by Tracey Ward
I take a calming breath, run my hand through my madwoman’s hair filled with static and anger, and I bring the phone to my ear. “Hello?” I sing sweetly.
He’s laughing. It’s barely audible but I can hear it. It’s through his teeth, in the back of his throat, like he’s trying to hide it but he sucks at it. “You okay?” he asks, his voice shaking.
“I’m great. Feeling good. How about you?”
“Curious. What exactly is a ‘cock whore’?”
“I’m sure you can figure it out.”
“I’d rather hear you explain it. In detail, please.”
“This is not why you called me, and if I’m not wrong, you’re on a ticking clock.”
He sobers immediately and the speed of it makes me nervous. He shifts gears faster than Robin and I’m worried I’m living in a world of people slowly going mad around me. Or is it me?
“I am, yeah,” he admits quietly.
“What’d you need to tell me?” I ask, trying to imagine all sorts of urgent things that he could say that would be good news. Things that are positive, because that’s how I’m trying to stay. I’m trying to remain in the fairy tale and the romance and the starlight the way Robin told me to because she’s right: I need to enjoy it while it lasts, because it can’t last forever.
“I’m deploying next month.”
And it just ended.
I breathe out hard through my teeth, making a strange hissing sound like a deflating balloon. “Where?”
“Afghanistan.”
“Fuck,” I whisper.
“I should have told you,” he continues sincerely. “I’m sorry that I didn’t. The whole drive back to base after you left I was so angry at myself for not telling you. It felt like I lied to you somehow and I don’t ever want to do that.”
“I don’t ever want you to do that,” I chuckle nervously. “Wow, okay. I have no idea how to feel about this. Obviously I’m scared for you.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Afghanistan—that’s where your cousin was when he…”
“Yeah. Same base.”
I feel sick. “Jax,” I moan.
“I work in a completely different field. Once I’m on base I won’t leave. Not until my deployment is over. It’s the convoys you have to worry about. The getting there and leaving when you’re outside the walls and you’re vulnerable.”
“You said he died during a mortar attack.”
“It was an attack on their convoy. He was outside the gates a lot. He was a cop.”
“Still, though.”
“I know.”
I sit in the black of my room with my butt on the hardwood floor and my back against the thick metal beam of my bedframe. It hurts and I hate it. I should move but I don’t.
“Listen,” he says, sounding tired. “When I was beating myself up on the drive home for not telling you about the deployment, it got me thinking about something else we should have talked about. Something I think we were both avoiding.”
I nod, opening my eyes. “Us.”
“Yeah. We should have talked about what we expect from each other. If anything.”
“I didn’t want to talk about it because the situation already sucked, and that conversation had a decent potential to make it suck way, way worse.”
He pauses. “So you don’t want to keep going?”
His voice is guarded. He’s nervous, and for some reason that makes it easier for me. It gives me a hint that maybe he doesn’t want club whores after all. Maybe he wants me.
“I don’t want to stop this,” I tell him, my voice strong and decisive. I swallow roughly. “I think… I think we’re something good, and even if I wanted to stop, it’s too damn late for me. We passed that exit in a bathroom in Germany.”
“Technically it was the bedroom.”
“Officially it was the point of no return for me. Or maybe London was.” I drop my face into my hand. “Hell, it could have even been Munich.”
“It was definitely Munich.”
I smile and wish he could see it. “So we’re doing this? We’re making it official and slapping on labels and doing the long-distance thing?”
He chuckles and it makes me glow from my toes to the tips of my fingernails. “I’m all in.”
“Me too.”
“I’m going to carry your picture in my wallet and tell everyone you’re my girlfriend.”
“Perfect.”
“I’m going to call you at all hours of the night just to hear your voice because I need it. It does something dark to me.”
I smile, my skin tingling. “I’ll always answer.”
“I’m going to lock the vault and use only your memory when I jerk off.”
I stop, my jaw falling open in surprise. “Um…”
He lets the moment hang, let’s me sweat, before laughing. “I’m fucking with you.”
“Oh thank God,” I breathe in relief. “I thought you had just gotten way too comfortable way too fast.”
“Are you going to do all of that for me?”
“Yes. I will jerk off to you, put your picture in my wallet, and tell everyone you’re my girlfriend.”
“That’s all I ever wanted.” I hear rustling on his end, then a sharp curse. “Sorry, babe, I gotta go. If I run I won’t be late for work.”
“Whoa, going for the pet names right out the gate.”
“I stopped myself from calling you that a million times over the last month. You gotta give me this one. I’ve earned it.”
“It’s yours.”
“Thank you.”
“Jax!” I call, needing one last thing from him. One last little moment.
“What?”
“We are, aren’t we? Something good?”
“No, Wren,” he replies, a smile in his voice. “We’re something great.”
Chapter Eighteen
Jax sends me a pickle for Christmas.
It’s not a real pickle, it’s a Christmas ornament, but that somehow feels weirder than if it’d been an actual pickle.
“They’re everywhere,” he tells me on Christmas morning/evening.
He’s closing out his day while mine is just getting started, and I feel bad that he had to wait all day for me to wake up before he opened his present from me. It was nothing special, just a shift knob for his car with his favorite football team’s logo in the top, but he swears he loves it.
“I have never seen a pickle ornament,” I muse, spinning it where it dangles from the tree and watching the green glitter on its exterior sparkling in the bright morning light. “What does it mean?”
“What does it mean that the Germans unanimously hang pickles on their Christmas trees?”
“Yes.”
“It means they’re weird, Wren.”
I drop my hand and fall back on the floor. “Granted, yeah, but it must have some kind of meaning.”
“None that I know of.”
“I’ll look it up later.”
“Look up Krampus while you’re at it.”
“What’s Krampus?”
“The German Christmas devil,” he says simply.
I frown. “You’re making that up.”
“I wish I was. One of the locals that works on base told me about it. Said they put treats in their shoes instead of stockings and there’s the Krampus demon who comes around and beats naughty kids. There was something about a stick and giving it to Jesus to beat their asses with, but I think I misunderstood. His English isn’t perfect and my soul can’t stand it if I got it right.”
“Wow,” I breathe, closing my eyes. “So I’m pretty happy with my pickle considering the alternative.”
“The alternative of being caned by Jesus,” he clarifies.
“Yes. I won’t look that up later.”
“Smart,” he chuckles. “That’s not your gift, by the way.”
“The pickle isn’t?”
“Nope. It’d be pretty pathetic if it was.”
“I’m happy with it.”
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“Well, I’m better than that, so watch for your real present. It should be there next week, I hope.”
“I’ll watch for it. Thank you.”
“For what?”
I throw my arm over my eyes, listening closely to the sound of his voice. I’m drinking it in, memorizing it. I’m remembering it the way it was in the car or on the planes. The way it felt when he was near me. “For the present, Jax. Thank you.”
“You don’t even know what it is yet?”
“No, but it’s from you, so I’m grateful.” I yawn heavily. “I’m grateful for everything about you.”
He pauses, hesitating for so long that I worry we’ve lost the call. Then he speaks and his voice is deep in that way he gets when he’s fallen serious. When the world is heavy and he’s burrowed under it. “I miss everything about you.”
“Me too,” I whisper. My heart clenches as my hand flexes, reaching for him and coming up short. “How much longer until you leave?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
My arm falls away from my eyes. “Seriously?”
“Yeah, sorry. I know what day I’m flying out but I can’t talk about it on the phone.”
“E-mail it to me.”
“I can’t,” he insists. “No e-mail, no messenger, not over the phone. It’s a security risk. I wasn’t even really supposed to tell you what country I’m going to, and I won’t tell you what base I’m at until I get there. I won’t be in touch with you while I’m moving, either.”
“Wait a minute. So I can’t know when you’re leaving or where you’re going, meaning you’ll just disappear someday soon and I’ll wait and hope you pop up somewhere horrible?”
“Basically, yeah.”
“That’s bullshit!”
“Wren!” my mom shouts from somewhere in the other room.
I ignore her.
“That’s military life,” Jax tells me, not sounding entirely unsympathetic, but he’s not nearly as fazed by this as I am. He’s been through it with his dad, I guess. Probably more times than I want to count.
“What if…” I don’t finish that sentence because I can’t. I can’t voice those words. I can’t wrap my mind or my lips around the idea of him being gone.
But I don’t have to because Jax knows.
“What if something happens to me?” he asks, not fazed by the question.
“Yeah.”
“They’ll contact my parents, and I gave my mom your phone number. I told her to let you know immediately if they get the call.” He pauses, his voice softening. “I won’t just disappear, Wren. I’m not going anywhere.”
I laugh roughly. “Nowhere but a war zone.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do. I’m just… shit, I’m just worried, Jax. I’m so afraid for you. I have no idea what it’s going to be like and I’m a control freak. The whole driving thing, the crashing—it’s because I don’t trust other people. I haven’t let you see all of that yet because it’s part of the crazy I was hiding. I stuffed it down deep with the dead stripper in the cake, but here it is. I’m huge on control and I have none right now. I feel so powerless.”
“What about this do you wish you could control?”
“Keeping you safe. Keeping you alive. I need to know you’re going to come back and that you’re going to be fine.”
He doesn’t respond right away and I know why—he doesn’t want to lie to me. He said he never would and I’m forcing his hand. He knows it’s a promise he can’t make. Finally he asks me, “You trust me, don’t you?”
“I’d trust you with my life.”
“Then trust me with mine. Have faith in me and the fact that I’m trained for this. I’m trained to stay alive. I may not live on the front lines like my family, but that doesn’t make me soft. I can’t promise you that I’ll come back, but I will promise that I’ll carry you with me with every step I take. I’m risking you too, I know that. I asked you for a piece of yourself at the worst possible time, and it was selfish but I don’t care. I couldn’t not ask you. I couldn’t not have you in any way you’d let me, so I’m taking you with me wherever I go and I’ll protect you, Wren. I’ll do everything in my power to get back to you. Trust in that.”
I’m nearly crying and I never, ever cry. But he’s breaking me. He’s pushing the limits of my control, and there’s a part of me that’s bubbling up in my throat and trying to escape, desperate to go with him. But I bite down on it because I’m not ready. I want to say it to him, but I want to say it in person when I can see his eyes and he can hear my voice. Holding onto it now, keeping it from him, is how I tell myself that I trust him to come back. That I have faith there will come a day in the near future when I’ll stand in front of him again and I’ll be able to say all the things I’m dying to say.
To tell him now would be to say goodbye, so I close my mouth. I promise myself I won’t utter those three words that live and grow in me every day like the roots of a tree branching out and finding purchase in my soul, settling on a solid foundation that will carry it for ages. For eons. Until the memory of my body is the soft glow seen by distant stars that don’t know I’m gone. I’m perished and expired, but this light lives on.
This love.
***
He disappears three days later.
That was fast.
He must have known exactly when he was leaving when we talked on the phone. I’m impressed with his ability to keep secrets, because I would have blabbed it. National security or no, I would have told him. But I don’t fault him for not doing it because he’s doing his job. It was the right thing to do.
It still hurts when I know he’s gone, though.
The way that I know he’s gone is because he disappears from messenger and all social media. One day he’s putting up a picture of the newly installed shift knob I sent him, telling the world his ‘pimp ass girlfriend’ gave it to him, and then he’s gone. He’s not responding to comments, not answering phone calls, and not replying on messenger. Total radio silence.
On the third day, when I already know in my gut he’s gone, Sanchez sends me a message online letting me know I’m right: he’s gone. He tells me to stay strong and let him know if I need anything, and I’m grateful for the point of contact. I don’t have information for Jax’s parents so waiting for a phone call that I don’t want from his mom had been all I’d had. It’s nice to have someone I can ask questions of.
I would love to get on with my life, to dig into school and focus on that to pull myself from the funk of worrying about him and stressing things I can’t control, but I’m still on break. New Year’s Eve is coming, then a couple more days of break before I start classes again, and I have no idea what to do with the time. I go hang out with friends, I chill with Robin, I watch endless reruns of NCIS with my dad, but that only makes it worse. I’m suddenly very aware of the military side of the show and less concerned with the actual mystery. It happens everywhere, actually. I see the military everywhere that I barely noticed it before and it makes me curious. I start watching Army Wives, but stop on the second episode. It was not helping.
So then I’m back to wondering and worrying.
“I’m taking you out for New Year’s,” Robin tells me.
I look at up her across the table of the small café, forcing a smile. I realize that I’m spinning my phone in my hand. That I’ve actually been doing that for days now because every single form of contact I have with Jax is logged in and ready to go. If he surfaces, I’ll know it immediately. And I need to know. I need him to come up for air. He’s been down too long.
“Where are we going?”
She raises an eyebrow in surprise. “You’re going to go? No fight?”
“Why would I fight it? Do you think I like being like this?”
“You do it so much, I assumed you were loving it.”
“I’m not,” I groan, putting my phone down and wiping my tired eyes. “I need to get out. I need to take my mind off of it.”<
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“He’ll be fine,” she tells me.
It’s what everyone has told me every day for the last four days since he went off the radar, and what I want to say that I carefully keep to myself every time is “You can’t know that.” But they’re just trying to be supportive, so I don’t bitch out. I bury all of my stress and anxiety deep down inside and hope it doesn’t show.
“I know,” I reply amiably. I drop my phone and lean toward her over the table, smiling. “Where are we going to go?”
“Somewhere we can have fun without drinking.”
“I’m not the pregnant one,” I protest.
“That’s exactly what Chris says,” she grumbles. “You two don’t even drink that often. What are you worried about?”
“I know I didn’t before, but now that you’re telling me I can’t I kind of want to.”
“Well, get over it.”
“You get over it. I’m drinking.”
“Whatever. As long as you get all pretty and stop being sad, I’m happy.”
“I’m not sad. I’m worried.”
“You’re scared.”
“That too,” I mutter, slumping back in my seat. “This sucks.”
“I told you that it wouldn’t be easy forever.”
I roll my eyes. “Please. It was one of those generic statements people make that sounds wise but when you really think about it, it’s actually really obvious. Like saying that rain will fall on a Friday. Yeah, no shit. Statistically that’s just bound to happen. It doesn’t make you psychic for saying it.”
Robin narrows her eyes at me, stealing a sip of my coffee that she’s not supposed to have. “Are you going to be like this on New Year’s? ’Cause if you are, I’d rather stay at home with Chris and watch Ryan Seacrest’s little rat face countdown to midnight.”
“Why do you hate him so much?”
“I’d tell you but I feel like the answer is one of those really obvious statements you hate.” She stands, plunking my cup down in front of me—half empty now—and putting on her coat. “Like he’s a meat puppet controlled by the devil, and you better have your ass ready to go out with me by nine or I’ll cut your pretty face.”
“Damn,” I whisper in surprise. “Pregnancy has made you mean.”