“C’mon Axle! Go grab your Frisbee, let’s go,” I call out and my German Shepherd runs around the barely furnished townhouse in a jolt of pure excitement. Even with three legs, he gets around faster than most dogs I have seen. It doesn’t take him long to sniff out his favorite red Frisbee from the edge of the kitchen counter and bring it to me with his little stub wiggling.

I can’t help but smile at the pure joy on his furry face as he scurries around the front door. “Alright, chill out, I’m moving a little slow this morning,” I stand up from my worn La-Z-Boy chair and stretch my hands high over my head. “I had a late night,” I explain and Axle tilts his head at me, his triangular ears perked up and listening intently. “Don’t give me that judgmental look, l will have you know nothing even happened,” my dog keeps staring at me, looking into me, and I can’t face him, I have to look away.

You could say Axle and I are a couple of peas in a pod. We both served our country in Afghanistan, we both got blown up for our trouble and we’re both happy keeping our relationships simple. We have each other, and that is the main thing.

I walk across my bare floor and grab my running shoes by the front door. Even in socked feet, the sounds of my footsteps seem to echo in my barren place. What can I say? I don’t care about material possessions. As long as I have food for my belly, beer and casual sex, then I don’t need much else. And Axle, of course. We both came back from overseas broken, both of us carry scars on our bodies and wounds that you can only see if you have been to war. He was a bomb sniffing dog and lost his leg and tail when he and his handler found an IED that exploded. His trainer never came back to American soil alive.

I run my fingers over my sewn together skin as I remember my own recovery from the explosive we hit in the Humvee. It took months of surgeries and rehab to repair the damage that only took a second to rip me apart. For the first few weeks, the doctors kept me in a drug-induced coma because they felt that it would have been cruel to let me suffer the unnecessary pain. Of course, they had no way of knowing that even after they patched me up like a quilt and spent countless hours putting me back together that my own fiancé would cause me the most intense pain of all. She, didn’t even wait for my discharge from the hospital before she broke it off.

My hands tremble as my mind flashes back to our last conversation, “I mean, it’s just different now, you know? I can’t do this anymore Gabe,” she sighed heavily and I could tell from where her eyes were looking and her preoccupation with her lipstick that she was checking out the video of herself instead of me as we Skyped.

“It doesn’t have to be different,” I could see the writing on the wall, but I was in denial. I felt like I had already lost so much, my career was over, I lost friends in the explosion, I wasn’t ready to let her go too. “You always said you hated how much I was gone for the SEALs, well, that won’t be an issue anymore. I’m getting my medical discharge, so I’ll be around more now,” I wince at the memory of how I was trying to sell myself to her like a used car salesman: ‘Take a look at this car! It has low mileage, can carry a lot of baggage and because it’s been in a front- end accident, it’s a steal of a deal!’

“Gabe, it was fine when you were the hot SEAL and I was, like, gonna be your hot wife, you know? But, it’s just too hard now. I don’t even see you anymore when I look at you. I can’t spend the rest of my life with someone I’m afraid to look at. I’m sorry babe, I’m not proud of this or anything, but I can’t be with someone for the rest of my life if I’m not attracted to them. It’s not fair to me, is it?”

I looked at the little video box showing me the face of the man I’d become and I could not say anything. Tears sprung up, but only in my good eye and I turned away so she couldn’t see them. I squeezed my eyelids shut, trying to wash away the image of my scarred face. How could I expect her to want to wake up next to me every morning when I couldn’t even stand to look at myself.

“I understand,” I answered flatly and ended the video chat.

It was the last time I heard from her.

I never wanted another relationship after that. I didn’t even want to get to know the women I was fucking by name. The sex clubs were the perfect fit. They’re dimly lit, so my scars are less prominent, there’s not a lot of small talk, and I got to wear just enough clothes to cover the huge cock they’re all hungry for. After watching women wince and turn away from me at the grocery store, or even worse, bite their lip and twirl their hair as they sip their latte and gaze at my good side, only to watch their mouths drop open and their noses scrunch up in repulsion when they got the full picture, it all just made sex clubs more appealing to me. Strutting around in tiny shorts with a huge swaying cock between my legs had a way of giving me back what these scars stripped away. Of course, hearing the anonymous woman of the night beg me to fuck her or try to seduce me was always a nice bonus. And that’s all I ever needed.

Until now.

The thought is only a whisper on a breeze and yet, just like everything in my house, it seems to echo from the empty walls back at me.

I never expected to meet someone like Vanessa.

Not in a million years.

I stare blankly at the front door, my hand frozen over Axle’s leash as I remember her smile. There was something so innocent, so alluring about the way she genuinely looked at me when she laughed. I remember how she put down her window and waved goodbye to me.

An opportunity lost.

A moment that will become a beautiful memory and nothing more.

Axle whines and presses his cold nose into my palm, bringing me back to the present.

“Sorry about that buddy, I got kinda lost there for a second, didn’t I?” I look down at him and he seems to get it. He picks up his Frisbee and I clip his leash on him, even though he doesn’t need it, but I’ve got to obey the stupid bylaws. I grab my keys and phone as I head out the door toward the dog park a few blocks away.

Just as I drop my cell in my pocket, my ringtone begins to sing from inside. I pluck it back out, but don’t recognize the number. Swiping my thumb over the screen, I answer, “Hello?”

“Hey, um, is this Gabe?” A nervous sounding woman asks.

“It is,” I wait for her to tell me what this is about.

“It’s Vanessa,” she says it like she’s not sure if I’m going to remember who she is. Axle looks up at me and tilts his head, walking beside me down the sidewalk.

“Oh! Hi!” I blow my whole calm and cool act sounding way too excited that she called.

“Hey,” she giggles.

“What’s up?” I manage to say that much more nonchalantly and Axle again looks over at me as if to say he’s not buying it.

“I was hoping, if you’re not busy of course, that you could come to my place? I’d love to talk to you about something,” she rushes through the sentence like she’s trying to blurt it all out before I can say no.

“Yeah, I can stop by, sure,” I answer breezily. “Where do you live?”

As she fills me in I realize two things. The first is that she lives in a much, much nicer neighborhood than I do, and the second is that I’m about to break my own rule about not getting involved, because there’s no fucking way I’m going to let her go.