by LA Witt
Snorkeling?
Well, that was promising. At least there was something here I enjoyed. If the snorkeling was anything like Hawaii or Guam, then maybe I could get through this three-year tour without completely losing my mind.
I tried not to think about that number, but it just kept banging around in my head. Three years in this foreign place where I didn’t even know how to drive or how to speak the language. Three years without my daughter. Three fucking years.
I tossed the brochures aside. Only I could find a reason to be depressed after looking through pictures of turquoise water and colorful fish, but the promise of snorkeling didn’t quite make up for everything else on my mind.
Lying back on the hard barracks bed, fingers laced behind my head, I should have fallen asleep in seconds. I should have been out cold before I even hit the pillow.
But I was exhausted to the point of restlessness. I teetered on the brink of thinking myself into insomnia or crying myself to sleep. Again.
It didn’t help that my options were limited when it came to making friends on this island. Even finding someone to go snorkeling with once in a while promised to be a challenge because the military was ridiculously restrictive about fraternization. As an E-6, I couldn’t hang out with E-5s or below without risking disciplinary action, and the E-7s and above had to be careful spending time with my paygrade or below. That and if the chiefs were anything like the ones at my last three commands, I could pretty much rule out the E-7s and above anyway, unless I wanted to go to the brig for kicking someone’s ass. So it was E-6s or nothing. E-6s who were usually married, which meant family get-togethers instead of hanging out with single guys. Well, unless they were golfing. And of course, I didn’t golf.
If making friends would take an Act of Congress, I had a sneaking suspicion it would also be three years before I could get laid on a regular basis either. And fucking forget any kind of relationship. Most Americans on Okinawa were military, which meant if I wanted to date, casually or otherwise, I had to fish off the company pier. Even with the repeal of DADT, that was never a wise career move, but unless I learned to speak Japanese, I didn’t have much choice.
I was a single, gay E-6 on an island where nearly every American was military. I didn’t golf. I wasn’t a huge drinker. I didn’t speak a lick of Japanese. My kid was an ocean away.
Reality started sinking its teeth in. I tried to blink away the sting in my eyes, tried to ignore that pressing ache in my throat, but with each passing moment, the scales tipped more and more in favor of crying myself to sleep—again.
No two ways about it, Eric. The next three years are going to be very, very lonely.
~*~
The next two weeks were occupied with the delightful process of finding my sea legs in a new command. There was the usual endless stream of paperwork, headache and more paperwork. My favorite part of the military. I was assigned a duty section of about a dozen other masters-at-arms—Navy police, like me—and was made watch commander. By the end of it all, I was settled in at work, had a piece-of-shit car and a nice apartment a few kilometers off base, and still missed my daughter so bad I couldn’t see straight.
Day in, day out, getting to know strangers at a professional arm’s length. Then I’d go home to an apartment building full of people who were lovely and polite, but there was a mile-wide language barrier between me and every one of my neighbors. Fifteen minutes here and five minutes there, talking on the webcam with my ex-wife or my parents. An hour every couple of days with Marie. My plane had long since landed, but the distance just kept growing the more I realized I was here and she was there and that wasn’t changing anytime soon.
My skin crawled from the lack of human contact. Real, genuine human contact. Something that wasn’t filtered by regulations and geography.
On my third Friday night in town, Chris offered to take me out to dinner with his wife and some guys from work, but I bowed out. All my things had arrived yesterday, I’d told him, and I still needed to unpack.
Forget unpacking. I was itching to find something to do.
Who was I kidding? I didn’t want something to do. I wanted someone to do. I couldn’t think of anything else to alleviate this craving, or at least distract me from it for a while.
Sitting on my couch with my feet up on a box of something I hadn’t bothered unpacking, I balanced my laptop on my knee and opened up my browser.
More than once while I’d lived in temporary lodging, I’d been tempted to look up certain aspects of Okinawa’s nightlife, but—rational or not—I was terrified someone would find out. Not that I was one of those tin-foil-hat wearers who was convinced Big Brother was constantly peering over my shoulder, but my time in the military had given me a healthy respect for the need to be extra, extra, no-measure-is-too-paranoid discreet about some parts of my personal life, especially in a place like this where any man I fucked probably carried a military ID.
Safely on my own off-base Wi-Fi, I searched. The search engine brought up a few places that didn’t pique my interest. One catered almost exclusively to locals, and I wasn’t familiar enough with Okinawan customs to venture into that realm yet. Another was on the off-limits list because the bartenders had been busted selling spice, a synthetic form of marijuana that was a huge problem here. A third had some attractive photos and looked like it was easy to find, but a few people had posted reviews saying it was more of a hangout for members of the Yakuza crime syndicates than a place to meet other guys. Not a good place for a cop to show his face, never mind try to get laid.
Ah, but what was this? Palace Habu.
It was down an alley off Gate Two Street. Of course it was. I’d heard that the majority of the nightlife for Americans on this island existed along that several-block stretch of clubs, shops and restaurants just outside Kadena’s Gate Two. And being down an alley wasn’t unusual either; apparently, the alleys and side streets here were not only safe but brimming with places to eat, shop and party.
For that matter, dangerous or not, the fact that the Palace Habu was down an alley meant it was harder to see from the main road. Always a bonus when I didn’t want anyone I worked with to know where I was spending my evening.
I printed the directions, then looked up the number for a taxi to take me from my apartment out by White Beach, which was the base I was attached to, to the legendary Gate Two Street.
Half an hour later, I was in a cab and on my way.
~*~
Gate Two Street certainly lived up to its reputation as party central. The street was choked with cabs, and nearly everyone on the sidewalks was obviously American and military. Bright neon signs blazed above shops, clubs and tattoo parlors, trying to draw people in to spend their freshly deposited paychecks. Signs advertised the beers on tap, especially Orion, a local beer that was wildly popular among Americans and Okinawans alike.
Maybe one of these days I’d go exploring and check out the rest of this street, but not tonight. I had a destination, something I needed, and that was final.
In front of a clothing store, which the website had said to use as a landmark, the cabbie let me out into the sticky, humid night. From there, according to the directions in my hand, I was supposed to face the store, then turn to my left until I saw a sign with a cartoon monkey on it.
What is this? A scavenger hunt?
Certain I was about to end up on some form of Candid Camera—Hey, look! Another clueless new guy fell for it!—I faced the store and turned to my left. Sure enough, on the corner of another building about twenty feet away was a weather-beaten sign with a cartoon monkey.
The directions indicated I was to go down that alley. I paused at its entrance, looking down the narrow, mostly empty gap between the two buildings. Everyone had said Okinawa had little to no violent crime, so it was reasonably safe to go to places like this, but instinct is instinct, especially when that instinct has been fine-tuned by sixteen years as a cop.
I checked the directions one more time. Then I g
lanced around the street and sidewalk in search of any familiar faces that might recognize mine. If any of my guys were here, looking for the booze and tail that drew everyone to Gate Two Street on Friday nights, I didn’t see them. Hopefully that meant they didn’t see me either.
Taking a deep breath, I started down the alley.
Numerous doors lined the brick walls, and thumping music came from behind several of them, adding an irregular, echoing heartbeat to the otherwise quiet alley. About forty feet from the street, I found the door I was looking for, the one marked Palace Habu. I went inside and followed a dark stairwell up to a windowless, black-painted door with a similar sign.
I put my hand on the doorknob, which vibrated with the music on the other side, and closed my eyes. Going into a gay establishment in a new city was always unnerving, especially if there was a significant military population. It didn’t matter how often I told myself that if someone saw me in this place, that meant they were there for the same reason and thus wouldn’t be inclined to rat me out. And even if they did, I couldn’t get kicked out for being gay now. Still, I didn’t want people to know. Bad for the career, shitty for the work environment.
But no one would know. They wouldn’t know I was here, they wouldn’t know how badly I needed to share a bed with someone tonight, and what they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt me.
A glance to the left, a glance to the right, another deep breath, and I pushed open the door.
Chapter Two
Shane
When he walked into Palace Habu, I sat up so suddenly, I almost choked on my beer.
He’d never been here before; that much was immediately obvious. Maybe he was new to the island, maybe he was just new to the club, but he had that bewildered, fish-out-of-water look on his face of someone venturing into someplace unfamiliar.
Couldn’t really blame him. I’d given the place the same sweeping, disbelieving look when I stepped through that door a little over six months ago. Palace Habu was pretty much designed for sensory overload: flickering lights, bright colors, music videos playing on six different flat-screen televisions. A fog machine kept the air opaque on one side of the room, but an industrial-strength air conditioner prevented the place from getting too humid.
Whether or not it was deliberate, the gaudy, retina-searing sensory overload made it difficult for newcomers to make out those of us who were already in the bar, whereas a strategically placed spotlight made sure we all got a good, clear view of every man as he came through that door. In other words, if my commanding officer came waltzing in, I had a chance to make myself scarce before he saw me.
Which meant this new guy couldn’t pick me out of the onslaught of flicker-shadow-flicker, but I could see him. Oh God, could I see him.
He was obviously military. Of course he was. The vast majority of Americans on this island were, but he wore it even in civvies. The high-and-tight haircut was neat, but his dark hair was grown out enough on top to suggest he knew how far he could push the regulations. Even as out of place as he was, he didn’t give off much of a nervous vibe. He just looked like someone processing unfamiliar surroundings. He still had confident shoulders and fearless eyes, still carried himself like the kind of man who didn’t get intimidated but would look another man square in the eye even if he was intimidated.
He was the perfect combination of squared away and arrogant. Not enough of the former to be uptight, just enough of the latter to be irresistibly attractive. He must have been a pilot. They always carried themselves like that, and pilots were, as a rule, hot as hell.
I moistened my lips.
God, please don’t be meeting someone here.
That wasn’t likely. Men didn’t come here to meet someone with whom they’d already crossed paths. No one came here just to hang out, and no one came here on dates. This wasn’t a watering hole; it was a hunting ground, and on an island where out, attractive gay men were difficult to find, a man had to move quickly if he saw something he wanted. My head wasn’t the only one that had turned when he walked in, and I’d be damned if anyone else got to him first, so when he started through the crowd toward the bar, I flagged down the bartender.
Gesturing toward the newcomer, I said, “Kono hito no bun wa ore no ogori.” Loosely translated, Whatever he’s drinking, it’s on me.
The bartender, a balding local in a red Hawaiian shirt, grinned and said something I didn’t catch over the music. Then he smiled and sidled down the bar toward the newcomer.
Over my drink, I watched, pretending the moisture on my palm was from the ice-cold glass of Orion in my hand.
At the bar, the newcomer stopped, probably poised to order a drink, but then did a double take and looked past the bartender. His lips parted. Yep, he was new to the island. Everyone had the same “what the fuck” reaction when they saw Habu sake for the first time. It was, after all, a little unusual to walk into a bar and see a row of jars containing equal parts transparent amber liquid and angry-looking coiled snake.
He shook his head and returned his attention to the bartender. He placed his order, and while he waited for his drink, let his gaze drift to the Habu sake again. Grinning to myself, I wondered what he’d say if I suggested doing a couple shots of the stuff.
No, Connelly, don’t get ahead of yourself. Meet the guy first, then see what kinds of shots he’s willing to do.
The bartender slid the glass across the bar, and I held my breath as he put up his hand to reject the thousand-yen bill that came his way. He gestured toward me, and the newcomer’s head slowly turned. Through the fog-thickened air and the crazy lights, our eyes met. He raised his glass and inclined his head, a vague smile forming on his lips. I returned the gesture.
He broke eye contact as he took a drink, and I loosed a couple of curses that just got lost in the music anyway. But then he set the glass down, collected the yen he’d tried to use and slipped the bill back into his wallet. After he’d put his wallet in the pocket of his khaki shorts, he picked up his drink and started toward me.
Blood pounding in my ears, I casually hooked my foot around the leg of my barstool just to anchor myself in place. As he neared me, his features sharpened and came into focus like a developing Polaroid. High, smooth cheekbones. Disarming blue eyes. Lips that were probably always just on the verge of either a smirk or a devilish grin.
And just like that, some motherfucker with a death wish stepped into the five-foot gap between us and cock-blocked me.
I ground my teeth, glaring at the guy’s back. They both made a few small, casual gestures, as people do when making conversation, so I swore into my drink and turned back toward the bar. I wasn’t the type to give up easily, especially when I saw someone who intrigued me like this, but there was just enough of a wobble in the intruder’s posture to suggest he’d had a hell of a lot to drink. I was in the mood to get laid, not get into a bar brawl, and I had more than enough experience with rowdy drunks to leave well enough alone. No one in this place needed the JPs—Japanese Police—breaking up a fight and calling all our chains of command.
Oh, but for a man that attractive, I had to admit, it was tempting.
I took another drink and looked up at the backlit jars of Habu sake. The flickering strobes and wild disco lights rippled over the motionless, coiled snakes, which at least gave me something to look at besides someone else moving in on the guy who’d caught my attention like no man had in I didn’t know how long. Shit, maybe I was just way too horny for my own good tonight. It had been a while, after all. Maybe it was just that relentless itch to let some willing stranger distract me from how long it had been since the last willing stranger.
But…no, it was definitely him. Those eyes. That face. That bold I’m-completely-in-control way he carried himself in spite of being someplace unfamiliar. That…that…every fucking thing about him. Even from halfway across the room, the man didn’t just radiate sex, he radiated the kind of sex I’d been dying to have. Fuck my life.
Probably just as well someon
e had intercepted him. A man that hot, after I hadn’t slept with anyone in months, we were liable to break furn—
Movement beside me turned my head, and in a heartbeat, I couldn’t breathe.
From just inches away, so close he could touch me if he wanted to, he shot me a mouthwatering, asymmetrical grin. “Hi.”
I cleared my throat and managed a strangled, “Um, hi.” Up close, he was even more attractive. His features were sharp in all the right places, smooth in all the others, and the flickering and flashing lights didn’t even try to take the edge off the intensity of his blue eyes.
“I, um…” He paused, then set his glass on the bar beside mine. “Thanks for the drink.” He extended his now-free hand. “I’m Eric.”
“Shane.” Holding his gaze, I shook his hand, and oh my God, I want you. Heat rushed into my cheeks, and I was thankful for the club’s lighting, which hopefully hid any new color in my face. Desperate for some sort of conversation, I said, “You new to the island?”
He laughed, which did all kinds of weird shit to my blood pressure. With an expression that was probably as close to shy as he was capable, he looked at me through his lashes. “Is it that obvious?”
I smiled. “Nothing to be embarrassed about. Culture shock’s just part of the experience.”
“Yeah.” He looked around the bar, then sniffed as he raised his drink almost to his lips. “So much for the whole place being all Americanized and shit.”
“Someone fed you that crap too?” I shook my head and laughed, pretending I wasn’t holding on to my glass and the edge of the bar for dear life. “For all the bullshit people told me before I came here, you’d think we were talking about two different places.”