Page 89 of Hard to Lose

“Did you expect me to say something else?” he asks.

“You’re not going to tell me to get my ass back to New York because I’m slacking in getting shit done?”

“I’m not going to tell you anything. I could tell you that you have contracts piling up and requests coming in that need your attention. That regardless of your absence, I’m impressed with the progress you’ve made with marketing and social media and excited to see how this will help KSM move forward. I could sit here and badger you with questions, and tell you that it’s ridiculous to play out this charade, one that I hope won’t hurt you in the end. But I won’t. When you left here, you told me you’d be home on a set date, and I’m going to trust that you will be since you haven’t told me otherwise.”

I watch Gunner doing normal, weekend things and wonder how it’s going to feel to miss this when I do go home. The ease. The comfort. The having someone who gets me.

“Honey?” my dad says.

“Hmm?” I don’t trust myself to talk, because I think my voice would betray the nonchalance I’m attempting about leaving here.

To leaving Gunner.

“Remember this. The best relationships are the ones you never saw coming.”

“Who said anything about a relationship?”

His chuckle is low and comforting and a tad mocking. “Because I know you, and if my Chase wasn’t going to get the prize, she would have had her shit packed and be headed home as soon as possible. My Chase doesn’t like failing at anything and so—”

“I didn’t fail,” I say and then realize it only serves to prove his point.

“No, but you didn’t come home.” I can hear the smile in his voice. “That tells me all I need to know.”

“Dad.” The lone word is an exasperated sigh.

“Don’t apologize, Chase. Enjoy your time. Paint the town red. Sometimes life just happens and you have to jump on the merry-go-round till it’s time to get off.”

I don’t know why tears come to my eyes but they do, and I blink them away. “How do you know when it’s time?” My voice is barely a whisper when I ask.

“Sometimes it’s never time. Sometimes you have to get used to that incredible dizzy feeling. It forces you to readjust the way you look at the world, because you realize you can’t live without it like you once did.”

I clear my throat and try to find the words to respond. “I don’t have that option, Dad.”

But his words stay with me all day.

As Gunner and I laughed and had an impromptu dance party while we barbequed burgers. As we had a mini make-out session on the couch—simply kissing, and nothing else. I can’t remember the last time in my adult life a man simply wanted to kiss me, to enjoy the act, without using it as a precursor to sex.

It was refreshing.

It was sexually frustrating.

And there was something special about it that simply owned my heart.

Yet, my dad’s talk about merry-go-rounds and being dizzy spun in my mind and now I can’t sleep. So I wander through the house. I look at pictures on a bookshelf. One of him and a woman who looks so much like him, I assume she’s his mom. One of four soldiers in addition to Gunner and wonder if this is the group he talks about often. The one he celebrates the birthdays of even though they’re no longer here.

I walk past Gunner where he has fallen asleep on the couch. Sleep comes so hard for him, even after a long day and closing down the bar, I’ve noticed he’s usually fitful in sleep. So much so that many nights I wake up to find the bed beside me cold and when I get up to look, he’s typically sitting on the couch or at his desk in the alcove off the kitchen. Anything to exhaust him to the point of no return so as he says, “the nightmares don’t come.”

But tonight, he fell asleep on the couch when he got home after closing FU-Bar. I laid a blanket on top of him and went to bed alone, not wanting to disturb him, but his sleep isn’t peaceful.

It was his struggling with someone in his sleep that woke me even from where I was asleep in the bedroom. I contemplated waking him up to pull him from the dream but by the time I got to the family room, he was settled.

But the nightmare is still there, still troubling him, and I wish I could do something to soothe him or make him feel better. I know I can’t. I know soft words from a girlfriend aren’t going to erase the horrors of war that his mind relives, and that’s hard for me to accept.

“Stay with me. Shotgun. Come on. Don’t you fucking die on me.” He groans and kicks his feet around. Normally he settles down after an outburst, but this time he continues to be agitated. A tear slides down his cheek. He gurgles, like he’s drowning. He thrashes his head from side to side.

I watch him for what feels like an eternity and can’t take it any longer. I do the only thing I know to do. I squeeze my ass onto the couch beside him and gently rub my hands up and down his chest so as not to startle him.

It’s something that first my mom and then Dekker used to do to me when I was a little girl and struggling with a nightmare.