I should be paying attention to this. I should be fully immersed in the primal art of pelting strangers with neon-colored paint projectiles while Forrest channels his inner G.I. Joe, complete with unnecessarily intense hand signals and useless information on military equipment. This is our sacred ritual. When we’re playing paintball, we’re no longer grown men with real problems and responsibilities. We don our plastic armor that makes us look like we’re acting out a scene inCall of Duty, and pretend for a couple hours that the solution to all our shitty baggage is annihilating the opposing team.
Even after Forrest abandoned our apartment and the escort business for domestic bliss, the ritual remained. We’re friends who’ve seen each other at our best, worst, and most ridiculous. This is supposed to be an escape, but I’m chained and trapped by the guilt of what happened on that balcony. I shouldn’t have touched her. I shouldn’t have gift-wrapped her for the wolves with their telephoto lenses and clickbait headlines.
Charlie was clearly barely holding herself together with tape and prayers. I just set her world on fire in the worst way.
“Taio.” Forrest’s voice cuts through my spiral and suddenly I’m staring at his boots. “You with us?”
I rise, then huddle into the team circle with all the renewed enthusiasm of a cat being forced to attend its own birthday party. My paintball gun dangles from my fingers like an overcooked noodle. “Yeah. Sorry. What’s the plan?”
“Cam takes left flank. Saylor takes right. You’re with me up the middle. We breach in thirty.”
Cam blinks. “I don’t know what any of those words mean.”
Forrest rolls his eyes so dramatically his entire head follows the motion, like a human-sized bobblehead. “Just go left and try not to get shot.”
“Which left?”
“There’s only one left, Cam,” Say grunts out.
“There’s also a right. And a middle. And frankly, I’d rather be at the bar around the corner, which is south.”
Forrest pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to control his exasperation. “Just follow Say. Do what he does.”
Saylor nods with enthusiasm. “Right in front of me, mate.Like a human shield.”
“Fine. But I want it noted that I’m here under protest.”
“Noted. Now move.”
We move. Or rather, Forrest and Saylor move with the fluid precision of men who take this way too seriously. Cam wanders vaguely leftward, looking like a man who just time-traveled and is trying to orient himself with this strange new world. I move like someone whose brain is three miles away, tangled up in memories of a cartoon Tweety shirt and a voice like heartbreak.
A paintball whizzes past my ear. Then another. The enemy team has spotted us. Easily. Probably because Cam is walking around like an inflatable tube man.
“Get down, we’re made,” Saylor warns about a second too late.
I take a hit to the shoulder. The impact stings—a sharp bloom of pain that’ll leave a bruise tomorrow.
Another hit. Chest this time. I roar more out of frustration than anything. Ten seconds into the match and I’m sat? What the fuck?
“Taio’s down!” Saylor shouts. “Hawk, it’s the three of us. Let’s just—” He stops short and I hear a cry of agony coming from my distant left. “Shit. Just two of us,” Say says through the radio. “Cam just got pelted.”
“Just leave me, bro,” Cam pleads through the radio with mock theatrics. “Finish the mission.”
“Yeah, we were going to, buddy. Ty—you good?”
“Yup, just headed to the loser bench,” I answer defeatedly.
I raise my hands and trudge toward the dead zone. Cam joins me approximately two minutes later, having been cornered behind a barrier and shot repeatedly while yelling “I surrender, I surrender” to opponents who clearly didn’t care.
Cam collapses onto the bench beside me, clutching his neck like he’s been hit by a sniper rather than a paintball. “This is a war crime,” he declares, voice pitched uncannily like a toddler who was denied ice cream. “That jackass in the blue mask saw I was surrendering and shot me anyway.In the neck!That’s fucking illegal.” He yanks his collar down dramatically. “Look at this monstrosity. It’s bad already, isn’t it?” The welt is indeed impressive—angry red with a purple center, pulsing like it’s trying to communicate in Morse code.
“No, man. You can’t even see it,” I lie, just to stop his whining.
I’m already on my phone, scrolling through headlines with a growing knot in my stomach. The news has gotten worse since I checked this morning.Much worse.
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