what I wanted.

  11

  After graduation, Jason was sent to Lackland Air Force Base for training, which is not that far from Randolph. We were there for nine months and hung out quite a bit.

  When training was done we were both sent to Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma. That was some seriously freaky shit right there. We said good-bye to each other after college, thinking that our road would fork and I’d go one way and he’d go another. Eventually, we knew we’d see each other again somewhere in the world. The Air Force family is actually quite small, and you’ll run into the same people even when you’re in backwoods BFE. We never actually thought we’d get stationed at the same place so soon.

  We both landed in Oklahoma around the same time and we rented an apartment together on the south side of the city. For a while there, we had it made. We had a really nice apartment, we had our brand-new cars—mine was a convertible Mustang, cherry red, just like I’d always dreamed, and Jason’s was a black Camaro—and we had our brand-new jobs. We threw parties every weekend, met friends in each other’s squadrons, dated some cute honeys we met in the clubs.

  We really lived it up in OKC. I can’t say that the life of a bachelor officer sucks. We lived like little kings. Two years in, we pinned on first lieutenant. God, we had it made.

  And then Elsie showed up.

  Shit, I hate that I’m even saying this, but she really put a damper on our bachelor lifestyle. After graduating she tooled around Monterey for a while before she accepted a web design job in Oklahoma of all places. It felt like high school again, when she’d follow Jason and me around.

  It really drove me up the wall because, for one, I can’t very well bring dates to my apartment when there’s a girl living there, and two, because I still had feelings for her. I mean, there I was ready to let loose and live a little and she was in my space all over again, taking up my thoughts and shit.

  She said she only needed a place to stay for a few weeks while she looked for a place of her own, so I at least had that to look forward to. But Jason was a douche and made her sleep on the pull-out couch instead of offering her his bed so every time I came out of my room in the middle of the night, I had to see her lying there, wearing her tiny shorts and a tank top with no bra on. I developed a sudden case of dehydration after that, so I had to go to the kitchen and get a drink of water every night. I was just so thirsty.

  One night, while I walked past her on the way to the kitchen, she turned to her side and—I swear I tried to look away—her breasts just about fell out of her shirt. She was asleep so she didn’t do it on purpose, but the neck of her shirt was really low and when she lay on her side, I could see almost everything. God, I could have stayed there all night just looking at her but I eventually slapped some sense into myself and pulled the sheets over her shoulders. Then I went to my room and jacked off.

  The next morning, I went on a hard run and brought back a newspaper. I scoured the classifieds, ready to find a place of my own. I wasn’t going to be the bad guy and kick out my best friend’s kid sister but there was no way I could live there anymore. My self-control was going to snap sooner or later, and who knows what would happen then.

  When I got back from work that day, she had her stuff all packed up by the door.

  “Where are you going?” I asked her.

  She held up the newspaper with my highlighted ads of available one-bedroom apartments. “I’m going. I can take a hint.”

  I grabbed the paper out of her hands. “That’s not—”

  Jason chose that very moment to walk in the door and announce that he was going to deploy. That guy had interrupting down to an art form.

  “What?” Elsie asked, her attention completely on her brother. “Where?”

  “They’re sending me to Afghanistan.” Jason looked so proud, so excited. Hell, I was excited for him. This was the first time either one of us had done anything that actually meant something. I mean, we go to work every day, we do our jobs, but for the most part, it’s just training. We’re just working in preparation for deployments, for war.

  That’s my job: going to war, and to pretend otherwise is to lie. Our job is to start and end conflicts. Peace means we will be out of a job.

  But you know what? Peace is just an idea. There will never be peace on earth, at least, not the kind of kumbaya-harmony people envision. There can be cease-fires and treaties, but we will never know true peace. That’s the sad truth of the world.

  So Jason getting called from the dugout to play in the big leagues, now that was the job we had both been training for.

  We went out to celebrate that night and we all got drunk. We took a taxi home and drank some more at the apartment. I relaxed a little around Elsie but before I could tell her that I was the one who was moving out, Jason asked her to stay, to take up residence in his room for the six months that he’d be gone.

  Elsie didn’t even hesitate. She said yes.

  12

  I know I haven’t said much about Jason lately. I can pepper his name into conversations easily enough but to talk about him, to really say something about what kind of guy he was, is hard.

  So today, I’m going to try. I’ve been delaying talking about his death but I’ve arrived at the point when it can’t be put off any longer.

  It’s so hard to define a friendship, to pinpoint in words what makes you want to spend all of your time with someone. I’ve thought about it, and I can say some generic things like he’s funny or he’s loyal, but that’s not the entirety of it.

  He and I just clicked. That’s the best way I can describe it. Jason was a good guy down to the core. I would do anything for him, even take a bullet for him, and I know without a doubt that he would have done the same for me.

  That’s what war buddies become after they’ve spent time together in the trenches, when you learn to really trust that the person beside you has your back, that even if you’re dying on the battlefield your buddy is going to run in and drag your bleeding ass back to safety. It’s not something you ask of each other; it’s just an understanding. They don’t call GIs brothers in arms for nothing; except in our case, Jason and I were brothers long before we joined the military.

  It was about forty days into his deployment, a few weeks before Thanksgiving, when my commander called me into his office with a grave expression on his face and told me that I’d lost my only brother to a fucking sniper on a rooftop.

  I honestly couldn’t tell you how I functioned that day. How I didn’t get into an accident when driving home was a miracle. All I remember is walking in the apartment and seeing Elsie at the dining table, doing something on her laptop, her life still untouched by the news.

  I must have looked like complete shit because she immediately stood and asked, “Are you all right?”

  I considered telli
ng her right then and there but I couldn’t for a multitude of reasons. First and foremost, my commander had asked that I wait until the Shermans were notified through official channels. Honestly though, I just couldn’t find the courage to tell her, to extinguish that light behind her eyes.

  If I haven’t made it obvious, Elsie loved her brother. They fought a lot but at the end of the day, she adored the hell out of him. She followed him to Oklahoma, for crying out loud. I knew that if she found out about Jason’s death she would crumble. I know now that I didn’t give her nearly enough credit, that she is far more resilient than I thought, but at the time I just couldn’t bear the thought of devastating her life. Everything she knew would change and I wanted to delay that for as long as possible.

  As the only brother she had left, I was going to use everything in my power to protect her from pain. That’s what Jason would have wanted.

  I don’t know how I managed to smile through the storm inside me. “I’m just tired,” I lied and went straight to my room. I tried to sleep but my brain wouldn’t shut off. I paced around the room but I just felt caged. I went to the gym and ran on the treadmill and even that didn’t seem enough. The punching bag in the corner caught my eye so I pounded on it until the pain had moved from my chest to my knuckles. I think that was really the only way I was able to get through the next seven days, to hurt my body enough that it superseded the hurt in my heart.

  I avoided Elsie as much as I could and just shook my head whenever she asked me if I’d heard from Jason. I told her that work was stressful, a story that she bought until the day her parents called.

  For as long as I live I will never forget the look on her face when she was on the phone; her face crumpled and then her eyes landed on me. The hurt on her face made the weight of Jason’s death nearly unbearable. It nearly broke me.

  I wanted to talk to her right away but she took the cordless into her room and stayed on the phone the rest of the night. The next morning she was gone, leaving only a note on the counter to say she’d flown to California to be with her family, making it abundantly clear that I wasn’t part of that.

  She was only gone five days but those one hundred and twenty-some odd hours felt like a lifetime. For the first time since I met Jason, I was completely alone. It was . . . unsettling.

  I was prepared to grovel and beg when I picked her up at the airport but the moment she emerged from the gate she just fell into my arms and pressed her face into my chest. I couldn’t hold it together anymore. I hadn’t cried about Jason’s death until that moment, when I finally admitted to myself that my best friend was really gone. So I held close the only person I had left, hugged her so tight to me I was sure I was crushing her, but she clutched me closer. I could feel her tears soaking right through my shirt and wetting my skin, and my own were running off my cheeks and onto her hair. We must have looked like long-lost lovers, hugging and sobbing in the middle of the airport, but we didn’t care. We were in our own little miserable bubble, two people glued together by our heartache and tears.

  It wasn’t until a day later when her sadness turned into anger, and she aimed it straight at me. She was so livid that I hadn’t told her the day I’d found out. I endured her angry words and accusations quietly, not only because I deserved it, but also because being angry was easier than being miserable. I needed at least one of us to stop being miserable.

  Jason’s funeral was held a month later. Elsie and I flew to California together this time and we sat in the limo with her family as we followed the funeral procession. Elsie squeezed my hand throughout it all—the draping of the flag on the casket, the firing of the volleys, the bugling. When they folded the flag and presented it to the colonel, I finally broke down. I couldn’t play the stoic guy anymore, not when what was left of my best friend was lying in a box a few feet away, and especially not when his sister was falling apart beside me.

  There have been very few times in my life when I allowed myself the luxury of being sad, but when they lowered my buddy into the ground that day, I had no control of anything. It was as if a floodgate opened up and I was completely engulfed with grief.

  Jason was really gone.

  * * *

  The first night Elsie had a nightmare, I ran into her room and found her flailing around in her bed, screaming Jason’s name. Not knowing what else to do, I sat beside her and rubbed her back until she calmed down. She was a trembling mess and she cried in her sleep.

  When she woke up, she didn’t say anything.

  “Having a bad dream?” I asked gently.

  She nodded. “I dreamt about Jason walking around in a neighborhood and he stopped to pet this dog. And then . . .” She couldn’t choke the rest of the words out.

  “Come here,” I said, wrapping one arm around her shoulders and pulling her to my chest. I leaned back into her headboard and held her like that until she fell asleep. It didn’t matter that I had a kink in my neck the next day. All that mattered was that I was able to give comfort to Elsie.

  The next night I was back there, soothing her again after a nightmare. I could say I was being altruistic but the truth is it was for my sake too. Holding her close gave me a sense of purpose and made me feel a little less alone. She started to sleep on my bed when she had a bad night. Sometimes we’d talk until we fell asleep; sometimes we didn’t need to say anything at all. Just being near someone else was enough.

  “I’m here,” I liked to tell her, to remind her that she wasn’t completely alone. “You still have me.”

  A byproduct of Jason’s death was that it cemented my relationship with Elsie and filled in the cracks between us. It was during that year of healing and changes that I finally admitted to myself that my feelings for Elsie were not going to go away; that, in fact, they had intensified due to our new bond. I knew she felt it too but neither of us acknowledged it out loud.

  We had just survived the biggest loss of our lives and were finally getting back to a new state of normalcy; we couldn’t very well go changing things all over again.

  13

  Who was it that said that the only thing that is constant is change? Heraclitus? Well, that guy spoke the damn truth.

  No matter how much I tried to keep things from changing, life always threw a curveball to remind me that I didn’t know jack shit.

  Elsie and her boyfriend, Brian, broke up in January. They had only been dating a few weeks before Jason’s death, and they were still just at the getting-to-know-you stage. He wasn’t staying overnight yet (though I’m pretty fucking sure that asshole got to know Elsie a few times at his own place). Brian seemed like a nice guy, but after we came back from California from Jason’s funeral, Brian just kind of freaked out. He didn’t know how to give Elsie the comfort that she needed so they broke up.

  She didn’t date that entire year but it wasn’t for lack of invitations. Guys from work asked me if I could fix them up. I just told them that she wasn’t ready yet, she was still too vulnerable from her brother’s death, which was a little truth-stretching on my part.

  Elsie and I spent more time together. I guess, from the outside, it looked as if I had made her my new best friend and she’d made me her new big brother. That wasn’t the way of it, at least on my end. Spending time with her felt natural because we had been doing it since we were kids. We went to movies, we ate at restaurants, we planned things around each other’s schedule. It was bittersweet, being with her but not really being with her, but we were together and for me—at that time—it was enough.

  Just when we got comfortable and content, fate pitched a screwball our way. I was told I’d be deploying for six months to Afghanistan.

  So how would you do it? How would you tell the person you love that you’ll be going to the same place that claimed her brother? Would you tell her right away or would you keep it a secret, like I did? Which one is the braver choice?

  For nearly two months I kept that damn
secret because it was easier to carry silently than to see the inevitable look of worry on her face. If I could have kept her from the anxiety for even just one day, it would have all been worth it.

  Then that night at Tapwerks happened. She was trying to get me to talk by plying me with beer, but boy did that backfire when we got on the dance floor. I don’t think she meant to get so close to me, and I certainly didn’t mean to shove my boner into her stomach—it just happened. Just like that, I could no longer hide how my body reacted to hers. Who knows what I would have done if she had stayed pressed against me on that dance floor one more second? I would have kissed her—that much was certain—but then what?

  I was thanking and cursing every deity for making her pull away.

  I had two weeks left before I deployed and I still hadn’t told her about Afghanistan. I was getting desperate. I finally decided to just bite the bullet and sit her down the next night. I’d get her favorite flowers, cook her dinner, light some candles, the works. Maybe if I showed her a good time she might not freak out about the deployment.

  But then she found out a day too soon and reacted just as I’d feared. She was so angry, so hurt by the fact that I hadn’t told her, I was actually a little worried that she was going to punch me. I gave her some time to calm down, and even though it took a while, she eventually saw reason and forgave me.

  I knew, when I woke up the next morning to her hands around my dick, that things were never going to be the same. God, that was . . . the most amazing thing to wake up to. Her hands were gentle and firm and insistent and when she woke up and realized what she had done, her skin turned this adorable shade of pink. I wanted to hug her and tell her that it was okay, that I didn’t feel violated—in fact, I wanted her to keep going—but I suspected from her reaction that she wasn’t ready to hear that yet.