As heartbroken as I was, seeing Dean’s misery was even worse. I knew this man to his very heart, and I was convinced that there was not a mean or dishonest bone in his body. He was torn between the life he’d been building and the bump in the road that threatened to explode it all to hell.
I understood that. Maybe, if I were a man and didn’t have the physical reality of my baby with me all the time, I might have been struggling with the same frustrations. Just because I wasn’t didn’t mean I couldn’t offer Dean empathy and understanding.
With no little difficulty, I manage to push myself up into a sitting position, facing Dean with my knees almost touching his. My enormous belly made it impossible to do what I wanted, to pull him into my arms, so I had to settle for reaching out and stroking the side of his head.
I didn’t have any words to say. I didn’t have any comfort to give him. And so we sat like that, both of us sunk in sorrow and a peculiar form of grief until the sun began to set.
ChapterSeventeen
Dean
“Yo, Lassiter!”
Norton stumbled into our room, his cheeks flushed, and his eyes unnaturally bright. My roommate had been spending much of our last week here at the academy celebrating by getting drunk every night with a different group of friends.
I, on the other hand, was sitting on the floor, focused on packing up duffle bags and wallowing in my own misery.
“Welcome back,” I replied, sparing him only the briefest of glances. “Glad to see that you made it here and didn’t end up on the Supe’s lawn again.”
“Man, that was a close call.” Norton wagged his head. “My guardian angel was definitely looking out for me when Hayward passed by and noticed me there.”
“You’re lucky that he carried your sad ass back here,” I retorted. “It would’ve served you right if the Supe found you there the next morning. Let’s just say I’m not sure you would’ve been joining the rest of your classmates graduating at Michie Stadium the day after tomorrow.”
“Nah.” Norton plopped onto his bed and laid back, his hands folded behind his head. “This close to graduation, they just want to get rid of us. There’s gonna be more than one MP and officer on post happy to wave goodbye to me.”
“You’re probably not wrong,” I agreed “Did your parents and your sister get in tonight?” I knew that Norton’s family had planned to check into the Thayer tonight, and I was scheduled to join the family for lunch tomorrow.
“Yeah, Dad texted me earlier. They’re all excited to see me march onto the field a first classman and march off as a second lieutenant.”
“Not technically true,” I corrected. “There’s the commissioning ceremony afterwards.”
“Sure, sure.” Norton waved that away with his hand. “It’s a technicality. But I guess it’ll be pretty cool to have my mom and my sister pin on my bars.”
I looked away, a familiar wave of envy threatening to drown me. It was tradition that two people important in the life of the newly graduated cadet pinned on his butter bars at the commissioning ceremony that would make us second lieutenants. That happened directly after graduation. But I knew that I was going to be one of the few people in my company who wouldn’t have anyone present to do that for him. Probably Major Thomas or some professor would take pity on me and do it. Once again, I was the guy who was going to be alone.
As if reading my mind, Norton asked, “So your mom for sure is not coming up?”
I shook my head. “She’s not coming. I told her not to. She hasn’t been part of anything since I started at West Point. She never came for a game or for any of the parent weekends… it’s a different world for her. She’d be miserable, and I’d be stressed out, worrying about her.”
“Well, you know my family already plans to adopt you for the weekend,” Norton announced. “And if you need someone to pin on your bars, I know they’ll be happy to do it.”
“Thanks, man.” But I felt contrarily annoyed that Norton had made the offer, as though he was offering me his family out of the sense of pity.
“Or,” Norton went on, oblivious to my reaction. “You could always ask your knocked-up friend if she’ll do it. Not sure that she’d be able to reach your shoulder around that basketball she’s wearing these days.”
His casual reference to Willow amped up my annoyed into a solid mad. “Shut the hell up, won’t you?” I snapped. “Don’t talk about Willow.”
“Whoa, whoa whoa.” Norton swung his legs to the ground and sat up, still a little unsteady. “Dude, chill. I was just kidding around. Just making a joke. Anyway, you know it’s the truth. She’s like—" He held up his arms in front of his stomach as far as his hands would extend and blew his cheeks out. “She’s enormous.”
“I told you to shut the fuck up,” I snarled. “You don’t know Willow. You don’t know anything about her. So just stop talking about her.”
“Fine, fine.” Norton waited for a moment. “But I gotta tell you, Dean. People are starting to talk about you and her.”
I swiveled around and glared at him. “What are you saying?”
“I’m just saying, I’ve heard shit.” Norton rested his elbows on his knees and leaned forward. “You can tell me, buddy. Do you have some kind of like… kink? You know, where you get off on doing it with pregnant chicks?”
It took every bit of restraint I had not to leap to my feet and pummel Norton back into his bed. His only saving grace was that I knew he was wasted and couldn’t be held responsible for what he was saying.
