His lips curl at the edges, assuring me that whatever I do forhim must at least be good enough for him to keep coming back for more, which isa fucking relief. Because it feels good every time, and I want it again…andagain…and for however long it keeps feeling as good as it does.
I head back to my work, but William doesn’t give me any moreshit about the forklift, which he filled with fuel after I headed up to talkwith Reese.
As I help move some boxes onto the trucks, I find I’m filledwith an eagerness that I’ve never really felt while working before. I actuallyhave something to look forward to other than just getting home and desperatelytrolling Grindr for a trick.
I shouldn’t feel this giddy about it. It pisses me off a little.
I don’t do relationships. They’re complicated. They never endwell. I’ve only had a few in my early twenties, but after learning that theonly way they end is catching someone messaging another guy behind your back, Idecided I couldn’t do that to myself anymore. It wasn’t worth the fights or thescreaming matches. It wasn’t worth putting my heart out there only for it toget beaten up.
When my shift ends, I head back to my place for a bit. Showeroff. Pick out what I’m going to wear. I don’t have anything nice. Just my workclothes. Closest thing is a polo with a lube stain on it. I debate for a fewminutes before I decide it’s not noticeable enough for me to stress about it. Ithrow it on and head to Reese’s place.
He’s also cleaned up when I arrive, smelling of a fragrance thatcatches my attention. A striking cologne that’s almost as hypnotizing as he is.
He leads me inside. “Want a drink?”
“A drink? Oh, I don’t have to fuck and go?” I ask, teasing butkinda serious too.
“No,” he says, turning to me, a serious expression on his face.It comforts me.
What am I doing? If this all goes south, I’m gonna have to quitthis job and move on…to where next? How many cities do I need to bounce aroundto before I realize that wherever I go, I’m still there? My problems are stillthere. The pain and the hurt is still there.
“A drink would be nice,” I say.
12
Reese
I fix him a vodka Sprite at the kitchen bar. He sits in one ofmy stools, looking cute as fuck in a burgundy polo, his chest filling it outreal nice. I can see his nipples through it. Makes me want to skip any pretenseand strip him down, take him the way I’ve wanted to since we fucked in thesupply closet. But I don’t want him to think I’m an asshole who only wants himfor his body. He’s a good guy. He’s just guarded, and that’s something I morethan understand.
He looks around uneasily. I know he’s still in shock from howclean my place is. He had a similar expression on his face when he was here thefirst time. Makes me self-conscious.
“It’s the service,” I explain. I offer him his drink and startmaking my own. “That’s why I keep everything so clean. You don’t really havethe luxury of keeping things tidy when you’re shacking up with a bunch of otherguys and you’re spending your nights roughing it around the desert.” I’m tryingto downplay the far messier explanation. One I’m not ready to share with him.
“That makes a lot of sense,” he says, appearing sympatheticrather than judgmental, which is more often than not the response I get fromtricks that I bring home.
“What was that like?” he asks. Tension rises within me, and hemust sense it because just as quickly as he asks, he says, “Sorry, that was astupid question. I guess you don’t want to talk about it, considering—”
“No. I’m getting better. Laura says it’s good for me. She’s mytherapist. We’ve been working on this together for a long time. Believe me.”
He must think I’m all kinds of fucked up with the way I talk aboutthis shit. He can’t understand what it was like. Can’t understand everything wewent through. Can’t understand what it’s like to murder a human being and haveto find a way to make peace with that in your own head. To go around constantlytrying to justify putting a gun to someone’s head and blowing their brains outbecause you were scared as shit that they were about to kill you.
“At first,” I say, “it wasn’t much different from how I wasraised. I was with the state when I was a kid. You know the ones that never getadopted? That was me. So I just moved around from one orphanage to another.Shared dorm rooms with a bunch of other guys. I signed up for the armedservices because I was told it was a good way to pay for my education. That itwas the only way I’d be going to college. So I was in the Reserves. Studiedbusiness at UT. And then we went to war with Iraq, and I was deployed. It wasabout a year that I was gone. Most people were deployed for fourteen months.That was it. I don’t think most of us realized what we were getting ourselvesinto. We were kids. And at first, boot camp was fun. It was this bondingexperience where you got to hang with all these cool guys and goof around. Butthen shit got real when we were being shouted at by our superior officers andbeing told to scramble to get away from the machine guns. And the IEDs.”
“IEDs?”
“Improvised explosive devices. That’s what caused a hell of alot of injuries during the war. It’s how I…”
I can’t say it. I try to get the words out, but I choke on them.
“Got it,” he says as though he’s trying to give me an excuse notto finish my sentence. I appreciate it.
“I think a lot of guys thought the war would be real black andwhite. But is the woman running down the street an ally or is that baby she’scarrying really a bomb? You don’t know. And you have to make split-seconddecisions, a lot of which you regret.”
He stares at me wide-eyed. I got so lost in telling him about myexperience that I almost forgot he was here.
“That sounds horrible,” he says.
“It’s not something a bunch of eighteen-year-olds should beexpected to do. Die for their country. Suffer for their country. Too many guysI know came back from that messed up.”
