Abby
I am eleven years old again.
A grown man is screaming in my face. The demons of war etched in his skin, ripping him apart.
But eleven-year-old me did not love the man in my past.
And love is a powerful, stupid thing.
It takes every ounce of courage I have not to reach for him. To place my hand on the scarred and broken man in front of me and tell him it’s not his fault.
I'm not eleven years old anymore. And I have a choice to make.
And I will not beg. I will not cry for this man.
My cheeks are wet in the shadows.
My heart broken into a thousand pieces in my chest.
No matter how much it hurts. No matter how much it rips my soul out and grinds it into the damp pavement.
I let him go.
Chapter 22
Josh
I should have gone home. But if I’ve utterly and completely destroyed everything good in my life tonight, I might as well keep drinking. And there's nowhere better to be right now than crawling into the bottom of a bottle, numbing the pain if not ending it. I have no idea where I'd even start on that one.
I knock back another shot. I've lost track but I'm pretty sure Eli is counting.
When I showed up at his apartment, he didn't judge. Didn't cuss me out for trying to take his door off the hinges at three in the morning.
He took one look at me and let me in, then poured the Jack and Coke silently.
Waiting.
He knew I'd start to spill at some point. He's creepy psychic that way sometimes. Right now, he's just drinking quietly, letting me marinate in my own misery.
I want to ask why he wasn’t at The Pint tonight but I don’t.
Eli says nothing. It's part of why I like the guy. The first time I met him, I pegged him for having some heavy f*ck
ing rocks in his ruck from the war. Who doesn't, though?
I sit there silently with him, filled with hate and anger and rage. Hate at the stupidity of the f*ck
ing war. Rage at the emptiness it's left me with.
And anger.
The fear that I will always be f*ck
ing damaged. That this is my new normal.
And maybe, it isn’t worth it.
If I close my eyes, I see nothing but the brightly bleak desert. The piercing sunlight glinting off pools of fresh blood.
"You have any morals, Eli?" I ask finally. My words are heavy and thick and run together.
"Don't we all?"
I squint at him. He's a little blurry right now. He might have two heads. "You're the officer. Aren't you supposed to be a leader of character or some shit?"
He shakes his head slowly, sipping his Jack. "Was an officer. I'm not anymore."
"I notice you didn't answer the question. About morals?" I suddenly very much need to know the answer to my question. Even if I won't remember it in the morning.
"Sure. I've got morals."
"Where did you put them?"
"What the f*ck
are you talking about?"
I point my glass at him. I'm pretty sure some Jack sloshes over the rim of the glass. "When you went to war. Where did you leave them for safekeeping?"
"You don't check your morals at the door when you sign up, brother."
Another shot slides down my throat. It's smooth now. Smooth and steadying. "Yeah, well some of us had to." I raise my glass in his direction. "Remember when you told me I should be grateful I came home?" I shake my head. "I'm not."
"You're drunk." A quiet menace in his words that I am too far gone to heed.
"Why should I be? I can't f*ck
without threatening to beat the shit out of someone. All I'm good for is fighting. I should enlist again. Go back to war."
I reach for the bottle. He slaps his hand over the rim of my glass. "Say that again," he says.
"I should go back to war. Let them finish what they started."
He shakes his head. "Not that part. The ‘beat the shit out of someone’ part."
I swallow. It f*ck
ing sucks hearing my shame put into words. "You got it pretty much covered."
"What do you mean, you can't f*ck
? Without violence?”
I adjust my pants. "It's…complicated."
"Try me." He slides the bottle from my hand and pours me another glass.
Shame burns my skin. My head drops back to the chair behind me.
"I thought you were seeing that girl from the Baywater," he says after a while.
I want to ask how he knows about Abby. I remember she came to the bar one night.
Shame crawls up my spine, a cold and prickling feeling. "I screwed that up tonight."
"Is that why you're here?"
"You could sound a little pissed at me or something, you know? This whole saintly, calm older brother thing isn't what I need at the moment."
He releases a quiet sigh. "I am not your company commander and I am not your father. Your daddy trauma isn't my problem."
"f*ck
you." But there is no threat in my words.
"At least I can."
I flip him the middle finger. "That hurts, man."
I say nothing. His words cut small chunks out of my remaining pride and toss them into a frying pan. I can hear them cooking, leaving me alone and ashamed.