by Naomi Niles
I was too choked up to talk, but thankfully, Tate took over for me. As I walked out the door, I heard him tell her, "Mommy has to go to work early to meet her new students, but I'll take you to school. We'll find your classroom and see who your teacher is going to be. It will be fun."
"Okay," Halle said sadly. I shut the door before I could hear anymore and completely broke down into tears.
I drove to the school, getting there well before my first students arrived. They trickled in one-by-one, all looking so young and scared. I did my best to make them feel relaxed, and soon they were smiling and checking out the fun supplies I'd placed on their desks to make them feel welcome.
"And this is your classroom. Let's see who your teacher is," a father said to his young daughter, and I couldn't help but smile.
"I wish it could be my Mommy," the little girl said, and I turned around to greet her.
"Welcome to your first day of school, Halle. Your desk is right here in the front row," I said, and suddenly it dawned on my daughter that her teacher was me.
Squealing with delight, she ran into my arms and hugged me tight as Tate looked on, smiling.
"Wishes really do come true," he said to our daughter.
I smiled lovingly at my family. "Yes, they really do."
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SEAL’D
By Naomi Niles
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 Naomi Niles
Chapter One
Zack
I was sitting in the airport waiting for my plane to arrive. Midmorning summer sunlight poured in through the huge windows. I wanted to curl up in my seat and sleep for the next hour, and I might have done it if the chairs weren’t so uncomfortable. I wasn’t looking forward to the flight back to our base in the Congo.
My buddy Carson Wallace was sitting next to me. Every few minutes, he’d reach over and feel my pulse to make sure I was still alive. Carson’s funny like that. Only occasionally do I want to slap him.
“It’s been a good month, but I’m gonna miss being back in the States,” said Carson. He was a wiry young man of 25 who, like me, had a full head of closely shaved dark hair. Except where his eyes were black and thin and beady, like buttons, mine were blue and hungry. “I’m not looking forward to more physical training, I can tell you that much.”
I shifted in my seat, trying to find a position that wouldn’t kill my back. There were about twenty girls walking past us, probably all members of some church youth group. Some were wearing dresses; others were wearing tank tops and cute shorts.
I nudged Carson in the ribs with my elbow. “Take a good, long look,” I said in a voice no louder than a whisper as a girl in a tight purple shirt and pink shorts ran past us. “That’s the last you’re gonna see of them for a long time.”
“That’s the thing I always miss most about leaving home,” said Carson. “This time I decided to make the best of it while I was here. You wouldn’t believe some of the babes I shagged while I was in Brooklyn.”
“If you actually shagged a single babe,” I replied, “I’ll eat my left shoe.”
Carson went on for the better part of ten minutes making up stories while I drifted in and out of the conversation, nodding along every now and again to let him know I was listening.
The two of us were Navy SEALs, stationed together at a remote base in the heart of the Congo. For the last month I’d been on furlough, back home in Sulphur Springs, a one-horse town just outside of Dallas where my mom and dad lived on a two-acre ranch. While I was home, I’d gotten to visit with my three brothers and check up on how they were doing: one of ‘em was still living at home and playing video games, one was out on the streets causing trouble and about to end up in prison, and one of ‘em had just met a beautiful woman and started dating.
That brother, Curtis, had taken me out one night with his girlfriend and one of her friends on a double date. Me and the girl had hooked up and spent a few weeks together. As the end of my furlough got closer, I realized I would have to call things off. It about killed me to do it, but I knew there was no use trying to start a relationship with this woman when we were living halfway across the world from each other.
But man, there were nights when I missed the feel of her body beside me. I’d heard friends talk about missing somebody so much it was like a physical ache. I’d never felt that before until now. There were times when it made me wonder if maybe we shouldn’t get back together, but I knew it was unwise.
While my brothers had always been clueless and carefree, I had a reputation as being the worrywart. Back in high school during the summers when we used to sneak up onto the top of Bryant’s Bridge, they’d be whooping and yelling while I’d be wondering when the police were going to show up and whether we’d go to prison. As a SEAL, I’m trained to prepare for the worst, but really, I’ve been doing that for most of my life.
So even when me and the girl first started going out, I was already thinking ahead to the end of our relationship and how it was probably going to break her heart. In hindsight, I think I’d have enjoyed our time together a lot more if I hadn’t been so worried all the time. Sometimes during sex, she would pause for a minute because she could see the concern on my face. She’d lay her hand across the side of my head, like I had a fever or something. “What’s wrong, love?”
“Nothing,” I’d say. But we both knew it was untrue, and we would go to bed unhappy.
Curtis had threatened to take my phone away after I broke up with her because I kept wanting to text her and make sure she was okay. “I thought the whole point of you breaking it off,” he said, “is because you wanted to move on and forget about her. If you want her to get over you, you’ve gotta stop texting her.”
And that was all there was to it.
But that didn’t stop me from thinking about her. Wondering how she was doing. Sort of hoping she’d move on and find someone else and sort of hoping she wouldn’t.
And now that I was here, waiting in a New York City airport for my flight back to the Congo, it was like different worries were competing to see which ones would take up residence in my brain. We’ve all heard the horror stories about SEALs who got killed in their last month of deployment. I was more worried about what came after that. What was I going to do when I came back to the States? Had being in the SEALs prepared me in any real way for life at home?
I remembered Curtis being horribly depressed when college was ending and he didn’t know what he was going to do out in the real world. The Navy had been my college in that sense. There were nights when I seriously thought about beating down Sergeant Armstrong’s door and begging him to let me stay for another year or two. At least in the Congo I had a set routine, a set number of places to go each day, and I didn’t have to wonder what I was supposed to be doing because there was always someone to give me orders.
Here in the States, I had freedom. And I wasn’t sure freedom was what I wanted.
“What are we going to do with our lives, man?” I asked. It was that time of the morning after you’ve stayed up all night when delirium sets in and you feel the grief of the world. “We’ve only got a year left in our contracts, and frankly I don’t think I’m ready for my deployment to end. One month out of the year is enough for me.”
“Same,” said Carson. “I started to go crazy after just two weeks at home. There’s only so many things you can do in Austin before boredom sets in. Put me back out there in the jungle with a bottle of water and a gun, and I’m happy.”
“I guess I could write a book about my time in the service,” I said. “But that seems kind
of sad, don’t it? Just reminiscing about the past.”
“Seems like a waste of time, honestly,” said Carson. “When you could be learning a new skill like, I don’t know, playing guitar in a metal band or training bears for the circus.”
“Oh, right, I forgot we were still in high school,” I said sarcastically, and went back to reading my book. It was a crime novel by James Patterson that I had picked up at one of the airport bookstores. Carson was always giving me hell for reading, so I did it around him as often as I could.
He leaned over, intending to nudge me in the ribs, but missed and struck my elbow. I winced. “Hey, you see that girl over there?” he asked.
“Which one?” I asked, feeling a little irritated. “There’s like two hundred girls here.”
“That one over there, in the stewardess uniform.”
Ignoring his bizarrely outdated choice of words, I reached into my backpack and pulled out my glasses. A girl in a red and black flight attendant’s uniform was walking past us at a brisk pace. Youthful and petite, with long dark hair and bangs neatly trimmed, she smiled at a couple of children on their way through the terminal. She looked like the sort of woman who smiled at everyone and meant it.
I’m not sure any of this registered with Carson, who only ever noticed two things when he looked at a woman. “Check out the boobs on that girl.” He let out a low moan of desire and satisfaction. “I bet she posts naked pics of herself on Reddit.”
“You ought to go ask her.” I was mostly kidding, but if it would get him to leave me alone… “You might as well get another one in before we leave. It’s gonna be a long time before you see another American girl.”
The cute flight attendant continued on her way through the concourse until she reached the counter where a man in uniform stood announcing departures. I went back to my book, hoping it would distract me from having to think about her and all the horrible things we could have done together if my plane wasn’t flying out in an hour. Carson groaned jealously, watching the two of them flirting. Then he went strangely quiet, and when I looked back over at him, he was on his phone, browsing through Reddit GoneWild.
I shot up in my seat. “Carson, what are you doing, man? You can’t be looking at that in here!”
“Why not?” said Carson. “There’s no law.”
“I’m pretty sure there’s a law against looking at naked ladies in the middle of the airport terminal. Some woman in her forties with three kids will probably file a complaint with the airport police. They’ll come over here and give you a stern lecture.”
“Ooo, a lecture,” said Carson, waving his fingers in the air. “I’m real scared now.” But he put his phone away and went back to sitting there sulkily with his arms folded.
“You know, it wouldn’t kill you to learn to read,” I said quietly.
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing.”
I went on reading. But Carson was now so agitated and, presumably, horny that he began shaking his legs like a sulky child. Slumped over in his chair with his arms folded and a perturbed look on his face, he looked like he had just been sent to the principal’s office and was trying hard to pretend he was too cool to care.
“Look, man,” he said finally. “One of us needs to hit that, or I’m gonna be thinking about it for the rest of our flight.”
With a sigh of impatience I closed my book and set it down in my lap. “Okay.”
Carson sat up straight in his seat. “Okay?” he said, incredulous. “You’re really gonna go over there and talk to her?”
I shrugged, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. “Yeah, why not? If it’ll get you to shut up about it.”
“I really don’t think you understand how hot this girl is,” said Carson.
“No, I get it.” I grabbed my backpack from the floor and began unzipping it. “Cute girl, early twenties, looks a bit younger, curvy, not too skinny, real friendly attitude, got one of those million-dollar Yankee smiles that could light up a runway. Looks like Zooey Deschanel on a bad day. When you see a woman like that, you don’t ask questions. You just go for it.”
“So go for it!” shouted Carson, about to wet himself with impatience.
“It’s a little disturbing that you want me to do this so badly,” I said as I stood to my feet. “But just to show you how easy it is…”
I left the waiting area and strode up to the counter. Even from a distance of a hundred paces, I could feel Carson’s eyes on me.
Somehow the flight attendant looked even cuter in person. She had that sexy, fresh-faced, just-out-of-college look, and she smiled at me shyly with her hands in the pockets of her work pants. “Can I help you with something?” she asked.
I’d seen how Carson navigated conversations with women, and I knew this was the point where he would panic and say something awkward or insulting. There were a couple of more effective approaches you could take: you could be swaggering and cocky, or you could be charming and polite. Then there was a third option, what I called “sheer cunning.” I decided to go with cunning.
“Yeah, there was a man over there in a coat and scarf.” I pointed to the lounge area, around where Carson was sitting. “And I think he was trying to flash a couple of grade-schoolers.”
“Are you serious?” said the flight attendant (the name on her nametag said “Madison”). She walked away from the counter, peering into the distance. “Do you think you could point him out to me?”
“I’d love to.”
Only when we were midway between the ticket counter and the seating area did I turn to her and say, “So I guess this is the part where I come clean. There was no flasher.”
Madison looked up at me, startled. Confusion and something like worry were plain on her face. “You mean you lied to me? Then what did you bring me over here for?”
This was the part where the conversation could have spun rapidly out of control. Carson definitely wouldn’t have known how to deal with this. But I remained calm and unruffled.
I turned and looked her straight in the eyes; she had the most gorgeous dark eyes, offset by long lashes. “Well, to be perfectly honest with you, I’m a Navy SEAL, and this is my last day in America for at least a year. And I saw you walk by and I knew if I didn’t make an effort to meet you, I’d be kicking myself for the rest of my deployment, and maybe for the rest of my life.”
One thing I’ve learned about girls: it never hurts to mention that you’re a Navy SEAL. Maybe it’s because here in America we have an ingrained sense of respect for men in uniform. I don’t know what it is, but the words worked on her like a magic charm, immediately putting her at her ease. “Are you really a SEAL?” she asked.
“I am,” I said proudly.
She asked, a little shyly, “Can you prove it?”
Without hesitation I reached into my shirt pocket and pulled out my SEAL pin, a golden eagle clutching a pistol, anchor, and trident. She gazed with a kind of reverence that made her face glow like an angel’s. I could tell by her expression that she was being won over.
“Where are you stationed?” she asked, quietly.
“Somewhere deep in the Congo. Couldn’t tell you more than that; it’s confidential.”
“And when are you coming home?”
“Next summer. That’s if I make it home at all. Not everyone does.”
Madison nodded. She seemed to be trying to decide what to do with this information. I could tell part of her knew she needed to get back to work. The other part of her was demanding to be better acquainted with this mysterious young man she had just met, and whom she might never see again in this life.
“Madison—” I said.
“Please, call me Maddie.”
“When do you gotta be back at work?”
She smiled. “I’ve still got a few minutes.”
I could sense victory was imminent. Confidence is a heady drug and I was delirious with it. She was hungry, I could tell; eager to be near a man in uniform; thrilled that I would de
ign to talk to her. This drove my self-regard to new heights, which made me seem even more desirable, creating a spiral of lust that was begging to be consummated.
“You know what I’m thinking?” she asked me, batting those dark lashes.
“Hmmm?”
“I’m thinking we need to give you a warm send-off.”
“Be my guest. Is there a place in this airport where we could go and not be disturbed?”
Madison didn’t hesitate. I had an uncanny feeling she had done this kind of thing before. “There’s a storage closet about a hundred yards down the hall, full of mop buckets and old uniforms from the ‘60s, back when all flight attendants were required to wear short skirts. We don’t even use that closet anymore because there’s a new one where all the cleaning supplies are kept. Kids sometimes use it to make out.”
“And do they ever get caught?”
Maddie smiled, a roguish twinkle in her dark eyes. “I’ve never told on them.”
She turned and began heading off in that direction, swinging her keys and whistling like she was on patrol. I walked a few paces behind, not wanting to make it obvious that I was following her. She paused when she reached a non-descript blue door that looked freshly painted. Pulling it open slowly, she stepped inside.
A thrill came over me as I stood at the threshold of the door. I had no idea what would be waiting for me on the other side, what we would do together. I just knew whatever it was, I wanted it. Needed it. And I was ready.
I opened the door and went in. She stood at the back of the closet, pulling her shirt over her head to expose her ample stomach. Underneath, she was wearing a white bra with lace trimming. I was relieved to see that under her clothes she was what you would call buxom or well-endowed. Somehow the fact that she kept her bra on instead of taking it off made her boobs seem even more tantalizing. I could feel myself being drawn toward them as if by a powerful magnet.
Maddie seemed to have learned the strategic power of less being more. She paused with her hand on her belt, then shook her head with a smirk as though thinking better of it. I found it weirdly alluring and irresistible. There she stood half out of her work clothes, and I couldn’t have wanted her more if she had been completely naked.