SEBASTIAN & CAROLINE’S TENTH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY
“Hey, hot mama!”
I take a moment to appreciate the beautiful woman who’s my baby mama. Well, the kids are not so much babies now. Marco is nine-going-on-nineteen, if the way he notices girls is anything to go by—little dude has all the moves. Our baby girl, Shirley, is nearly six, named for the woman I think of as my mom.
And Sofia, our adopted daughter is 11 and such a beautiful soul. She loves being a big sister and shows it in everything she does—the way she looks after her brother and sister, the way she talks to them and tells them stories. Cutest fucking thing ever. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that her life started in the stark mountain ranges of Afghanistan. I talk to her in Dari every day so she has some connection with her homeland, but in all other ways, she’s an American girl, just starting junior high. And I will personally FUBAR any teenage boy who lays eyeballs on either of my daughters.
Ever.
I look at my family and wonder how I got to be such a lucky mofo. It’s not all been smooth sailing, not by a long shot, but life is good right now; we’re good.
Caro had her 50th birthday a few months back. I know it bothers her, although she doesn’t say much, but I caught her coloring her grays in the bathroom with a home dye kit.
“Grays show up more when you’ve got dark hair, Sebastian,” she snapped at me when I asked her why she was doing it, although her eyes were glassy with unshed tears when she said it.
“Baby, I don’t care. If you want to color your hair pink, green and purple, then go ahead. You’ll always be beautiful to me.”
“It’s alright for you,” she snorted, torn between tears and laughter. “You’re blond—no one will ever notice.”
And although she didn’t say it, sometimes the fact that I’m 13 years younger still bothers her.
Things had gotten a little tense between us for a while, and it was for the dumbest of reasons.
Since I was medically discharged from the Marines, I work as a personal trainer at an upscale Manhattan gym four days a week. That sounds fucked up, but when I was discharged, the docs thought I’d never walk well again, and the bullet that went through my shoulder left me with poor motor skills in that arm. But I’ve worked really hard to get as much function back as possible. I’m fitter than most guys in their thirties or even twenties.
So now I work with people like me—I mean guys who’ve been injured. I even had to go back to school to learn all the anatomy shit to be a personal trainer, but it was worth it in the end. When I first started out, I used my USMC connections to cut a deal with a gym owner, Connor Gibson, a guy who has a chain of gyms across the East Coast. He wanted to do something for ex-servicemen and women, so I persuaded him to let me do rehabilitation work with guys who’d lost limbs in Iraq and Afghanistan. When he saw that it was good marketing, good for business, and highly fucking motivating for the able-bodied in his gym, he made it a core concept for the whole chain. But part of the deal was that he wanted me working more on the marketing side, as a kind of poster-boy for people recovering from injuries. What-the-fuck-ever if it helped my guys.
I definitely had injuries: as well as being shot, I’d lost 15% of muscle mass from my right thigh after getting caught in a suicide bombing in Afghanistan.
But then Gibsy had the bright idea of putting me on the front of a fucking calendar that he sold for the charity Wounded Warriors. That was fucking bad enough, but it got worse. Because that’s when I was approached by a model agency to do underwear modeling for them. I’m not kidding! How fucking embarrassing is that? A bunch of strangers staring at my junk. But the killer in the contract was that they’d fundraise on behalf of Wounded Warriors—a deal that would net hundreds of thousands of dollars for the charity. How could I say no to that? And Caro talked me into it, as well.
So seven or eight times a year, I’m flown off to some beach or photo studio, and paid crazy amounts of money to strut around in skivvies. Too fucking funny. Except that I started getting stopped in the street by strange women, or even groped in public.
At first Caro thought it was kind of amusing, but the way these women treated her wasn’t. Yeah, it caused some tension for a while. I said I’d stop the dumb modeling, but she pointed out how much money the charity would lose, and the publicity meant that Gibsy gave extra free memberships to rehab guys to use his facilities. I guess you could say I was locked into it.
I’ve just gotten back from a shoot in Florida and surprised Caro and the kids by turning up three hours earlier than they’d expected.
Caro is sitting on the deck in the backyard reading a book. She jumps when I whisper in her ear.
“Hey, hot mama.”
“Sebastian!” she manages to breathe out, before I give her the long, hot kiss that I’ve been imagining for days.
Then Marco looks up from where he’s been kicking a soccer ball and a huge smile spreads across his face.
I never had that as a kid. The only emotions my dad invoked in me were fear and hatred. My kids are never going to know what that’s like. Never.
“Dad!” yells Marco. “It’s Dad!”
Shirley runs out of the house, shrieking at an ear-splitting volume, and she and Marco start using me like a jungle gym. Then Sofia joins in and it becomes a group hug-a-thon, and we crumple onto the deck while they climb all over me. I fuckin’ love it.
“Hey, can we have a BBQ tonight?” yells Marco.
“Sure, bud—at Atash’s place. Me and my girl are having a date night.”
Marco kicks at a dandelion growing in the cracked paving, sending the seeds floating into the air.
“That means you’re going to have sex,” he grimaces. “That’s gross.”
What the fuck? I mouth to Caro.
She shrugs, as if to say, You’re his dad—you fix it.
“Don’t disrespect your mom,” I say to Marco seriously. “I’ve missed her and we just want to spend some time together.”
“I think it’s romantic,” giggles Sofia, and I can’t help rolling my eyes. Fuck knows what books she’s reading these days. I leave that shit up to Caro.
“Sorry, Mom,” Marco mutters when I give him another hard stare.
“Did ya miss me, too, Daddy?” asks Shirley.
“Yeah, I missed all my babies!” I say pulling her into a hug.
But she wriggles away looking annoyed. “I’m not a baby anymore, Daddy!”
“Aw, you’ll always be my baby,” I laugh.
Sofia takes Shirley’s hand and herds Marco toward the door.
“Come on, we’re going to Uncle Atash.”
“I’ll pick you guys up at twenty-hundred hours!” I call after them, and laugh as Marco salutes.
Kid wants to be a Marine and is forever asking Caro about my medals and where I served. He knows I don’t like talking about it, so he asks her. She’s gently trying to dissuade him from enlisting and figures that she might be successful with another nine years of persuading him to go to college instead, but I’m not so sure. He reminds me a lot of me at that age—stubborn and single-minded, just a lot happier.
They wave goodbye and I stare at my wife. “Bed, woman. Now.”
She sucks her teeth and looks down. “Can we talk first?”
That doesn’t sound good. I sit next to her and hold her hand. “Sure, baby, what’s up?”
She’s silent, just staring at our joined hands until she lets go and rakes her fingers through her hair.
“I feel like we’re drifting apart,” she says, and the words threaten to shatter me. She’s only just started talking and I’m trying not to freak out. “You have the gym and your modeling work. The kids are in school now. I’m bored with covering local events for community news-sites. And you and I…”
My heart clenches. What the fuck is she trying to say?
“Well, frankly, Sebastian, the only time we see each other is in bed and we’re…”
“Fucking like it’s the end of the world?”
She laughs suddenly and I feel my shoulders relax for the first time since she told me she wanted ‘to talk’.