"I'll stay here, then,” I decided.
Bo knocked me on the back of the head. "So you'll be dishonorably discharged or thrown in the brig? That's going to win her back?" He hit me again. "Use your fucking head."
"All my ideas are shit." Bo opened his mouth and I threatened him, "Don't fucking say I told you so or it'll be on right now."
He closed his mouth then and then said, "I'm only standing down because I think the squirrel over there is stronger than you at the moment."
"I don't know how Sam got up and lived again after losing her husband because right now the pain is fucking unbearable,” I choked out.
Bo drew me against his side, a hand on the top of my head and I allowed myself to lean into him, like we were out in the desert and too tired to stand up after a thirty-mile hike through the hills of Afghanistan. "You gotta go home, get your head together, and plan an assault. There is no citadel, human or natural, that can withstand a siege from a Marine."
"I hope you're right."
They took me to the airport the next day. Silence was our fourth companion, so heavy and weighty it could have been another passenger.
When we arrived at the gate, Noah and Bo both got out of Noah’s truck. Bo had felt so sorry for me, he gave me shotgun even though I hadn’t called it.
“You look like hell,” Noah commented.
“Thanks, man.” I shouldered my seabag and rucksack. “It was real fun.”
Any moment the police would come and boot them out of the drop off lane but neither of them seemed to care. Noah grabbed me and pulled me in for a long hug. "You know we love you, man."
I nodded, the emotions of the last few days riding so close to the surface that I couldn't speak. He shoved me away then and grabbed me around my neck so I'd look straight at him. "You love her enough, you never stop fighting for her. Never stop showing her how much she matters. You give it your all, and even if she doesn't accept it, you lived up to your own standards and you can walk away with no regrets. But I'm telling you, Gray, that if you love her, she's going love you back. I know it."
I think it was the most words I’d ever heard Noah string together.
"Do you now?" I snorted.
"I do." He let go and said, "Semper Fi, Marine."
Always faithful.
Noah was right in one sense. I wondered a lot after Carrie had cheated on me if I'd given it my all. Maybe I hadn't. Probably I hadn't. I loved having sex with her, but I loved playtime with my boys just as much. And that had sat uncomfortably on my shoulders. Deployment had been a relief from the constant emotional upheaval.
In the airport, people shied away from me, the bruises on my face making me look like a dangerous man. The airline ticket agent didn’t give me the upgrade that servicemen and women usually received and I was stuck in the back by the bathrooms in a tiny seat with no space. The woman beside me shrank to her side as if I was a monster. I was a monster, though. Only a monster would’ve done what I’d done to Sam.
When I arrived home, I threw away my enlistment papers and drove out to see my parents.
"I'm not reenlisting," I told my dad. His mouth quirked to the side in what looked like disappointment, but he didn’t ask about my bruised face.
"What will you do?"
I wasn't going to say that I planned to return to the city to try to win over a girl, so I just mumbled, "Don't know."
"That doesn't sound like much of a plan." My dad had been a drill instructor when he retired, and you didn't get to that position without perfecting a stern look of reproof and disappointment. He laid a good one on me, but I was too numb to care.
I threw up my hands. "What do you want out of me? You said there were better things for me than just the Marines. You and Pops got in a fight about it at Christmas, and made Mom cry, so now I’m telling you I’m getting out. I’m going to get a degree, maybe go into law.” Maybe I’d be the lawyer Sam didn’t want to be. At this point I had no other plan but to win her back.
"I told you that because you were looking like you were at a crossroads. I wanted to make sure you thought long and hard about whatever decision you made."
I gaped at him. "I thought you wanted me to get out."
"Hell, no." He stood up and began to pace, his hands folded behind his back like he was barking orders to an unseasoned recruit, which is what I was acting like. "I wanted you to know that the Marines weren't your only option. That because we have a little more money now and I have a certain position, that you've got other choices. The Marines were good enough for your grandpa and me but we didn't have much. I know that there was a lot of pressure on you to enter the Corps because your older brothers decided against it. I wanted you to have an out."
I sank back in my chair. "I don't know what to say."
"Think about your service again," Dad recommended. "I don't want you making a hasty decision because you thought that’s what I wanted, but you'll have to do it on your own time and you’d better hurry before the boat fills up."
Boat space—or space in the Corps—was limited, particularly with the troop drawdown and the government tightening its belt on the defense budget. Ponder too long about your future options, and they’d be decided for you.
At my sigh, Dad came over and squeezed my shoulder. "But no matter when you make your decision, there will always be room for a good Marine like you. I'm proud of you, son."
Oh man, if you only knew. I swallowed and stood up, saluting my dad. He knocked my arm down, and drew me in for a hug. "Looks like all that thinking took a lot out of you. Let your mom coddle you for a bit. It'll make her feel good."
I spent the day with my parents and then drove over to my brothers' garage and they took me in without question. Unlike my dad, my brothers knew immediately what was wrong with me and it wasn't that I'd been wrestling with a decision about my future. "Girl troubles, huh?" said Luke, my oldest brother, but that was it. I tooled around in the garage doing odd jobs, running errands and learning a bit about custom painting, silently stoking my pain into hardened determination. Then it was back to Camp Pendleton.
My bruises were mostly healed by the time I got back to base but my CO still called me in. “Am I gonna hear about some Marine breaking shit in bars and generally making the Corps look bad?”
“No, sir.”
“I’d better not,” he harrumphed. “Where’s your reenlistment papers then?”
“I’m not reenlisting, sir.”
CO Dailey looked alarmed and then narrowed his eyes at me. “You better tell me what happened out there.”
“Nothing important, sir.”
“If it ain’t important, then why the hell aren’t you reenlisting? If it’s a tiny bar fight, then we give you an Article 15 and call it a day. With your record, that ain’t gonna hamper you.”
“No need for a non-judicial punishment, sir. Nothing will reflect poorly on the Corps, sir.”
The CO stared at me for a long time hoping I’d cough up some details but I stood rigidly at attention, giving him nothing but the stony face I’d learned in boot camp.
“Go on then, get out of here.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Samantha
ADAM’S CREW CAME IN THE night I returned from England.
“You look good,” Eve commented.
“Do I? Because I feel like shit.”
“Okay, I was lying to make you feel better. You look like you went on a bender in Reno and are still hung over, rather than a ten-day vacation to jolly England.”
“The Reno description is pretty close to how I feel. Besides England isn’t very sunny. Lots of rain.” It had mirrored my mood.