“Yeah, but Campos said that I could have burned down the whole fucking barracks,” I grumble, balling the paper up and throwing it in the trash. The work detail form is done in triplicate, like most things in the Army. The white original, which goes in Captain Campos's file that he keeps on everyone, the yellow copy, which the company admin desk keeps, and then my copy, pink. “Never mind the floor is hard tile and our walls are concrete and granite. We live in a fucking fallout shelter!”
“Well for once, I'm glad that you’re the one getting in trouble for shit going down in our room and not me,” Cho jokes, leaning back. “Chill, don't get in a bind about it. That's one Saturday, and this is an A weekend anyway. Besides, you burned one of your passes already last weekend with that trip to New York. What, you're gonna lose all your triathlon conditioning by missing one ride?”
“No,” I growl, turning to my laptop. Nobody knows about Lindsey. I don't need that sort of attention, and Cho thinks I went down to the city by myself to just hang out. “Just . . . oh, fuck it, you're right. One weekend, and I can do something else afterward.”
“That's the spirit,” Cho says with false good cheer. I wonder how much of that cheer is because he's gotten used to spending weekends under some sort of restriction, or if he's trying to hide a lot of anger and being pissed off at the Academy system because of it. “Anyway, I'm heading over to E-4.”
“Who's over there that you know?” I ask. “Math study session?”
“Yeah, that’s it . . . studying,” Cho says, grinning. “Actually, what I plan on studying is Glenda's legs.”
“Who?” I ask, surprised. I didn't know Cho was seeing a girl.
“Glenda Bell. I started talking to her last time I had hours. It rained, and they had us up in the sixth floor of Washington Hall, just sitting. She's a foreign language major, and I asked for some help with my French.”
“You don't take French,” I note, pointing at the Portuguese textbooks above his desk.
“Like that matters?” Cho replies, laughing. “She thought it was cute, or at least she didn't throw me out of her room. Anyway, see ya.”
Cho disappears, and I laugh, shaking my head. I’ve gotta admit, the man's got style, even if he does get told to get lost most of the time. The man strikes out with women constantly, not that it stops him.
Speaking of women, I'm not looking forward to what I've got to do next. I close my door and pick up my phone. “Hello?”
“Lindsey? It's Aaron.”
“Oh!” Lindsey says, and at least she sounds happy. I still have no damn clue where to go after last night when I'm broke as fuck, but maybe I can talk to her about that later. “How's it going?”
“Not that great, actually,” I admit, sighing. “I kinda fucked up and got myself busted. We're going to have to cancel our Saturday ride. I got hours.”
“Ouch,” Lindsey says, sounding genuinely disappointed. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, I just made a stupid mistake. It’s just one day. But the work detail runs from one to six, and I'm not allowed to leave post until that's cleared out. With sunset like a half hour later, we couldn't even get started,” I add. “Sorry.”
“That's okay, really,” Lindsey says, and in her voice, I hear acceptance and forgiveness that I didn't quite get from my roomie's attempt at humor. “So Saturday's out.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “What about Sunday? You and I, the bikes, and we could head out for a while . . .”
“Sorry, I've got work that day,” Lindsey says regretfully. “But what about Monday?”
Monday? I've got to wait until then? “Monday?”
“I understand,” Lindsey says, lowering her voice to a sexy, kittenish purr. “If it helps, it’s been on my mind too.”
I groan, my cock twitching in my shorts. It's like it finally realized its purpose again other than helping me piss in the toilet. And now that it's been inside Lindsey, it wants back there again, and as quickly as possible.
There’s a moment of silence, and Lindsey laughs softly. “Sorry. Okay, well, maybe you can give me a call tomorrow night. We can call it Friday phone date night.”
“A phone date night?” I repeat.
“Gimme a call about eight. We’ll talk then,” Lindsey says.
Marching down to Flirty Walk along with the rest of the work detail crew, I'm somewhat glad that I did get work detail this weekend. The sky overhead is gloomy, and it's already threatening to rain. It's no weather for bike riding with Lindsey. I hope it holds off, if for no other reason than I hate working in the rain. And besides, I know the firstie who is running the details. I had a few run-ins with him before. He'll run us into the ground in anything short of a nor'easter.
“So where are we starting out, anyway?” someone asks, and the firstie turns around, walking backward.
“We're covering the first half of Flirty, from the north arch to Sheridan's bench,” he says, earning some groans from the guys whom I take it are working off longer slugs than what I got. Hey, better for them to be doing this than the poor damn fools who got caught with DUI or some other sort of alcohol offense. The Supe not only puts a letter of reprimand in their permanent file that stays with them after they graduate, but he makes them march tours Old Corps style, dress uniform and rifle on the shoulder. Give me work details any day of the week.