“Let’s see…San Antonio, Dallas, Houston, Baton Rouge…Mobile fora while. Boston for a bit. New Orleans. And then here, I guess.”
“You got a place to run to next?”
“I do, actually,” he says, his grin suggesting he’s always readyto be out the door as soon as things start heading south. “Was thinking thatChicago might be nice. I figured I might at least like the weather better.”
“The cold?”
“It’d be a change from this humidity. At least for a bit. What?You haven’t lived in a lot of different places?”
“I grew up in Tennessee, but I moved here shortly after I gotback from Iraq.”
“Why Georgia?”
I tense up. I don’t like the conversation shifting back to me,but I’ve spent years learning the art of ambiguity, so I can handle it.
“To stay close to someone,” I reply.
“Ooh. A lover?”
“A good friend.”
“Must have been a really good friend if you were willing to movehere with him.”
“He was. The best of friends. A guy named Caleb.” I choke alittle on his name as I say it. “Met him when we first went to war. We hit itoff real well.” The tension rising in my chest is intense. I worry that if I’mnot careful, I might have a panic attack.
13
Jay
I can tell this guy means a lot to Reese just by the way hestruggled through his name, but he’s become even more rattled than when he wastalking about the war. It makes me wonder why this Caleb guy isn’t in his lifeanymore. They must’ve been a couple. Surely this guy had to have been more thana friend, like Reese said he was. That would explain why he acts so weird whenhe says his name.
Reese drinks from his cocktail, but he takes his time as hegulps down what must be at least a shot’s worth of vodka. I’m waiting for himto continue, but he just stares off.
“What happened to him?” I ask, figuring that’s where the storywas leading.
“He passed away,” he says, his face turning red, his jawtightening as he seems to be trying to keep himself together over it.
“Sorry,” I say. “Didn’t mean to hit on a sore subject.”
He looks at me, but not reallyatme. Through me. Likehe’s still thinking about this friend.
“Not your fault,” he says finally. “He was a Georgia native. We didn’tget along very well when we first met. He was like you—a stubborn shit who gotinto trouble with his mouth. Didn’t like to take orders. He had a beautifulbody because every time he talked back to the sergeant, he would have to dopush-ups. He’d tell everyone that boot camp was the best thing that everhappened to his six-pack.” He chuckles. “One night, maybe a week after we’dbeen put in the same squad, we were all drinking, and he turned to me and said,‘I don’t like the way you look at me.’ He seemed really serious about it, too.He must’ve caught me looking at him in the showers, which I would do sometimesbecause he was hot as hell. Never had any intention of doing anything with him.He just…was gorgeous, so it was something that would catch my eye occasionally.I figured he was going to be an ass after that, but the next day, he wrappedhis arm around me and started chatting me up about this other guy he didn’tlike in our squad. We were inseparable after that.
“He was a good guy. He got into the Reserves because, like me,he didn’t have a lot of options outside of it. He grew up in a small town in abig family…a single mother who had a hard time keeping up with them all. Shepassed away when he was in high school. She didn’t have much of anything toleave to the kids, so he had to make it on his own. He figured it was eitherthe army with the possibility of getting a real education or winding up amechanic in a shop. He studied engineering. When he got back, he wound up beinga mechanic for a while anyway.”
“What happened to him?” I ask.
“The PTSD got to be too much for him, and he just…”
He stops short, telling me everything I need to know. I can tellby the way he keeps moving his lips that he wants to go on, but I don’t thinkhe can right now.
“Sorry,” he says. “Wasn’t planning on talking about these kindsof things tonight.”
“What were you planning, then?” I ask, raising my eyebrowssuggestively, hoping to distract him from the pain the memory of his friendobviously stirred.
Reese forces a smile. I rise from the stool and head around thebar, eyeing him with a look that surely makes my intent clear. He appears toslip out of whatever trance he was in as I approach him.
I kiss him. Hard. I want to yank him from the darkness before itgrabs him and leaves him shaking like I’ve seen it do before.
