I’m going to fuck this up tonight, aren’t I?
I looked at him and smiled. “Seeing you slowly opening up gives me something to look forward to.”
“I’m not opening up.”
I scrunched my face into a scowl and looked at him. “You are too.”
“I’m doing my best to maintain prick status.”
I laughed. “You’re failing miserably.”
He gave a slight nod. “Thank you.”
I pierced the last of my vegetables with the tines of my fork and glanced at his plate. A single wonton remained, but not for long.
I savored the crisp vegetables and then took a drink of water. The best way to do it, I decided, was just to do it. So, I started by blurting out the introduction to my story.
“I was sixteen when I lost my virginity.”
He swallowed the wonton, cleared his throat, and started to speak.
I raised my hand. “Hold uhhm. Hold on a minute. This isn’t going to be easy.”
He pushed his chair away from the bar slightly and turned to face me. Despite his repositioning himself, I faced straight ahead. I hoped it would make things easier, but seriously doubted it would make much difference.
“We uhhm. We were going to get married and have kids. That was the plan. After we graduated, I moved in with him. His family had oil money, and they bought him a house. More like gave it to him, I guess. It was one of their rentals. Every year, we’d say we’ll get married next year. After four or five years, it became an ongoing joke with his family.”
I stole a quick look. With his legs crossed and his arms folded over his chest, he listened intently. I shifted my gaze to the stove.
“We were the homecoming king and queen, for what that’s worth.” I chuckled. I couldn’t help it. I had truly recovered from the breakup, but Marc didn’t know it. The rest of the story was what was important to me, and to tell it, I needed to start at the beginning.
“We were together eight years. Then, one night after work, he came home and told me I needed to find somewhere else to live. He uhhm. He said he had a girlfriend. A pregnant girlfriend. The kid they were having was their second.” I looked at him. “Everyone in town knew it but me. I felt like such an idiot.”
He let out a sigh and reached for my hand. “I’m so sorry.”
I squeezed his hand. “It’s okay. It bothered me a lot at first, but I’m okay now. That was ten years ago. I uhhm. There’s more, but I’m…I’m going to look over there when I talk, okay?”
I pointed toward the other side of the kitchen.
“Okay.”
My hands found their way to my lap. I clenched my right into a fist and pressed it into my left palm. As I wedged them between my inner thighs, I began to tell a story I had yet to tell anyone. For some reason, however, I felt compelled to tell Marc.
“I’d never really drank before that. Not really. But. I started drinking a lot. I was eating Xanax like tic tacs, and drinking tequila like water. And vodka. I moved back in with my parents. We were…we were uhhm…we went to Tulsa to eat. It was right before Thanksgiving. My sister was at. She was going to…”
I began to rock back and forth in the chair. It wasn’t going to be as easy as I’d hoped. I took a drink of water, hoping that it would help with my tightening throat.
“She was attending college at OSU in Stillwater. It was her fifth year, and she was going to be home for the holiday. They had…my mom didn’t like to drive, and her and my dad had a lot to drink. They were celebrating. My dad had a hole in one at the country club.”
I realized tears were rolling down my cheeks. I wiped my face on my shoulders and somehow managed to forge ahead.
“When we left, he wanted me to drive. I wasn’t drunk, but I wasn’t sober, either. I was much better off than he was, though. So, I drove. We made it back to...” My gaze dropped to the countertop. I let out a heavy sigh, wiped my eyes with the heel of my palms, and shoved my hands into my lap. “Choctaw. 9th and Choctaw. The light was…it was green. We had uhhm. Two blocks. Two blocks to go. So, because it was green, I went through it.” I shook my head. “I was going through it. He came from…”
I lifted my hand and pointed to my right. “He came from that way. He was in a truck. A white truck. It hit the back…”
I bit into my lip to stop it from quivering. I was almost done, but had my doubts I would make it. My heart ached. My soul had a hole in it that would never be filled. I missed them desperately, and wanted things to change, but knew they never would.
I felt his hand on my thigh.
I glanced in his direction. With my lips pursed, I nodded several times. He mouthed the words, I’m sorry, and although I was sure he meant it, it did very little to comfort me.
Nonetheless, I somehow managed to speak.
I shifted my gaze to the floor and swallowed hard. “He uhhm. He ran the red light. His name was Todd. Todd something, I don’t remember. He hit the back of the car, right where my mom was sitting. My dad was. He was back there with her. They uhhm. They liked to…”
I couldn’t continue. I began to sob.
Marc stood, wrapped his arms around me, and pulled me tight to his chest. I rocked back and forth for some time, not really knowing how – or if – I could continue. At some point, the sobbing stopped.
With his arms wrapped around me, I continued.
“They liked to sit together. So, they were…they were side by side in the…the back seat. Todd? The guy in the truck? He was drunk and wacked out on meth. They said he was uhhm.” I looked at Marc. “Ninety. He was going ninety miles an hour when he hit us. It tore the car open like a cardboard box and flipped it over a bunch of times. It tossed us…we all ended up scattered around in the street. I was the only one…they were…”
My throat constricted. A dull ache resonated through me with each beat of my heart. I was almost done. As much as I didn’t want to continue, I knew finishing was the most important part. I inhaled a deep breath and decided to say it in one long, breathless sentence. I took a drink of water and then wiped my eyes.
“They were both killed. That Todd guy got thrown through the windshield, and he was dead, too. I was the only one that lived. When they asked who was driving, I thought about it for a while. I knew if I said I was that I would go to jail, regardless of whose fault it was. At least I thought I would. My dad wouldn’t have wanted that to happen, I knew that much. That’s what I told myself, anyway. So, I told them he was driving. I thought it would be easier that way.”
He lifted me from the chair and held me in his arms. I was exhausted, and doubted I could stand on my own if he released me.
But. He didn’t.
In each other’s arms, we swayed back and forth while he hummed a tune I didn’t recognize. The buzzing in his chest resonated through me, and provided a sense of comfort I hadn’t had the luxury in feeling for many, many years. I continued crying, nonetheless.
I needed to.
After a moment, he carried me beyond the glass wall and onto the back deck, humming the entire time.
He lowered me onto a large sofa that faced the beach and then sat down beside me. It’s been said that it never rains in southern California, but on that night, it did. A light sprinkle began as soon as we sat down, peppering us lightly with the sky’s tears.
It was impossible to tell where the tears stopped and the rain began, so I welcomed it, not once considering going inside. I’ll never know if it was the rain or his humming that eased my pain the most.
While the waves crashed against a beach that I couldn’t see, a darkened sky continued to shed its tears.
Eventually, mine dried up.
It was right after that when his started.
Chapter Two Hundred Fifty-Four
Marc – Day eleven
Over the course of the evening, the light rain came and went repeatedly without warning. The eave of the roof shielded us from most of it, but from time to time, a drop found its way to where we were sittin
g. As I gazed toward the ocean, I found the sporadic rain to be symbolic.
Taryn’s talk revealed that she had tremendous strength, which didn’t come as a big surprise. Her trust in me was a different issue altogether. I hoped it would come with time and exposure, and although it was something I would require of her, had no expectation of her expressing it so early.
Convincing myself to trust anyone was a struggle, and for good reason. Over the years, my confidence in people – all people – had diminished to nearly nothing. Nonetheless, I realized if our relationship was going to make any progress, I had to give as much as I expected to take.
“You’ve been here ten years, then?” I asked.
“Uh huh. Moved here when I was twenty-four.”
“To escape your ex, and all of the people who knew about his affair?”
“You know, that’s what I told myself.” She looked at me and then looked away. “But in being honest with myself, I’m thinking I really came out here running away from the other thing. From the wreck. My parent’s death. The lie. My sister doesn’t even know.”
“Do you only have the one sibling?”
“Yeah. She’s still in Oklahoma. You?”
“Only child.”
“Parents?”
“My mother’s a professional shopper, and--”
“Really?”
“Not as a profession, she just passes her time by shopping.”
She giggled. “Oh.”
“My father is the Chief of Police. They live in Portland, Oregon.”
She shot me a surprised look. “Your dad’s a cop?”
I gave a nod. “Police Chief.”
An audible sigh shot from her lungs. “Oh wow.”
I turned to face her. “Have something against cops?”
“Uhhm. I mean, kind of but not really. No. I guess not.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m just scared of them. After the accident. I just. I’ve got this fear that one day they’re going to come get me. It might seem weird, but I think about it all the time. I almost obsess about it. When there’s one behind me in traffic, I get all tense. It’s pretty bad. I think I do obsess about it.”
“So, you fear retribution, but have nothing against the police, in general?”
“I guess so. Yeah.”
It was comforting to hear that she didn’t have some deep-seated resentment toward police officers for some reason. I turned toward the beach and gazed blankly into the darkness for a few minutes, trying to decide how to start.
Discussing my past wasn’t something I’d done with another woman. Not having been in a relationship since my ugly breakup left me no reason to. I hadn’t even told my parents the truth about why Shelby and I split up, only that it happened as a result of me being away.
As much as doing so troubled me, I decided to take the advice of Lewis Carroll’s King in Alice in Wonderland.
Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: then stop.
“Three of us were gathering intelligence in the Helmand province. We’d been in hiding behind a few large boulders in a valley at the base of a mountain for three days. Taliban soldiers began to show up a few hundred feet from where we were, and they continued coming for two days. So, there we were, surrounded. We rationed our food, knowing we could be stuck for a few more days. The three days turned into a week. It seemed they were using our location as a compound. Exhausted, short on water, and out of food, we knew we had to do something.”
I let out a sigh. From a combat standpoint, the events of that day were noteworthy, but it wasn’t the most significant of all the missions I’d been on. It was, however, a turning point in my life.
“We called for evac, and scheduled our pick up for the next morning. We planned on getting to the other side of the mountain, and knew in the shape we were in, we’d need twelve hours to get there. If we could get there.”
She looked at me and swallowed hard. I forced a smile and turned toward the beach.
“Think of a pie, and what it would look like if you took one small sliver of a slice out. The pie that remains was where they were. The slice was our only way out. Halfway between our position and the base of the mountain, we were spotted. It got ugly, and it got ugly quick--”
“How many of them were there?” she asked.
“A hundred or so.”
Her eyes went wide. “And there were three of you?”
I nodded.
“Oh. My God. Obviously, they got you out, though. I mean, you’re here.”
I somehow managed to laugh. “The day we were to be evac’d, I got shot. Four hours after we pulled out of their compound.” I pressed my hand against my thigh, directly below the wound. “Trapp got shot twice, and Big Gus had more bullet holes in him than I could count.”
“I’m so…did they…did they live?”
“The three of us did. More than I can say for the rest of my platoon, though. They shot down the evac chopper with an RPG as it was landing. Half the platoon was killed in the explosion. The three of us were stuck on the side of that mountain for another 24 hours, but we held our ground.”
I realized how emotional I’d become while telling the story. Every hair follicle was raised and my hands were shaking, but it was the tears that I didn’t expect. Weeping for my fallen teammates wasn’t something I’d taken the time to do.
I wasn’t able to attend the traditional funeral service, or participate in the pounding of the trident onto the coffin. I realized as I sat there and wept that I never took the time to acknowledge their deaths, or to let them go.
I leaned out from underneath the overhang far enough to allow the rain to fall onto my face. Each falling drop helped mask what I was feeling, and I welcomed them. I silently said each of their names, paying respect to them for their sacrifice.
Little Smith.
Tremont.
Gus.
Wilson.
Patterson.
Hart.
Sweeney.
Carson.
Eventually, she broke the silence and brought me back to reality.
“I can’t imagine how three men could fight against a hundred. That’s amazing,” she said. “I’m sorry about your friends, though.”
“So am I. We understood the risk when we signed up, though.”
“Luckily, we recovered a dozen Kalashnikovs from men we had killed. We spent the night taking shifts. One man would sleep for an hour while the other two took position and fired at opposition. Our constant repositioning, and the changing of weapons from our M4s to the Kalashnikovs kept them wondering just how many of us there were. By the grace of God, we held them off. The next morning, we got CAS from a couple of F-18s and an A-10.”
“CAS?” she asked. “I don’t know what that means.”
“Close Air Support. Airplanes flew over and dropped bombs.”
I recalled the elation I felt when the airstrike happened. In circumstances such as ours, airstrikes don’t always go as planned. Ours, however, was spot on. Seeing the devastation to our opposition gave the three of us the energy to make it to the extraction site.
“Energized by the airstrike, we got to the new extraction site. When that bird landed…when the skids touched down?”
I swallowed hard. The emotion of that day, of that extraction, and of that mission, all of a sudden returned. The odor of our adrenalin-laced sweat and chopper filled with blood replaced the smell of the beach and of the falling rain.
Incapable of continuing, I extended my right hand and gave the thumbs up.
After taking a minute to recompose myself, I drew a breath and continued. “I was taken to a hospital in Germany. It was the second time I’d been shot. It wasn’t that bad. In and out the front of my thigh. They sent what was left of my team to be with another team until they could reassign some men. I got one week of leave, and came home unexpectedly.”
I clenched my jaw muscles and looked away. I needed to continue, but doing so was
a reminder that although I told myself I wasn’t resentful about what happened, I obviously was. I was something, that much was certain.
I decided I was simply hurt.
What happened was beyond my control. To think for one minute that what my girlfriend did was a result of something I had done – or failed to do – was preposterous.
“I didn’t tell her I was coming home. She didn’t know about the mission, or about my injury. I never told her about the bad, only the good. It was best that way. There was a truck in the driveway when I pulled in, and I got that feeling in my gut. You know, the one that you can’t deny?”
I looked at Taryn.
She rested her hand on my knee. “I do.”
“I didn’t announce my arrival.” I forced a laugh, and it sounded like it. “I snuck in. They were in bed together. I don’t know how long it was going on, but I didn’t really care. We weren’t married, but we’d been together five years. I moved out that day. Put all my stuff in storage, and stayed abroad for five more years. It took that long for me to feel like I could come home. So, for what it’s worth, I know what it feels like to be cheated on.”
She inched closer.
I draped my arm over her shoulder, and pulled her into me. Silently, we stared toward the beach. I’d always told myself if I somehow ended up with someone who had been cheated on in the past, that they’d never do to me what was done to them. My belief was that anyone who felt the pain associated with the betrayal of being cheated on certainly wouldn’t want to impose that upon their significant other.
I glanced over my shoulder.
She did the same.
“Do you like malts?” I asked.
She coughed a laugh. “What? Malts?”
“Chocolate malts? Milk, ice cream, malted milk. You know, a malt.”
“I haven’t had one in forever. Yeah. They’re pretty good, why?”
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go inside. I’ll make us a malt.”
We stood in unison, and when we did, she turned to face me.
“A malt sounds good, really,” she said.
I could only suspect that her feelings mirrored my own. I knew a malt wouldn’t fix either of us, but I’d never had a chocolate malt worsen my mood, I knew that much for sure.
HOT as F*CK Page 128