“The baggage that makes you treat people like shit and act like a raving bitch nobody wants to work with. Lennox is asking to be reassigned, you know?” She threw her car into reverse and backed out of the driveway, spearing me with another glare before focusing on the road.
Yes, I knew. Travis Lennox was a new member of my flight crew, and during our most recent aerial refueling training he froze, costing us valuable time and almost making us fail the training. “That’s probably for the better. I don’t think he’s cut out to be flight crew.”
“Not cut out for it? Bitch, please. Lennox is new. He needed your reassurance and encouragement and you dressed him down in front of everyone. He was a mess before the training even started. You put all this pressure on your crew and you expect them not to buckle under it.”
Of course I did. Flight crews handled high-stress situations regularly, and there was no room for amateurs who froze. I was doing the kid a favor, probably saving his life. “Shit will be a lot more nerve-wracking when we’re refueling over the ocean. If he can’t hack it in training, he really won’t be able to hack it out there.”
“Bullshit,” she said, stopping for a light before turning on the road that would take us away from Cannon Air Force Base and toward the Albuquerque, New Mexico airport. “Everyone’s first aerial refueling is a crazy stress-fest. Don’t act like yours was some cake walk. I remember.”
We’d gone through flight training eight years ago. Sometimes it seemed longer, like I’d been flying forever and hadn’t actually gotten anywhere. “They keep sticking me with kids who don’t know their shit, and it makes me look bad.”
Monica rolled her eyes. “They stick you with kids because everyone agrees that youdoknow your shit, and if anyone can train them, you can. Naomi, you could build these kids up and get them combat ready, but instead, you choose to break them down and make them question what they’re even doing in the service. Now, cut the bullshit and tell me what this is really about.”
I’d never been a good liar, and Monica could always see through me. Even when I couldn’t see through myself. I took a moment and thought about what was bugging me. What about the training had set me off. “Every time they stick me with a new kid, they pull me off CSARs.” Combat search and rescues were my passion. The ops involved swooping into hostile territory to pick up servicemen, essentially saving the day and doing my little adrenaline-junkie, wannabe-superhero heart good. I lived for the action and hated being sidelined. Training newbies was the worst kind of being benched.
“Girl, you are theonlyactive female in the twenty-sixth Special Tactics Squadron. You graduated at the top of your class, above even me, which I’m still salty about because I know you were holding out on me during those study sessions. You’re the best helo pilot I’ve ever seen, and you know you can fly circles around everyone else in your squad. You’ve worked your ass off to get here, and you’ve arrived. Can’t you just chill the fuck out for a minute and enjoy it without being ‘on’ all the time?”
“Arrived where?” I asked. “Enjoy what? I have to be perfect to get their respect, but not too perfect, because I don’t want to out-perform and intimidate them. And now, because I’m doing well, they pull me back to babysit? That’s bullshit, and you know it.”
She snorted. “Don’t talk to me like I don’t know the struggle. Four percent of all Air Force pilots are female. Two percent are fighter pilots and I know I don’t need to tell you how many are blackandfemaleandfighter pilots. No matter how hard I work, no matter how many commendations I get, some fool will always be whispering about affirmative action creepin’ into the military, talkin’ likethat’sthe reason I’m here. Like I didn’t earn my way. Like a strong, intelligent, beautiful black woman couldn’t possibly handle the G-forces and blow shit up. But I don’t know what you’re hollerin’ about. We knew what we were getting into when we signed up. Shit, Naomi, we went for the jobs we knew would be the most challenging. What did you expect? This isn’t daycare. There’s no naps or treats, and nothing is fair.”
She was right, but it didn’t make me feel any better. “I don’t know. I guess I thought it’d get easier eventually. I’m sick of playing by their rules. I just want to go out and perform my job to the best of my ability. Is that so hard?”
“You’re the only one making it difficult. You know I’m only telling you this because you’re my girl and I love you, but you don’t get to be sick of it. You knew the rules when you signed up. You knew it would be hard. Hell, that’s why you did it. So, you sure as hell don’t get to turn into some woe-is-me the-man-is-out-to-get-me bitch about it. You do that, and every single misogynistic asshole out there wins. They get to call us moody bitches and complain about why we don’t belong. We’re not going down like that, Nae. Not when our bodies are made to handle G-forces better. We belong in the sky. We own that bitch.”
Monica always had a way of making me see things differently, and she was giving me just the slap across the face I needed. This was why I loved her. Even when her words hurt, they made me think, made me want to be better and work harder.
“But girl, you already know all of this. I swear, I will never understand why you march around the base with a stick up your ass. You’ve done everything you set out to do. What more do you have to prove, Nae?”
It was an excellent question with several possible answers. Maybe I wanted to prove that I wouldn’t quit and walk out when life got hard like my mom had. Maybe I needed to show the world that I had what it took to be the daughter of Jacob “Jake” Lincoln, Army Special Forces veteran and president and founder of the badass motorcycle club I’d grown up in. Maybe I was desperate to assure myself that I was every bit as valuable as my brother, Tyler “Link” Lincoln, who was also an Army Special Forces veteran and would soon be taking the club’s reins from our dad.
No. I’d lived with the pressure of my family my entire life and it sure as hell wasn’t bothering me now. Something else was. Something more unattainable than the sense of self-worth I could never seem to foster within myself. “Did you hear that the Green Berets allowed a woman on the Q Course?” I asked.
The Special Forces Qualification Course was an important step in Army Special Forces training. Until recently, the course had been closed to women. When my dad had first come home from serving our country, I’d sat on his lap and told him I wanted to be a Green Beret, just like him. He’d laughed and brushed my hair out of my face, telling me it was impossible. Girls weren’t allowed to be Green Berets. It was the first time I’d ever felt truly disconnected from my father. I wanted to forge my own path along his legacy, but the fact that I was a girl had kept me from it.
“No way! How’d she do?” Monica asked.
“Failed.”
“Dammit.”
Indeed. I’d always wondered how I’d do on the Q Course. My father and brother had passed it, but would I? I’d worked my ass off to get where I was, but without that measurement, I felt like I hadn’t proven a damn thing. I’d never measure up to that standard. Not when my gender forced me to use a different yard stick. It wasn’t even like I wanted to be a Green Beret after those childhood fantasies passed. I just hated that it hadn’t been an option when I’d enlisted because I didn’t have a penis.
Kind of like the way I’d never be a patched member of the motorcycle club my dad had started. The club my brother was taking over. It didn’t matter that I was also a veteran and could drive and fix motorcycles. I didn’t have a penis, so my acceptable aspirations for club life were limited to a property patch.
I could only get in if some biker made me his ol’ lady.
Fuck that.
I didn’t want a penis, but not having one sure did close a lot of doors.
“You need this vacay,” Monica announced. “You need to remove that stick from your ass, turn it into a flag, and let it fly. You’re about to be surrounded by some fine-ass biker man candy, right? Your challenge for this event, should you choose to not be a candy-ass bitch and accept it, is to find some especially tasty looking morsel and take a big, juicy bite. You pickin’ up what I’m puttin’ down?” She wiggled her eyebrows at me.
How on earth could I miss the meaning behind that? She was so ridiculous, I couldn’t help but laugh. Gifted at drawing me out of my own insecurities and keeping me from taking myself too seriously, this girl was my diamond. My rock.
“I’m serious. When’s the last time you got laid?” she asked.
I thought back, but couldn’t remember. Most of the guys on base were good guys—and not the misogynistic assholes I made them out to be when I was frustrated—but they liked to talk, and I wasn’t about to become the subject of any whore rumors. Men could sleep with whomever they wanted and not get a word of flack about it, but when a woman made her way around the base people called her a slut, her career suffered, and nobody took her seriously anymore. That wasn’t a price I was willing to pay for a little nookie.
