“Man, I spend all week helping you with your house and this is how you repay me?” Ryan Rogers looks around the bar with disdain.

“Pfft, helped me all week,” I roll my eyes exaggeratedly. “More like helped clean out my cupboards, not to mention my booze,” I shoot him a look.

“What can I say? Your entire cabinet was a good vintage,” he laughs and his blue eyes twinkle as we walk over to the bar. “I’ll have a rum and Coke,” he nods at the sleepy looking bartender.

“Make it two, please,” I add. The woman behind the bar looks like she’s been doing this for decades and that every long night has permanently taken their toll.

“Two rum and Coke coming up,” she answers like she just uttered the most boring string of words in the universe before she twists her long, greying hair up into a bun and grabs our glasses.

“I know it’s not a hot club or anything, but I hate those places. You can’t even hear yourself think, let alone talk to anyone. Besides, you know how it is,” I glance over at him and I can see from the seriousness that passes over his face that he gets it. We don’t need to talk about how when you get back from a deployment like ours, you can’t stand wall-to-wall crowds anymore. Or how you automatically scope out the exits when you walk inside, mentally taking note. We don’t need to have a chat about how I only feel comfortable with my back to the wall when we go sit down or how people wearing backpacks set off a little alarm bell in my mind. Those things don’t need to be discussed, but I can tell he knows them well.

“You wanna pay now or run a tab?” Our alcohol slinging ray of light slides the drinks over the bar at us and doesn’t even pretend to smile as she waits for an answer.

“Tab, please,” I answer.

“Good call,” Rogers smirks and lifts his glass in a clink-less cheers. We both take a drink and scope the place out.

“Over there,” I point to a table at the far end of the room where I can sit with my back to the wall. It’s a quiet part of the room, but I’ll be able to see everything going on around me.

Rogers agrees and we pass a couple of tables full of ladies having a girls’ night and some guys pretending not to scope them out a few seats over.

We relax into the well-worn chairs and put our drinks on the slightly wobbly table. “Well even though you drank all my booze and ate all my food, I still wanna say thanks for your help man,” I look up at my former military subordinate. “I mean, I totally could’ve gotten that window in myself, but it was nice to have a hand with it,” I take another sip of my drink as Rogers laughs.

“Oh yeah, you might have. Or they may have found your body under a layer of broken glass in a week or so,” he snorts.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence man,” I laugh.

“I’m not saying you couldn’t do it or anything, I’m just saying my money is on the second one,” he chucks shit at me before taking a huge mouthful of his drink.

“Hey, take her easy man, you’ve got all night,” I glance at the disappearing brown liquid in his tall glass.

“And if she’s easy, take her twice,” he brings the glass to his lips and tosses the rest of his drink back, making his cheeks puff out as he swallows it down.

“Or, you know, chug it all like a frat kid. Whatever,” I shake my head and suddenly feel my age. When I was the Lieutenant of our SEAL team, I always felt like I might have been too young and too close in age with my guys to really be in charge of them. Don’t get me wrong, I had world-class training and I did my job well, but when I was thirty-one and the rest of my guys were only a few years younger than me, I didn’t feel like the experienced, grizzled vet you see in movies. Now, at thirty-two, I feel like I’ve aged a decade in the last year. There’s something about war that makes you cautious, that makes you hollow, that makes you old.

“Listen, not everyone wants to live in some cabin on the edge of town, like, chopping wood and shit. Some of us still want to ride the tides. Let’s relax and see where the night goes. I’m gonna grab another one, you want one?” Rogers stands up abruptly, scraping his chair across the dull, wooden floor.

“Nah, I’m good,” I hold up my barely touched drink and he shrugs.

“Suit yourself, I’ll be back in a sec,” he saunters across the bar, noticeably checking out the table of girls as he passes them and I take another drink. Maybe not everyone feels like this when they get back. Maybe it’s just me. I can’t help but smile when a couple of the ladies at the table giggle and watch Rogers walk past.

Show off.

I look around the room, it’s getting louder now that there are few more people bustling around. I scan the faces, all of them unfamiliar, and don’t really soak in their features as much as I look for things that are out of place. Rogers is right, I need to relax. I’ve got to leave the desert overseas.

My eyes fall on two girls across the room, one with long hair the color of fire and milky skin, but it’s the other one with black hair and mocha skin radiating like a bronze statue, that holds my gaze.

They both look away quickly and I realize they were scoping me out. For a second, I feel like I was kicked in the gut as I take a deep breath and try to understand how every guy in this place isn’t feeling the same twitchy, swirling madness that’s been stirred in my soul just by looking at her.

“I got ya one anyway,” Rogers plops down our drinks and mine slightly sloshes over the edge of the cup leaving a fizzing black puddle on the oak tabletop. “I’m not letting you nurse that thing all night like some kind of old lady, drink up,” he blabbers on, but I can’t move my eyes.

“Uh, yeah,” I’m not sure what I’m agreeing about as I take a huge sip and finally manage to convince my gaze to sweep back to his face.

“What’s going on, man? You got that million-mile stare happening, you alright?” He looks around the room and his shoulders stiffen a little, like he’s shot with a tiny lightning bolt as he spots them. “Oh, yeah, I can see how you’d be distracted,” his voice goes down an octave.

“Don’t stare,” I suddenly feel possessive, like I don’t want him even eye-fucking the woman that just stole the oxygen from my lungs and made my heart beat faster. She’s far from mine. We’re complete strangers. Still, anger begins to bubble inside me at the thought of him looking at her that way.

“You gotta go introduce yourself, man,” Rogers looks back at me and I shrug.

“I don’t want to try to hook up, I’m supposed to be showing you around. I mean, you’re leaving in a couple days and…”

“Nope, stop there,” he holds up his hands, “don’t use me as an excuse to sit in the corner like a wilting flower and miss out on the fun. Go talk to her man, I can see you’re into her and that’s the only reason I’m holding back right now. If you don’t go, I will. I don’t care if I’m leaving in a couple days or not, she’s too pretty to pass on.”

I cringe when he talks about her like that. There’s no reason in the world for me to feel protective or jealous right now, but him casually talking about picking her up makes me want to casually punch his face.

“Man, she’s got a banging bod,” he glances back over.

Irritation steams inside me, but I can’t disagree. “She does,” I check out the curve of her breasts and the flare of her hips.

“And those lips, man, damn,” he continues.

My eyes glide over her pink pout and a flurry of images flashes through my brain of kissing them, biting them, watching them wrapped around my cock.

“And her hair is so long, I just want to wrap my fist in it and watch the rest fall around her face like red curtains while she bends over for me,” his voice is distant, like he’s watching a movie in his own mind.

“Huh?” Red curtains? I snap back and look at the other girl at the table. Not the bronzed goddess I’ve been fantasizing about, but her pale, redheaded friend. “Oh, her,” I smile, truly relieved. “Yeah, she’s cute man. You should talk to her.”

“You don’t mind?”

“Why would I mind?”

“Oh, you’re into the other chick,” it finally clicks for him. “Yeah, she’s hot too.”

“I’m going to buy her a drink,” I decide out loud but realize I have to finish the one and a half drinks I still have sitting before me first. All of sudden, a breath of life fills my aging soul and I feel thirty-two again for the first time in a year. Grabbing a glass in each hand, I pound back the rum and Coke in one and then toss back the other. The second one burns down my throat and I look over at Rogers accusingly.

“Yeah, that one was a double,” he shrugs sheepishly, but his blue eyes light up like a kid that just pulled off an April Fools’ joke.

“Okay, whatever, I’m gonna talk to her, you coming?”

“Yep, I’m right behind you. Oh, and McLean?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t bring her back to your place, alright?”

“Nah, I wouldn’t do that to you, it’d be awkward,” I answer.

“No, not because of that,” he laughs, “I mean because I’m gonna be fucking that sweet little ginger all night, so you need to go back to her place.’

Classy.

For the briefest of moments, I think about Rogers getting sweaty with some random chick in my house and how I would be wise to wipe my counters down with some Clorox tomorrow before cooking anything. However, the concerns are quickly erased as we approach the table and the woman I’ve been transfixed by looks up at me with a smile.

“Hey,” I feel my mouth tug up and my body relax as I soak her in.

“Hi, did you guys want to join us?”