My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I slide it out to find my sister Calista’s name on the screen. She only ever calls about Mom, so I lift a finger. “I’m sorry. I have to take this.”
“Of course.” She smiles, turning to face the bar.
“Calista,” I answer. “What’s up?”
“Hey, I was supposed to bring Mom dinner tonight, but Evangeline’s got a fever and Grayson has basketball and Rod’s working a double.” Her voice is a mixture of exhaustion and surrender.
“It’s fine,” I say. “I’ll swing by and grab her something tonight.”
“Thanks, little brother. I owe you.”
“You owe me nothing,” I say.
“What am I going to do when you’re gone?” she asks, exhaling into the phone.
“You’ll do what you always do,” I say. The sound of rattling toys and a blaring TV in the background disrupts our moment and she tells me she has to go.
As much as the two of us butt heads, Calista hates that I’m in the military. She’s made that crystal clear from the day I enlisted. And it’s not that she has something against the army—she’s scared for me, that’s all. She’s scared to lose me. We were always so close growing up. Then she got married and had kids and I was overseas. Now our interactions are relegated to short phone calls about Mom and silent “love yous” that are never said but always somehow felt.
It’s really the closest I allow myself to get to actually feeling something.
Slipping my phone back into my pocket, I turn toward Maritza, only to find some emaciated jackass with a sleeve of tattoos and an ear full of piercings leaning up against the bar, wearing a jerkoff’s smile and looking at her like a shark about to devour chum.
I have to intervene.
She’ll thank me later.
Returning to her side, I slip my arm over her shoulder and give that tool a good, hard stare. He doesn’t get it at first. Almost scoffing and then laughing, like he thinks it’s some kind of joke.
“This guy bothering you, babe?” I ask.
She glances up at me before gently removing my arm from her shoulders. “Isaiah, stop.”
The guy scratches his temple, glancing around, fidgeting almost.
I make him nervous.
“Find someone else, all right, bud?” I say, flashing a pearly white ‘fuck off’ smile. “This one’s mine.”
“Isaiah.” Maritza says my name harder now, her brows meeting.
The guy’s shoulders slump, his confidence taking the shape of a deflated Mylar balloon, and he ambles away, disappearing into the crowd.
“Why did you do that?” She punches my arm. I think she’s actually mad.
“I was doing you a favor.”
“No, you were acting like a jealous asshole. Need I remind you that we are not a thing? That this is not a date? That you have no claim over me?”
“No need to remind me at all,” I say because we’re still very much on the same page. “I saw a situation that required an intervention and I delivered.”
Maritza rolls her eyes. “Un-fucking-believable.”
Our drinks arrive and she reaches for hers so quickly she nearly knocks it over.
“He just wanted a piece,” I tell her.
Her back is to me, and she lifts her martini glass to her full lips. “And you knew that how? Because you sized him up for all of three seconds?”
“I know men,” I say. “I know how we think, how we operate. I’ve spent the last damn near decade of my life around sex-starved men who treat bars like some kind of fucking feeding frenzy and that guy was fishing hard.”
She says nothing, only takes another sip. But I wish she’d reply because now I’m starting to feel like the jackass.
“Maritza,” I say.
A moment later, she finally turns to me. “You know, honestly? I’m offended right now. I’m offended that you think I’m too stupid to not know the difference between a man who’s genuinely interested and a man who just wants a piece. That guy was nice and we were talking about Aerosmith because he was wearing an original t-shirt from their 1993 Get A Grip tour, and you made him feel about ‘this’ tall.”
She pinches her fingers together before turning back around.
“I’m sorry,” I say, scraping my hand across the gritty stubble that peppers my jaw.
“What if he was supposed to be my future husband? What if he was the one?” she asks, back still toward me. “What if we were supposed to get married someday? And have two point five kids and live in a beautiful house in Temecula? But now I’ll never know.” Maritza turns back to me. “I just hope you can live with yourself after this.”
“What?”
“You’ll have to live with the fact that you basically killed my future children by intervening in destiny,” she says, lifting her glass. “That’s some Back to the Future level shit, Corporal.”
I’m so fucking confused.
And then she bursts out laughing. “I’m fucking with you.”