CHAPTER TEN
GABE
I haven’t jerked off in years, but the thought of that kiss, the incredible softness of Shannon’s lips, her warmth and willingness… I take hold of my cock and come in seconds.
A hollow void opens up as soon as I’m done. It takes me a while to work out what it is, but when I do, I recognize it as an old friend.
Guilt.
I shower and sit on the edge of my bed staring at the dog tags hanging off the dresser mirror. They’re just two pieces of tin. I’m not a sentimental guy. I don’t know why I’m even hanging onto them.
I get a flash of Triss beside me, smiling as she checks her weapon.
I block it out. I can’t think about it now.
Maybe I never want to think about it.
*
“As I live and breathe. If it isn’t Gabe ‘The Babe’ Reed.”
I take Jason’s hand. “No one’s called me that since BUD/S.”
I notice he’s gotten a little greyer up top, tried to color it black.
I rub his hair. “You did this so it would match with your eye patch, right?”
He taps the patch over his left eye. “I’m telling you, losing this to that frag was the best god-damn thing that ever happened to me. Chicks love it.”
“Because you look like a fucking pirate?” I take a seat at the bar, Jason sitting to join me. It’s mostly Navy in here today, though The Hole welcomes all servicemen. In any case, it’s a hell of a lot better than The Swinging Dick. I’d only meant to duck in there for a quick drink. I think of Shannon. Just as well you did.
Jason reaches down to cup his crotch and pulls. “Hey, it beats a wooden leg.”
I signal the bartender for two beers. “Buds,” I call. “Two.”
She nods and heads off. I turn back to Jason. “Seriously, how have you been?”
He nods. “Good, Senior Chief. And you? Heard you’re out.”
“I am.”
He shakes his head. “And pigs will fucking fly. I was sorry to hear about… you know.”
“Thanks.”
I change the subject with lightning speed. “How’s the sky-diving school?”
“Good. Again, it’s great for picking up. No pickup line can match dropping someone out a plane. If that’s life-and-death shit, man. It gets them wet every time.”
“Because they’re wetting themselves with fear, most likely.”
He claps his hands together at that. “Oh, we’ve had a few of those, too. A golden shower at twelve-thousand feet is an interesting spectacle to behold.”
“I have no doubt.”
Our beers arrive. I place a twenty down and slide a beer to Jason. He cracks it open with his shirt.
I hold my beer with two hands between my legs. “I remember someone shitting their pants our first HALO jump, and here you are doing it for a living.”
He laughs. “Shitting my pants? But diving? It’s real, man. The only thing someone’s shooting you with up there is a camera. It’s a long way from dropping into yet another south-east shithole full of jihadis and questionable nasi goreng.”
I raise my beer, looking around the bar. “To shitholes.”
“To shitholes,” he grins, clinking his bottle against mine.
I see Shannon enter. She looks around stunned. Like she said, bars are not her natural habitat.
Jason twists and follows my gaze. He turns back. “That her?”
I nod.
He whistles. “Jesus, you sure know how to pick them, Senior.”
“Easy,” I warn, “she’s a civvie.”
I stand and call Shannon over.
She smiles when she sees me, making her way over with her handbag held in front of her.
Jason stands as I make the introductions. “Shannon Bailey, meet my good friend and former colleague Jason Hart.”
Her eyes dart to the eye patch as she takes his hand. “Nice to meet you.”
He pulls out a stool between us for her. “And you. Can I get you something? A stick maybe, to beat off ol’ Blue Eyes here?”
“A ginger beer?” she queries, like it might be illegal to request such a thing in a dive like this.
“Sure.”
Jason calls down the bar for it.
“So,” Shannon starts, clearly nervous, “you were in the SEALs with Gabe?”
Jason nods solemnly, his eyes flicking to me for approval. Discussing the fact you’re a SEAL with a civilian is taboo at the best of times, which is why I gave Jason a heads-up over the phone. “Yes, ma’am,” he says. “SEAL Team Three, based out of Cali. The Chief and I have certainly had some wild times. Ain’t that right?”
I tilt the neck of my Bud towards him. “Watch it, Petty Officer. The lady doesn’t need to hear about our former indiscretions.”
“’Indiscretions?” laughs Jason. “I’ve got a few other names for it, names my mother would wash my mouth out for speaking aloud, but if you insist.”
“You’re retired?” asks Shannon.
Jason nods in the affirmative. “Yes, ma’am. I’ve got myself a skydiving school about ten miles away. It keeps me entertained enough.”
Her eyes light up. “Skydiving. Wow, I’ve always wanted to go, but…”
“But…?” I question.
“I think I’d need someone to push me out the door,” she laughs.
“Happy to oblige.” Jason winks. “But seriously, why don’t you swing by when you get a chance? The first one’s on the house.”
“Because it’s the first and the last,” I whisper to Shannon.
“Pfft,” whistles Jason. “Don’t listen to Big Boy here. I run a tight, safe ship out there. You’re in good hands.”
I want Shannon in my hands is what I want, her body mine and mine alone, but after last night I’m not sure how to approach the situation. She was so into it at first, but then she was pushing me away, telling me she’s sorry… I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
Because you rushed in like it was a frontal fucking assault.
If she wants to take it slow, I will. I’ll do damn near anything to taste those lips again.
“Don’t you get sick of it?” Shannon asks Jason. “I mean, you must have done a lot of sky-diving in the SEALs, right?”
Jason looks past her to me. “You remember training, Gabe?” He shakes his head. “They’d fly you up, drop you… Fifteen minutes later you’d be back up in the air for another, over and over again. I remember this one time, at night, flying low, just looking down at a line of traffic, people sitting in their cars eating candy bars, kids watching movies in the backseat. A minute later I’m jumping out the back of a plane. It can be surreal like that, you know.”
I nod in understanding. “You’re a sucker for punishment, you know that?”
“Says the pot calling the kettle black,” he laughs. “Remember that time you and Triss commandeered that van in Islamabad? The damn thing was firing on one cylinder. We would have been better off in a wheelbarrow.”
Shannon catches the name. “Triss?” She faces me. “Who’s that?”
My throat catches. “An ex.”
“You were together overseas?”
“Fuck yeah,” Jason continues. “Triss and Gabe were like Kim and Kayne out there. One time I caught them fu—”
“Jase,” I cut in, the old authoritarian back, “she gets it.”
I’ve got to change the subject again, derail this before it goes any further. “Say, did you know Shannon works in the film industry?”
Jason straightens up. “I did not.”
I stand. “I’ll be right back.
I leave them talking and head to the bathroom. I stare at myself in the mirror, hands gripping the vanity so hard my knuckles are white. What the fuck are you doing?
I thought inviting Shannon out here might be fun, let her meet Jason and get to know a bit about Navy life, but now I realize this was a mistake. There are parts of my life I simply can’t allow her access to. All of us, SEALs especially, have our little boxes, our minds nicely segmented and compartmentalized so the horrors of the past don’t overwhelm us. You take that pain, that shit, and box it up. That’s how you get through it.
You sure about that?
I splash water on my face and head back out.
Keep. It. Together.
Jason’s deep into the story about how he lost his eye, can’t help but bring it up every time we go out.
“I didn’t even see it coming,” he finishes.
“Wow,” says Shannon, unsure how to respond. “Did it hurt?”
“Oh, it hurt like a motherfucker,” laughs Jason, “but the morphine helped. They had me dosed up so high on the way back to base I swear I met Saint Peter himself.”
I take a seat, nodding towards his eye patch. “If you ask me, it’s an improvement.”
Jason points his beer at me. “See what I have to work with, Shannon? You try bunking with this guy for three years.”
Shannon smiles at me, no doubt conjuring up what sleeping arrangements with me would entail. I’m thinking the same—waking up to her perfect body, my sheets wrapped around her ass. It’s the kind of thing you dream about abroad. Home. Always home. The simple things everyone else takes for granted. I promised myself I wouldn’t, but now I’m here life still seems to be floating by me.
The bar starts to fill up as afternoon turns into night—Air Force mostly, but familiar faces all the same. Four beers down and Jason’s tongue is getting way too loose for my liking.
I decide to cut things short before he starts digging out the truly dirty stuff, but he’s on a roll.
“Tell her about the thumb thing, man. That shit was badass.”
I roll my eyes. “I don’t think she wants to hear about my war stories.”
“No,” says Shannon, smiling, “tell me.”
I exhale, beer bottle hung between my hands. “It was in Afghanistan. We were supposed to meet up with our POC.”
“Point Of Contact,” clarifies Jason. “Don’t bamboozle her with the jargon, bro.”
“Right. Our point of contact,” I continue, “was a no show, but a bunch of insurgents did show up in his place.”
“Oh no,” squeaks Shannon. “What did you do?”
“Nothing we could do. They had us holed in real good.”
“The thumb,” Jason presses, his enthusiasm getting the better of him. “Tell her.”
I can’t believe I’m telling this one again. “They stripped us down, piled us into the back of this pickup, our hands handcuffed behind our backs.”
“But you escaped, right?” says Shannon. “Clearly.”
Jason goes to finish it, can’t contain his excitement, but I ward him off with my hand. “We had to get out of there. It was do or die. So, I dislocated my thumb.” I hold up my left hand and wiggle my thumb. “Right here.”
Jason laughs seeing Shannon’s face screw up. “I know, right? It sounds like some bullshit urban myth, but he did it. There were witnesses. He fucking well did it.”
“How?” asks Shannon. “It doesn’t sound like an easy thing to do.”
I put my hands behind my back to demonstrate. “Easier than you’d think. You get leverage on it like this, and then use your bodyweight to fall into it, make a clean break of it. It’s the swelling you have to watch out for. You’ve got to work through the pain, get out of the cuffs as quickly as possible.”
“You’re not joking, are you?”
“No, ma’am. I don’t recommend it, of course, but when you’re desperate…”
Shannon’s shaking her head in disbelief. “I don’t know if I could do it.”
“Given the right situation, you might not have a choice. It’s incredible what you can force yourself to do when the pressure’s on.”
“And what happened after that?”
“It’s classified.” I wink.
Jason moves the conversation into a detailed description of the drudgery of Navy life, but when he starts to skirt around talk of Triss, I stand.
I slap my hands against my thighs. “I guess we should be getting off then.”
“You two?” Jason sniggers. “Getting off?” He takes a swig of his fifth beer. “Oh, I bet you will.”
He goes on laughing.
“Ignore him,” I tell Shannon. “Another beer and he’ll be on the floor.”
He stands—or tries to, at least—to see us off, taking Shannon’s hand and kissing the top of it. “It was good to meet you, Shannon. Don’t let Senior Chief screw you over, you hear? If he does, you come tell me. I’ll sort him out.”
“You can’t even sort your taxes,” I laugh.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Shannon replies, reaching down to collect her handbag.
Shannon and I head outside, the din of the bar dissipating. The night air’s cool. I take off my jacket and wrap it around Shannon’s shoulders. “Better?”
“Thanks,” she nods.
A plane takes off in the distance, a red streak across the sky.
“Do you need help getting home?” I offer.
She looks down between her feet, suddenly sheepish. “I can get a taxi. It’s fine.”
I take out my keys. “I’ve only had two beers in six hours. I insist.”
“Alright,” she agrees.
I place my hand lightly on her back and direct her towards the parking lot. Even this lightest of touches is serious cock torture. It strains in my pants desperate to be released.
A military bar this might be, but that doesn’t mean it’s free of scum. I’m not going to let anything happen to Shannon on my watch—not now, not fucking ever.
I help Shannon into my four-wheel-drive before heading to the driver’s side and starting it up.
I head out onto the highway. In the small space of the cabin I can smell her, that intoxicating scent she wears so naturally. I want to bury my face between her legs and lap it up. “How’s work? That boss of yours giving you any more grief?”
Shannon looks to me, her eyes glinting as the highway lights rush past. “Actually, he was on my case today about another, supposed incomplete file, but I stood up to him.”
“You did?” I don’t mean for it to sound like surprise.
“I told him the file wasn’t incomplete; the available information I had to work with was. I said if he had a problem with that he should give me better resources.”
“Wow, I’m proud of you,” I say, and I am.
She’s smiling, staring out the windscreen. “Yeah, it felt good… not being helpless, you know? In fact, I felt kind of elated. I still do.”
I don’t know if it’s a hint or not, but I’m happy to take it all the same.