American Prince

I was walking into the showers, grateful to see they were mostly empty, and also grateful that our new base had proper shower stalls instead of curtains. But then I heard a noise—the kind of noise that even stalls can’t keep private—and my heart missed a beat.

It was Ash. And that kind of noise—

But no, it was only his feet visible under the stall door. I let out a breath I’d been unconsciously holding and shook my head at myself. Did I really think Ash had been playing around with another soldier?

There was another noise. It wasn’t a groan, not as loud as that. More like a breathless grunt, a sharp exhale. And then a sound that every man knew well—a hand moving fast on a cock. Ash was jacking off.

I retreated to my room and decided to shower another time. Part of me was amused but I had to admit, a stupid part of me was a little wounded. Was last night not enough for him? Or did he think me too worn out to help him relieve tension if he needed it? Or—and it sounded madly paranoid to even think it, the worst kind of jealous thinking—was there actually someone else he wanted? A desire that his honor or orderly brain demanded he satisfy apart from me?

So I watched him, as any jealous lover would. Watched him with the other soldiers, watched his habits. We were afield so often that any deviation from routine was hard to pin down, but I began to notice small things. Checking his email more often than necessary on the rugged field laptop. A folded sheaf of papers he kept in his breast pocket. Slipping away at night, when everyone else was asleep. Except for me.

Only once did I see those folded papers out; we were in his room before dinner, door open, playing the part of casual friends. He went to the shared bathroom to brush his teeth and I saw the sheaf sticking out from under his pillow. It was underhanded and invasive and wrong, but since when had that ever stopped me? I lifted the pillow ever so slightly, listening for his footsteps in the hall, and gently unfolded one page. It was a printed email from half a year ago. Dear Ash, it said at the top.

My heart sank. Ash. The name he only gave to those close to him.

Dear Ash, it’s been six months since we met—

Footsteps in the hallway. With the ease born of too much practice, I replaced the object of my snooping and effortlessly assumed the position of a bored, innocent friend when he returned. We went to dinner, and I managed to talk and laugh and mime along, but the whole time, those words kept running through my mind. It’s been six months since we met…six months since we met…since we met. Did love letters sound like that? Ash and I had written to each other, but those letters were less about love than need and anticipation.

We’d never defined exactly what it was we were doing, other than sneaking around and fucking constantly. That conversation had been forestalled by my lie about what I wanted for my future. And if we hadn’t defined our relationship, did that mean that we weren’t necessarily exclusive?

Since the ambush at Caledonia, Ash had been a darling for the press, and because I was the object of his heroism and conveniently also good-looking and wealthy, I became a bit of a darling too. And consequently, I now had an international reputation as a playboy, although that was a bit unfair, as I hadn’t actually slept with anyone else since that first time with Ash. It was crazy what the press could invent from a handful of parties and a few off-color jokes. I’d never minded people thinking of me that way—it was true before Ash, certainly—but I did mind if Ash thought I was sleeping around.

I especially minded it if there was someone else in the picture.

I thought hard about how to bring it up, a way to casually introduce the subject, but even in my head, the words always came out wrong. Suspicious and ugly—and what claim did I have on Ash anyway? I’d been the one to tell him we didn’t have a future, as far as he knew I was the callous, noncommittal one. How could I interrogate him about some emails and jacking off in the shower?

It turned out I didn’t have to. One day not long after, there was an issue with a patrol scheduled to go out within the week, and I went to Ash’s office late that night to get it sorted. I found him on this laptop, typing out brisk responses to his emails.

“Yes, Lieutenant?” he asked, only taking his eyes off the screen to reference a marked up map of the valley.

“Dag is telling me that they never got the medical supplies they’re supposed to carry down the val—”

Ash’s laptop chimed, an email notification, and he clicked the mouse a couple of times, eyes sliding back and forth across the screen, stopping abruptly when they found what they were looking for. His face changed—focused to stunned to studiously blank—in the space of a second.

And I knew.

I just knew.

“Is there someone else?” I demanded. “Are you with—I mean—just. Is there another person?”

He lifted that studiously blank face to mine, closing the laptop with an efficient push of his hands. “No,” he said.

I paused, wondering if I got it all wrong, but then he continued. “Not in the way you think, at least.”

“You don’t know in what way I think,” I replied.

Ash gave me a sad sort of smile. “You think I’m fucking someone else or planning to. At the very least, you think we’re exchanging letters. But none of those things are true.”

Not good enough. “Is it someone you’d like to fuck? And they’re writing you emails? And you like getting those emails?”

He sighed. “The answer to all three of those questions is yes. But we aren’t ever going to fuck and I’m not ever going to write her back.”