CHAPTER FOUR
Ashley looked shell-shocked.
As Jim watched, she brought her still half-full glass of wine over to the table that he’d decreed as belonging to Team One. She sat down across from him, but the smart, funny woman he’d been talking to at the bar had vanished.
Bull and Todd were in the corner, having a heated but relatively quiet discussion with Dunk.
The three other teams were buzzing with both excitement and relief as they connected at other tables throughout the room.
“Dunk’s telling them that because we’re a five-man team—the other teams each have six; two campers dropped out this afternoon, so… Anyway, because there’s only five of you, he’s going to allow me to join you when you compete,” Jim explained as Clark and Kenneth sat down, too. “At least until there’re more dropouts to even things out.”
The two boys—both looking uncharacteristically grim—purposely chose chairs on either side of Ashley, ensuring that neither Todd nor Bull would be able to sit too close to her.
“That’s supposed to be a good thing?” Clark asked. “Dude, you hide the limp pretty well, but no one is fooled. Speculation abounds about the extent of your injuries.”
Kenneth, surprisingly, defended Jim to Clark. “Still, he’s a SEAL. This training is a vacation for him. Our paltry challenges are things he can do with both hands tied behind his back.”
Clark turned to his friend. “Yeah, but look at the rest of us. Out of you, me, and Ash, she’s the most athletic. Add in the rage twins over there…”
Across the room, Dunk was still listening to whatever Very Important Thing Bull was earnestly telling him. One possibility was that both Bull and Todd would decide to go home early. Jim hoped that wouldn’t happen—at least not right away.
“Can Lieutenant Slade do our paltry challenges with both hands and feet tied?” Clark asked Kenneth.
“Whose idea was it?” Ashley suddenly asked. She looked up, directly at Jim.
He knew what she meant—and that she wanted him to say it was Dunk’s idea to put Bull and Todd on their team. But he wasn’t going to lie. “It was mine.”
She nodded. “Okay. Wow. Your apology,” she said. “It worked.”
Jim didn’t understand. “Worked?”
“I was disarmed,” she admitted. “I thought… Well, my bad.”
“Ho, now,” Jim said. “I meant what I said. And you said you wanted to learn something.”
“I wanted to learn something new,” she told him, way too evenly. Why wasn’t she more visibly upset? She was rather freakishly calm. “I mastered getting my ass grabbed the summer before seventh grade.”
And… she wasn’t upset because apparently this experience was unfolding exactly as she’d expected it to unfold. Seventh grade was twelve, thirteen years old… Holy shit. “Boys can be idiots,” Jim started.
“These weren’t boys,” she informed him coolly. “They were grown men. Friends of my father’s. I learned to keep my distance.”
Christ. “You should’ve learned to tell someone—”
“Believe me, I did.” She took another sip of her wine. “I also learned that no one cares.”
“I care,” Jim said.
She laughed. “You sure have a funny way of showing it.”
“You could quit,” he pointed out.
“I could,” Ashley agreed.
“Incoming,” Kenneth murmured, and they both looked up to see that Bull and Todd had finished their conversation with Dunk and were stomping toward their table.
“Brace yourself for impact,” Clark muttered, “in three, two…”
* * *
“Team One,” Bull said, putting his glass of beer down on the table with so much force that the amber liquid sloshed over the sides. He looked directly at Ashley. “We’ll have to make the best of this, won’t we?”
She looked over to see Lieutenant Slade—their team instructor—watching her steadily from across the table.
“The girl and the gay dudes,” Todd said with a scornful laugh as he sat down. He was a slightly smaller, thinner version of Bull.
“Thank you, but… we’re not gay,” Kenneth said. “We’re just…”
“Hipsters?” Todd asked. “That’s pretty gay.”
“A)” Lieutenant Slade said in a tone that brooked no argument, “we will not use gay as a pejorative. And B) Ashley is a woman. Show some respect.”
Bull was still standing, and he grabbed his crotch as he told Ashley, “I got some steaming hot respect for you right here, sweetheart.”
“Enough. Sit. Now,” Slade ordered.
Bull sat but he still made kissing noises in Ashley’s direction.
And again, the SEAL was looking at her, as if waiting for her to do something.
But Ashley had found that nothing worked better than refusal to engage. Ignore and avoid. Although avoiding Bull was going to be impossible, since they were on the same team… That left ignore, so she calmly took another sip of her wine.
Lieutenant Slade finally spoke. “Okay. Let’s go around the table, introduce ourselves—where you’re from, what you do, and what you hope to gain from this session. Kenneth, why don’t you start?”
“Oh, uh, yes, of course,” Kenneth said. “Kenneth Price. Originally from the UK, little town just outside of London… College student, Boston University, English major… Hoping to gain… I want to say… life experience…?”
“Good. Thank you. How about you, Clark?” the SEAL prompted.
“Clark DeWitt. I’m Ashley’s brother and Kenneth’s roommate. Originally from New York. I’m here because I’d… well, I was thinking of maybe trying to become a SEAL someday.”
Ashley looked at him. She’d had no idea… “Really?”
Bull snorted his disdain. “That’ll never happen.”
Ashley shot him a hard look. “You don’t know that.” She turned to Clark. “I think that’s a great aspiration.”
“I think you mean pipe dream,” Bull said.
“I think you need to zip it,” she shot back at him.
“I know one way you can get me to zip it,” he said. “Although it starts with unzipping a different it.”
Nope, not going there. Ashley looked at their SEAL instructor, who again was looking back at her. “May we continue? I’ll go next. I’m Ashley DeWitt. From San Felipe, California—it’s near San Diego. I’m a lawyer for a family law practice that specializes in protecting women who are victims of domestic violence.”
Bull laughed. “Of course you are.”
“I hope to gain… confidence,” Ash said.
Bull grabbed himself again. “I got a confidence injection for you right here, baby-cakes,” he said.
Clark had had enough. “You know, you read as pathetic,” he told Bull. “You’re not funny, you’re just stupid and ignorant—”
As Bull bristled, Ashley leaned slightly against her brother. “It’s okay,” she murmured. “Just… pretend he’s not here.”
“Does that really work?” Lieutenant Slade asked. He was still watching her. He’d been watching her since this gathering had started. No doubt ready for her to quit and walk away. “Because in my experience… well, I’ve never been able to just wish an adversary away.”
“Can we finish here?” she asked in response. “I’d like to get back to my camper. I’m still working on my recovery from my jet-lag.”
“We need to elect a team leader,” Bull pointed out. “In fact, I nominate Ashley.”
“I second it,” his friend Todd said.
And before Ash could begin to form the N for no, Kenneth and Clark, not realizing what they were doing, chimed in with “Third!” and “Fourth!”
“Good, so that’s decided,” Bull said with a smirk. “You’ll get a packet of info that tells you what you have to do—it’s mostly just taking attendance, and bringing us coffee in the morning.”
What? Ashley looked at Lieutenant Slade, who was shaking his head. “No, to the coffee, but yes to the packet,” he said.
“Yeah, but lowest scoring team member has to bring the morning coffee,” Bull pointed out. “Since that’s gonna be her, anyways…” He smiled at her. “I was trying to give you an out, TL—that stands for team leader. If I had to choose between bringing coffee because I was team leader, or because I sucked…”
“I’ll bring the coffee,” the lieutenant said.
Bull shrugged. “Sir, yes, sir! And now I suppose I should do the intro thing, even though I’m pretty sure you all know who I am. Bull Edison, from Indianapolis, Indiana. Assistant manager of finance and sales at a Fortune Five Hundred company that shall remain unnamed. This is the third time I’ve come to camp. This time I’m hoping for a balls-deep experience.”
He was looking right at her, so Ashley instead focused on her wine glass, hoping he was done.
He wasn’t. “I mean, I really wanna plough my way through the next two weeks, go at this thing hard and rough and—”
“Thank you,” Lieutenant Slade interrupted him. “Todd?”
Todd worked with Bull, and he was looking to improve his paintball game score.
Paintball. Great. Ashley was going to suck at paintball.
“Well, since you seem to have come to an agreement about your team leader…” the SEAL lieutenant said, again as he looked at Ashley, as if waiting for… what?
She was certain that being team leader was going to be awful—confirmation coming in that packet of info—but if it wasn’t her, then who? No way was she subjecting Clark and Kenneth to Team Leader Todd or—God help them—Bull.
“We voted,” Todd said. “The chick’s it.”
“I do believe we are done here,” Bull said. “Boom. Bull out!”
He and Todd laughed as they got up and walked away.
Ashley stood, too. She had to get out of there—God forbid she start to cry. “I’ll see you guys in the morning.”
* * *
Jim followed Ashley out of the mess hall and into the heat of the Florida night. Tropical insects were making a racket in the trees, and the air was thick and humid. “Wait up. I’ll walk you.”
“You don’t have to.” She barely glanced at him. Her voice was calm but her shoulders were tight.
“We’re going in the same direction.”
“Yes,” she said with the slightest of sighs. “I noticed that I was assigned the RV between yours and Lieutenant King’s. That wasn’t necessary. I don’t need protection.”
“You sure?” Jim asked. “Because that was pretty passive back there. I kept waiting for you to do something, and you just didn’t.” He’d purposely tried not to step in—although a few times Bull pushed him too far. Still, he’d waited and waited and waited for Ashley to defend herself. But she hadn’t.
She finally looked over at him, her face a pale blur in the mostly-moonlight that lit their way, but again her voice was even. “I’m sorry, you think my being passive is the problem…? Not Bull’s language and behavior…?”
“So you do want my protection,” he countered.
Ashley laughed a little. “That’s not what I said.”
“Isn’t it?” he poked. She had to be furious with him, or at the very least massively, crushingly disappointed, but aside from the tightness in her shoulders, she let none of that show. And, in fact, as he looked more closely at her body language, her tension seemed to be more about bracing for another attack than righteously brittle anger.
As they approached her RV, she ignored his question as deftly as she’d ignored Bull and Todd back in the lounge. “Please don’t walk me to the door. I’d prefer no one mistake your misguided chivalry for impropriety.”
He stopped there, at the fork in the trail. “Although that would be one sure way of convincing Bull and Todd to keep their distance.”
She looked at him sharply, and he realized that she’d misunderstood, and quickly added, “I’m not suggesting we actually, um, hook up. That wouldn’t be… No. I mean, the implication would be an easy solution. Just to make them think that—”
She cut him off. “That’s your idea of a solution?”
Jim shrugged. “They’re Neanderthals. It would work. Put a little fear into ’em.”
“Fear of you,” she pointed out.
“Yeah, sorry, I don’t think they’re ever going to fear you,” he told her.
“I’m not looking for fear,” Ashley said. “Just respect.”
“I get it,” he said. “But I doubt you’ll be able to change them.”
“Boys will be boys…?” she said.
“Sadly, yes. I mean, I don’t agree with that, of course, but that’s how the world works.”
She surprised him then. “I don’t accept that it can’t be changed.”
“Then you’re going to have to do more than ignore them,” Jim told her. “It’s an uphill battle—wow, we are just dropping the clichés, here, aren’t we?”
Ashley smiled, but only because she was polite. “It’s uphill, because the idea—the massively offensive idea—that a woman needs to belong to a man so that she’s treated with respect is acceptable to, well, you. If you really believe that, you’re a part of the problem. Think about your suggestion—and what it really means. A woman on her own is fair game to idiots like Bull, but he’ll back off if he thinks someone else possesses her. But he’s not treating her with respect. No, the respect is man to man—right over the head of the woman. I won’t treat your woman like shit out of deference to you, Brah.”
Jesus. He’d never considered… Still, “That’s a pretty good imitation of Bull, but I don’t think deference is in his vocabulary.”
Frustration flared in her eyes, but just for a very brief moment before she tamped it back down. “Good night, Lieutenant,” she said, heading for her RV.
“You know, sometimes it’s okay to get pissed off,” he called after her.
“And do what? Kick you in the shins? That’s really not my style.”
“As opposed to running and hiding?” he said.
His words struck a nerve—she practically flinched. But when she turned back, her voice stayed even and calm. “I’m tired—it’s been a long day. I’m sure we’ll have plenty of time to continue this discussion, because sorry, but I’m not quitting.”
“I’m not even close to sorry about that,” Jim said. “No one here wants you to quit. Well, those of us who aren’t Bull and Todd.”
But she laughed again, just a little, and he knew she didn’t believe him. “Good night,” she said again.
And as Jim watched, she used the keypad to unlock her door, and went inside, not looking back.