“And he did?”
“He did. He saved my life. And when we brought his body home for burial, we found out why he was in a bad mood. His high school sweetheart had been fucking around on him. He thought they were forever, and she thought being with a soldier was sexy. But it didn’t take her long to get bored with the uniform. She’d sent him a letter and told him that she was in love with someone else. She needed space to ‘find herself’. She needed to ‘explore’ and ‘see what else the world could offer’. But when we carried his casket off the aircraft, she came running. She was sorry.” I meet Abigail’s eyes. “She was also pregnant. And we’d been gone eleven months at that point.”
Her eyes widen. “Oh no.”
“Mmm. She’d explored, alright. And she wasn’t just a day along, or a month. She’d been fucking around on him for at least six months. She was sorry, but he was still dead, so we walked on past her and laid him to rest ourselves.”
“Where is she now? And the baby?”
I shrug. “No clue. She made her bed. She wanted exciting and new, she got it, and my comrade got death. Life doesn’t pause or slow down for idiots who can’t make a decision. The rest of us have to learn how to make choices on the fly. We aren’t afforded a timeout so we can sit down with a coffee and have time to think. And we especially don’t get the luxury of picking between people we claim we love. That’s what she wanted… a buffet of choices, and zero consequences for her inability to make up her mind.”
“But that’s what you do,” Abigail whispers. “You pick between women all the time. You admit it.”
“But I don’t love them. I don’t hurt people’s feelings.” I pause and consider my words. “In my world – and I mean my work, not my sex life – if you don’t keep moving, you die.” Jay accentuates my point with another gunshot that makes her jump. “We don’t do things half-assed, and we don’t fuck over the ones that mean something to us. I chewed the guy out, but I didn’t fuck his girl. I told him to pull his head out of his ass and focus, but I didn’t get personal and say shit I regret. He died knowing who his brothers were. He died honorably.”
She reaches up and swipes an errant tear from her cheek. Strangely, that single tear slices me up.
“I’m sorry for making you cry.”
She gives a wobbling smile and goes back to stroking my nose. “It’s okay. I’m mourning a man I never knew.”
“You allow yourself to feel too much.” I lean forward and press a kiss to her lips. “You’re always letting shit dig into your heart. You gotta protect it.”
“I don’t want to protect it,” she argues. “I like feeling. I like knowing I’m here and that I can feel. It hurts, of course, but he deserves a moment, right? He deserves to be loved by a stranger for a second, and remembered for his bravery. I don’t consider that a flaw.”
“Not a flaw,” I concede. “But it’s dangerous for you. If you take on too much, you hurt yourself. If you hurt yourself too much, you eventually have no choice but to stop feeling. It’s better for you tochooseto close yourself off from some things, rather than be forced to become an unfeeling machine.”
Her eyes drop to my chest for a moment while she thinks. “I don’t know. I think we’ll have to agree to disagree, because I’m okay with taking on someone else’s hurt sometimes. If I have the room, why not? Maybe the person I’m helping has no room left at all. Maybe my act is what saves them.”
“And maybe that one straw is the one that breaks your back?”
Again, she shrugs. “Which are you? Do you not feel by choice, or because you were hurt too much?”
I consider her question with serious thought. Part of me defaults to this being a choice. But then part of me remembers the Ashleys of the world.
I had a girl in high school too, and her need toexploretaught me early that fucking bitches is immeasurably more gratifying than being hurt by them.
But then there’s this small part of my brain that reminds me I’m lying in bed right now with a half-naked woman. I didn’t fuck her, I’m allowing her to stroke my nose, and I’m mourning for a young soldier that risked, and eventually lost, his life for me.
“I don’t know which one I am,” I answer truthfully. “It’s a complicated question, I guess.”
Her eyes come back to mine. Green and blue. They haunt my fucking dreams.
“It’s okay to not be sure, I guess. So long as you’re thinking about it. What was his name?”
“Whose?”
She grins. “The soldier. The man that died outside your hospital.”
“Oh.” I think back to the fresh-faced boy, andchooseto ignore the pang in my chest. “Davis. Corporal Gavin Davis. Also known as Delta. He joined when he was seventeen, and he died when he was twenty-four.”
“Now he’s at rest, and he’ll never know his girlfriend was pregnant with someone else’s baby.”
I scoff. “Small mercies, I suppose.”
Jay’s shots seem to be getting louder and less often, so when he shoots again and it almost sounds like he’s in the living room, Abigail sits up with a snarl.
“Does he have to do that right now? The sun hasn’t even risen yet.”