I was in bad shape for a long time. The VA thought I’d put a bullet in my brain before a year was out. I did every kind of therapy they had. I even wove a damn basket once because it was supposed to help. Don’t tell my brother about that basket. Nothing worked after a certain point. They had to let me out. Told me to find a shrink and eat right and get a job.
Seemed like being outdoors was the only way to clear my head, and I’m not shy of heights so I worked a lot of construction. I got fired from the first gig for being too fearless. They were afraid their insurance wouldn’t bond me if I took risks like that. Because I didn’t care if I fell.
The thing was, I didn’t put a bullet in my brain. I didn’t crawl in a bottle and never come out. Those things—they both sounded better than what I had, I won’t lie—but it would have been a dishonor to my squad, my men. I was still a coward, would’ve welcomed a fall that broke my neck at work. Maybe I wouldn’t choose death, but I damn sure flirted with it. I was a daredevil before, and when I got back from the Middle East, I figured I didn’t have much to lose. Mom and Jer would have done fine without me. In a way it’s easier to have a noble, dead soldier in the family than a wounded one that comes home with a shitload of problems. Both of them tried to get me to live with them, but I needed breathing spaced, needed not to see the worry in my mother’s face all the time.
I only moved out here to shut my brother up. I wanted to see him, sure, but I didn’t look forward to living under his eyes. My bare space, my tasteless food, my punishing workouts—he’d see it all. The way I scrape by and call it living. He did try to help. Tried a hundred different ways. But all I did was push him away. I couldn’t stand his pity.
I met you. You didn’t pity me. You didn’t even like me, just maybe the way I looked. You didn’t treat me like I was broken, like maybe I used to be something before the IED, like I was just what’s left over. The parts of me that survived the explosion still haven’t come back together to make anything whole. They hadn’t when I met you, but maybe they’ve started to. I went to that group to have an excuse to see your face. You could’ve been teaching a class on how to paint teacups and I would’ve gone, so don’t think you were what stood between me and therapy. I know where to find a doctor if I want one. I didn’t go because I wanted to explore my secret pain or some shit like that. I wanted to look at you, make you talk to me, seduce you as fast as I could.
Something else happened. I saw how you talked to them, to us. The broken ones. You didn’t act like you felt sorry for us, but like you had some tools to show us. I liked that. I liked how you licked your lips before you said my name, every time. Like you wanted to taste it. When the other people were talking, you’d look at them so serious and the whole time I was picturing what it would be like to slide my hands in your overalls and touch your breasts. You were trying to heal people. I was there to defile you, and I make no excuses.
And I think you know where you belong, you just won’t admit it. So I’m saying it for you, proudly, as a man who fantasized about fucking you over a folding chair in a room full of trauma survivors—just in case you’re thinking that I wanted to stay in that group and get help. You belong with me. Every word you’ve ever said to me from when you told me your name and that you were Maggie’s friend right up until you said it was wrong and you knew it—it’s all burned into my skin. I can feel it. I can feel you.
You said you knew this was wrong. I know just as surely that it isn’t wrong. Because I can feel it. Nothing in my life has grounded me to the moment like this. I’ve spent years trying to escape the present and the past and live in some frantic gray nothing and maybe find some peace. I found that peace inside you. You can joke all you want about sexual healing. I know you will. When I told you—when you laid on top of me and I told you that it felt like an honor that you knew me and what I’d done and what I was and you took me inside you without hesitation, that was profound for me. It was more than chemistry or anything simple. It was a blood oath, my hands making you a promise, writing it on your skin. I only want to be with you. I don’t care if it’s wrong, or if it’s forbidden.