Chapter Text

October 28th, 2016

My hands are very, very cold.

It is a frigid October afternoon, the kind that warrants moth-ball scented linens and mulled wine. It’s a deceiving kind of cold, too, because the sky is perfect. If someone looked through a window from the inside of their house, maybe they would think it’s the middle of summer or late spring.

The canopy of the jet is closed tight, sealed impeccably, and my suit is thick. It smells of lye soap and skin. There’s perspiration gathering on my brow underneath my helmet and in the pit of my arms, but my hands are still cold.

My hands are cold every time I get nervous, even if I wear wool mittens, even if I wear our father’s thick leather gloves I’d taken before my first winter in Philly.

“How’re your hands? Cold yet?” Crimson asked on the tarmac, after we finished out walk-around.

Her helmet was tucked beneath her arm, resting on her hip, and our jet was looming behind her. It’s the only time my sister looked small to me.

The sun beat down above us, casting a shadow on the lower part of her face; her docile chin, her China-doll lips, the dimple in her left cheek, the blonde freckles over her nose. She reached out and took my left hand, then dropped it like it burned her. She shook her hand, contorting her face into a look of disbelief.

“Phew, Clover, cold as ice!”

Crimson was rarely nervous, and if she was, it never touched any part of her body. We were the same in the sense that we could command stillness in our limbs and slow our hearts with precise, measured breaths. But my hands got cold and hers never did.

Our F-18 was fragged. She watched them load mounds of ammo to our jet--API, HEI, SAPHEI--unblinking, unmoving.

“You’ll be fine,” she said after a moment, bumping me. I stood sturdy on the tarmac, my lime-colored helmet at my feet.

“I know,” I said, looking up at her.

The sun felt good on my cheeks.

She bit a grin and nodded.

“Couldn’t be a me without a you,” she said.

I zipped her khaki flight suit up so it covered her chest and shoulders. Her skin was warm to the touch, like the surface of a cooling kettle. I flattened out her shoulders and straightened her collar.

“Yeah,” I said, “and there couldn’t be a me without a you.”

Up here, approaching what feels like the top of the world, the sky is the kind of blue that seems endless and soft--like it’s made out of tufts of cotton and seamless flower petals.

We are flying somewhere over Europe, early in the afternoon.

“Approaching angels forty-six,” I say into my mask, “Maneater, you got us?”

When I speak, the scent of my smoothie thickens the air of my mask. It still smells sweet--that sick kind of sweet, the kind that would still taste sweet coming back up as bile.

“Roger, Maneater visual.”

The back of Crimson’s helmet is scuffed and scratched. Some of the scratches are so deep that patches of the baby pink color are flaking off, revealing the eggshell slate beneath it. There is a bright blue peace sign on the back of her helmet, and parts of it are chipping away, too. At the base of her neck, half a dusty blonde bun pokes out. I had twisted it into its place there earlier, after I twisted an identical bun at the base of my own neck.

“Banshee two engaging,” Crimson says, her voice crackling over the comm.

All I can hear besides the crackling comm is the sound of my own breathing. When I first came up in the air, it surprised me that I couldn’t hear the wind rushing past me. I feel it press down on my chest and hug me to my seat, but it never whispers to me.

The thinness of the air this high up is something I cherish--the moment I strain to breathe for the first time, when the cool stream of oxygen bursts through the mask and into my mouth, my nose. I like the feeling of the floor dropping out from under me, when I want to scramble around and find purchase on something to hold me in.

Our F-18 noses to the Northeast, tailing Banshee one, which is Maneater. I crane my neck--Banshee three is engaging, too. Jagger’s bright red helmet is like a blemish in the robin’s-egg sky.

“Banshee three engaged,” Jagger says, “sorry to break up the hen party.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Maneater snarks, “you didn’t.”

I know Crimson is smiling, even if I can’t see her face.

We are flying over a rocky terrain that is broken up by sprawling evergreen trees. There is already snow on the ground, the rocks jutting out from the white powder like jagged teeth. It looks very quiet--so soft, like the snow is just a dusting of powder.

“Radar?” Crimson asks.

The blinking screen is empty.

“Picture clean. Nose hot.”

“Roger. Banshee one engaging firewall.”

Maneater’s jets forward, her throttle maxed.

“Banshee two engaging firewall. Ready, kiddo?”

I reach forward to give Crimson a thumbs up. She nods without looking behind her and I hold tightly to my leather seat. The oxygen is racing inside me, like I’m gulping it down.

I’m forced against my seat like someone is holding me there. I strain to hear the wind whistle, but I don’t. One, two, three, four, five. I count the beats of my heart steadily, blinking rapidly as we approach Maneater’s tail. Crimson’s helmet is pressed against her headrest, too. The sky is so completely monochrome that it looks like we’re flying parallel to an endless screen.

“Banshee three engaging firewall,” Jagger follows closely.

For a moment, all I can hear is the jet slicing through the atmosphere, my own breathing, the oxygen hissing into my mouth. My saliva feels thick.
I will my heartbeat to steady and mirror Crimson’s, which I know is cool and collected. I could be Crimson’s heart monitor--no actual connected wires required. It feels like there is a left side of myself and a right side of myself--or maybe a top version of myself and a bottom version of myself--and one part of it is always Crimson. I even know what she thinks.

The radar is still empty, blinking precisely nothing. We are approaching the target rapidly, slyly--a Russian submarine somewhere off the coast of Poland, which has been disregarding every warning to evacuate the area they have not been granted access to.

The Atlantic Ocean glimmers ahead of us, deep blue ahead of our fleet, expanding just as vastly as the perpetual sky we are inside of. The water looks deep, and very dark, almost black.

“Regretting that panini yet, Crimson?”

Crimson laughs over comm, shaking her head.

“Of course not,” Crimson answers, “dreaming about it, in fact.”

“Five ‘til target,” Jagger says, then adds, “aioli or pesto?”

“Roger. Pesto on French,” Crimson laughs.

Each time Crimson laughs, I wonder if my laugh is as melodic and infectious. Even over the crackled radio, Crimson’s laugh sounds like music, or the start of music. My sister’s laugh sounds like the split moment of amplified silence when one puts the needle on a record, when the machine seems to think. Maybe Crimson’s laugh even sounds like the first moments of the music, notes dancing from the record over a crackled speaker.

“Comanche 117,” a new voice crackles over comm, a familiar plain-toned one, “Banshees approaching target. Picture clean.”

“Roger. Banshee permission to standby?”

“Comanche 117, permission granted. Banshee continue.”

With that, each of our jets' nose's angle towards the earth below us as they descend, the terrain thinning expeditiously from snow to sand to ocean. I glance over my shoulder and the swirling waves stare back at me. I swallow hard, facing my sister again. The radar is still clean.

“Two until target. Picture clean,” I say, my voice unwavering.

My palms are sweating, but still cold. Clammy.

“Banshees, assume attack formation,” Maneater says, her voice clear and amplified.

Each maneuver of the stick feels like it's been practiced over and over again by Crimson. She flies fast and smooth, never getting ahead of team leader, never falling past the Banshee behind her. She thinks fast and acts faster. She doesn’t worry about catching her breath until she’s on the ground.

We are only a few hundred feet above the ocean now and the waves are so ominous and dark that I imagine them raising high enough to skim the bottom of our jets, knocking us out of the sky before swallowing us whole.

“Comanche 117. Banshees’ signal is buster to target.”

I fill my lungs, the skin at the base of my neck prickling. The air around me is muggy and nippy at the same time. Radar is still clean.

“Roger. One until target.”

We’ve practiced this assignment a many, dogfighting with Cyclone and Warlock, even though the mission itself is supposed to be routine. Maritime strikes are happening more often than not now. And all of us, even Jagger, have flown fragged jets at least a handful of times.

I feel that I’m on auto-pilot and Crimson does, too. If I close my eyes for the rest of the flight, my fingers would still know how to flip the right switches, my eyes would still know when to glance at the radar, and my heart would still know how to slow its own pace.

We are approaching what feels like the middle of the ocean, radars clear, holding our breaths. The land behind us grows smaller and smaller as we approach the target.

“C and C 293 visual?” Maneaster asks.

“Affirmative, C and C 293 visual,” I say.

“Jagger 692 visual?” Crimson asks.

“Roger. Jagger 692 visual.”

“Approaching target. Missile locked. Comanche 117, Banshee permission to fire away?”

“Comanche 117, your signal is bombs away.”

“Here we go,” Crimson whispers.

I look at the radar once more. Clear. Clear as the sky is blue.

“Bombs away,” Maneater repeats.

Red and yellow flames burst from Maneater’s jet, the heavy missile freefalling towards the ocean with a determined nose pointed downward. I turn and check the air around us, just in case the our nose is unknowingly cold. Jagger is trailing closely behind us. He sallutes me. I return it, then swivel back around.

“Clover, engage missile lock,” Crimson says.

It is easy to take orders from her, the older version of myself, even if it’s only by ten measly minutes.

“Roger,” I say, thumbing the heavy metal stick until the small screen squares in on the water and makes tone, “missile lock engaged. Bombs away, bombs away.”

It feels like the bottom of our plane is falling out, but it is a familiar feeling that makes the pit in my belly grows and grow until it feels like my abdomen is full of thick, dark nothing.

“Banshee three, engage missile lock,” Maneater commands.

With my helmet against the glass canopy, I watch Jagger’s missile nosedive right after ours in a plume of black smoke. I swallow hard--glance at the radar. Still nothing.

“Banshee three engaged missile lock. Bombs away.”

“Comanche 117, Banshees signal RTB. Picture clean. Approach angels 30.”

Maneater cuts through the air like it’s softened butter, jet pointing towards the heavens. Maneater is panting behind her mask, which is what she does each time we drop a missile, even during the drills. She’s like Crimson, though--she isn’t stifled by danger.

Crimson pulls the stick back, probably not even having broken a sweat, and our jet mirrors Maneater’s. I turn over my shoulder and watch Jagger follow suit.

I feel oddly naked flying with no clouds to obscure our jets. I stare at the radar, almost willing something to happen, for a bandit to blink alive.

“Comanche 117, Banshees approach angels 40.”

Below us comes a thunderous rumble and the ocean seems to split in half as our missiles destroy the submarine. The water is so high, so cold, that I shiver watching it reach up towards us, even if we are climbing to 40,000 feet. My lungs are hot and heavy, but the radar is still clear.

“Missile launch success. We have direct impace,” Jagger says gleefully, “bullseye!”

The word bullseye makes my toes curl.

“Comanche 117, Banshees approach angels 50.”

“Roger. Maneater 031 RTB.”

Each of us reaches 50,000 feet and radios to Comanche, letting them know we are en route to base. We are 50 minutes out.

When the jets level out, we are flying high and clear over the snowy terrain once more. I bring my shoulders down from my ears. I have always felt more vulnerable over the ocean--like it is waiting to lick our wings and gobble us up.

“Piece of cake,” Crimson says, sighing, “picture clean?”

“Affirmative,” I return, “piece of pie.”

Maneater chuckles over comm.

“Twins are so grotesque,” she says, “Jagger, you alive back there?”

“Alive and well,” Jagger sighs, then clears his throat, “felt a little too easy.”

Like clockwork, I say, “Radar clean, nose hot.”

“Right, right,” Jagger says, “just feel like we’re missing something.”

“Well,” Crimson starts, “I’m missing a hot, hot shower. And then maybe a drink.”

“And then a hot, hot date?” Maneater asks.

“Maybe so,” Crimson sighs, “someone to share with Clover.”

I can feel Crimson batting her lashes.

“I know a guy,” Jagger says, “a pilot. Graduated top of his class at Top Gun.”

“Jagger, you were number three,” Maneater scoffs.

“Number one in everyone’s hearts, though,” Jagger bites back. I can feel him grinning.

Crimson sighs into the comm.

“Think you can handle us both, big dog?”

I slap her shoulder.

“Maggie,” I hiss softly.

My face is burning. Hers is cool and slack. Jagger groans.

“Crimson, you’re making your sister blush,” Maneater laughs, “Hard Deck after we land?”

“Of course,” Crimson says, “we’ll be there.”

It’s nice sometimes to not have to answer. In the same way that I know the temperature of Crimson’s face, the fluttering of her eyelashes, or when she’s hungry, Crimson knows what I’m thinking. She knows what I’ll say, how I’ll answer. We are connected by an invisible string that was once a cord connecting us to the same womb.

The Hard Deck is somewhere we frequent, three to four times a week if we can swing it. It’s mostly a hangout for the Navy, the bar closest to base. Someone dressed in khaki always at the pool table or playing darts, some other uniforms sharing the expensive brandy.

The radar blinks back at me, still empty.

“What’s that God-awful song you played last time? Something about eating cars?” Jagger says this with a grimace evident in his strained voice.

“Rapture,” my sister and I say at the same time.

“That’s where I draw the line,” Maneater says, “no saying shit at the same time, lieutenants.”

I’m smiling behind my mask, glancing out either side of the jet. The sky is still clear. When I glance back at the ocean, the waves are building momentum as they race to shore, washing everything in white foam and black water.

“Who doesn’t like Rapture? Everyone likes Blondie,” Crimson laughs.

“Not their shitty music,” Maneater follows.

“I draw the line at Blondie slander,” I bite.

Crimson nods. Maneater chuckles. I can almost see her dark face reflecting the sun, the smooth parts of her skin shining blue. Her hair is also twisted into a bun at the bottom of her helmet, which I secured for her, maneuvering bobby pins in her black curls.

“Go out to the parking lot and you get in your car and drive real far,” Crimson sings, her voice raspy and amplified, “and you drive all night and then you see a light and it comes on down and lands on the ground and out comes the man from Mars!”

The sky is so blue through the canopy, the world darting past us at the speed of a fluttering eyelash. Crimson’s helmet is bobbing as she crudely sings, shaking her shoulders. She’s being a brat.

“And you try to run, but he’s got a gun! And he shoots you dead and eats your head,” I sing back.

Maneater and Jagger pretend to be exasperated on the other ends of the comm, but they’re laughing, too. Jagger’s thin chest is probably aching as he laughs because of the iron he pumped before taking flight, which was his own private ritual.

“Why does an alien have a gun? What kind of gun?” Jagger asks.

“Crimson, you’re the devil on your sister’s shoulder,” Maneater laughs.

“You’re making her blush,” Crimson exclaims.

My cheeks, as if on cue, grow pink.

Just as I open my mouth to defend myself, it happens. Two bandits blink to life on the radar. Everyone hears the chime.

“Tally two,” I say clearly.

“Position?” Maneater calls, blinking back into her authority.

“Bandits approaching from Northeast. Bandit one low four o’clock, Jagger. Bandit two high seven o’clock, Jagger,” I relay, “bandits firewalled.”

My fingers are so cold that it hurts to uncurl them. My heart jumps once, twice, then falls back into regular rhythm. Pressing my helmet against the canopy, I narrow my eyes on Jagger’s tail. Two SU-57’s approach Jagger.

“Jagger, engage firewall,” Maneater commands, breaking right suddenly to circle back, “C and C 293 visual?”

“C and C 293 visual,” Crimson bites, “Jagger, don’t let them get tone!”

“They’re gaining fast,” Jagger calls.

Suddenly, just as Maneater is falling behind Jagger, circling around to face the SU-57’s, the tone alerts Jagger. A missile drops from the jet at his four o’clock.

“Jagger, break left!” I yell.

Jagger’s jet suddenly cuts and the missile is hot on his tail.

“Deploying flares,” he calls.

Little bursts of yellow trail behind him, confusing the missile, exploding it.

“Crimson to Comanche 117,” Crimson calls, her voice still steady, “bandits engaging dogfight.”

“Comanche 117 to Banshees,” the voice says, “Banshees signal is to fire away, I repeat, fire away.”

“Hell yeah,” Crimson whispers.

My belly drops as Crimson suddenly angles our jets nose to the ground and falls behind Jagger and Maneater, behind the enemy aircraft. It is all so swift--behind them, I angle the missile lock, narrowing my eyes.

“We’ve got tone!” I yell, even though she can hear it.

“Bombs away,” Crimson yells.

The jet at Jagger’s high seven o’clock breaks left suddenly and our missile falls out from under us, cutting through the sky in a fury. The jet deploys flares, but just a moment too late. I watch it happen with my breath in my throat. Our missile explodes in the air, but close enough to his tail so that a piece of it breaks off, thick smoke swirling around the jet.

“We’ve got impact,” I call, “bandit two, high seven.”

“I’ve got tone,” Maneater calls, “bombs away!”

In just a single moment, Maneater deploys her missile and the jet doesn’t even deploy flares. The sleek, black aircraft bursts into flames instantaneously when the missile hits their engine one. A red parachute shoots into the sky just as the aircraft collides with the lip of a mountain.

“Bullseye,” I call, “what a grape.”

“Shit, bandit one has tone,” Jagger alerts us.

I look over, helmet against the glass. Jagger’s nose is straight and the bandit is behind him, missile dropping out from under.

“Break right, deploy flares,” I command.

“Deploying flares,” Jagger calls, pulling his nose suddenly to the right.

The bandit is hard and fast on him, mirroring his movement. Jagger deploys his flares in just the nick of time, only feet away from where it would really count if the missile made contact.

“C and C, time ‘til base?” Maneater asks.

“20 RTB,” I read.

“Jagger, fall back,” Maneater demands, “C and C 293 visual?”

“Affirmative,” Crimson says, “we’ve got you, Maneater.”

The rumble of our engine vibrates my throat. I gulp the oxygen coming in through my mask, blinking rapidly at the radar.

Maneater falls back behind the bandit and we fall below her, to her three o’clock. Jagger falls back suddenly, suddenly enough to confuse the bandit into following him directly into Maneater’s airspace.

“Tone,” she says quickly, “firing.”

Then I hear it. The tone in our jet screams. I look at our radar and it is clean except for the bandit Maneater’s missile is thundering towards. I look to our left, to our right, and there it is: a third bandit, aircraft so polished that it reflects the blue of the sky. It looms at our nine, vapor spreading beneath it as it zeroes in on us.

“Crimson, nose down, break left! Smoke in the air!”

Crimson smoothly follows my directions. I think I can hear her heart skip a beat, her breathing hitch.

“Deploying flares!” I scream out.

The little pops behind us are replaced with the screaming of a missile that only narrowly misses us. My throat aches.

“We’ve got another bandit hot on our tail,” Crimson yells over comm, “Maneater you got us?”

“I can’t shake bandit two,” Jagger calls desperately, “he keeps getting tone!”

Maneater bites suddenly, “Maneater not visual, Banshee one defending Banshee three.”

“Nose cold,” I call, tapping on the radar that has suddenly blinked off, “we’re naked over here!”

Crimson is throttling us through the sky in an almost zig-zag formation, forcing my head against the seat. She’s gulping her oxygen, but she isn’t picnicking, not yet.

“Comanche 117, C and C 293,” Crimson recites, “bandit inbound from East. C and C 293 flying naked, nose cold. Signal?”

“Comanche 117 to C and C 293,” Comanche answers, “Banshee two your signal is bug.”

The tone interrupts Crimson. I turn around and the bandit is on our six, gaining. A missile deposits under its aircraft and screams toward us.

“Smoke in the air, break left! Deploying flares!”

Maneater screams over the comm too, declaring her tone on bandit two.

“Hold tight, girls,” she yells, “bug!”

“We can’t fucking bug,” Crimson bites, “bandit three has tone again!”

The alarm blinks all around our cockpit. The bandit is on our right wing now, faster, vapor screaming out behind the jet.

“Deploying flares!”

I slam my fist against the button as Crimson cuts sharply down.

“Angels 30,” I tell Crimson, “be careful!”

“Hard Deck is angels 5! Decreasing to angels 10,” Crimson decides.

Our plane is racing towards the earth. I watch us behind us, the radar still naked and blinking nothingness. The bandit is smoothly following us, falling behind as Crimson engages the full speed of our F-18. We rapidly fall, my belly in my throat, my neck against the seat.

“Where’s our wingman?” Crimson howls.

Jagger has bandit one hot on his tail, mirroring each of his movements like they, too, are connected by an invisible string. Maneater is hot on the bandit’s tail, but she’s deployed guns.

I realize, as goosebumps prickle my skin, that Maneater is out of missiles. For the first time, the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention, my spine tingles like someone is ghosting their finger along my spinal column.

“What?” Crimson shouts and I know that her arms have goosebumps, too.

“Banshee one deployed guns,” I call, “we’re flying naked, Crimson!”

We swallow at the same time, both of us blinking rapidly. No wingman.

“Banshee one defending,” Maneater screams, rapidly firing ammo at the jet, “Banshee two hold tight!”

Crimson levels our nose, breaking right and left, but the bandit is still hot on us, nearing us with an ominous speed.

“Faye,” Crimson calls, “nose cold?”

I knock my gloved fist on the screen. It is black and calm as the ocean before our strike.

“Affirmative,” I say.

Our bellies are full of rocks. I can feel the sweat dripping down Crimson’s face. She’s breathing hard, pulling the stick back and forth. Both our mouths are cold and dry. She’s gripping the stick with the strength of a boar, her fingernails ripping and cracking.

“Banshee two, engage firewall!” Maneater calls, still aiming her guns at the jet that is evading her bullets. It’s like an intricate dance that’s been rehearsed, rehearsed, rehearsed.

“We’re already buster to mother,” I yell, “Comanche 117, C and C 293--standby for signal.”

“Comanche 117, your signal is buster.”

“God dammit,” Crimson screeches harshly, “we’re already bustering! Banshee one engaged in dogfight. We can’t bug!”

“Comanche 117, Banshee three, your signal is defend Banshee two.”

Jagger shakily cries over comm, “Banshee three engaged in combat. Hold tight, Crimson and Clover, hold tight!”

There is a single moment of quiet before we hear tone again. I slam my fist against the button again and the button suddenly feels hollow. Behind us, no flares pop in the sky.

“Out of flares,” I yell, “are you able to move into defensive maneuver?”

“No,” Crimson’s yell lurches from her violently, “this guy knows what he’s doing!”

The missile launches out of the sky and slams into out right wing. We jerk with the force of it, my helmet slamming into the back of Crimson’s seat.

“Right wing ablaze,” I shout, tears starting to pour down my face.

“Climbing,” Crimson says, suddenly pulling the stick back so our jet races upwards, “throttle back.”

There’s another sound, a louder one--the right engine bursts, sparks flying everywhere.

“Engine one on fire!”

“Extinguishing engine one,” Crimson cries, flipping switches haphazardly.

Nothing happens. The engine is still on fire. Something feels loose and I wonder if I am feeling the stick beneath Crimson’s palms. Our plane stalls and then, all at once, we are going down.

Crimson wildly tries to bring our nose out of the downfall, pulling back, turning it. Gravity punches us back into our seats.

“I lost control,” Crimson yells, “fuck, we’re going down fast!”

We are plummeting towards the earth and I hear it, then--the whistling of the wind. Except it is screaming, bursting my eardrums.

“Mayday, mayday!”

I have never spoken these words outside of a controlled stall, a drill; just pretend. And now, as we are falling, that’s what everything before this moment feels like. Pretend--like we were just playing.

“Punch out!” Crimson screams suddenly, “Clover, punch out!”

“What?” I cry.

I feel like I’m frozen in the moment, trapped in hardening molasses. The tone hisses in our cockpit, our radar still sleeping. The back of my sister’s helmet is all I can see as my vision blackens, tunnels. I know she’s crying. I can feel the tears on her cheeks, the lump in her throat. It is an involuntary kind of cry--one that is just the body’s reaction to its surroundings. We have never punched out of our aircraft before.

“Punch out now, Faye!”

I grip the cords and pull with all my might and in perfect unison, Crimson and I shoot from our jet as the missile collides with it. It’s like we are being born again into the sky.

The wind is so piercing that I can hardly hear our plane explode. Its heat rushes at us as our parachutes bloom. I rock harshly as the wind catches under the chute. It is freezing and the oxygen that was flowing into my mask has stopped now.

I feel, suddenly, like I’m falling instead of being suspended in the air.

That’s when I turn and see Maggie, her parachute pathetically being beaten by the wind instead of catching in it. Maggie is the one that’s falling, falling fast and hard, her arms flailing as she reaches around for purchase. She’s falling towards our burning jet, her helmet a dot of pink amidst the flames. I can feel the wind ripping the skin on her cheeks, the bile that’s rising in her throat, her stomach sitting in her chest cavity. Her heart is racing and my throat vibrates with her scream. Her fingers ache with the coolness of my own. My thighs grow warm when her bladder releases.

Our 24th birthday was three days ago. It was a Tuesday. She came to my house and we watched ‘Dirty Dancing’, fielding calls and texts from the same people. She brought a bottle of prosecco that we finished and I made an almond cake--an ugly yellow thing with a murky glaze. She showed me a message from an Army boy on Tinder.

Twins, huh? I have two hands.

I had pushed her shoulder as she laughed, laughed that big laugh that vibrated my couch, my chest. She stayed late, later than she should’ve.

“Will you play with my hair?” She’d asked, already sinking to sit on the floor before me.

I scratched her scalp, ran my fingers through her silky length, pulling out any knots gently. It was something I’d done since childhood; played with my sister’s hair. The sun had faded by then, ‘Dirty Dancing’ long finished, and she’d turned on her favorite record. ‘Landslide’ by Fleetwood Mac whispered through the speakers.

“Stevie Nicks was 27 when she wrote this,” I said.

She scoffed in amazement

“Is this what we'll feel like when we're 27?”

She hummed along quietly and her voice felt sweet in my throat.

I know she is going to die the exact same moment she does, the wind shredding her skin, knotting her hair.

“Maggie!” The scream tears from my raw throat the way her parachute suddenly tears free above her, sending her down harder, faster, cords flying freely in the wind.

Maggie is free-falling somewhere over the jagged, snow-dusted rocks.

Chapter Text

July 12th, 2019

Before I knock on the open office door, I look down at my skirt. It is what my mother would call a smart piece of clothing. An olive-colored linen, somewhere between midi and maxi, steamed early this morning when the morning light was still blue. I pick a piece of non-existent lint off the fabric, wasting time.

The door is solid and strong under my knuckles--the noise is a resounding one, not hollow like the door to my shared office. Everything in my office feels hollow, especially the flimsy desk they assigned to me.

“Come in,” he calls from inside. 

My heels click the wood floors and even they don’t sound hollow. His office smells like leather and tobacco, like I’ve just walked into a cigar shop. It’s dark and its wood is heavy and polished, each piece of mature furniture carved meticulously. The windows, which face the tarmac, allow the late afternoon sunshine into the room. There is not a speck of dust on any of the wood.

I salute one time, straightening my back, keeping my place in the doorway.

“Admiral,” I say, short and bold--loud. 

“At ease,” Admiral Simpson says softly.

The Admiral is standing with his hands fastened behind his back, his uniform crisp, his eyebrows and mouth flat on his face. He gestures to the leather chair, his blue eyes very serious, very calm. His age is stamped beside his eyes in creases.

“Please, take a seat.” 

I cross his office silently and sit poised in the chair even though it sinks with my weight. I cross my legs at the ankle, hands folded in my lap.   

“Lieutenant Ledger,” he greets, sinking back to his chair, his back impeccably stiff. 

“Good afternoon, Admiral,” I smile.

“We’ve been over this,” he says, more casual than before, “Cyclone.”

I nod one time, never intending to call him by his call-sign.  

The corner of his mouth raises, just a hint, and I know it is the most he’s smiled all day. He has a soft spot for me. I know this . He is the one that extended my bereavement leave--the one that offered me a position as a researcher. Admiral Simpson, through all his impeccable discipline and hard exterior, has done more for me the past few years.

He liked Maggie more than me, before she died. She challenged him, truly challenged him--we were always the last jet to be shot down during drills. One time, we had even gotten tone on him. It doesn’t matter now, though .

“Your research--has it been fruitful?” 

I nod, clearing my throat. Admiral Simpson is briefed on my research weekly. It’s his conversational equivalent to me picking invisible lint off my skirt.

He narrows his eyes, just slightly. It makes me straighten my shoulders, which are already straight. My file is sitting on his desk, right beside a thick legal pad and a heavy-looking gold pen. It is open. I swallow hard. 

“Yes,” I hum, dancing around addressing him, “yes, it has.”

He nods, just once, then sits back in his office chair. One of the windows is open and a hot gust of wind makes the blinds quiver. It touches the hair framing my face like it’s trying to get a good look at me.

“Let me be frank, Lieutenant,” he starts, “you are a gifted backseater. Navigating, weapon-system operations--it comes naturally to you. You are a gifted researcher, too. You’re precise…careful…obedient. You hold your own. You’re an excellent example of what the Navy wants--what it needs.” 

My fingers curl, my blood running cold. Fuck.

“Thank you, sir.” 

He pretends not to notice. 

“There is an upcoming mission, one set to deploy in three weeks time. Training starts bright and early Monday morning,” he sighs, “and unfortunately, I have been backed into a corner. I have chosen Captain Pete Mitchell to lead the training for this mission.” 

“Maverick?” 

Maggie’s portrait hangs in Memorial Hall, where all the fallen aviators are memorialized. One day, very shortly after Maggie’s death, Maverick and I silently stood in Memorial Hall. He was on one end, studying the portrait of a Nicholas Bradshaw, call sign: Goose. I was on the other end, examining Maggie’s shit-eating grin in her fresh portrait. We said nothing to each other. We were both crying. 

I wiped my wet face with an ineffective hand when Maverick started towards me. He simply clapped a hand over my shoulder, one time, very softly. Then he kept walking.

Admiral Simpson seems to stifle an eye-roll. He nods curtly. 

“Maverick was not my first--or second--choice for this mission. He will be tasked with training an elite squadron--all Top Gun graduates, of course.” 

He pauses, swallows, his eyes flickering to my file. My fingers are numb with cold now. Fuck.

“Si- Cyclone , if you are asking me to get back in the air, then I--” my breath catches in my throat, belly full of wool. 

He holds a hand up, furrowing his brows and shaking his head. 

“No, no. No one is asking you to get back up in the air. All I’m asking is that you observe and record for the Official Record,” after a beat, he adds, “and maybe keep an eye on Maverick.” 

I deflate in the chair, blood starting to pool back in my fingers.

“I trust your judgment, Clover,” he remarks, “and if things were different, it is you I would want in the air.” 

His eyes are soft under his furrowed brow as he searches my face. I nod a few times, eyes falling to my file then back up to his face. I smile very politely. 

“You flatter me,” I say. 

A bit of his seriousness fades. I think I even see his left shoulder drop a centimeter.

“Flattery is not in my nature,” he declares, leaning back into his chair, “I take it you accept your position in this mission?”

“Yes, sir.”

He nods to the door. 

“Dismissed, Lieutenant Ledger,” he drones. 

As I get out of the chair to walk out of his office, he pretends to write a note down on the legal pad. He does not raise his eyes to mine when he says, “And if you need anything, please do not hesitate.”

☾ ☽

The call comes as I’m walking into my house. Stevie is already sitting in the foyer, looking blankly at me with slanted eyes, her white tail wrapped gracefully around her paws. We stare at each other for a second, my leather bag slung over my shoulders and sweat dotting my hairline.

“I’ll feed you in a minute,” I whisper to her, “don’t look at me like that.” 

She blinks at me, one time, very slowly. Unimpressed , as per usual. 

My phone is singing in my purse--Elton John. Robert From Major Authors it reads, unchanged since my senior year of college.

Hold me closer, tiny danc- -

“Hello?” 

“Faye?” Bob says on the other line, his voice soft. 

“Hey, Bob,” I greet, biting a smile back, “it’s good to hear from you! I really need to change your contact name.” 

He laughs on the other end as I close the front door, turning the heavy lock. Stevie is as still as a statue, regarding me with an air of elitism. I set my purse beside her, fanning myself. It’s very hot in my house.

“I’m still Robert From Major Authors after everything we’ve been through? Is that all I am to you?” 

I slip my loafers off, the tile in the entryway cool under my bare feet. It makes me shiver.

“Maybe it’s a subconscious thing,” I try, “what am I on your phone, then?”

I start up the stairs which open to the living room. The curtains are all drawn, shielding my precious furniture from the ruthless heat outside. It is dark in the living room with the shades drawn--I blindly reach for the wall, my eyes still adjusting from the July sun. 

“The clover emoji, of course.”

I groan. 

“So, I am an asshole.”

Bob laughs and it sounds very familiar, very warm. It makes the heat in my throat spread to my chest. A familiar voice is something I treasure--all the squadrons filing in and out of Miramar like it has revolving doors. No one seems to stick around for very long.

My fingers tingle as I feel my way to the kitchen door, which is one of the only rooms in the house with working air conditioning. The air fills me with an instant euphoric solace--I bite my lip to keep from moaning as the kitchen tile ices my feet. 

On the notepad I hang on the fridge, I write air conditioner guy right beside dishwasher guy and lock guy.  

“What are you doing right now?” 

I survey my kitchen in the early evening light. It’s just past six and the sky is only just beginning to consider dimming. My kitchen is my most recent renovation and it still smells vaguely of wood shavings and metallic screws. My house is an antique one, but the previous owner’s did not regard it as an important piece of history, not like I do. When I bought the house, five years ago now, everything was painted beige and there was brown carpet covering almost all the original hardwood floors.

The house is getting better slowly, as I have time to restore. The kitchen looks more like mine now, more accurate to the decade the house was built. My copper pots and pans, which were my grandmother’s, hang above the gas stove which I opted for instead of the gaudy electric thing that used to be there. The avocado-green oven, which is original to the home, is freshly painted. The Smeg fridge, which gives me goosebumps when I remember the pricetag, is in its final resting place among the wooden cabinets. The countertops are copper, brand new, and it gleams beneath the low lighting. 

I pull the fridge open, debating. 

“Standing in my kitchen, basking in the window-unit air conditioning. Regretting how expensive this tiny fridge was. Thinking I’ll make curry for dinner. What about you, Bobby?” 

He sighs on the other end of the line and I can practically see him sitting in a hangar somewhere, hunched over his desk, holding the phone to his ear and listening to me like it’s the only thing in the world he wants to do. 

Bob is the kind of person who can only be described as good . He doesn’t interrupt, he doesn’t talk over, he looks in your eyes when you’re speaking to him. He was the only boy in our Major Authors class at Temple University. He was summoned almost two years ago. 

“Well, I’m at the Hard Deck.” 

I freeze. 

“I’ve been called back to Top Gun.” 

An elite squadron of Top Gun graduates.  

I slam the fridge door shut, skittering across the kitchen to scoop a heaping mountain of cat food in Stevie’s plastic bowl. She is sitting before it now, like she knew I would succumb. 

“Give me thirty minutes!” 

☾ ☽

The Hard Deck looks the same as it did when Maggie used to drag me out here every chance she got. A building that oozes casual--brown wooden slatted siding, chipped white trim, palm trees sprouting in the patches of grass before it, a faded blue sign with blinking neon letters swirling the name of the bar. 

There is a photograph of Maggie there, under the sign, when we were 24. The American flag is waving in the wind above her, a blur of red and white and blue, and she is mockingly saluting the camera, a pout on her lips. 

The Polaroid lives there, in my wallet, in between my social security card and coffee shop gift cards. I rub the soft leather of my wallet, imagining that it’s the glossy front of the photograph. 

The sun is beginning its descent, casting everything in a warm gold. The ocean glitters behind the bar, waves lazily rolling to shore and dousing the sand. Lilac clouds sporadically float across the sky, heading West with the sun. 

Even from the outside, I know that the bar is crawling with Naval aviators. Not just because it always is, but because Sister Christian is pulsing--a favorite of the cocky pilots.

  You're motoring / What's your price for flight? / In finding Mister Right / You'll be alright tonight

I know everyone will be talking over each other, yelling back and forth over a game of clattering pool. There will be peanut shells on the floor, empty bottles lining every flat surface. 

If Maggie were here, she would be buying everyone drinks, slapping down her credit card and winking at Penny. Maggie used to corral everyone to the dance floor while I queued songs on the jukebox. People would really dance with us when we danced. Maggie was never embarrassed to dance and it made me not embarrassed to dance. I gained somewhat of a reputation as the Jukebox Queen--from the moment I walked into the bar until the moment I walked out, people would donate their quarters to me. 

There is a fleeting pinch in my heart. The lump in my throat feels impossible to swallow. The warm wind blows through my hair again and I hold very still, letting it wash over me. 

“It’s Friday,” I whisper to myself, “buck up.” 

The rumble of an engine pulls my eyes away from the door. 

A cyan colored Bronco screeches into the lot and swerves into a parking spot. The top is soft and the windows are all rolled down. The driver is blasting a song, tapping his steering wheel as he throws the car into park. It takes me a moment to place it--an Otis Redding song. Tramp . It stops very abruptly as the driver cuts the engine. 

With all the swagger only a pilot could embody, the driver steps out. The first thing I see is the Hawaiian shirt. It’s somewhere between hideous and gorgeous. It is open, layered on top of a crisp tank top, a pair of dog tags between two massive pecs. Tanned skin shimmers with a sheen of sweat; probably because the jeans he’s wearing are of a good grade--thick denim. He’s smiling, pearlescent teeth glowing under a thick mustache. His hair is made up of a blonde that is as golden as the sunset. He’s wearing black aviator sunglasses. 

He starts gliding towards the front door, but seems to stutter when he sees me standing near it, looking in his direction. He approaches me slower, glancing from me to the door a few times before smiling. He’s close enough so that when the wind blows, I can smell the cologne he wears. It’s peppery and deep. 

“You going in?” He asks, quirking a brow. 

He is still smiling, his nose thick and straight. 

“Debating it,” I answer, toeing the sandy gravel. 

He nods, squinting. If he was in a hurry before, he is not anymore. He puts his hands on his hips and turns towards the door so our arms are almost touching. He looks the bar up and down, studying it like I am.

“It’s been a while,” I tell him, swallowing. 

“Yeah,” he sighs, “me too.” 

A beat passes; somewhere in the distance, a seagull cries.

“What’s holding you back?”

What a question .  

“Can’t decide if it’s intelligence,” I say, tilting my head, “or rationality.” 

His laughter booms--loud enough for me to hear over the chatter inside the building. His arm brushes against mine when he laughs. His skin is warm. 

“Maybe it’s a little bit of both,” he replies. 

We both suck our teeth and shake our heads. The lump in my throat has dissipated without me even swallowing it. The sun kisses my lips, my chin. 

“What’s holding you back?” 

He sighs, shaking his head. 

“A little lady who can’t make up her mind,” he says. 

I scoff, shake my head. He’s watching my eyes, my face.

“People these days!”

His smile deepens. He nods to the door. He has seemingly made my mind up for me.

“Can I get that for you?” 

I pretend to think about my answer--he’s looking at the side of my face, maybe at the white scar that traces the bottom of my jaw. I imagine it’s glowing under the sunset, not unlike the neon Hard Deck sign. 

“Might as well,” I say, gesturing for him to walk ahead, “tramp.”

He is in front of me when I say it, but he stops again and bites a grin over his shoulder. 

“What did you just call me?” 

He is amused. His eyes seem very deep in his face behind his shades, framed with dark eyelashes that I can barely make out through the tint. They glimmer with enjoyment. 

“Tramp,” I repeat, “Otis Redding. You were just listening to it, right?” 

He nods, his face stuttering from a smile to an impressed frown back to a smile. There are scars along the left side of his face, a few crooked lines, and they glow under the sunset like I thought mine would--like neon. 

“Thought my reputation preceded me,” he sighs. 

In a few strides, we are at the door. He opens it wide and I step over the threshold with a careful foot. 

The lump in my throat has returned as soon as I see the inside of the building. The wide-plank white pine floors are almost entirely covered with boots and heels and sneakers. What little pieces of it worm into my view are polished and dirty at the same time, like a used aluminum can. The brown rafters are entirely covered with hanging white mugs, the mugs Maneater and Jagger used to insist on drinking from every time we came to the bar. The old wooden bar, the velvet chairs, the jukebox in the corner--I absorb it all, feeling suddenly naked without Maggie holding my hand. 

There is such a crowd that it overwhelms me just to think about discerning all their faces--everyone is an amalgamation of a singular face, blurring from one broad nose to another’s sculpted cheeks. And khaki--so much khaki.

Hawaiian Shirt taps my shoulder. I hope he doesn’t notice the tears clouding my vision as I turn to him. I plaster a toothy smile to my face. 

“I’m sorry, did you say something?” I yell, “can’t hear you over the music!” 

Sister Christian has finished and Let’s Dance has begun. 

He’s looking down at me with a silly grin that makes me want to grin. He bends over so his lips are close to my ear. 

“You here with anyone?” He asks. 

I nod, searching the crowd. 

“Meeting a friend,” I say, swallowing hard, “how about you, tramp?” 

I can feel his lips bite into a smile. 

“Nothing serious,” he says, “hey, I didn’t catch your name?” 

I pull my eyebrows together, coming closer to his ear. 

“I didn’t tell you my name,” I say. 

Then I pat one of his pecs, meet his eyes again. His cheeks are dusted with pink. I salute him, then start for the bar. It smells like beer and my shoe sticks to some parts of the floor as I navigate through the sea of bodies. 

Penny is behind the bar, her back facing me. She’s talking to someone with her arms crossed, a frosty mug of beer in her hands. I have to stand on my tip-toes and crane my neck to see the patron on the barstool she’s talking to. It’s Maverick--his black hair speckled with gray, the lines around his mouth pressed deep from the grin he’s sporting. 

Penny turns suddenly, her face flushed, and sees me almost immediately. Her eyes widen and her grin spreads. She holds a finger up to Maverick and crosses the bar to stand before me. 

“Do you know how happy I am to see your sorry face here?” She chuckles, her hands on her hips. 

My cheeks redden. 

“It’s been too long,” I say, “feels good to be back.” 

I’m not really sure if it does feel good to be back, but I think I would say anything to make Penny smile. She used to cut Maggie’s free-drink charade at $200, handing the card back at the end of the night with a tight-lipped smile. Maggie was none-the-wiser.

“How’ve you been, kiddo? Staying alive?” 

She asks this and then her shoulders slump, her hip un-cocks itself. Her smile is beginning to falter and the color drains from her cheeks. It’s what happens when people say something to me accidentally, something about death or sisters or plane crashes. 

I grin, pretend like I don’t notice her sloping mouth. 

“Alive and well-ish,” I say, “guess I couldn’t stay away.” 

Penny recovers, smiling again. She leans her elbows on the bar and brings her face closer to mine so she doesn’t have to shout. 

“I missed you, Clover. Don’t be a stranger,” she says this with all the affection of a mother, which makes a coil wrap tightly around my throat again, makes my fingers cold. Then she snaps back and tilts her head, a playful smile tugging on her lips. “Bloody Mary, right?” 

I stiffen. Bloody Mary was what Maggie drank. I nod, though. Penny turns around at once and makes a very bloody Mary. 

Maverick watches her from his spot, his eyes soft. When he catches my gaze, he smiles in a small way, nodding. I send him a half-hearted salute and it makes him chuckle. 

“One bloody Mary,” Penny says. She nods towards the pool table. “Bob’s waiting for you. Keeps asking me to keep an eye on the door, as if I can even see it from here.” 

I fight my way to the pool table, relying on muscle memory and my precision to keep my white shirt white. When I break through the crowd and see the pool table for the first time, it is a gaggle of khaki-clad aviators that greet me. I skim over their faces until I see him. Bob is lining a shot up in pool, his glasses perched on his nose, one eye winking in concentration. 

I wait there for a moment, sipping my drink. Oh, God . How did Maggie drink this?

Bob makes his move--there is the clattering, not unlike the clattering of marbles colliding, and not one ball makes it into a pocket. The aviators around him are watching him with their arms crossed over their chests, all their hair combed and coiffed. 

A tall blonde man claps him on the back, a hyena grin contorting his pretty face.

“Shoot,” Bob bites, blushing. 

“Lieutenant Floyd,” I call over the music, leaning against the stack of chairs beside me, “you kiss your mother with that mouth?” 

Bob’s head snaps to attention when he sees me standing in front of him with my putrid drink, smiling at him. His smile makes me ache. It suddenly feels like it’s been years since I’ve seen anyone familiar. I want to hug him, want to kiss him, want to take him home to my house and keep him there with me. It makes my throat tight. 

Bob isn’t the only one looking at me--my declaration has captured my entire audience of aviators, who regard me with cocked eyebrows. 

“No,” Bob laughs, “but I kiss your mother with this mouth.”

The blonde man’s smile is replaced with wide eyes and a lacked jaw. There’s a unanimous jolt among the aviators, each of them awe-struck and pleasantly surprised by Bob’s quip. I immediately understand that Bob hardly knows these people--that they are not really his friends like I am. They’ve never experienced his quick wit.

Bob and I are grinning at each other. 

All the eyes on my face are making me hot. Perspiration is starting to gather in the pit of my arms, my legs. 

Bob crosses the table quickly and wraps his arm around me. I have just enough time to jerk my drink away from us before I hug him back. He smells like a freshly-washed baby. My eyes fall shut for a fraction of a second and I rack my brain, trying to remember the last time I was hugged by a friend.  

“It’s so good to see a familiar face,” I sigh, “missed you, Bobby.” 

Bob releases me, holding my shoulders for a beat, searching my face for anything new. Still me, Bob! I want to say.

“I haven’t seen you since…” he trails off before shaking his head, “since too long ago, that’s when.” 

“Bob, aren’t you going to introduce us to your friend?” A voice pipes from behind him. 

It’s the blonde haired man, the one that clapped Bob on the back while he bit back a cocky grin. He’s grinning at me now, eyes flickering to where Bob’s hands, which are still lingering on my shoulders. 

“Right,” Bob says, releasing me so I can be beheld by the entire group, “allow me to introduce Lieutenant Faye Ledger, call-sign: Clover. We went through the academy together.” 

I ease over the aviators crowding the pool table with friendly eyes. Only a few women, only one of them engaged in the conversation. Her hair is sleek and dark, her expression fierce but friendly. All the men drip with ego, with the angular cheeks and cut jaws to match.

Maggie would hate how the men outnumbered the women. 

“Sausagefest,” I can practically hear her spitting. 

“Clover of Crimson and Clover ? Twin-aviator-extraordinaires?”

A man with black, curly hair chopped short says this, his lips parted

Bob’s smile weakens. I take a long, long drink of the bloody Mary. The acidic tomato juice burns my nostrils. I nod.

“In the flesh,” I say, “half, anyway.” 

Bob sniffles a smile.

“That’s Hangman,” Bob introduces, pointing to the blonde man with his arms crossed, “and beside him we have Phoenix, Fanboy, Payback, Coyote, and Rooster.”

I follow his fingers, trying hard to nail the names to faces. When Bob’s finger lands on Rooster, I almost stumble in place. It’s Hawaiian Shirt. He’s beaming at me, a foggy beer bottle in his fist. His head is slightly tilted back--his Adam’s apple is pronounced and glistening with sweat. 

“Lieutenant Ledger,” Rooster says, “didn’t take you for a pilot. You know, with the indecisiveness and all.” 

I sigh, shifting my weight from one foot to the other, tilting my head. 

“Sister was the stick jockey. I was just the backseater.”

“One of the best backseaters,” Hangman adds, “everyone’s heard the stories.” 

Hangman has his arms crossed and he’s regarding me with his eyebrows knit, his mouth slightly ajar. Maybe he’s surprised that I’m not in uniform, or maybe he’s surprised that half of me is missing. I’m never sure how much anyone knows about Maggie. 

I am flushed, but I’m not sure if it’s the sudden attention or if it’s the heat radiating off the sea of bodies all around us. Maybe it’s the vodka. Penny makes a strong drink . 

“Impossible,” I say, “not when Bob’s still kicking it. Right, Bobby?” 

Bob laughs and it makes me think of Maggie, the way she would make Bob clutch his belly when she did cartwheels all the way to the Uber after close. Or when she would do her Elvis impression, feet bare as she planted herself before him, heels long since forgotten as they were toted around by whatever uniform she was going home with. 

I gulp the rest of my drink. My throat vibrates. 

“What are you drinking?” 

It’s Rooster that asks, striding towards me. I shrug, looking up at him. The sunset has given in to dusk and the warm bulbs above his head turn his hair a brighter blonde than I saw outside. Up close, his scars seem more pronounced, like unnatural wrinkles. He’s still wearing his sunglasses. 

“Whatever Penny makes me,” I shrug. 

He starts for the bar, but I suddenly tug on his Hawaiian shirt. He turns around, eyebrow quirked. 

“Not another one of those,” I whisper, grimacing. 

He nods, saluting with his free hand. 

“Understood, ma’am.” 

He disappears in the crowd. 

I turn to Bob. 

“What brings you back?” 

Bob shrugs, biting his lip. His glasses are perched higher up now that he isn’t focusing on a pool ball.

“All of us were called back for the same assignment. Not sure what it is yet, but seems pretty serious. Everyone dressed in khaki here,” he points around the bar, “top of their class, or damn-near close. Best of the best here.” 

I consider telling Bob what Admiral Simpson told me, but I keep my mouth closed, pulling my brows together. 

“Must be pretty crucial.” 

Bob nods, raising his eyebrows before taking a swig of his beer. He licks his pointed lips then shrugs. 

“That’s what we’ve gathered--!” 

“Clover,” Hangman interrupts, “you game?” 

He points to the pool table. Hangman’s eyes are on mine and the intensity of his gaze feels like standing in front of a fireplace. Phoenix is looking at Bob with wide eyes, nodding for him to play covertly. 

I shake my head. 

“Not very good,” I call, “these hands aren’t what they used to be.” 

“Can’t be any worse than Bob here,” he grins. 

His jaw is so toned--it looks like he chews a pack of gum a day. 

“Play nice,” Phoenix commands, “rack ‘em, Bagman.” 

I nod to the pool table when Bob catches my eyes again. His cheeks are red.

“Give ‘em Hell,” I whisper. 

Rooster returns as Bob re-engages with the group. He hands me a wet glass full of something purple and girly. I smile down at it. It’s a lavender limeade with tequila. Penny realized her mistake.

“Thanks,” I call, softly bumping him with my elbow. 

Rooster stays put beside me, still smiling, a few drops of sweat racing down his neck and onto his collar. His elbow is touching my bicep. 

“Didn’t know you were the Clover Ledger,” Rooster admits, “could’ve told me that before I called you a little lady.” 

I suck in a breath through my teeth, taking a long sip from my drink. The tequila instantly warms my throat, loosens my limbs. 

“Where’s the fun in that, lieutenant?” 

He laughs.  

After a beat, I add, “I knew you were a pilot the moment I saw you.” 

Rooster looks down at me, searching my face with a bemused expression. 

“Oh, yeah? How’s that?” 

“The swagger gave it away,” I answer, “the Bronco, the sunglasses, the song, the shirt .” 

Rooster holds his hand up in offense. 

“What’s wrong with the shirt?”

I shake my head, innocently shrugging. 

“No, no, I like it,” I declare, meeting his tinted eyes, “really brings out your eyes.”  

Behind his sunglasses, his eyes glimmer. He likes to be teased . 

I gulp the limeade. My toes start to feel fuzzy.

“You here for the mission?”

He rests part of his weight on my arm. The heaviness of his arm makes a certain warmth pool in the pit of my belly. 

“My mission is to observe and record,” I say, straightening my shoulders and squaring my jaw to imitate Cyclone, “for the Official Navy Record.”

Rooster whistles, feigning impression. 

“How can you live with the pressure of it all?” 

I shrug, stirring my drink with my finger before sucking it clean. He’s watching me, a perpetual grin tickling his mouth.

“I’m an alcoholic,” I retort. 

Rooster laughs loudly--the same laugh from outside. Phoenix and Bob glance up at us from the pool table, quiet smiles on their lips. Bob glances at Rooster, then flickers his gaze back to me, narrowing his eyes just slightly while nodding. He’s saying oh, yeah. He’s a good one. I’d almost forgotten about that secret language we share; the secret language of old friends.

“So…you’re sitting this one out because it’s below your paygrade, then?” 

I blink up at him. He cocks his head. 

“You’re the best of the best,” he remarks, “isn’t this mission for the best of the best?” 

My belly turns sour. I finish my drink again, setting my glass on the stack of chairs. I wipe my damp palms on my dress, studying the floral print as I chew my bottom lip. I can feel my cheeks gathering redness, can feel the lump growing again. Rooster watches me think.

“Aren’t you a cocky creature,” I tease, “is that what all this Rooster business is about?” 

Just as I return his gaze, just as I recognize how fuzzy and warm I feel, there’s a tap on my shoulder. Rooster and I turn at the same time. 

It’s a man a few years older than me, dressed in a khaki uniform. He’s smiling like he knows me, and leaning closer to say something to me.

“You’re Clover, right? Not the other one?” 

Not the other one . I nod.

“I think so,” I say, pretending like I can’t see Rooster beaming. 

“This is for you,” he shouts, holding his closed fist in the air near my face. 

I lay my hand flat in the air, palm-up. He drops three shiny quarters in it. 

“Oh,” I say, feeling flustered, “oh no, that’s okay, you shouldn’t--!” 

The man is already walking away, immersing himself in the crowd. I stare down at my open palm, the quarters ringing as I force them against each other. 

“What was that about?” Rooster asks, gingerly picking a quarter up and studying it.

I close my fist and let it fall to my side. 

It doesn’t seem possible without Maggie wrangling everyone in, doesn’t seem possible to pick the right songs and dance without being embarrassed. 

“Secret’s out,” I sigh, “I’m also a hooker. A bad one.” 

He bites a grin. I hold a finger up to him. 

“I’ll be right back.” 

I muscle through the crowd with my hand still closed around the quarters. As soon as I make it to the bar, Penny meets me, like she was waiting for me. 

“In need of some serious liquid courage,” I tell her, “two shots of tequila?” 

Penny nods, not asking any questions. After she pours the shots and hands me a lime, she glances over her shoulder at Maverick. He is on his phone and I almost warn him, but it’s too late--he sets it on the bar. 

Penny rings the bell with a smirk. The bar erupts in cheers, a few men clapping Maverick’s shoulders. Penny points to the sign and before I can chicken out, I bottom out the first shot glass and suck the lime. Maverick sits at his seat with a look of disbelief, mouth slightly ajar. 

“Did you know about this?” He yells to me. 

I grin something fierce, hold my shot glass up to him. 

“Cheers, captain!” I bottom the other shot, grimacing. 

The sour lime cuts the tang of the tequila. My belly sloshes with liquid. 

“Penny, my dear,” Hangman sings, “I’ll have four more on the old-timer.” 

Hangman is standing behind me, his scent strong. He smells like the outdoors, if the outdoors was freshly polished and sanitized. 

“Why do they call you Hangman?” 

Hangman registers my presence and smiles down at me in the way men do when they see something they like. He leans against the bar, looking at me, my empty shot glasses. 

“Long story. They call you Clover cause you’re lucky?” 

Lucky . I almost laugh in his face. Blood rushes to my ears. 

I’m too drunk to feel upset, to feel angry. My lips never lose their smile.

“You know, I actually read a Cornish legend about clover,” I say, leaning towards him, “a young maid put a fistful of clover on her head to alleviate the pain of carrying a heavy pail of milk and got instant relief. Not only that, but she could suddenly see dozens of fairies and elves all around her.” 

Hangman considers my story, cheeks dimpled. 

“So, if I put you on my head, I’ll be able to see fairies?” 

I shrug, blushing. 

“I guess we’ll never know.” 

Penny hands the beer to Hangman and glances at me. I can hear my own heart hammering in my chest. Hangman turns around to rejoin the group, but first sends a wink my way. 

“Maggie would have ate him alive,” I laugh. 

Penny doesn’t laugh--just smiles sadly. The pit in my belly grows. She touches my hand softly, squeezing it. I wonder how much Penny knows. After Maggie, I came to The Hard Deck rarely--first opting for a harsher scene, then no scene at all. Maybe Penny still feels fresh about Maggie. 

“I think I’m drunk,” I tell her, waving myself off, “I should close out my tab.” 

“Rooster put your drinks on his,” she waggles her eyebrows. 

Just as I muscle my way back to the group, Penny rings the bell. More cheers erupt from the crowd and Hangman and Payback trample to the bar with ornery grins splitting their faces. 

Bob is still in the middle of a game of pool, chatting with Phoenix. Rooster has disappeared. I sink into the stack of chairs, not bothering to turn around and crane to see what’s happening over the bobbing heads of the bar-goers. Everyone is chanting the same thing and I strain to understand it. 

Overboard! Overboard!

Suddenly, the jukebox blinks off. A chorus of groans echo. I drop the quarters into my dress pocket. 

Somebody starts to play the piano--I’ve never seen anybody play the piano here. Phoenix grins across the room and I follow her eyes. Rooster is sitting on the piano bench, fingers working the keys effortlessly, beautifully. 

“C’mon, guys,” she says, giddy. 

Bob glances at me and I wave him off, giving him my best I’m totally okay smile. I am alone by the pool table. It still smells overwhelmingly like beer. My chest is growing warmer and heavier by the minute, my cheeks a deep read. Crimson. 

“You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain,” Rooster croons. 

His voice cuts through the bar like a pair of heavy scissors. The patrons are all starting to flock towards Rooster, who is basking in the attention, smirking. 

“Too much love drives a man insane! You broke my will, but what a thrill!” 

The pool table is abandoned. I think of all the times Maggie slinked around the table, putting on her best pout, waiting for someone to let her in the game. She would play the first round or so cluelessly, letting men put their arms around her to help her shoot. It wasn’t until there was money put down that she revealed her talent. Maggie was good at everything . 

“Goodness gracious, great balls of fire!” 

Other people are singing with Rooster now. 

I make my great escape, stepping on cracked peanut shells and cocktail stirrers as I cross the bar. Not one person is watching me, not even Penny. 

The night is warm outside. Without the competing conversations and booming jukebox, I can just barely hear the ocean. Salt prickles my tongue, the air holding me close. 

I sit there, under a palm tree, looking up at the star-dotted sky. Something metal clatters beside me. It’s one of the quarters. It shimmers under the moon and I bring it close to my eyes, squinting to see the date. 

1992.

I whimper softly, eyebrows pulled together. There is no evading the lump in my throat--no Rooster to dissipate it, no friendly face out here in the lot. My tears are hot on my cheeks as they race down my face. 

With quivering lips, I bring the quarter to my mouth and press a kiss to it. 

“Hi, Maggie,” I whisper. 

Chapter Text

July 15th, 2019

I miss my air-conditioned office.  

It’s all I can think about as I stand inside the hangar, waiting for the Admirals to file in. The collar of my cotton shirt is soaking up all the perfume and perspiration on my throat and my sleeves, though short, are stifling my arms with a cruel stiffness. 

It is over a hundred degrees in San Diego and the cavernous hangar is one sprawling piece of metal that is practically sizzling under the morning sun. The garage doors are open and I cannot tell if it is worse inside or outside. 

I gather my hair in my hands and peel it from my sticky neck, holding it in a crumpled bun on the back of my head. Nothin g. No breeze--no relief. I keep my hair up, anyway, tilting my head back to look at the vaulted ceilings, to let my throat breathe.

Jets scream past the command tower every few minutes. The smell of fuel is burning my nose. It fills me with a certain hunger--like smelling a chicken roasting in the oven after not eating all day--all week, even. Further inside the hangar, there is a makeshift classroom setup with desks surrounding a single podium, which sits humbly before a gigantic American flag. The squadron is settled into their seats, chatting. 

When Bob passed me, he smiled at me. 

“Didn’t know you were Irish,” he teased. 

I knew he meant my unannounced exit the Friday before. 

“I converted last year,” I’d said, smiling softly, “sorry, Bob.”

Sometimes people don’t let me say sorry to them. Like I’ve been through so much that even when I do things that bother people, they don’t want to hear it. Their faces will start to contort--eyebrows always knit, a frown tugging their mouth, and sometimes even a hand over the heart. They will drip with sympathy. Oh no, I just bitched out the girl with the dead twin . It isn’t so much about preserving my feelings, but theirs.  

Bob didn’t do that, though. He shook his head, still smiling. 

“I may have overheard that it was your first time being back at the bar,” he says, very measured, “I’d say you did okay.”

I grinned. 

I loved Bob for not mentioning Maggie’s death. It was so good to be around a friend, someone who already knew my history, someone who doesn’t have to beat me over the head with the ugliness of Maggie’s death. 

Even after she died, he brought her up frequently--only talking of her if he remembered a funny story about her or if it was something that really, really needed to be said. Never mentioning her ending.

“Just okay? I thought I was fantastic,” I said. 

We laughed, more aviators filing in behind Bob. All their helmets were tucked under their arms and they were chatting with each other, combat boots thunderous against the concrete. 

I readjusted the leather strap of my bag on my shoulder. Bob smiled in a softer way. 

“Well, you were sorely missed,” he had told me.

Rooster was walking past when Bob told me I was missed. He glanced over his shoulder at us, at me. It was the first time I’d seen him without sunglasses on and it surprised me. His eyes were wide and green, almost as dark as his flight suit, and coated with sandy lashes. The sunlight had kissed his skin so perfectly, so evenly, that it was difficult to imagine he didn’t have his own private sky. 

“He ain’t lying,” Rooster said, “Clover.”

I had to bite a grin, opting to chew on my bottom lip instead of beaming at Rooster. I still had to thank him for paying my tab. 

Bob scoffed, bumping me with a friendly elbow before trailing after Rooster. 

“I never lie,” he called out to no one in particular. 

“Lieutenant,” a voice pipes from behind me. 

Admiral Simpson approaches me with Admiral Bates, both of them with flat mouths. They squint under the harsh sun, but don’t move to put their aviators on. I let my hair fall down my back and scramble to straighten my back.

“Sirs,” I say, the words coming from deep within my chest. 

I salute them. 

“At ease, Lt. Ledger,” Admiral Bates says, nodding.

Under the shade of the hangar finally, the men’s eyes return to their regular lemon-shape. They blink a few times each to get acclimated. 

“Good morning, gentlemen,” I smile politely. 

Simpson nods curtly, studying the room, and Bates pats my shoulder. 

“It’s good to see you back in here,” Bates says, then adds, “wish it were in a flight suit, though, Lieutenant.”  

Something squeezes my heart--it feels like a fist.

Simpson is already looking at me when I glance at him. His face is very still and serious as he searches my eyes. He’s waiting to see my reaction. I just smile. 

“Sorry to disappoint, sir.” 

Bates and Simpson start walking and I fall in place beside them. 

“Attention on deck!” I call to the group, turning on my heel.  

Instantaneously, each member of the squadron stands to attention, locked into position as we approach. My heels clack the concrete and it makes it easy to measure my heartbeat--clack one, clack two, clack three. My fingers aren’t cold. Not yet, no.  

“Morning,” Admiral Bates greets, standing behind the podium, “welcome to your special training detachment. Be seated.” 

There is a quiet clamoring as everyone takes their seats. There is an empty, larger desk to the far left of the podium where I know I’ll set up camp. My bag is making my shoulder ache--not just because it’s holding my personal laptop and a Navy-issued laptop, but because the dictionaries I must carry with me and the recording devices. The leather bag itself, a gift from my father on our 21st birthday, is heavy. 

“Admiral Bates, Nautical commander. You’re all Top Gun graduates. Elite. The best of the best. That was yesterday.” 

Admiral Bates’ voice is very deep and smooth. It is easy to listen to him talk. I stand off to the side, still sweating, but not moving to do anything about it. Admiral Simpson is on one side of me, Hondo on the other. They smell like lye soap and aftershave. 

Hondo leans over and whispers slyly, “They’re going to shit their pants when they see Mav.” 

I stifle laughter, but can’t help the smile that creeps on my face. I’d learned of Maverick’s exit from The Hard Deck  in a text from Bob late Friday night. Payback and Hangman had done the honors. Maverick had been thrown overboard . 

I lean close to him, whispering out of the side of my mouth.

“Who are you going to watch deflate--Hangman or Payback?” 

Hondo snickers softly, like I’ve asked a silly question. 

“Hangman,” he says quietly, “that boy… mmm .” 

Hondo just shakes his head, crossing his arms over his chest. 

“Hangman is the correct answer,” Admiral Simpson says suddenly from beside me. 

He doesn’t lean towards us, does not lean forward, does not glance at us. He stares at the squadron with all the seriousness of a trauma surgeon.

“Sir,” I whisper, laughing. 

“His exploits are legendary,” Admiral Bates is saying when I tune back into his speech, “And he’s considered to be one of the finest pilots this program has ever produced.” 

It is at this precise moment that Maverick appears. Hangman, twirling a tooth pick in his mouth haphazardly, freezes. The smirk melts off his face and he turns away from Maverick at once, head angled down. 

“What he has to teach you may very well mean the difference between life and death,” Bates says as Maverick leisurely walks down the aisle, the F-18 manuel under his arm, “I give you Captain Pete Mitchell. Call sign: Maverick.” 

Rooster’s head bobs suddenly and when I look at him, he has a grimace on his face. It is one that is deep: his eyebrows sloped, his mouth straight until the left corner where it turns down just barely, his eyes narrowed and suddenly hollow. He’s staring at Maverick. 

“Good morning,” Maverick starts, “before I begin, I would like to introduce Lt. Faye Ledger, call sign: Clover.” 

I didn’t know I was going to be introduced to the audience that I’ve already met--drunk. I nod at the crowd, holding my leather case close to my legs, pretending that I’m not embarrassed. 

Admiral Simpson glances at me from the corner of his eye and I think I see another almost-there smile. 

“Lt. Ledger will be observing and recording this mission for the Official Navy Record,” Maverick says, gesturing to me. 

Admiral Simpson takes a step forward and addresses the squadron in an even tone, “Lt. Ledger is not only a skilled researcher, but is a seasoned navigator and special-weapons system operator. She is not your secretary, she is not your babysitter. She is your equal. She will be treated with respect--and nothing short of that.” 

I square my jaw, but keep my eyes soft as I look out over the squadron. Admiral Simpson steps back into place behind me. Each of the members are looking at me and I catch Rooster’s eyes--he is no longer grimacing, not when he’s looking at me. His eyes are soft, very soft. 

“Affirmative, sir,” Hangman announces. 

When I switch my gaze to him, he winks one time, almost too quickly to register. 

“It is an honor to be among fellow Top Gun graduates,” I say simply, “I look forward to working alongside each of you.” 

Maverick nods, faces the squadron again.

“The F-18 NATOPS. It contains everything they want you to know about your aircraft.

I’m assuming you know the book inside and out.
“Damn straight,” Hangman says, nodding.
There are a few other callings. You got it. Hell yeah. Everyone wants their voice to be heard. I can almost hear Maggie’s response; duh.
Maverick glances one time at Admiral Simpson, who has not broken his gaze away from Maverick since he stepped behind the podium. Then he squares his jaw and lazily lets the manual drop into the wastebasket beside him. The thud echoes through the hangar and the aviators shift uncomfortably.
“So does your enemy,” Maverick states simply.
Hondo leans over to me again, bemused.
“And we’re off,” he whispers. 

“Bombs away,” I say, smiling. 

☾ ☽

Penny B : It’s dead tonight. I’ll make you a burger if you keep me company. Didn’t get to probe  you Friday.

Me : I’ve got some transcribing to do…homework allowed at the bar? 

Penny B : For you? Anything. 

The Hard Deck is strikingly empty when I enter through the front doors, pushing my yellow sunglasses to the top of my head. Despite it being past six o’clock, it is still outrageously hot outside. My cheeks are rutty after the short walk from my car to the door. I fan myself, catching Penny’s smile, shooting her a look of exasperation. 

“I thought being near the ocean meant a breeze, no?” Then I add, “Just makes the air taste like sweat.” 

I cross the wooden floors, which are empty of beer cans and peanut shells and straw wrappers. Penny is wiping down a spot at the bar, her hair falling down her cheeks like brown silk. 

“How you doing, short-shorts?” 

She’s teasing me, pointing to my denim shorts, which are by no means short-shorts. In fact, they reach almost halfway down my thighs and are loose enough to allow a breeze. I thrifted them somewhere between Kansas in California when my one pair of denim shorts ripped from end to end. Maggie had called them my dad shorts.  

“Hot,” I say dryly, “and already overwhelmed with this assignment. Everyone talks so damn much.” 

I fall onto one of the leather bar stools and Penny holds her chin in her hands, batting her eyes prettily at me. 

“Pilots love the sound of their own voice,” she says. 

I nod, mirroring her. The bar is cold and damp under my elbows. 

“And dammit if we don’t love the sound of their voices, too.” 

After she tries to pry any information about the mission from me, Penny serves me a burger. She even remembers what I like; it’s loaded with lettuce, onion, tomatoes, pickles. There’s even a sliced avocado. She sets a lavender limeade before me, too, winking. 

“Virgin,” she tells me. 

Penny and I talk for a long time while I eat. She tells me about her daughter, how big she’s gotten, how close they are now. She mentions, in a blase manner, that her divorce was hasty and necessary. She mentions Maverick a few times, too, her cheeks rosy. 

“Penny Benjamin, you are such a school-girl!”

Her face is only eaten by sympathy-- pity --once or twice, only when I bring Maggie up in passing. Sometimes I find it difficult to not bring her up--not even in big ways, sad ways, ways that make others upset--but because every one of my stories has her in it. I can’t tell a story about just the right side of my body when the left side was there, too. 

The first year after Maggie died, I didn’t mention her to people besides my Navy-issued therapist. I suppose it was because I wasn’t in the business of telling anyone stories that whole year. It makes a pit in my belly bloom when I think back to that year. 

The only time I’d been away from Maggie was the first two years of undergrad when she was in Missouri and I was in Pennsylvania. Sleeping was the hardest part about not having Maggie. When all the lights were off and the world was quiet and still, I would think of her. Sometimes I would think of her frigid body, the one I’d clung to while I waited for Search and Rescue to locate me, when I wasn’t sure if I would live either. I’d thought that if the cold didn’t kill me, or my injuries, then my grief surely would. Other times, I would think of a time when she made me laugh very hard and make myself weep when I couldn’t remember what she said that was so funny. Sometimes the only way I could drift into a fitful slumber is if I pretended to be in my dorm at Temple University, imagining she was just a few states away, sleeping in her dorm or emasculating a frat boy during Beer Pong. 

I allowed myself that farce very sparingly. If I did it each night, the thin veil between reality and imagination would fade. 

My parents were perhaps the first people that taught me the politics of talking about a dead sister. When my grandmother died, everyone told stories about her long, long life. Their tears were happy ones. The first thing I learned after Maggie’s death was that someone who died young, before their time, plummeting to their death in front of their birth-mate was very different than talking about an old woman who lived a long, happy life and simply passed in her sleep. 

Sometimes, just saying her name would make me mother cover her face and cry. My father never said it, but I knew it was hard for him to look at me. Maggie and I had the same face, only she was dead and I was just inexplicably not her. They looked at me like I was a ghost. 

It wasn’t until Bob called me out of the blue one day, a year after her passing, that I’d heard someone tell a story about her without crying. Bob had gotten to know her during senior year of college, just before we all entered the Academy together and became a trio.

“Do you remember when she stayed out until, what, four or five in the morning then took an exam at like eight?” Bob had laughed. 

I’d been alone all day, scrubbing my house, and had only just curled my aching feet under myself when Bob’s call had lit up my phone. 

“Yeah,” I sighed, “and she got the top grade in her class.” 

Bob chuckled and then sighed. 

“That was so like her,” he said, “everything came so easy to her.” 

“She was good at everything.” 

A warmth had bloomed in my chest then. It was like Bob had called me and breathed a new sort of life back into Maggie. She was not a ghost in the room--she was the room, everything was her. And it was okay to say it. What was the point of her life, all the big good parts of it, if we can’t talk about it? She would’ve hated for her life to be defined by her last moments. 

The second time Penny frowns, I lean forward and touch her hand. 

“Penny,” I start softly, “it feels…good to talk about her. In my own terms, of course. It’s okay. I’m doing much better now.” 

Penny takes this into account, unfurrowing her eyebrows, but still reaches out to squeeze my hand a few times. 

“I just miss her,” she says, smiling, “I’m sure you know all about that.” 

Warmth spreads down my legs. I nod.

“‘Course I do.” 

She starts to wipe down the other parts of the bar, the sun finally setting outside. Every sunset looks like the most beautiful one when the ocean is glimmering beneath it. I watch the way the palm trees sway and imagine I can taste the salt in the air even from the inside. The ceiling fans churn above me, the air conditioning spewing out icy air.

Then I plug in a headphone and start transcribing, typing rapidly on the clunky Navy-issued laptop. Penny works around me, both of us smiling, peaceful just being in each other’s presence. 

I’m listening to the radio communications during the flight drills today and trying to differentiate everyone’s voice. Rooster’s seems to be the one that stands out the most, his voice deep and gravely serious. 

“I got your back,” Rooster grunts, “I’m coming. Hang in there, hang in there!” 

I close my eyes as I listen, trying to imagine what it feels like to be in the air. Cyclone used to dogfight with us, never allowing himself to get a big head like Maverick. Even when he prevailed against the cockiest of pilots, he simply stated: “You’re dead. RTB.” 

Crimson and I used to be the last ones in the sky, breaking left and right, pulling back and forth. We worked together in absolute unison, tethered to each other.

I try, but I cannot remember what it feels like to fly. It has been a very long time since I was in the air. All I can remember is basking in the feeling of our lives hanging in that delicate balance of in-our-control and out-of-our-control . That and how cold my fingers used to get, which used to endlessly embarrass me. 

Penny taps the bar and I smile up at her, pulling my headphone out. 

“I’ve gotta shut some stuff down in the back,” she says, “stay as long as you like.” 

Mouth closed, I smile. I glance at the clock on the far wall. It’s almost ten o’clock. 

“Thanks, Penny.” 

She disappears, still clutching a rag from the bar and I am alone in The Hard Deck. I have never been alone in here before. The quietness chills me, so I put my headphone back in and continue listening to the drill. 

Just as Phoenix and Bob are abandoned by Hangman, a new sound floods the echoey room. I know as soon as I hear the opening note--the staticy strumming of a guitar--what it is. Crimson and Clover. 

I turn my head slowly and there is Rooster, standing beside the blinking jukebox. He’s leaning against it, hands in the pockets of his partially-unzipped flight suit. He’s watching me with amusement holding his features, his mouth just barely suggesting a smile, his eyes glittering beneath the bulbs from above him. 

Pulling my earbud out again, interrupting Hangman, I turn just slightly to behold Rooster there. It is only him and I there. The song whines out of the speakers and it prickles me when they say ‘Crimson’ and ‘Clover’. It is the same feeling I’d get when someone was named Faye in a book or movie, when the whole class would turn to look at me. Like the word is mine, every syllable. 

“I was just listening to the drill,” I say, smiling, “were your ears burning?” 

Rooster steps toward me and I turn so I’m fully facing him, tugging the sleeves of my t-shirt down where I’d rolled them. 

“Listening to Mav kill me?” 

When he says this, he sounds bitter, his eyes narrowing slightly. I shake my head softly, putting my hands in my lap. 

“Listening to you die to protect your wingman,” I answer. 

His feet stutter, just for a moment, and he just looks at me. One foot is in front of the other and his hands fall from their pockets as he stills completely. He isn't sure what to say. 

“Or maybe you wanted to do two hundred push-ups?”

A beat passes.

“You know,” he says, recovering, continuing his saunter towards me, “I asked around. Apparently you’re not an alcoholic or a hooker.” 

I raise my hands in defense. 

“You got me,” I surrender. 

He’s standing before me now, his grin halfway to shit-eating. He's tall, but he's especially tall when he looms over my seated position. He's close enough that I know he hasn't showered yet, his scent thick with sweat and scalp and skin. 

“You owe me some truth now,” he decides. 

I swallow hard, tilting my head as he gazes down. 

“What would you like to know, Lieutenant Bradshaw?” 

He blows air out of his nose, smiling, shaking his head lightly.

“How’d you get your call sign?” 

When we were at the Academy, Crimson and I had ruled whatever aux cord found us. People handed it over easily, no argument. When we met new people, it was one of the first things they learned about us. Music was our thing . Sun-drenched Sunday mornings in our childhood home in Topeka were scored by our parents’ endless record collection; James Brown, Blondie, KC & the Sunshine Band, Joni Mitchell, Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac, Loggins and Messina, Neil Young, Carly Simon, The Talking Heads . Our home was full of music. 

Even our real names, Maggie and Faye, were a dissected first and middle name. Maggie May was going to be the name of our parents only child, a daughter, named after a Rod Stewart song. When they found out they were having twins, they opted to switch a few letters around, and voila : Maggie and Faye Ledger. 

“It’s not because I’m lucky,” I tease, “sorry to disappoint.” 

Rooster smiles, waits for me to finish. I clear my throat, smiling, praying my breath doesn’t smell like pickles.  

“Our parents are big music people,” I said, “my father used to sing us to sleep singing this song. Crimson and clover, over and over. You know how it goes.” 

Rooster is chewing a sweet smile, his nose slightly scrunched. I know , I want to say, sickly sweet, right? 

What I don’t say is that my parents handed me their only Tommy James and the Shondells album the first time I visited home after Maggie died. 

“We can’t have this anymore,” my mother had sadly whispered.

‘Crimson and Clover’ is winding to its close on the jukebox now, whining, crackly. 

“Sweet,” he nods. 

He grabs one of the bar stools and drags it to the spot he was standing. He sits right in front of me now, his knees just barely brushing mine. He is the kind of boy that measures touches like these--just light enough to warm the tips of my fingers and toes, but not too close, too much. He’s grinning now. 

“And how did you get Rooster?”

Rooster squints. I stare at his mustache, thinking about the way it would feel against the pads of my fingers. My spine tingles. 

“Inspired by my old man’s call-sign,” he answers soberly, “Goose.” 

I blink in surprise, sitting up straight. Rooster notices this and his eyebrows furrow softly, arms uncrossing. I had kept Goose’s portrait company in the hall, had made a special effort to memorize the faces and names of every aviator there. Maverick had been staring at Goose’s portrait that day we saw each other in Memorial Hall. 

I think about Rooster’s scowl at Maverick earlier today. Uh-oh .

I see it now, though, looking at Bradley’s pretty face. Of course, he’s a Bradshaw . If his father’s nose and face shape hadn’t been an indicator, the mustache should’ve been a bright, neon sign. Bradshaw! Bradshaw!  

“Sorry,” I chuckle, “but I know Goose. Well, I know his portrait.” 

Bradley blinks in surprise now, mouth ajar. I consciously make an effort to keep my face happy and slack. No pity here .

“Yeah,” I smile, “you look just like him. I don’t know how I didn’t make the connection before. ‘Stache and all.” 

When Bradley swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobs. He’s searching me now, looking at my faded shorts and the t-shirt that swallows me whole. For only a split moment, I regret saying anything about his father. Then he meets me eyes again and sinks back into his chair with a lazy smile, his knees pressing into mine a bit further. 

“Spend a lot of time in Memorial Hall?” 

I nod, even though he is teasing me. It’s time to rip the bandaid off. 

“So, if you’ve asked around about me--,” I start, then I lean forward and lower my voice, “I’m flattered, by the way--then I would like to be briefed on the intel you’ve collected.”

Rooster nods, sucking his lips in, pretending to think. 

“Gifted navigator and WSO,” he starts, “some might even say the best--but I won’t name names. Went to college in Philly with Bob and got an…English degree? Right?” 

I nod, amused. 

“Right, an English degree. Breezed through the Academy, like, really . You were number one.” 

I gesture for him to continue. 

“You’re from some nowhere state,” he taps his chin, squinting at me, “somewhere in the midwest.” 

“Topeka,” I answer for him, “Kansas. Yuck.” 

He nods, laughing. 

“Right, right,” he thinks for a moment before continuing, “no one had to tell me this, but Cyclone obviously has a soft spot for you. Bob, too.” 

I roll my eyes, leaning back in my chair. It is silent in the bar again, the jukebox dead. 

“Bob has a soft spot for everyone.” 

“Fair point,” Rooster laughs, “and the biggest piece of intel I acquired on this mission is why some Junior handed you some quarters.” 

I’m already blushing when he points his thumb blindly at the jukebox behind him. 

“You’re Hard Deck royalty . A real party-starter, a dancer. Most importantly-- the jukebox queen .”

I imagine Rooster asking around in the locker room after drills. Bob’s soft smile as he talks about the glory days, when we all lived on base and were too young and excited to be hungover. When Maggie was alive and I was whole . 

“Seems like you’ve got me down,” I say, “Lieutenant Floyd was your only source?” 

He shrugs, biting his lip. 

“I could tell you,” he starts, “but then I’d have to kill you.” 

We size each other up. The flight suit hugs him so very well--his muscles ripple in the thick cotton. Sparse, sandy chest hair peers out from behind the unzipped portion of his flight suit. 

“Can I ask you something?” I ask. 

My throat suddenly feels dry. I suck in a breath. Rooster nods, spine straightening like he is going to salute me. He clasps his hands together, mouth firmly held in a serious line.

“You know why I don’t fly anymore, don’t you? Why I’m in Memorial Hall often enough to recognize your father?” 

Rooster swallows, but nods instantly, taking what I say in stride. 

“Good,” I sigh, leaning back into my stool with a profound weight melting off my chest. 

Rooster is quiet, studying me as I cross my legs. When he opens his mouth, that silly pity look is starting to invade his features. Not you, too, Bradshaw.  

I interrupt him before he’s too far gone. 

“I’ve heard some things about you, too,” I start. 

The look is replaced with a curious smile. I nod, humming as I cross my arms. Rooster is amused again. 

“Lay it on me,” he challenges, calling my bluff.

“Well, you’re careful when you’re in the air,” I start slowly, “cautious. You think about everything. You keep your wingman covered.” 

Rooster swallows.

“Your file says you went to college in Virginia. Graduated with a degree in,” I look him up and down, sucking my teeth, “history?” 

Rooster wrinkles his nose. 

“Poli Sci.” 

“Right,” I say, “that’s what I meant! You like the oldies, too, right?” 

He smiles. 

“Stuff your dad listened to?” 

He nods one time. I nod, too, understanding. 

“You can play the piano,” I say, “and you think you can sing.” 

Rooster bursts out laughing, and I do, too. It makes my belly ache so that I have to clutch that plush part of myself over my t-shirt. The realization that I haven’t laughed this hard in years screams towards me like a squealing car. 

“You’re the first girl to ever complain about my singing,” he says, feigning a wound over his heart, “didn’t it charm you?”

I swallow. Rooster is teasing, but somewhere beneath it, he is earnest. He is smiling softly at me. It is dark outside now and we can hear each breath the others takes beneath the sound of the rolling ocean.  

“One more question,” he nearly whispers. 

“Shoot.” 

A beat passes and he digs around the pocket of his suit before presenting a quarter.

“Pick a song for me?” 

I stare at the selections in the jukebox for a long minute, meticulously giving each one a thought. It’s been a long time since I’ve looked down into a machine to pick a record and not at my living room wall. I flitter through them, my throat tight.

Rooster is standing behind me; I can feel his eyes on the back of my head. I think I can even feel the grin that’s infecting his entire face. It’s hard to keep my eyes tracking all the records.

When I find the perfect song, I know instantly. I’d forgotten about this feeling--like excitement is caving in my chest. 

“Got it,” I call to Rooster. 

“Anticipating greatness over here.” 

23. The buttons suddenly feel very familiar as I press down. The machine thinks before the sound floods the room. Sweet Thing by Van Morrison. 

I turn on my heel and Rooster’s eyes are trained on me, a smile tugging at his lips. His scars shine white-gold under the lights above us. This song makes my toes curl.

“Show me how you got the party started,” he teases. 

I step towards him, my chest a gaping hole. My face looks like the word please .  

“That was more Maggie’s department,” I whisper, “but you can ask me to dance and I’ll say yes.” 

Rooster’s face goes slack with sobriety. He licks his lips and then reaches his hand out for me, palm towards the ceiling. He does not look away from my eyes. Seeing him like this, his empty palms and his flickering eyes and his unzipped flight suit and messy hair, I realize how handsome he is. He looks just like his father.

“Will you dance with me, Faye?” 

Faye . It’s the first time I’ve heard him say my name. It sounds like he’s said it a thousand times before now. I imagine all the times it’s rolled off his tongue. Maybe he whispered it as he typed my name into Facebook, a fruitless attempt to cyber-stalk me. He had uttered it to Bob, no doubt, dripping with curiosity.

  I take his hand, just ghosting over it before he clasps his around mine and pulls me in slowly, like he’s lassoed me. He holds that hand in his and our grip is suspended in the cool air beside us. He pulls me close enough so that our chests rest peacefully against another’s. Tenderly, his arm sneaks around my waist and finds purchase on the curve of my spine. He spreads his fingers and nudges my belly towards him until our torso’s are connected. 

“There,” he whispers, smiling down at me, “I was getting vulnerable over here.”

Carefully, I bring my other arm up to rest at the base of his neck. His skin is smooth and warm. When my fingers make contact with his skin, he stifles a shiver. His hand is big and rough and as it holds mine, I feel that even if I were weightless, he would not let me float away from earth. 

He leads, slowly turning us in a circle, his body so close to mine that I can feel how steady and even his heart rate is.

“Bob told me that you were lost, you know…after,” Rooster whispers, “I know what that feels like. I lost both my parents.”

Bradley Bradshaw is an orphan. I have to try very hard to not let my face contort in pity. But maybe there’s a small part of myself, a part that will never be spoken into the very real air around us, that feels like Rooster losing both his parents is equivalent to me only losing Maggie. I feel rotten when I think about this. 

Goosebumps prickle my scalp. He’s still looking down into my eyes, very earnestly. He licks his lips again. My stomach feels cold and hot at the same time, like I’ve just finished running outside in the dead of winter. 

“I believe you,” I whisper before adding, “you know, I look at your father’s portrait everyday. Even when you aren’t here, he isn’t…alone.” 

Rooster makes a sound in his throat, like something is squeezing him. He grips my hand tighter.  

“I would hate it if no one saw Maggie’s portrait,” I say quickly, “I wouldn’t want her to feel alone.” 

If I was saying that to anyone else, I would blush with humiliation. How can photographs feel alone? But Rooster understands, his eyebrows pulled together in an earnest way. He understands . Perhaps it’s a fear he’s had since leaving Miramar.

He releases my being, pulling away from me with only our joint hands remaining. He nods and I spin, laughing, then fall back into him. Falling into his body reminds me of falling into a pile of leaves collected by my father. He smells sharp and earthy and each part of me feels safe.

It feels like crickets are rumbling in my belly, my toes tingling.   

And then, for some reason, I know it will be okay here with him. My head feels fuzzy and heavy, so I let it fall to rest on his shoulder. At first, I just barely let my cheek rest on the worn fabric of his suit. But then he rests his nose and lips in my hair, his breath warm. I sink my cheek into him. 

We dance without speaking for a moment and I close my eyes. M aggie would love Rooster. She loved it when men danced, especially in uniform. She loved it when people didn’t take themselves too seriously. She was always tugging someone to this very dance floor. 

“This is a good song,” he whispers into my hair. 

We chuckle. I very gently feel the soft hair at the nape of his neck.

He holds me closer. He smells like jet fuel, like adrenaline, like my life before. 

“If I asked you to go on a date with me,” he starts and I stiffen with excitement, “would you say yes?” 

“Ever the gentleman,” I whisper, “yes, I would.” 

He inhales deeply, smelling my shampoo, my house, my skin. 

“Should I dip you now?” 

Chapter Text

July 16th, 2019

The sky is cobalt blue when I get to the base. It’s already seventy-nine degrees outside and not even a fraction of the red hot sun is visible, blazing just out of view. I’m lugging my leather bag, sunglasses pushing my hair back, and my headphones are shoved deeply in my ears. I’m listening to Walk on the Wild Side by Lou Reed and trying to match my footsteps to the beat--which is to say I’m walking slowly.

The base is very quiet, very still. The motion-sensor lights wink on as I walk down the halls, air conditioning humming distantly, and the fluorescents seem impeccably bright and white. 

Sleep found me for only a few hours the night before, and even then, it was fitful. 

Penny had come out of the back just as Rooster and I parted, our mouths slightly parted. My body was cold without him against it, the kind of cold my fingers got when I am nervous. Rooster’s hand was still holding mine and our hands released only when Penny’s eyes flickered to their union. 

“Bradley,” Penny smiled, pretending that she didn’t see us just holding hands, “good, you’re here. Someone’s gotta walk us ladies to our cars.” 

Rooster had recovered remarkably fast. 

“It would be my honor, Miss Benjamin.” 

I gathered my things hastily, ignoring Penny’s eyes burning my cheek. I was embarrassed and felt silly for feeling embarrassed. Rooster and I had been so close that I felt that anyone who looked at us could tell we had touched--like there were some invisible markers or something.  

“Did I miss anything?” Penny asked, chuckling. 

“No,” I said, looking up at her, “just a couple of lieutenants taking advantage of a vacant jukebox.” 

Penny glanced past me, squinting at Rooster. 

Rooster walked Penny to her car first and she waved to me with a sneaky look on her face, her dark eyebrows pulled together and her mouth twisted as she bit the inside of her cheek. 

She said something to Bradley I couldn’t hear from my spot below the American flag. 

“Goodnight,” I waved to her, then whispered as she pulled out of the lot, “nosy.” 

Rooster met me under the canopy again, his face shadowed in the moonlight. He smiled down at me and it was softer than any of the smiles I’d seen from him that night. It was almost a knowing smile, like we shared some sort of knowledge now. 

“Should I put my number in your phone?” 

My belly ached with that uncertain hunger again, like I was missing something. 

I handed him my phone silently. 

“1-9-9-2,” I told him and he laughed. 

“Very trusting of you,” he said. 

“I have access to all your files,” I said, “so, you know. Eye for an eye or whatever.” 

The breeze kissed my neck and as Rooster navigated my phone, a small smile playing at his lips, I pulled my hair into that makeshift bun at the back of my head again. I looked up at the stars, the sand in the parking lot crunching under my shoes. It was cloudy, but only partly. The moon was white like talcum powder. 

“Waxing gibbous,” I said quietly. 

“What’d you just call me?”

I pointed to the sky, at the moon, laughing. 

“The moon phase,” I said, “waxing gibbous.” 

When I peered at Bradley from the corner of my eye, his head had fallen back as he gazed up at the sky, my phone lit up in his hand. His throat looked golden even under the dim light of the moon. His Adam’s apple bobbed when he swallowed and I was suddenly overcome with a vast spectrum of emotions. My throat ached with want but my eyes filled with tears. He looked like a man and a child at the same time, very tall and broad, but his face pulled together curiously as he gazed up at the moon like he had a million questions about it. 

How could anyone leave him alone on this planet?

When he caught my gaze, he smirked, quirking his eyebrows. 

“Are you checking me out, Lt. Ledger?”

“Classified,” I’d returned curtly. 

He grinned as he finished typing on my phone, handing it back to me happily. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said. 

I nodded, itching to see what he’d labeled his contact as. I restrained myself. 

“Goodnight, Bradley,” I whispered. 

He stiffened with excitement when I said his name. There was a moment where we stared at another under the light of the moon, the waves a constant lullaby, the air tasting of salt and sand. 

“I like when you say my name,” he whispered, his voice slightly strained. 

I swallowed hard, pressing my thighs together tightly. I wanted to tell him that I would say his name whenever he wanted me to. He could call me in the middle of the night and I would say it again and again until he fell back asleep. He could radio me from the air and I would say it over comm, in front of everyone. He could ask me at lunch time, or in the middle of a pool game, or on a long drive. 

Instead, I said, “Get home safely, Bradley.” 

He watched my lips. 

Then he watched me walk to my car. My mouth was dry and my legs ached from being pressed together so tightly. As soon as I was in my car, the doors locked, I nearly burst. My chest tingled and my hands were shaking. 

I couldn’t wait any longer; I peered into my side mirror and saw that Rooster was in the Bronco already, pulling out of his parking spot. He honked at me before driving out of the lot and into the night, his engine rumbling, the Bronco a dot of bright blue in the dark night. 

I scrambled to my phone and opened up my contacts, scouring until I saw it: Tramp. I tapped on the contact and stared at his number, aching for any part of him. Reclining in my seat, partly deflated, I pressed on the ‘message’ button and saw a conversation already existed. 

Oh, sugar baby, sweet thing

I drove home in a daze, no music on. Then I went inside my home, fieded Stevie at the front door, washed my face, brushed my hair, lit a candle, laid in my crisp sheets, cuddled into my linen duvet, and closed my eyes. 

Sleep would not come, though. 

All I could think about was him, his fingers on my phone, typing a message to himself. 

Just as I turn the corner to Memorial Hall, I spot a figure at the end of it and pause. No chance in Hell it’s him , but when I squint, I see that it is him. It is Rooster. 

He’s standing before his father’s portrait, dressed in just a pair of gym shorts and old sneakers. His bare chest heaves and sweat seems to glow under the fluorescents. He has very clearly been running, his cheeks hot and red. I think I feel his body heat from where I’m standing at the other end of the hall. 

He hasn’t spotted me yet. I take another step in his direction, willing him to see me, but then I realize he has headphones in, too. I feel stuck suddenly, unable to move, unsure if I should even approach him. 

He knocks a knuckle softly against the glass of the portrait, his cheeks puffing out for a moment. Then he turns--startling when he sees me standing there, my bag slung over my shoulder, my smile lazy. He lets his eyes wash over me before he strides to my side of the hall. We meet in front of Maggie’s portrait. 

Each of us takes a headphone out. 

“Faye,” he pants, “good morning.” 

“Bradley,” I nod. 

It is hard to keep my head angled towards his, hard to not let my eyes fall down to his glimmering chest. His muscles strain under his skin as he attempts to catch his breath still.

“What’re you listening to?” 

Instead of answering, I gingerly hold my free headphone towards him. Instead of taking it, he turns his free ear to me. My throat is tight when I press the bud into him. 

Jackie is just speeding away / Thought she was James Dean for a day 

He looks down at me as we listen, a sweet smile on his lips. Even his mustache is dripping sweat. I try to even out my breathing. 

Without a word, he picks his dangling headphone off his wet shoulder and very delicately places it in my ear, pushing my hair back. My mouth goes dry. I strain to hear what he is listening to over Lou Reed. 

Oh yeah, alright / Take it easy, baby! / Make it last all night

I can sense how quiet the world is round us as we finish each other’s songs without speaking, a true cacophony as Tom Petty and Lou Reed sing. 

When I am this close to Bradley, all I can think about is how solid his shoulder felt under my cheek, how correct his lips and nose felt in my hair. All I can think about is the hours that I tossed in bed, how warm it felt between my legs when I finally dipped my fingers inside, his name falling off my lips and withering away into the dusk of my room. No relief came. I wonder if he can tell this close to me--if there is something about my lips, my fingers that give me away. I want to put my mouth on his chest and suck the sweat off his skin. 

His lips move, but I can’t hear him. I tug the headphones out and cock my head. 

“I said ,” Bradley says, “you look gorgeous.” 

Pink tickles my neck and face. I turn towards Maggie’s portrait and her grin taunts me. Bradley follows my gaze, registering what we’re standing before. 

“Wow,” he says, “she looks like she’s laughing at us.” 

I nod, smiling. Her eyes are bright and wide. A spray of freckles covers her nose and cheeks. Her hair is pulled back and she is in her whites, but she’s open-mouth smiling. 

“She probably is,” I say, “from beyond.”

Rooster beholds her beside me, his arms crossed. 

“You two must’ve been popular,” he comments. 

I nod. 

“She was, definitely. Everyone was in love with her. Men, boys, girls, women, pilots, captains,” I tell him, “who could resist that face?” 

Rooster looks at me, but I don’t look away from Maggie’s portrait. 

“Anyone ever told you that you guys have the same face?” 

I shake my head.

“No, no,” I say, “well, yes, but no. Look at her nose. She had this perfect patch of freckles because she never wore sunscreen.” 

Bradley is looking at the portrait again, squinting. 

“And look at her teeth,” I say, grazing them over the glass, “she had this incredible chip in her front tooth and the one below it. Really turned on the charm, people loved it. She got it in college, when she was playing tackle football at a frat party. And people loved that she got it from being tackled by a frat boy.” 

She had FaceTimed me that night our freshman year of college very late and I scrambled in the dark to answer it, apologizing profusely to my grumbling roommate. 

“Are you okay?” I’d hissed at her. 

She was drunk, her eyes bleary, giggling. She grinned at me, pulling the camera of her phone close to her mouth. Her front teeth were drenched in blood. 

“Coleton chipped my teeth!” She’d burst, all smiles. 

“Who’s Col--you know, what? It doesn’t matter. Do you want me to look for a dentist for you? Let me see, stop moving!” 

She bared her teeth like a wild animal and proudly showed the cracks. Yes, there was definitely two chips and they were definitely bleeding. 

“I think it’s cute,” she told me, sucking the blood from her teeth and swallowing it, “do you think it's cute?” 

Rooster is grinning, chuckling. 

“And her neck,” I say, pointing to her delicate throat, clear of blemishes, “it’s, I mean, it’s perfect. Spotless. I have four freckles on my throat.” 

I turn to him and point. 

He leans down, narrowing his eyes, nodding. Then he raises his hand and presses down on my skin, making note of all four with his index and middle finger. His fingers are warm and he touches each of them slowly, an agonizing kind of slow. I try hard to swallow normally so he doesn’t feel the lump just under his touch. He is humming, his fingers lingering on the last freckle, his eyes downcast and shaded by the curtain of lashes that line his green eyes. 

He takes his fingers away and lets his hand fall beside him. I know that if he brought his fingers to his nose and breathed, it would smell like me. The thought almost makes my knees buckle. 

He straightens out again, meeting my eyes. 

“I like your throat,” he says.

My heart stammers. I want to excuse myself and douse myself in cold, cold water.  

“You can have it,” I say, “it’s yours.”

The brevity of what I said holds us in silence, his mouth ajar, his chest rising and falling slower now that he’s caught his breath. His cheeks are still red, he’s still glowing, his skin so achingly close to my body and touch. I wonder if he’s looking at me the way I’m looking at him, if he wants to touch me as badly as I want to touch him. If his fingers are tingling, if he will be careful to keep those two fingers on his right hand clear of the shower stream. 

He steps closer to me and just when I think his face is going to near mine, he turns to Maggie again, eyes washing over her. 

“I’d bet people loved the both of you,” he says, then he turns back to me, smiling, “I mean, look at you. Who could resist?” 

I’m dizzy. 

“Not many,” I whisper and I’m teasing but I can’t get my lips to smile.

“I should hit the showers,” he says and it sounds like an invitation. 

It lingers in the air like rotting fruit.

“I didn’t know how to tell you this,” I breathe, “but you stink.” 

We share a grin and his moss-colored eyes flick to my mouth where I’m chewing on my bottom lip. He’s thinking about kissing me. 

I can’t remember the last time I kissed someone, really kissed someone in the real way;  the one that curves my spine and makes the back of my head prickle with desire, when my eyelashes flutter closed and my breath catches in that delicious spot between my throat and mouth.

Just before he moves towards the shower, still grinning, he brings his two fingers up again and ghosts them over the freckle that’s lowest on my throat--where my collarbones kiss--and then he walks away. 

When he’s gone, I turn to Maggie. 

“Did you see that?” I whisper. 

She grins back at me. 

  ☾ ☽

When my doorbell chimes, I hardly hear it. 

It is 6:57 and I am in my closet, sorting through the polyester and cotton and linen, my hair already falling down my back, freshly brushed. Sound and Vision is hurtling through the soundsystem in my living room, where Stevie is perching on a marmalade-colored chair licking her paws politely. 

I pause--strain to hear anything over David Bowie. 

It rings again. 

A stone sinks in my belly. I pull my robe around myself tighter, gritting my teeth, feeling a flurry of flower petals bursting in my belly. He’s early .

I race to the living room, where the sun is drenching the room in ochre. I have four candles burning, my record player on, the fan is mercilessly churning hot air around the room, and as I step on the living room rug, I realize that even the carpet feels hot from the San Diego heat. But at least my house smells like maple.

“Coming!” I call, even though he can’t hear me through the thick door.

I race down the stairs, my feet bare and my lips painted pink. 

Rooster is there. He is smiling when I first swing the door open, like he had held his face in place as he waited. When he sees me, my hair probably stricken from the heat and my body covered by a silky robe, his smile falters. He blinks a few times, letting his eyes drop down my body. My throat feels warm all over again, the way it did after he touched me. I was sure his fingers had left some sort of mark, some sort of evidence that he had touched me. But my neck looks like it does on any other day. 

He’s wearing a pair of true-blue denim shorts and a sage-colored button up, except that only three of the buttons are done. His chest glistens under the red-hot sun. He’s holding a bouquet of lavender, wrapped in crinkling brown paper. 

“Bradley,” I greet and my voice sounds steadier than my legs feel, “you’re early!”

He meets my eyes again. His eyes look so very green. He swallows hard and I want so badly to look down at my own body and try to see it from his eyes. 

“Hope that’s alright,” he says, “Lieutenant Ledger.” 

I squint, swallow. 

“There’s a joke in there somewhere about birds and worms.” 

Rooster laughs.

I open the door wider and gesture for him to come inside. 

“Please excuse the heat,” I say quickly, “this house was built in 1899 and it’s just cursed any central air conditioning I’ve tried and I, like an idiot, am trying to find cute window units for all the rooms.”

He steps over the threshold and is still smiling at me when I close the heavy front door behind him. My music is still blaring. He holds the lavender out for me and I take it from him, but our fingers brush against another’s just one time very softly, enough for my thighs to spring together again. 

Even without nearing the flower, the lavender’s fragrance envelopes my nose. 

“Lavender brings luck,” I smile, “are you trying to tell me something?” 

I sound like Maggie . 

His cheeks are painted pink. 

“There’s a joke in there somewhere about clovers,” he quips. 

My throat constricts. I point to the wooden stairs and nod. 

“Let me get a vase,” I say, motioning for him to follow me. 

As I start up the steps with him trailing behind me, I am suddenly entirely aware that I am entirely naked underneath my robe. I don’t even have panties on . My knees almost buckle, my neck growing red. 

He is silent behind me, but his footsteps echo on my stairs. I enter the kitchen and hold the door open for him. He looks so big in the doorway--so unfamiliar in this landscape. He looks like he belongs here. His cheeks are already turning pink from the heat. After a beat, he follows me into the kitchen and noticeably deflates when he feels the air conditioning. 

I grab a vase, which is really an antique measuring cup from somewhere in Nebraska, and fill it under my faucet. W hat should I say to him? I rack my brain, biting my lip, trying to get myself to look over my shoulder at him. 

“Your house,” he says suddenly, “it feels so much like…like a home.” 

When I turn and face him finally, he has his back to me on the other side of the island. He’s looking at my beautiful refrigerator, at the doors that are littered with gaudy magnets, polaroids, magazine cutouts, stickers, and sticky notes. Only little pieces of the eggshell-colored fridge are visible through the mess of life that I have stuck on the fridge. 

Even the back of his head looks handsome . He’s so tall and broad, his shoulders lifting and falling with every careful breath he’s breathing. His hair is shorter in the back and little parts of it are starting to curl at the nape of his neck. 

I unwrap the lavender on the island, still watching him while I grab a pair of gardening shears from my outdoor-tools drawer. I snip the ends of the lavender at an angle and very carefully put them in the glass. They sprawl and spill over the sides, dropping little purple buds. I set them on the sill above my sink quietly and the colored flowers looks breathtaking against the dying sun.

His fingers whisper over a polaroid on the top right corner of the fridge. I watch him, scooping some bits of lavender into my hands and setting them back on the paper I spread out. It crinkles under my touch, but he doesn’t turn around. The polaroid he’s touching is one from 2015. It’s Maggie and I in our flight suits, standing on the tarmac in front of our F-18, our helmets propped under our arms. His index finger brushes very softly over Maggie’s face, then mine, where it lingers. 

In the living room, Always Crashing in the Same Car has started. It floats through the closed kitchen door and Rooster does not look away from the refrigerator. 

“I want people to feel that way about my house,” I say, swallowing, “it’s important to have a place that feels like home when you’re, you know…grown up, I guess.” 

Rooster’s hand falls to his side. My throat feels warm, my mouth open a little bit. 

“Smells like home, too,” he says, just barely, voice almost a whisper. 

“What does my house smell like?” 

He turns so his left cheek is facing me. It’s blushed. His eyes are downcast and there’s a sad sort of smile creeping onto his lips. 

“Smells like you.” 

Instead of sinking to my knees, I pull my robe around myself tighter and Rooster finally turns so he’s looking at me. We’re smiling at each other. I could faint. 

“You want a drink while I finish getting ready?” 

He shakes his head. 

“That’s okay,” he whispers. 

He seems very soft right now, like the brash boyness he wears on base is just a malleable membrane that can be peeled off him with slight ease. Like whatever defenses he had up, they dissipated when he crossed the threshold of my kitchen. He’s looking at my face, his eyes glimmering beneath the Edison bulbs that hang above him. 

“Put on any record you want,” I say, “and I’ll be quick.” 

I round the counter and his eyes follow me. When I am standing beside him, reaching for the door, he nods. 

“Take your time,” he says, “I’m early.” 

I barely make it back to my bedroom before my chest is heaving with desire. I lean against my closed bedroom door and try to catch my breath. My basil walls seem to breathe with me, gold frames cluttering the walls as they expand with rapid exhales. All the eyes of the people I love--Maggie, my mother and father, Bob, Jagger, Maneater, friends from high school, friends from college--they all stare at me, grinning. I think of Rooster standing in my living room, his peppery cologne staining my furniture deliciously. He’s looking at all the pieces that make up my home, all the pieces of myself that are kept safely away from base, tucked into my private life like a confidential file. 

I open the door a crack and the music has stopped. I can see Rooster’s shadow from the hallway, the tallest thing in my home. 

“The cat’s a bitch,” I call, “her name is Stevie.” 

His laugh echoes down the hall and it sounds like it belongs there, among the picture frames and knick-knacks and vinyls, more than anything I’ve ever brought inside. I close the door again and drop my robe on the floor. 

It’s 7:15 when I step out of my cool bedroom and into the hallway. I’m wearing one of Maggie’s t-shirts, one that had been past along a long line of men and one-night stands, and it has the Rolling Stones logo printed on the front, though it has faded greatly with age. I’m wearing a paisley mini-skirt, one my mother wore in the 70s. It brings me a sense of comfort--a sense of strength, maybe--to be wearing the clothes of the women that I love. 

Rooster is standing with his hands in his pockets, evaluating the shelves and shelves of records I have framing my television. The shelves reach the ceiling and he cranes his neck to read the sides of the cardboard cases. Love by David Bowie is spinning soundlessly, ready to be flipped. 

“Couldn’t find anything you like?” 

Rooster whips around, beaming. He looks at my shirt, my skirt, my legs, my hair. Oh, Lord.

“Found a few,” he tells me, “but got overwhelmed. How many…”

“Last time I counted,” I stay, moving to stand beside him, inhaling the dusty scent the old records radiate, “I think it was over five-hundred.” 

Rooster laughs in shock, wide-eyes searching the endless records. 

“If you look,” I start, fingers ghosting over both copies of Blue by Joni Mitchell, “I have a lot of duplicates. I got all of Maggie’s records.” 

Rooster is watching the side of my face. 

“Obviously,” I whisper, grazing my two copies of Hounds of Love by Kate Bush, “we had the same taste.”

I face him and he’s smiling down at me. His eyes are sweet and wide. The oppressive heat in the living room does not feel so bad when we are looking at each other, our arms grazing another’s. 

  ☾ ☽

Rooster opens my car door, which is not the first time a man has opened my car door, but it is the first time I’ve cared. His back is straight and his shoulders are squared. 

“Lieutenant,” he says almost mockingly, nodding. 

I nod at him, too, pretending that I’m not blushing. 

“Bradley,” I return, pretending that I don’t see him stiffen when I say his name. 

The leather seats of the Bronco are impeccable. They’re gray, unblemished, not faded with age or sagging. The car is freshly polished and vacuumed, the dash free of dust or trash. A folded paper map is neatly folded and rests on top of the radio. 

When Rooster gets in the Bronco, he’s beaming. He pats the dash and glances at me as we buckle in. 

“This car is my baby,” he tells me. 

And he doesn’t say it, but I know that it was his father’s car. We are two people who have lost big parts of ourselves. There is an unspoken bond between those that have looked death in the face and made it out the otherside. We walk on the earth with heavy feet. He doesn’t have to say it, but I know that this car is the biggest piece of his father he has left. 

He motions for me to connect my phone to the aux cord and I do.

The only part of the car that isn’t original is the radio. 

“My old man would’ve changed the radio out, too,” Rooster says even though I don’t question it.

The evening sky is baby blue. Pink clouds drift lazily across the sun that is beginning to sink. It’s almost 8:00 now and we are in Rooster’s cyan Bronco, racing down the Pacific Coast Highway. The top of the Bronco is soft and the windows are down. The air smells like the ocean, which we are approaching rapidly. 

He has his sunglasses on and he’s tapping the thin steering wheel, singing nodding to the beat with his sharp jaw. Knock On Wood by Eddie Floyd is grooving through the speakers. A giddiness is climbing my throat the closer we get to the beach, the closer we get to sunset. My hair is frolicing in the wind like a flighty child. The music is too loud for either of us to talk, but we are both smiling. 

There is a paper bag crinkling at my feet and when I lean forward to look inside, Rooster’s arm suddenly juts out before me, like a barrier. He grins at me, just shaking his head. 

“It’s a surprise!” he yells over the wind and the music and the ocean. 

I lean back, holding my hands up in surrender. 

“You look unreal, by the way,” Rooster adds, glancing at me, voice still carrying over the sounds around us with gusto, “like, fictitious , even.”

“I thought I was the one with the English degree,” I bite back teasingly.

My thighs are pressed together so tightly that I imagine crushing an aluminum can between them. I think I could break open a geode even.

“You don’t look too bad yourself,” I say, leaning towards his ear so I don’t have to yell, “for a tramp.”

There is no center console in the Bronco. The empty seat in the middle of our bench blinks back at me as I lean over it. We both look at each other, but we don’t say anything. Rooster sucks his teeth. 

Oh Honey by Delegation is playing now.

When we pull into the parking lot of Flat Rock Beach, it is almost completely empty save a few cars nestled into corners beneath palm trees. The sun is ablaze now, racing towards the earth. Already, the moon is high in the sky, translucent. 

Rooster opens my car door again and holds my hand as I climb out. When his warm hand is holding mine, I think about the night before at The Hard Deck when he played mine and my sister’s song, when he gave me his quarters and I picked a song for him. I think about how solid he felt against me, like I was actually dancing with something deeply rooted in the earth, like a tree. 

He reaches inside for the paper bag, then opens the back door. He pulls a large flannel blanket out of the backseat and then nods towards the edge of the parking lot where the steep stairs break up the sharp, sand-covered rocks. My heart is racing. I smooth my skirt out.

“After you,” he muses. 

We are the only people on the beach. All around us are steep cliffs made up of brown stone and golden sand. The beach is a small one and I am able to see the northwest end of the beach from where we are at the southwest end. 

Rooster lays the blanket out swiftly and tells me to sit. 

The sand is soft and warm beneath the flannel. I sit, facing the water, which rolls in calmly. Above us, the moon is growing brighter as the sky grows dimmer. 

“Aren’t you going to ask what’s in the bag?” 

I look at Rooster and he’s standing beside me with a lopsided smile. I pretend to think, tapping my chin, sitting with my legs crossed, arms propping me up. 

“Okay, I’ll bite.” 

Rooster immediately reaches into the bag and its crinkling is the only sound in the world besides the traffic above us, the waves rolling in. He reveals a thick circular bottle with a dark liquid sloshing inside of it. 

“Maraska cherry wine,” he tells me, “a personal favorite of mine.” 

I nod, biting my lip. 

“Didn’t take you for a wine guy,” I tease. 

“Didn’t take you for a tequila girl,” he quips, handing me the bottle. 

I blush. He pulls out an identical bottle and we both break in laughter. I lay it beside the other bottle, against my thighs. 

“We also have two plastic wine glasses, dried figs, one half-loaf of sourdough, and a block of the finest Whole Foods brand cheddar cheese.” 

We fall into each other so easy that it knocks the breath out of my lungs. He is on his knees on the blanket now, looming before me larger than life, the moon drifting in the sky above us like a spotlight. He is pouring the cherry wine in the plastic glasses, his eyes down, his lips sinking into his bottom lip. 

He hands the dark glass to me, eyes finding mine for a moment. 

“Thank you,” I whisper. 

When he has his glass of wine, he falls beside me. We are both lying back on the sand, reclined on our elbows. Our skin is only inches apart. The sky is dying. 

I have not been on a date since my sister died and when I think this, I get dizzy; the kind of dizzy I would get when my mother spun me round and round in the backyard, the trees above me a canopy of green leaves that billowed above us. 

I sip my wine until my throat is hot.

“What else did Bob tell you?” I ask suddenly, “or maybe I should ask what you asked?” 

Rooster is smiling, eyes lingering on the rolling waves, the white foam of the ocean. 

“He told me you two became close in undergrad, but you and your sister really took him in while in the Academy.”

Bob is pressed into many of the memories I so bitter-sweetly reminisce. He’s in photographs in my house, in my dreams sometimes, in my handwritten phone book that I keep in my purse for emergency purposes. 

“And he told me that you are funny and kind and smart,” Rooster says before pausing, “but he didn’t have to tell me that. I would have figured that out right quick.”

I nod, blushing. I take another sip of wine; it’s sweet and bitter on my tongue. 

“He told me that you take care of people,” when he turns to me, I pretend I don’t notice and just smile softly, “but he didn’t have to tell me that either.” 

I swallow and keep my voice steady. 

“And what made you decide to ask him about me?” 

He laughs and it’s his turn to pretend like he doesn’t see me looking at his cheek. The cheek that faces me is free of facial hair except for the top of his lip. It is free of scars, too. 

“You’re asking the tough questions, Faye,” he laughs. 

I shrug smally. His laughter fades and he becomes pensive, sighing. 

“If it wasn’t your quick wit or the way you handle your drink,” he teases and I blush, “then maybe the--well, do you really want me to go into details?” 

He suddenly turns and looks at me, the corners of his mouth pulled up, his eyes earnest and soft. I smile at him and nod two times, very seriously. My heartbeat hastens. 

Rooster watches my face, eyes lingering on my lips. 

“Maybe the precise moment was after I finished my critically-acclaimed performance,” he teases, “and I looked for your face, but couldn’t find you. I went to the front doors, just to catch my breath, but I saw you out there.” 

The back of my neck prickles with goose-flesh. The freckles on my throat feel red-hot like coals in a fire. 

“You were sitting on the stoop, leaning against the building. The flag was blowing above you. And you were just quietly sitting out there, existing. You looked like you belonged right there, like you were planted there, or something. Truth be told,” Rooster says, “I’ve heard a lot of stories about you over the years, stories about you and Crimson acing missions and climbing the ranks like it’s no one’s business, stories about you two working hard and playing harder. And the, of course, Bob told me what happened. But when I saw you, you weren’t what I thought you’d be.”

I think of the first time he saw me, only a few days before, standing outside The Hard Deck in a flowery dress. Had my face been small and pensive as I stared at the front doors or had my face been open, my eyes swimming, a smile tugging on my lips as I watched him swagger towards me? I want to ask, but I’m scared to know. 

“What did you think I was going to be?”

He swallows, thinking. 

“I guess I thought you would be hardened. Mysterious, maybe.” 

His eyes are looking right into mine. We are resting our cheeks on our shoulders and the sun has disappeared from the sky. The cherry wine has stained his lips red. 

I force myself to say it. 

“And what am I really?”

His eyes flicker to my lips.

“Warm. And frightfully pleasant.” 

I stifle a shiver. I finish my glass of wine and sit up to pour another one. He watches the back of my head, I can feel his eyes getting lost in my hair. I sit like that for a moment, just breathing, and pop a sweet fig in my mouth. It gets stuck in my molars.

“Nobody has a bad thing to say about you,” Rooster says quickly, “did you know that?” 

I nod. I know already that I am someone people like. I am non-offensive, I am not mean-spirited. Even before, when Maggie was alive, I was polite and kind. People loved Maggie and they liked me. Now, though, no one can say that they don’t like me--even if it’s true. 

“People can’t say bad things about the girl with the dead sister.” 

A beat passes and Rooster moves to mirror me, somehow scooting closer to me in the process. Our arms are touching now, our skin damp and tepid. 

“Maybe you aren’t giving yourself enough credit,” Rooster suggests. 

I hum. Then I shake my head and take another gulp of wine, smiling at Bradley. 

“What about you, Bradley Bradshaw? Driving a piece of history, classically trained on the piano, military family…” I start, “I want to hear all about you.” 

The waves crash in the distance and I glance up at the sky once more. The moon is full and bright; robust. Just as he opens his mouth, my tongue prickles with another question. 

“Wait,” I interrupt, “when’s your birthday?”

He cracks a smile. 

“June 27th,” he starts and I press him by leaning into him just slightly, “1984.” 

I have to think for a moment, reciting the order in my head.

“A Cancer,” I smile. I don’t say anything about the eight years that separate us.

He’s watching my lips again. I swallow. 

“Will you tell me about your parents?”

He swallows, too. Then he nods to his glass and bottoms it out. He pours himself another silently, eyebrows furrowed just slightly. I tear off a piece of bread and crumble a piece of cheese, placing a dried fig on top. Just as Rooster finishes a heaping swallow of wine, I hand him to food. 

“Thank you,” he whispers. 

I nod. I think about how good it feels to talk about the good parts of Maggie. It makes me feel like she’s still alive, like we are only a few states away from each other and she’s at a frat party while I’m trying to get to sleep before an early class. Maybe Rooster doesn’t feel like that at all. My cheeks grow hot. 

But before I can say anything, he starts, staring off into the distance. He tells me all about Goose: about his memories of banana pancakes when his dad wasn’t deployed, about baseball games in the backyard, about drive-in movies in the Bronco, about the millions of pictures of them together, on base and off. He tells me about what he can remember about his father’s favorite things--favorite bands, favorite movies, favorite food. The Supremes, Tootsie, steak.

We are lying on our backs now, flat on the blanket, blinking up at the open sky above us. I am closer to him now, the breeze encouraging us. There are three points of connection between our two lying-bodies; our biceps that are permanently against each other’s now, our hips which rest just so against each other’s, and the toes of our shoes that lazily fall into another. 

“It’s weird when a parent dies so young, because it’s like missing a ghost. Memories-- sure, maybe a few, but sometimes I wonder if they’re real. Like, for example,” Rooster says, his voice deep and hard, “I remember my dad always smelling like sunscreen and cigar smoke. Cigar smoke, sure, I can understand that. But sunscreen?” 

I smile. 

“That is an odd thing,” I whisper, “but even your truth is still true. On some level.”

Rooster is quiet for a moment. We each take another swallow of wine. 

“I guess I never thought of it like that,” he whispers, “I guess I’ve always considered real life to be the most important.” 

I shrug. 

“Fuck real life,” I whisper. 

He turns to me, measuring a grin. 

“Fuck real life,” he whispers back. 

We both bottom our glasses and he gingerly takes mine, sitting up to refill it before he lies down beside me again. The breeze he brings back with him is a gust of saltwater and treebark and amber. 

“My mom pretty much raised me by herself,” he says, “and Maverick tried to step in to be some sort of surrogate father. Except, you know, it was obvious that my dad’s death had fucked Maverick up pretty bad.” 

I stayed silent, allowing him to chew his words. 

“My mom got sick when I was in my last year of undergrad, right when I had applied for the Naval Academy. It was quick. I guess that’s lucky.” 

Quick . I think of how quickly Maggie went, free-falling through the air like a sinking stone. Maybe it hadn’t felt quick for her, or Rooster’s mother. 

I swallow more wine until I can feel the gritty sugar coating my teeth, can feel the fuzz wrapped around my brain. 

“It’s not lucky to lose both your parents,” I say. 

He nods. 

“I know I shouldn’t be angry, that I should accept it and move forward, but…how? How do I do that? No one has been able to answer that.” 

I turn so we are facing each other. I know my breath smells like sugar and cherries and cheese. Bradley is still chewing his last piece of fig and turns to me with a sad smile. The scars on the other side of his face, his neck, glow rice-white in the moonlight. 

“Who told you that you shouldn’t be angry?” 

This question catches him off-guard. He furrows his brow and frowns slightly, searching my face. 

“The world, I guess. Isn’t that the number-one rule of therapy? Of healing?”

I shrug. 

“Why shouldn’t you be angry? Why should you have to stuff that feeling away or wait for it to go away to heal? It’s silly, really,” I scoff, looking at him with half-lidded eyes, “And you can be angry. I’m angry still, but it’s smaller now, because I’ve let little pieces of it out. I’ve felt that anger and I’ve nurtured it and now it just lives with me.” 

Rooster smirks. 

“Is that what Stevie is?” 

We laugh. After another beat, he faces me too. We let our plastic wine glasses rest between us and he watches my eyes. 

“You seem like you’re okay,” he says, “how?” 

The question makes my belly cold. A dot of clammy sweat forms on my hairline. It’s going so perfectly--I’m afraid that if I touch it, if I breathe too hard, this night will collapse like a house of cards.

“I am a pretty ritualized person,” I start, “and it is easier to function--for me, at least--when there’s routine. So I made a routine for every part of my day. You know, boring stuff. Wash face. Make bed. Farmer’s market on Sunday’s. Leftovers on Thursday’s. That helped me to feel like I was in my own body again after the accident.” 

Rooster’s face is earnest. 

“You talk about her so often,” he murmurs, “it still hurts to talk about my parents.” 

I nod, smiling even though there are tears prickling my eyes. 

“Yeah, I guess I do talk about her a lot. My parents really don’t, though, and I get that because they lost a daughter. I mean, if you knew Maggie…” I trail off, sniffling, “she was just larger than life. So obnoxious and flirty and stupid-fun. I can’t talk about the day she...but she would hate it if people only remembered the way she died.” 

Rooster pours more wine into my glass and I tuck a piece of hair behind my ear, closing my eyes, trying to hear Maggie’s laugh in the waves against the sand. 

“And, honestly, Bob was the first one that was brave enough to tell stories about her. I wasn’t even there yet,” I chuckle dryly, “but it felt so good to just let her live through all the good parts of her life. There were a lot of them.” 

Rooster swallows. 

“And do you still struggle?” 

I nod vehemently. 

“Of course I do--often. But Maggie would hate that, of course.” 

“And what do you do when the pain comes?” 

He asks this and does not explain what ‘the pain’ is, but maybe it’s because he knows that I know. Maybe he sees our invisible string now the way I saw it in the Bronco, when I knew that his father had once cherished the car before him. The pain is the sticky grief that tangles feet in sheets and pinches bellies and knots hair.

“It comes and goes,” I whisper, “and I just try to be gentle with myself.”

His eyes glisten beneath the moon. 

“Can I tell you something?” I whisper. 

I am drunk for the second time in Rooster’s gaze. Drunk and kind of sad and kind of giddy and my whole body yearns to be closer to him. 

“Of course,” he whispers back. 

A beat passes. The sentence I intend dies on the tip of my tongue before I can say it. I want to tell him about the six months after Maggie’s death--when my ribs ached with each breath and each breath was already an aching reminder that I was alive, when my left ear rang incessantly, when my wrist was pinned against my chest in a sling, when I was still getting confused when I drove even if it was a route I’d taken a thousand times before. Whenever every single day was a hazy mirage and my bed was never, never empty. 

I suck in a deep breath and lean closer to Rooster

“I’m drunk,” I say instead. 

He laughs. Then he brings his hand to my face and rests it on my right cheek. His hand is so warm, so heavy. His four fingers are all tall enough to touch my hair, which billows in the sea breeze. His short fingernails just softly graze my scalp. His thumb, though: his thumb comes to the corner of my mouth and just gingerly touches the spot where my lips meet. I wonder if his fingers are stained now like my lips are. I want to kiss his thumb. I could fall asleep just like that, with his face a few inches from mine and his wine-stained breath fanning out over my face. 

His eyes find mine and his are very serious, very deep. 

“I like you, Faye,” he says decidedly. 

My heart squeezes in my chest. I wish I could go home after this, dizzy with those first exciting feelings, and have Maggie waiting for me. She would beg for details, pausing whatever John Hughes movie she had on while I was gone, fanning herself with enthusiasm during my stories. 

“I like you, too, Bradley.” 

After a beat, his thumb still just softly touching my lips, he whispers: “Who could resist?”

Chapter Text

July 17th, 2019 

“You’re all dismissed,” Maverick says, still looking between Rooster and Hangman.

The two men are like animals: a slinky feline rubbing up against the grated door of a caged feral canine. Almost untouchable, taunting. 

Hangman breaks past Rooster and starts sauntering toward the exit behind me, his eyes half-lidded and a partial smirk snagging his lips. He moves slowly and deliberately, like he’s about to rub up against my legs and and purr for some scraps of chicken. 

I’m standing, gripping the sides of my temporary desk, the invisible string connecting Rooster and I taut. We had both jumped up at the exact same moment, coming out of our chairs abruptly like we’d been bitten by something. We moved in tandem the way Maggie and I used to--unbuckling our seatbelts, spitting our toothpaste into the basin, ejecting from a burning jet. 

My cheeks are pink, but not red-hot like Rooster’s are, his chest heaving desperately. Each place on my body that Rooster touched the night before is smoldering. The four freckles on my throat, the three points of contact at the beach, and my right cheek are glowing white-hot. 

Hangman catches my gaze as he walks past me. His pretty face is even prettier when he smiles, teeth pearly and eyes glimmering. I do not smile back, just very lightly shake my head, my jaw slack. I have never seen a pilot talk to another pilot that way, not ever, not once. Now he’s just strolling on by.

“Cat got your tongue?” 

He whispers it so quietly that it takes a moment to register what he’s said to me. Then before I can say anything else--there it is again. That wink, almost too fast to catch, the kind that only the intended sees. 

When the heavy door closes behind a lones Hangman, Rooster storms out in the other direction, not even going back to his chair for his bag. Hastily, I clear my desk and pack my leather tote, trying to measure the puffs of air out of my nose.

“What the Hell just happened?” Payback says, his voice echoing in the silence of the room. 

The rest of the squadron slowly meanders back to their seats to collect their belongings, each with a mystified look on their faces. What the Hell did just happen? Everyone’s eyebrows are furrowed and their mouths are twisted. Maverick is collecting his papers behind the podium, his face solemn and downcast. He doesn’t look up, doesn’t even acknowledge Payback’s question. 

“It was bound to happen,” Coyote says, shrugging, “both of them at each other’s throats all the time.”

Phoenix scoffs, one strap of her backpack hanging off her shoulder.

“Hangman jumped Rooster,” Phoenix bites back, “and we all know it.” 

Bob is standing silently beside Phoenix and turns his face towards me, his eyes wide, his face pale. He hates confrontation . He left the room every time Maggie and I disagreed, even if it was about the difference between pure vanilla extract and imitation. 

I’m still gripping my desk, but my fingers are damp. I kind of shrug my shoulders, my chest tight and Bob nods to Rooster’s bag stull crumpled in his seat. 

I look at Rooster’s former seat for a long minute, at the suede bag that holds his wallet, phone, keys. He can’t get home without it. Bob nods again, eyes wider. He wants me to take the bag to Rooste r. I nod, one time, just for Bob. 

When I release my desk, there are finger-shaped stains of perspiration on the varnish.

Maverick stares down at his hands now. He doesn’t register me when I walk past him, towards Bob and Phoenix. Phoenix is huffing as she says something lowly to Bob. The rest of the squadron is filing out of the room, meandering to see if Maverick will say anything to them. But he doesn’t 

It’s only the four of us now: Bob, Maverick, Phoenix, and myself. 

“--a fucking asshole. He knows what buttons he’s pushing.” 

Phoenix’s voice is harsh and low. Bob is standing beside her, his brows pulled down. He nods along with her words and glances up when I find my spot at Rooster’s chair. It still smells like him over here, like there’s a vaporized silhouette of him lingering. 

Phoenix turns around to meet my gaze, squaring her jaw. 

“Can you believe him?” She whispers, shaking her head, “I mean. That was low . Even for him.”

I nod. 

The way she’s speaking, spewing her words like venom into the air around us, she sounds like Maggie. Navy men frequently lit Maggie’s fire--especially pilots. She had a quieter approach--draining them of their ego and energy like a tick draws one’s blood. By the time she hopped off them, belly full from their hot insides, the men had holes in their bodies and felt dizzy when they walked.

“You know why they call him Hangman?” Bob whispers. 

I do know . I’d listened to their conversations during drills on the comm. I shake my head, though, and Phoenix bites her lip. 

“Because he’ll always hang you out to dry,” she finishes, not whispering now. 

If Maverick can hear her, he does not show it. He has not looked up from his paper stack. He’s pale, grief-stricken almost. I think about his heavy hand on my shoulder when I wept before my sister’s portrait.

I pick Rooster’s bag up and sling it over my shoulder. I’m weighed down by his bag and mine, my shoulders sloping towards the earth. Phoenix glances at me, at Rooster’s bag, and nods. 

“You know where he stormed off to?” 

“I have an idea,” I whisper. 

She nods and Bob smiles softly at me. 

“If anyone can calm a pilot,” he starts, teasing, “it’s Clover.”

“Lots and lots of practice,” I smile.

“Rooster is just…” Phoenix sighs, “he’s good, you know? Hate to see him pushed to the brink.” 

Phoenix and Bob start at the door together. Bob glances over his shoulder and notices that I haven’t moved from my spot. He nods for me to follow them, his eyebrows furrowed and I shift my eyes to Maverick one time before meeting Bob’s eyes again. He looks at Maverick, too, just for a moment. This is our language.

Then he nods before opening the door for Phoenix. 

I am alone with Maverick.

“Captain,” I say quietly, approaching the podium. 

Maverick glances up from the papers he’s looking at and I know his glazed eyes have not truly been reading anything. They are the kind of far-away eyes that are capable only of staring off and blinking back tears. 

“Lieutenant Ledger,” he returns, “you’re dismissed.” 

I nod.

“Yes, I know. I’m on my way out,” I start, “but sir?” 

He blinks at me, nods once, a little crinkle between his brows. 

“Yes, Lieutenant?” 

He swallows, his throat rippling. His eyes are glassy and heavy-lidded. 

“There’s nothing we could’ve done,” I say. 

I don’t say anything else. I know that he is not upset about the tiff between the two pilots. I know he isn’t upset about leading the mission, about having to train, about having to pick. I know that he doesn’t want to let Goose down. I know that he feels like he let Goose down. I know what it feels like to slowly float down to earth and know the person you love most in the world is lying on the ground, waiting for you, dead.

He is staring at me. I nod once, twice, then start for the door, too.  He does not call out. He does not ask what I mean. He keeps standing behind the podium, looking at the empty air I occupied moments ago.

Even though it is the late afternoon, the building seems to be entirely empty except for me. There is no evidence of the squadron--all dispersing to the parking lot and revving their engines. The air conditioning rumbles, the fluorescents buzz and flicker above me, people talk lowly in their offices--but all that noise, that sweet unimportant noise, is drowned out by the thud of my shoes hitting the tile. 

I’m nearly running--hitting that sweet spot between walking and the former. I know I’m going to have blisters, can feel the stiff leather of my loafers withering away the skin of my heels. A wetness gathers there.

My hair is falling out of its bun, my blouse is untucking itself from my skirt. My teeth hurt from biting down so hard. My chest is tight with a distant anger. 

Anger. I cannot remember the last time I felt true unadulterated rage, let alone the pissy way I feel now. I forgot how it aches in my throat, the way it makes my jaw fasten tightly, like it’s sewn together with a tapestry needle. Even the scar on my jaw is throbbing. 

I almost have to dig my heels in the ground to halt myself when I reach it: Memorial Hall. And he is there, just like I knew he would be. It’s only been a few minutes, minutes that were fleeting, but crucial. His cheeks glow red in the distance and his chest is heaving. He’s standing before his father’s portrait, his flight suit now unzipped to his belly, his arms limply by his sides as he clenches his fists. 

I don’t say his name, but I slow down. I found him. No haste necessary .

He doesn’t turn to face me when I step beside him. We just both catch our breaths, both our cheeks radiating heat. He even smells angry--like his sharp cologne is drowned out by the stench of sweat and salt.

He’s staring very intently at Goose’s portrait, but I know that he probably isn’t seeing it, not really. Not the way he does when he’s getting in a morning run, when he’s saying goodnight, good morning. 

My shoulders ache. I hold tight to our bags, though. 

This morning, my temple throbbed. It felt like there was cherry wine in my veins. I was still warm, even with my ceiling fan on high, even with the window-unit blasting. My house was quiet except for the naked sound of a record waiting to be flipped. It felt like he was nestled in bed beside me, in the dark, even though he had left me on my doorstep at midnight.

“Missed you this morning,” I whisper to him. 

He swallows. 

“I dreamed about you.”

I want to grin, but I don’t. I lightly drop Rooster’s bag by his feet. He doesn’t look down. 

We’re still just breathing. 

Then he does it. He moves closer to me, shuffling to his right just slightly, and rests the right side of his body on mine. His weight sinks me slightly, but I plant my feet on the tile and straighten my spine. I am holding most of his weight, all those precious pounds and ounces, and his shoulders are falling. His fingers are unclenching. His eyes are watering. 

“I’m sorry,” he chokes and I know the dam is breaking, cracking, tumbling. 

“Don’t be,” I say, “I’m not.” 

Then we stay like that for a long, long time. He watches his father’s portrait and we both pretend that fat, frustrated tears aren’t racing down his ruddy cheeks. I steel myself and hold all the weight he gives me with ample graciousness.

July 19th, 2019

Bobby : Come to the Hard Deck!!

Tramp : Come to the Hard Deck, honey!

Unknown Number : Coooome to the Hard Deck!!!!!

Penny B : Come to the Hard Deck! First drink on the house…

Tramp : Can I call you honey? 

Bobby : A little birdie won’t stop talking about you…

Bobby : It’s Rooster. 

Unknown Number : It’s Phoenix btw :) 

Tramp : Lavender limeade w/ tequila coming up !

Tramp : Honey! (?) (unclear)

Tramp : I’m a little tipsy .

Phoenix : Sausage party here! SOS!!!!

The night is a sacred kind of hot. It still feels like high noon, even at 9:30 when the moon is looming above the crashing waves and the stars look like needle pricks in a sheath of black fabric. 

I have to park unusually far away from the entrance, the parking lot jam-packed. The Bronco is parked next to Bob’s old Subaru. I’m sweating the moment my Mary Jane’s hit the grainy pavement. My thighs start sweating first, kissing each other inside my rust colored skirt. Corduroy was a bad idea, even if it’s a mini-skirt . Already my thighs and hips are suffocating. 

I’m only nine, eight feet away from my front door when it swings open suddenly. Light pours out into the night and the night swallows it whole. Bon Jovi is playing within the humble building, the very end of Livin’ On A Prayer . 

Take my hand / And we’ll make it, I swear / Livin’ on a prayer

Just as suddenly as the door opens, it swings closed and the music is thumping from inside quieter now, muffled. It’s almost too dark and I’m almost too far, but I still know who it is on the porch. They’re standing under the flag, tall and broad. 

“Clover Ledger,” Hangman drawls slowly, squinting in the dark, “is that you? Or am I just drunk?” 

“Oh, you are drunk,” I say, stepping into the light finally, “ and it is me, Bagman.” 

Hangman sighs, a sloppy smile on his lips. His eyes are shining. 

“They got you in on that, too, huh?” 

All day on Thursday and all day today, the squadron unanimously referred to Hangman as Bagman. Slightly in retaliation for his comments on Wednesday, but mostly because his ego necessitated an immediate check. 

I smile at him. We are only a few feet apart now. He smells like the thick cardstock designer brands put in big magazines, doused in expensive cologne. Almost there, but not quite. His hair is still gelled impeccably, his face unusually symmetrical. He turns, his broad chest facing me now. 

Then his eyes drop to my bare legs, my bare arms. 

He whistles lowly. 

“Lieutenant,” he croons, “you tryin’ to make an honest man out of Bradshaw? Lord help him!” 

I hear Texas in his voice suddenly, slightly slurred. He crosses his arms and grins at me, lop-sided. 

“Why?” I whisper, “Jealous, Bagman?”

He is groaning, a hand over his heart, when I let the door fall shut behind him. I’m blushing, but I’m also giddy. Hangman would fuck anything with a pulse, but it still feels good when a beautiful man notices you. Is this what Maggie felt like all the time, when men saw me as more of a shadow than a person? When she was the one the boys wanted?

The bar is busier than it was last Friday. I am almost six feet tall with my heels on and I can only see the group of aviators in their usual corner when I stand on the tip of my toes and fully extend my neck. 

The Man Who Sold the World by David Bowie is playing.

I can see them, though. Bob is shyly sitting in a chair by the pool table, munching on sunflower seeds and politely spitting them into an empty plastic cup he probably asked Penny for. Phoenix is shooting in pool, her usually slicked hair loose around her pretty face. Her lips are puckered in concentration, a little crinkle sits between her brows. Coyote, Fanboy, and Payback are playing darts. They’re laughing very loudly, covering each other’s eyes, hitting the abused wall surrounding the dartboard. Rooster suddenly appears beside Bob and he’s looking down at his phone. He looks golden. He looks drunk. 

My phone vibrates. 

Tramp : I want to tell you anout my dream

Tramp : about**

He looks up from his phone and says something to Bob that makes them both grin. I’m muscling through the crowd, excusing myself when I have to brush up against someone’s back or front. It smells like whiskey and beer and cigarettes. 

Finally, I break into their corner, my chest loosening at the familiar sight of them all there. No one looks up at first and when I’m this close, I can see how drunk everyone looks. Filmy eyes, painted cheeks, bitten lips. 

“There she is,” Bob shouts suddenly, pointing to me, “our Lady Tequila!”

There is a small chorus of greetings, everyone sounding equal parts drunk and excited. If I close my eyes, it almost feels like I’m back at The Hard Deck with Maggie. We’ve just come back from a taxing assignment. Maggie takes a long time getting ready and we are the last ones to arrive. The party-starters. Jukebox royalty . 

But here I am, with my eyes open, by myself. This time I took a long time getting ready, trying to follow Maggie’s meticulous checklist of shower, makeup, hair, outfit. All categories with subcategories and subcategories with separate columns. If this is what she felt like, magnificently perfumed and glittering beneath the yellow lights inside the bar, I understand why she did it every time we went out. 

“Honey,” Rooster croons, eyebrows deeply furrowed and mouth ajar, “you’re so cruel to me.” 

Rooster walks towards me, blue jeans hugging his thick thighs and a faded Led Zeppelin t-shirt straining against the thickest parts of his arms--his biceps. He’s grinning, but I can tell that is isn’t his usual shit-eating grin. No, no--there’s something looser about the one I see now as he swaggers up to me. 

He stops when we’re toe to toe. He looks down at me, his eyes gleaming. They look brighter than I’ve ever seen them--like grass or the leaves of a palm tree. 

“I’ve been waiting on you all night,” he shouts over the music, “you trying to kill me?” 

His hands have found my own. He tolds them in his and his hands are dry, steady. He brings them up to his mouth and kisses the top of each of my hands, his breath very hot. If my thighs weren’t sweating before, they are now. 

 “Sorry to keep you waiting,” I say, pretending like his lips don’t deflate my lungs, “Bradley. Honey .”

He pulls me towards him, effectively crushing the tiny bit of vacant air that was once between us. His body is like the air outside; a sacred kind of hot . Each of his muscles unfolds beneath his skin and strains to just hold me. His arms are around me and he’s pinning my body to his, almost squeezing the air out of me. 

“I love you in this skir-- no , I love this skirt on you ,” Bradley says, his chest rumbling when he speaks, “you’re a real knockout, honey!” 

Rooster’s breath smells like one of the beers Penny keeps on tap, one that the young pilots always drink. He smells like he doused himself in that sweet human scent, like he keeps a bottle of Himself on the bathroom counter.

“You’re making me blush,” I say back, trying to sound like Maggie. 

“Let me get you a drink!” He calls, suddenly letting go. 

The air is cold without him holding me. 

He nods towards the bar and presses one more kiss to the fingers of my left hand. 

Bob’s eyes are wide. I’m not sure whose face is hotter; his or mine? When I fall into the seat beside Bob, he fans me playfully. I bat his hand away. 

“How come I already feel drunk?” I ask, smiling. 

Bob laughs. 

“You do really look gorgeous,” he says, nodding at me. 

What he wants to say is that I look just like Maggie. I know that I do. I followed her routine--which she followed devoutly, like it was her religion, like she prayed to a hairdryer, like she was visited by visions of lipsticks and eyeliners--and I’m wearing her top. It was one of her favorites; a cropped square-neck tank with stripes all the colors of the rainbow. I’m even wearing a perfume of mine that she always stole a few sprays from. I do look like her. And I smell like her and I’m trying to sound like her. 

“I stared at myself in the mirror for, like, thirty minutes before I left the house,” I tell Bob, “just, like, looking for a flaw. None! Followed her routine. She really had that down to a science, didn’t she?” 

Bob nods, impressed. Before Bob can respond, we are eclipsed, a shadow looming over us. We look up at the same time and three men are standing before us in their Navy uniforms. 

“Clover, right?”

I nod, readjusting to face them. 

They break out in identical grins. It feels like Bob and I are front row for a toothpaste commercial, like we’re surrounded by teeth and hair gel and Axe. 

In unison, they reveal their open palms to me and each of them are holding a handful of quarters. Not this shit again . I groan, but they’re already nearing, insisting that I take the money from them. 

“She’s retired,” Bob tries, but the boys do not listen. 

“Get this party started,” the ringleader says before winking. 

They’re gone in a blink and I suddenly have $4.75 in quarters in my lap. They reek of aluminum and sweaty palms.

“Shit,” Bob says, “I can track them down and return it all?” 

I stare down at the quarters and think about the 1992 quarter the Junior had given me the week before. It had been Maggie, absolutely it had. What had she meant? That it was okay for me to keep living a tradition without her, even if she was the heart of it? That I am going to be okay? That she wanted me there at The Hard Deck? I close my hands around the quarters. 

“No, that’s okay,” I tell him, “why don’t you play pool? Phoenix is devouring.” 

Bob glances at the table then back to me. Then his eyes shift to beside us and I wonder if there are more men approaching, their sweaty fists closed around coins. But it’s only Rooster, grinning. He’s holding a plastic black platter full of brimming shot glasses on one palm and a lilac-colored drink in his other hand. 

Somehow the squad sees him the same time I do and everyone meanders over to him, grabbing one or two shot glasses. Bob and I stand, but before we can approach Rooster, he glides to us. He hands the glass of limeade to me, winking, then nods to Bob. 

“Save the lady two,” he says, “she’s playing catch-up.” 

“A pilot and a gentleman,” Bob teases, taking one of the shot glasses gratefully nonetheless. 

Rooster grins at me. There are three shots on the platter. 

“All yours, sweet thing.” 

Honey. Sweet thing .

I take just one and he places the platter on the chair I was sitting on. The sting of the tequila already finds my nostrils, even if I’m just holding it at chest level. The quarters are in a plastic cup I’d found near the chairs, probably sticky with cheap whiskey now. 

“To Top Gun!” 

It’s Coyote that leads the charge. 

“To Top Gun!” We all echo, even the people not in our corner. 

Drinks rise in the air then bottom out in our hollow cheeks. The tequila burns and I soothe it by choking back half of my limeade. Bob grins at me before he cuts the floor to join Phoenix at the pool table. Everyone resumes their activity before, stumbling slightly in their steps. 

It’s just Rooster and I by the cracked window. I strain to hear the ocean but cannot.

Rooster is handing me another shot and I take it with a sense of pride, our fingers grazing. I raise the glass to him. 

“To anger ?” 

He laughs, nodding. 

“To anger!” 

I throw the shot back by myself and cut my grimace short by finishing my limeade. My belly is already starting to feel full of liquid, sloshing like a water mattress. 

“And this one?” 

I hold the shot in my hand, squinting at it. 

Rooster thinks for a moment. 

“To mini-skirts!” 

I want to take him on the peanut-shell covered, beer-bottle infested floor. Instead, I bottom out the shot.

“I’ll drink to that,” Hangman says suddenly, standing beside Rooster and I with his arms crossed. 

Rooster’s smile falters but does not dissipate completely. 

Hangman is grinning, eyes crinkled. 

“Gotta buy yourself a shot first,” Rooster bites. 

Hangman doesn’t fumble. 

“Can I buy you one, too?” 

Hangman is looking at me. Rooster is still smiling. Their dynamic is a strange one; friends, not friends, competitors, teammates.

What would Maggie say? 

“Make it two,” I call.

Hangman glances at Rooster and claps his shoulder before he starts for the bar.

“You two okay now?” I ask. 

Rooster shrugs, rolling his eyes. 

“Hangman is Hangman,” he slurs. 

“And you’re you.” 

Already, the tequila tickles my toes. I swallow my thick saliva and come closer to Rooster. Like he’s been waiting for me, his palms are up and I am holding them lightly. So solid beneath my fingers, like sheets of rock. I wonder if I felt solid like that whenever he laid his weight on me on Wednesday. I almost get dizzy just thinking about it. 

I am measuring this touch unlike the first hug Rooster gave me. It embarrasses me to think about the squadron watching us, especially Bob, who I know will text me incessantly about it later. Except, Bob will not be bold enough to just say it, so he’ll dance around the fact for a few hours before I cut him to the chase.

I release him after a moment but allow him to keep his left pinky locked in mine.

We had not been out together since the night on Flat Rock Beach. We met almost every morning in Memorial Hall, each of us getting to base before the sun rose, even though it was an unspoken ritual. And when we didn’t see each other there, he would somehow ‘get lost’ and end up at my office door. Then he would linger, index finger dragging over the photographs and knick-knacks in my office. And then the touches--so small, so understated that I had to rack my brain at the end of each day to assure myself I didn’t miss any. Fingers brushing as I handed him paperwork, the ghost of a palm over the small of my back when he held a door open for me, even a puff of air on the side of my face when he was close enough to breathe on me. When there weren’t those minuscule touches, there were the glances. He was always catching my eyes, always flickering a bewildered look to me during training, sometimes just flicking his eyebrows when he knew I was looking at him. 

“When I call for you, will you come?” 

Rooster pulls back from me, smiling faintly. 

“Of course,” he says. 

“ Three shots for one Miss Clover Ledger, Backseat Supreme.” 

Hangman is holding six shots and sets them on the ledge of the pool table. Phoenix scowls at him, but keeps playing. 

Psycho Kille r by The Talking Heads is playing.

I detach my littlest finger from Rooster, cheeks warm, and meet Hangman at the pool table, biting a grin. He is pretty--maybe even prettier than I am right now, even with his hollow eyes and overly-wet lips. 

“Up for a little friendly competition?” He calls to me, leaning down so he hovers the shots. 

I mirror him, feeling Bradley’s eyes on my thighs, where my skirt is rising dangerously. I think I can hear him stiffen, can hear the tiny groan in his throat when his breath catches. 

“Always,” I say, even though I have never wanted to compete for anything in my life.

“I finish mine before you, I win. You finish yours before me, you win.” 

I narrow my eyes, my vision feeling soft and fuzzy. 

“And what exactly do I win?” 

He pretends to think. The rest of the squadron’s interest is piqued. They are starting to form a small posse around us, smiling half-smiles and crossing their arms. 

“A weekend with my baby,” Hangman says, “the Jag.” 

There are a few whistles within the group and then mumbling. 

I nod. 

“Okay. And if you win,” I say, leaning in closer, “Bagman?”

He leans in, too. We are almost nose-to-nose. 

“ One date,” he says, dropping his eye in a less-subtle wink, “deal?” 

The group is holding their breath. I glance at the shots. Tequila shots are like water to me. Maggie made it so. But my palms are sweating. 

“You’re on,” I challenge. 

We shake hands and Hangman squeezes my fingers. 

“Fingers are cold,” he taunts, “nervous?” 

“Half-dead,” I say. 

Rooster stands between us, smiling like something is funny. The group has closed in around us. My head feels thick and my knees like they’ll buckle. 

“ Clover v. Hangman ,” Bob calls, “my money’s on Clover!” 

My chest expands with a sigh. Bob sends me a grin, pointing at me. You’re my girl .  

“Oh, you’re on,” Payback laughs, “Hangman practically has gills!”

Rooster leans down, kneeling on the floor so he’s level with the shot glasses. Hangman and I are still leaning over them. His icy eyes are peering into mine, a cocky grin on his lips. I wish I could have seen Maggie wreck him . 

“Ready player one?” Rooster asks, looking at Hangman. 

Hangman nods, cocking his eyebrows. 

“Born ready, Bradshaw.” 

Rooster looks at me, amused. 

“Beat his ass, honey.” 

I salute. 

“Yes, Lieutenant!”

When Rooster slams his hand on the table, I bottom out the first shot in less than two seconds flat. With no recovery time, I empty the second and swallow it harshly, my nose burning from the inside out. My eyes are screwed shut when the third empty shot glass hits the pool table. I open my eyes just in time to see Hangman finish his third, his face unusually vacant. 

The squadron erupts in cheers, save Payback and Fanboy, who stare at Hangman in utter dismay, their jaws slack. Bob grabs one of my hands and raises it in the air, pointing at me. 

“Lady Tequila!” He shouts, pumping our joined hands. 

“Yes!” Rooster cackles, pointing at Hangman, “we have our loser of the night! One Mister Jake “Hangman” Seresin !” 

Hangman blinks at me a few times--partly in disbelief and partly in, what I think, is amazement. I wipe my mouth with the back of the hand Bob just dropped. My ginger-red lipstick stains the back of my hand in a smeared kiss. 

“And we have our winner! One Miss Faye “Clover” Ledger !”

Another round of cheers. Payback and Fanboy are doling out cash to Phoenix, Bob, and Coyote. Bob shoots me a thumbs-up. Good job, kiddo .

“Atta girl,” Rooster sings, hands on my shoulders. 

He’s in front of me and I think, looking up at his pretty face, that I’m just drunk enough to close the distance between his mouth and my own. I want to feel his mustache tickle my skin, my lips, my thighs. 

Rooster’s face changes; his eyes come screaming back into focus and his lips twitch into a calmer smile. He’s scouting my face, my drunk fiery face, and I think he might be the one that kisses me. But Hangman appears behind him, his grin fading. 

“Let me shake the winner’s hand,” he tells Bradley. 

Bradley blinks, like he was dazed before, and steps so there is empty space between Hangman and I.  

“Hey, Bagman!” I call, stepping closer to him, my spine straightened, “can you dance?” 

Hangman quirks a brow. He looks drunker than before. I probably do too. My cheeks ache when I smile. His hand, which he raised to shake mine, falls onto his thigh.

“What’s it to you?” 

His breath smells like mouthwash and tequila. Rooster is watching us with a partial grin, reaching inside my empty glass and bringing them to his parted lips before crunching them, his jaw throbbing. 

“I won,” I say, “and I don’t care about cars.” 

Pretty boys like to dance and they’re usually good at it--even if they aren’t, they are. 

Hangman is grinning, probably because he gets to keep his precious Jaguar, maybe because Rooster is watching us so closely. He glances at Rooster, who is still watching from beside us. 

“Better watch out,” he simply says. 

I know already, maybe from the invisible string, that Rooster is not jealous. Maybe he understands, because the string, that I am asking Hangman to do this task with me so Rooster won’t have to. Even if he would, I wouldn’t ask. Hangman is pretty in a way Rooster isn’t--Hangman looks like a Ken Doll and Rooster looks like a G.I. Joe. Both are plastic, but one feels more real than the other. Being the first to dance with a dead party girl’s only living sister is a job only a pretty, pretty boy can do.

“You’re on, sugar.”

When I drop the first few quarters in the jukebox, Hangman stands beside me like he’s guarding me. He’s leaning his hips against the machine while I file through all the songs. If I don’t blink often enough, the titles start to blur together. 

My belly sloshes with tequila. But there is a pit in my chest--one filled with flower petals--a happy one.

“You’re from Texas, right?” 

Hangman glances at me and nods a few times. 

“Before you ask--yes, everything really is bigger in Tex--!”

I cut him off when I bump him with my elbow. 

“I was going to ask if line-dancing was a graduation requirement,” I say, “or is it square dancing?” 

Hangman chuckles, shaking his head. 

“You know,” Hangman starts, “if I wasn’t me, you really would’ve emasculated me back there.” 

“Oh yeah?” I shout back, glancing at him out of the corner of my eye. 

He’s nodding, eyebrows raised casually. 

“Yeah. Such a turn on.”

I shake my head, laughing, warm. 

“Just being honest here,” Hangman defends, pausing before adding, “does honesty turn you on?” 

I turn to him, mouth agape. Even my teeth feel drunk when I run my tongue along them. I point a crooked finger at him. 

“ You’re relentless.” 

He grins, shrugging. 

“It’s in my blood.” 

120. I crank the volume. The resounding sound of a gong fills the bar. Conversation stutters. And five seconds later, the beat breaks in--a real groovy one. Usually, when I would turn around to dance, Maggie would be waiting for me. But when I turn around, abandoning the plastic cup of quarters on the jukebox, Hangman is grinning at me. 

My Thang by James Brown is playing. 

A brand new funk / A brand new funk

And Hangman does maybe the hardest part of it all. He grins and starts to sway to beat, extending his hand to me. I take it immediately- -a hand on an empty dance floor is a lifeline. Then we are closer, moving back and forth with the beat, grinning at each other.

“This is the worst part,” I whisper to him, my speech blurring with the song, “this was my sister’s gig.”

Hangman, in a moment of sudden sobriety, stares down at my face. I wonder if his face is going to contort to pity, that awful pity-face, but he smiles softly at me. 

“Gotta do right by her,” he says. 

He drops his hands to my waist and turns me so my back is against his front. I know what he’s doing almost immediately. I cross my arms over my front, like I’m hugging myself, and keep the beat with my foot.

“Make some room,” Hangman calls. 

If I wasn’t drunk, I would be panicking. My fingers are toasty. My chest is warm. 

People are looking at us now, but their faces don’t mean anything to me. Everyone looks the same to me when I’m focusing on the radiant smile I can feel Hangman chewing. 

He swiftly releases me and like a wind-up toy, I spin out away from him. There is a few callers from the crowd, some friendly laughter, a holler or two. I lean back far enough so my hair touches the floor, my leg extended in the air. Then Hangman pulls me back in to him and we laugh. 

“Gimme,” Hangman croons, “gimme my thang!”

“Whatcha say,” I mock back, arms lazily slung over his shoulders. 

And it’s only a minute into the song before other people are joining us. The three quarter donors are among the firsts, bobbing their heads and coming up behind Hangman and I. 

I turn when one of them taps my shoulder and Hangman holds my waist softly, chest still rubbing against my back as we dance. 

“She lives ,” the ringleader says, “jukebox royalty!”

“Long live the Queen,” his friend proclaims. 

“Long live the Queen!”

Like a call to action, the dance floor suddenly floods. Almost every patron in the bar is here now. Tears of relief nearly pepper my eyes. The dance floor swallows Hangman and I, stuck in the middle. We are sweating, but still moving. I imagine that Maggie is there, in the middle and she’s dancing, wearing my perfume, her eyelids painted blue. 

“I’ve heard stories about you,” Hangman tells me, his cheek against mine as he talks into my ear, “it feels like meeting a celebrity!”
I want to ask him if it was really me he heard stories about or if I was just the unknowing left side of my sister’s body. If I was just an extension. If I was unuttered, really, on accident. 

When I pull back to look at him, he does not look cocky, not like he usually does. He looks like he’s having fun--pure, unsullied fun. The smile that eats his entire face is not one that exudes the ego we had deflated the day before. His eyes are shining, crinkled by his grin. 

“Royalty,” I correct.

I don’t ask him about the stories. I don’t know if I want to know.

I squeeze his shoulder and nod to the jukebox. 

“I’m gonna go que some music!”

96. 55. 39. 

I lean against the jukebox after pressing the numbers, face impossibly hot, and watch the crowd move. Everyone is a sea of beer and cigarettes and uniforms and sweat. But everyone is dancing and smiling. Maggie would’ve been at the center of it all, the heart of everything that beat and pumped blood. 

The beauty of this tradition is that no one can dance. Maybe a few people can keep the rhythm and pump their shoulders to an exuberant tambourine or girate minimally, but for the most part every single person is an equal. It is a silly thing to do--and everyone knows it. 

Get Down On It by Kool & The Gang thumps the speakers. 

Hangman breaks through the crowd suddenly and offers me his hand. He looks drunk and happier than I’ve ever seen him. His face is screwed up in pleasure and he’s bobbing, lips puckering as he rolls his shoulders. He can keep a beat, but even if he couldn’t, he’s pretty enough that it doesn’t matter.

“C’mon,” he calls, “I’m gettin’ lonely over here!”

I take his hand and he pulls me back into the crowd--it feels like being submerged in a pool of marmalade, swimming through the hot and thick air. I almost feel like I have to propel myself by pushing the atmosphere around me. But Hangman is shouldering through the crowd for us. 

“Over here!”

Hangman and I look up at the same time; Rooster is waving at us through a hallway of bodies, right beside Phoenix. They’re both stepping to the music, smiling, drunk. 

“Tally two,” Hangman whisper-shouts to me. 

I bump him and he laughs.

“I guess our time’s up,” Hangman says, sighing, “anything you want to confess ? Proclaim ? Declar e?”

I tap my chin, pretending to think. 

“You’re a pretty good dancer,” I confess, proclaim, declare. 

Rooster and Phoenix have always reached us. Bradley’s hair is shining under the lights and I have that strange sensation fall over me, the same one I had when he stared up at the waxing gibbous. How could anyone leave him alone in this world? Even if it wasn’t on purpose? I think if I loved Rooster and he loved me, I would stay alive through sheer devotion. Maybe even sheer affection. 

“ Get down on it ,” Rooster is crooning, his body red-hot when he comes to move it against mine. 

Hangman and Phoenix are dancing together now, not as close as Rooster and I. 

“You did this,” Rooster whispers in my ear, pointing to the crowd. 

It makes me almost shiver. My first time coming here and returning to the jukebox since Maggie’s death. All by myself. Twins are never supposed to be halved. I was never supposed to be alone--not in the big ways that count.

Rooster’s belly is pressed against mine and beneath his shirt, I feel the expansive plane--it’s solid like an oak tree, like the ground we stand on right now. His arms come around to hold me and if he wanted to, he could squeeze me until I died. He is so achingly strong. 

“Where’s Bob?” I ask Rooster, moving away from him for a moment. 

Rooster takes my hands and spins me, just like he had when we were alone in the Hard Deck listening to Van Morrison. He’s grinning something fierce and watching my face as I smile and watch him. 

“Couldn’t get him up,” he says, “not for lack of trying, honey.” 

I can see Bob now--cowering against the wall, his grip on the sunflower seeds fierce. 

Instead of telling Rooster to follow me, I hold his hand. He grips my fingers as soon as they’re interlocked, like I’m going to try and lose him in the crowd, like he would rather do anything else but let go. 

It’s my turn to muscle through the crowd and as I do, people are smiling and clapping me on the back. A few people clap Rooster, too, and he devours the attention, but does not let me go. 

Bob is still by the pool table, eyes soggy and mouth dry. He’s looking out into the crowd and spots us immediately. 

“I knew you’d weasel your way back over here,” Bob laughs. 

The only person that could get Bob to dance was Maggie. 

“We’ve come to rescue you,” I call, offering him a free hand. 

Bob shakes his head. 

“I want these people to respect me tomorrow,” Bob argues. 

“We will,” Rooster tries, “or, we will by Monday. When everyone forgets.” 

I’m biting a smile when the opening notes of Boogie Shoes by KC & The Sunshine Band start. 

Bob registers the song and looks at me, mouth agape, shaking his head. 

“Oh, you so don’t play fair,” he whines. 

I’m dancing in front of Bob now and Rooster is dancing behind me. From far away, maybe we look like a couple trying to embarrass our surrogate-son. Maybe we just look like a couple in general--his hands on my hips and my hands cutting through the air.

“Girl, to be with you is my favorite thing,” I sing to Bob, coming closer to him. 

Bob wildly shakes his head, looking around to make sure no one is watching me serenade him. I’m getting closer to Bob and Rooster is reading me, assimilating. He falls beside me and we approach Bob in tandem, like choreographed dancers.

“I can’t wait ‘til I can see you again,” Rooster says, infinitely louder than I had. 

A few stragglers by the pool table are watching us, amused. 

“Tell him what you wanna put on, honey!” Rooster calls out. 

I lean down so Bob is very close to my face. He still smells like a freshly-washed baby.

“I wanna put on my-my-my-my-my boogie shoes,” I croon to him. 

I know my breath smells like tequila and that maybe there is perspiration gathering on my lipline, but Bob watches me with a grin plastered onto his face. 

“Just to boogie with you!” Rooster echoes. 

I hold my hand out and Bob takes it. 

We dance for a long time--every single person in the squadron. We are all equally drunk, grinning like something’s funny, rubbing up against each other and strangers alike. Everyone is loose, too, especially since Bob made his debut on the dance floor, pecking the air. Songs shuffle through the jukebox and the crowd sings along, no one really caring about embarrassment. 

Hangman is the center of his own world, surrounded by a bachelorette party. He dances close to them, but never too close. He takes his turns charming them; dipping them, spinning them. They’re in stitches because the prettiest boy in the Navy is dancing with them. Phoenix and Bob are dancing together and, just like Maggie would, she’s trying to teach him a simple two-step dance. Bob still fumbles as he tries to dance. Payback and Fanboy are lingering on the outskirts, grinning, while Coyote dances with a few lucky ladies.

Rooster dances close to me, body pressed against mine, but never overshadowing me. He and Hangman are different kinds of dancers: Hangman is the kind of man who knows how handsome he is, the kind that loves the attention on him. Rooster, though, he likes to show me off. He spins me, dips me, picks me up. There is an endless supply of butterflies in my belly. My fingers are almost numb by the time Play That Funky Musi c by Wild Cherry is playing. 

“Water,” I shout to Rooster. 

He searches my face with his brow furrowed, maybe wondering if I’ll be sick or something. But I just smile up at him. It’s so hot in here and his meaty thigh in between mine is not helping. 

“I’ll come with you!”

When we are at the bar together, Penny finds us with an impressed grin on her pretty face. 

“I haven’t seen the place like this in years,” Penny calls to us, reaching across the bar to give my arm a squeeze, “like the good ol’ days in here!” 

I’m leaning against the bar, with the ledge just under my breasts. My head is heavy, so I hold it with a flat palm, elbow resting vertically on the varnish. My hair feels like a weighted blanket on my back. I know my cheeks are ablaze and maybe my throat, too. 

“I know,” I smile, “Hangman really put in the work.” 

“It was all her,” Bradley interrupts, pointing to me. 

He’s standing beside me, facing me, his elbow resting on the bar, too. He watches the side of my face as I talk to Penny--I can feel his eyes rise and fall from my chin to my forehead. 

“I’ll bet it was,” Penny says, “water?” 

“Two, please.” 

When Penny turns around to grab the waters, I just smile into my palm. I don’t even know what time it is. It’s the first time I’ve been out this late since, what feels like, the dawn of time. My bones are tired, but it feels like every one of my muscles is shivering underneath my skin. Adrenaline courses through me at the same rate as the tequila. 

Without a word, Bradley suddenly bunches my thick hair in his hand and pulls it up so it rests on my head. He holds his hand there to pin it to me, then fans the back of my neck with his other hand. 

“You’re burning up, baby,” he smiles. 

I clench my thighs, not trusting my voice. If the music wasn’t so loud, maybe he would’ve heard the strangled noise that just occurred deep in my throat.

He’s still fanning me, wooshes of warm air hitting the back of my neck and hair, when Penny returns with the waters. She is smiling in that secretive way, silently setting the waters in front of us before sauntering off to let us be. 

“Go ahead,” Rooster calls, nodding to the water, “you need it more than I do.” 

“You’re not as drunk as me?” 

Rooster shakes his head. He falls in place behind me and his hips press against my bottom. My eyes flutter closed on pure instinct, body vibrating, waiting for his next move. He leans down and, ever so softly, presses a kiss to the back of my throat. His lips are plump and warm and it would take a million years of fanning the back of my neck if I wanted to cool off.

“I’ve been sobering up,” he tells me, “how else am I gonna take you home?” 

I open my mouth to answer, my tongue thick with excitement but my cheeks dry, when the man steps behind Rooster and casually looks at me before startling. 

“Maggie?” He yells over the music, eyebrows raised. 

He is older than Rooster and I. He’s tall and lean, his skin brown and smooth. His hair is neatly combed and curled, his chest hairs poking out through his partially-unbuttoned shirt. He’s wearing nice, nice shoes, too. Leather. 

“Oh, no, I’m not--!” 

We used to get mistaken for each other when she was alive--it was simply the life of identical twins, especially when we had almost the exact same career. Only people who didn’t know us very well mistook us for each other. This man, this pretty man, either did not know Maggie very well at all or praying at Maggie’s church was too fruitful. 

“I’ve been trying to call you for, like, years! Where you been?” 

I swallow thickly. I don’t know what to say. Is it possible that some people, people like this man, really don’t know about what happened to her? How can someone have her phone number and name, and be able to recognize her years after seeing her last, but not hear about her demise? Is it possible that in-between people like that exist? 

“I’m not Maggie,” I yell, “Maggie’s my sister.” 

Rooster doesn’t know what to say. His hand has fallen to the curve of my back and he watches me speak to the man with his eyebrows pulled together. My face is hot. 

The man furrows his eyebrows, looking me up and down, and shakes his head. 

“You’re really gonna do me like that?” 

My mouth is really, really dry. 

“She’s telling the truth, man,” Rooster speaks up, “Maggie never told you she had a twin?” 

The man squints--looking from Rooster to me a few times. He racks his brain, tapping his temple with an ineffective index finger. Before he can say anything else, I reach into my purse and grab my wallet. I quickly grab my ID and slide it to him on the bar. 

“Promise,” I say weakly. 

The man looks down at the ID without touching it, angling his chin to the floor. My belly aches. His eyes wash over it again and again, probably rereading my name. Faye Leona Ledger. Not Maggie Palmer Ledger . 

“I’m so sorry,” the man says, looking up at me soberly, “you look just like her--well, of course you do. You’re twins, right?” 

I nod one time. Rooster slides my ID back to me. 

“How’s she doing?” The man follows up. 

I could throw up. Rooster is watching my eyes, but I’m looking at the man. He’s truly wondering. I can tell that he cares.

“You didn’t hear?” I whisper hoarsely and he shakes his head in confusion, “she died, sir. In October of 2016.” 

Maybe Rooster is waiting for my knees to buckle, the way he watches me, intensity radiating off him like body heat radiates off me. 

The man’s face falls and he almost gasps. He stares at me, his mouth fallen open, and tries to stutter a response but nothing is coming. I have only had to tell a few people that my sister is dead. I guess the good thing about us being in the Navy together is that they do the notifying. This man before me--he looks like he’s about to cry. 

“What happened?” 

I can appreciate when people get to the point of things instead of telling me how sorry they are. 

“A freak accident,” I say, my voice wavering, “parachute malfunction.” 

Then, suddenly, I can’t look at this man anymore. I scramble to put my ID back in my wallet and gulp the rest of my water. Rooster is turned to the man, saying something I can’t hear, and I start for the door. I know Rooster will follow me. 

Bennie And The Jets by Elton John is playing as I step outside. 

The world is so quiet out here. I slip my Mary Jane’s off first, angling my chest towards the sea. Inside, I know Rooster is cutting through the makeshift dance floor to find me. It is still so hot outside, but the air is thinner out here. It’s the kind of thin air I used to cherish in the sky, when I wasn’t afraid to sit in the back of an F-18. 

My first step in the sand, the bottom of my foot sinks deep into the earth, until the sand goes from warm to wet and cold. I’m still drunk. Everything feels good, but numb. I think of the man’s face as I walk towards the water. 

The moon is high in the sky. Even if I am drunk, I still know that it’s a waning gibbous. I wonder if I should tell Rooster that. I wonder if he cares. The waves are calm and smooth. They do not reach very high on the shore, but the air is permeated with salt. I sit near the waves, close enough to breathe in their smell, but far enough away so that I won’t get wet--I think. 

I lay down, shoes and purse discarded beside me, and don’t even care that sand is getting all over my skirt, my shirt, my skin, my hair. 

It feels like Maggie is close, like she’s sitting in the bar next to the sad stranger and apologizing for not getting back to him sooner. It is hard enough already to live everyday after seeing what I saw when she died. Those twelve hours, lying on the snowy floor of foregin woods, holding her body close to mine--they are always lurking, always threatening the small box I’ve built for myself to stand on. It’s worse, though, when I think of the abruptness of the end of her. Maybe it was better that it was quick because it was so horrifying, so dark--but maybe I wish she would have survived the initial fall. Maybe I wish she would’ve talked to me for a few hours, telling me whatever she needed to tell me, before she died. Or maybe that would have been worse because she would be scared to die and I would be scared she was going to die and have to lie and tell her that she was okay. But now I’m here, all these hours and days later, and her life just stopped. It just stopped.

I don’t know that I’m crying until I have to gasp for breath and make myself dizzy. But then I’m able to reign it in. No . Maggie would hate it if I cried right now. One mention of her in a bar and I lose it? C’mon now. Buck up, baby.

I grip the sand with weak fists and let the breeze dry my tears. 

I know Rooster is here the moment he’s in my radius, walking towards me with his Converse in his hands. I sniffle a final sniffle and wait for him.

He sits silently beside me, warm. He gathers my shoes and purse and places them with his shoes, trying hard not to let sand invade everything. Wordlessly, he lifts my head, and lays it back down over his thighs. His fingers tangle in my hair and I don’t care about the sand and sweat--not when he touches me. 

We sit silently for a while, my face angled at the stars and his at the sea. His fingers pick strands of my hair and slide over them from root-to-end, over and over again. He’s breathing quietly. 

He won’t ask about what happened inside--at least not yet he won’t. He’s good in that way. 

“I never told you about my dream,” he whispers finally. 

I glance at him and he’s smiling down at me. 

“Fire away,” I whisper and in my voice, he can tell I’ve been crying. 

He doesn’t say anything about that either, though.

“Well, we were in my childhood home. I dream about that place a lot--I feel like I still know every nook and cranny of it,” he whispers, “anyway, we were there. And instead of it being empty, it was full. It was full the way I remember it being when my dad was alive. Everything is warm and happy, my dad is making pancakes, my mom is drinking coffee at the table.”

I close my eyes and try to picture these things. It’s hard to picture Goose living and breathing instead of just a portrait. 

“And everyone is older. Like if my parents didn’t…” he clears his throat, “and I’m sitting at the breakfast table, just watching my parents. And then from the living room, a song starts to play. It’s the one that’s like doo-doo-doo .”

Rooster starts humming the song that was playing when he stepped into my house for the first time. Sound and Vision . 

“And then I feel hands on my shoulders, even though both my parents are in front of me. And that’s when I knew it was you. The music was playing so loud, I should’ve known it was you from the get-go,” he chuckles, still fingering my hair, “it was very peaceful.” 

I am choked up. I am still drunk. I am still reeling. 

When I look up at Rooster again, my face is flaxen, though my cheeks still burn.

“What a nice dream,” I tell him, “but I’m not really a fan of banana pancakes.”

Rooster smiles. His hand comes to my face and he holds both my cheeks again, thumbing away a few tears before he rests his hand on my throat. My freckles tingle. 

“How about I take you home, honey?”

Chapter Text

July 19th, 2019

I brush sand off myself meticulously as I stand beside the Bronco, the door hanging open. Rooster is standing beside me, one hand still on the passenger handle and the other holding my shoes and purse. He’s watching me, eyes narrowed as I try to get the minuscule grains of sand out of the ribbing of my corduroy skirt. 

“The upholstery,” I mumble to Rooster, smiling. 

And I say it because it is true, because I understand that the Bronco is to him what my vinyl collection is to me. Climbing into his beloved vehicle with sand pressed into every crevice of my being would be like somebody touching the playing surface of one of my records. Rooster is too polite to say anything to me even if I had climbed on in. But I know a little part of him would have silently broken off and withered away into the night air.

He leans against the car and it boisterously rocks with his weight. He shines almost as brightly as the cyan exterior of his car, especially when he’s bathed in moonlight the way he is now. His eyes are narrowed, only a tiny bit, like he’s looking at me and wondering if he should say what he wants to say. He sighs before he speaks again, the hand that was on my door finding his messy hair, and lets that small smile hold the corners of his mouth up.  

“You’re making it real hard, honey,” he says and his voice is almost a whisper.

I don’t want to ask what he means. Here’s what I know, even with my brain swimming in a soggy pool of tequila: he doesn’t think I’m being a difficult person for wanting to keep his upholstery clean. I can tell, I don’t know how but I truly can tell, that he appreciates this gesture. I know he doesn’t mean that I’m making his cock hard--if he is anything, he is a gentleman, despite the whole little lady act that punctuated my first impression of him. No, he wouldn’t say that to me, not here, not now. Something tells me if he did want to convey that to me, there would be less telling and more showing. He doesn’t mean I’m making it hard for him to like me. I know he likes me the same way I know there will never be snow in California. Even if everyone wasn’t already telling me, I would know. It’s too warm.

So maybe he means that I’m making it hard for him to not love me. It makes my toes curl. And maybe he’s teasing. Maybe he’s saying it so brashly because I am drunk and he is sober now. Because he thinks that I will not absorb the brevity of his words. But I do, I do absorb them. I’m making it hard to not fall in love with me? It’s like he’s just suddenly grabbed my waist and thrown me over his shoulder and started running full speed into the water. I feel like I can only grip his shirt, let my breath catch in my lungs, close my eyes tightly and accept that we are leaving, leaving, leaving the spot where we stood before this, before his words. 

Maybe this is what he felt when I told him that my throat was his. The throat is vital to life--the passageway for breaths, for nourishment. It’s vital for talking, too; telling him it’s okay to be angry, telling stories about Maggie, alerting the other pilots about approaching bandits. It’s an integral part of singing; that mindless crooning when I’m standing at the stove and I need to hear something besides the bubbling water or sizzling meat, that humming that vibrates my chest when I lather my hair in the dim morning light, the obscene scream-singing when I’m on the Pacific Coast Highway with the windows down. I imagine my throat will always be necessary--that there will always be songs to hum and words to say. 

“Did you think I was going to be easy?” 

If I wasn’t drunk, I think I would be giddier. I think I would even have to cover my face so he wouldn’t see my all-consuming grin and my carnation-colored cheeks or my eyes which would no doubt be watering. But I am drunk, so I can quip something easy and fast, something that makes my shoulders drop and his smile widen. 

How long has it been since someone was in love with me? It feels like it’s been decades, lifetimes. My life, when I really break it down, is dissected into two parts: when Maggie was alive--those perfect twenty-four years when there was an intrinsic feeling that life would always turn out the way I wanted. And now; after Maggie. The first year after she died, I did not feel like I was alive. No, of course I didn’t. I felt that I had actually died on the floor of those woods with her. I wanted to die with her--  

“Penny for your thoughts?” 

I blink at Rooster. He’s still smiling in that soft way, like the smile is just for me and my eyes. My eyes ache. I have to bite down on my lip hard. 

“Easy and cheap? Thin ice, Lieutenant.”

My home is fifteen minutes away from The Hard Deck. Rooster rolls the windows down and the air that bursts through the them when he accelerates feels cool and wild. I want to swallow all of it, want to cool the organs in my body which all feel sweaty and bruised. 

I’m sitting in the passenger seat, leaning against the door, the top of my head leaning out of the window. Rooster drives with one hand, the other sitting in his lap. He flicks the radio on after a few quiet moments. 

I’m On Fire by Bruce Springsteen is playing. 

Rooster is quiet for just one more moment, but I can almost feel the words that are fighting at his closed lips. I watch him through half-shut eyes, black lashes distoriting bits of him. His Adam’s apple bobs when he swallows, like it’s only with great difficulty that he’s able to do so. He’s watching the road with attentive eyes, but he’s blinking fast, almost rapidly.

He suddenly reaches over and presses the button on my buckle without so much as glancing at me. It recedes decidedly and I sit up. My hair whips in the wind, feeling so much rougher than his fingers did on the beach, in the sand. 

“C’mere,” he says. 

And I do. 

My bones feel heavy as I detangle myself from the seatbelt, only with minor difficulty because the thing gets wrapped around my arm. And I’m just about to move myself, scoot myself closer to him, when his hand wraps around the precarious spot between my knee and thigh. He pulls me closer to him in one swift movement and it is wicked, really, just how close we suddenly are. 

At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet / And a freight train running through the middle of my head / Only you can cool my desire 

When I’m this close to him and he smells like old leather and black pepper and cashmere and jet fuel and sweat and salt and tequila, desire pools in the bottom of my belly and seeps lower and lower until I want to squeeze my legs together. He rests his hand on my leg, pressed into the meat of my thigh, his thumb rubbing softly at my skin like he’s trying to rub a freckle off. 

I am a rule-follower. I always wear my seatbelt and I never go ten above the speed-limit. I am good. I am obedient. I am what the Navy wants--no, I am what the Navy needs. I try to do the right thing and usually do. Rooster is driving fast, barely braking when we turn and I know we are going at least twenty over the speed limit, and I am not wearing a seatbelt, but with his arm secured over my body and the heaviness of my arousal makes me feel completely safe. Invincible, even, which is where this starts to become dangerous.

I want to be good for Rooster. I want him to want me-- need me. I hiccup when I try to say this and he squeezes my thigh, smirking slightly.

He’s humming along to the song, keeping the pace of his stroking thumb steady. I focus hard on it--on his hand holding my thigh. I will memorize the skip of my heart and the twitching of my knees so I can think of this when I can’t sleep. When desire is eating me alive, arousal swallowing me whole, I will think of this. Yes, yes . And the throaty humming, his neck, my throat. Yes .  

“Of course you like Springsteen,” I whisper to him, “all-American man.” 

It is an unspoken thing that he will come into my house. I can tell he thinks about stopping on my porch, waiting for some sort of verbal invitation as we stand on my welcome mat, under the moth-dotted porch light. Maybe he even thinks about just kissing my cheek and walking back to the Bronco with his lips on fire. 

I fumble with the lock for only a moment and then step inside, smiling. He waits on the porch, hands lying at his sides in utter surrender. He doesn’t hesitate when I open my door all the way, though, silently inviting him into my foyer. He watches my face as I smile, cheeks still pink from the spot on my thigh that’s still warm from his hand. As if I could take anymore, he inhales deeply--so deeply that his chest caves and his shoulders inflate. 

“Smells like you,” he says.

He’s so pleased when he says this. It’s not for show, he’s not gaining anything when he says this. It is simply what he thinks--it is simply the truth. And the truth, about the sweet smell in my home, makes him very happy.  

I am almost a puddle. My head swims.  

It’s the second time he’s come into my house and I silently take my shoes from his hands and set them in a wicker basket I have in the corner. He mirrors me and as he’s unlacing his shoes, I start up the stairs.

The house is very quiet, which is something it usually is not. Usually the fans are on, the air conditioning units are humming, something is hissing and popping on the stove, woodwick candles are crackling, and a record is turning. A record is usually always, always playing. Each night as I lay down to sleep, one is playing. Sometimes I will wake up at three or four in the morning and stumble down the hall just to turn the record. Silence is not something I welcome and it is not something I’ve welcomed since the accident. 

I flick a few lamps on in the living room, which is sitting at a cool 75-degrees and it’s the nicest the living room has felt all summer. The room is drenched in a warm light and Stevie is perched like a gargoyle on her favorite velvet ottoman. Her tail flicks as she watches me strike a match to light a few candles dotted around the room. 

“Can I get you anything?” I call to Rooster. 

I turn and he is on the top step, just drinking in the room like it’s only the first time he’s seen it. He’s never seen it at night when everything glows orange and pink and yellow and green. He’s never seen me in here, me with my short skirt and short shirt, leaning over the record table with blush in my cheeks and sand in my hair.

His eyes are on mine as I let the Donovan record, the one I cranked as I attended Maggie’s church, fall back into its sleeve. I’m smiling at him but I can feel how my lips are twitching, how my eyebrows are sloping. I feel like I’m a glass of hot water on the edge of a marble countertop. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be drunk?” 

I tilt my face at him, biting my lip, and he very slowly emulates me. Right down to the lip biting. 

“I am drunk, Bradley.” 

I feel strangely connected to him at this exact moment. I feel goosebumps prickle his arms. I think I can even feel the lump in his throat that he swallows with great might. I hear my own voice through ears that aren’t mine and it sounds so sweet, so soft. I am soft with want. He loves the sound of his name when it comes out of my mouth. 

“You should let me take care of you,” he whispers, his voice almost hoarse. 

He has not moved from the step. I am smiling wider now. I feel like there’s honey in my heart, gumming up my ventricles, starting its slow descent to my veins.

“Okay,” I say, “but only if you let me take care of you.” 

He nods, finally taking the last step to join me in the living room. There is only a small amount of space between us, his feet socked and mine bare. He’s looking around the room again and I want to see it from his eyes. 

When I bought my home, its bones were good. But it had been a victim of a boomer couple that, naturally , tried to rid the home entirely of its charm. It had taken a long time, a very long time, to restore its original charm. It was hard work--chipped nails from ripping up carpet, spackle-stained t-shirts, so much fucking paint, and a few extended stays at hotels when I finally threw in the towel and commissioned a professional. 

When I first bought the house, its price had been reduced because no one wanted to buy a Victorian-era home that had been distastefully remodeled. I’d bought it as soon as Maggie and I had been asked to sign contracts at Top Gun, when we were 23-years-old. For a long time, I tried to live around its ugliness, temporarily fixing the ugliest parts with hot glue and scotch tape. It wasn’t until after Maggie, after rehab, that I ripped the home apart and made it my own. 

Rooster slowly crosses the room, pausing when his feet land on the ornate rugs that I have layered beneath a peg-legged coffee table. I like the way they feel under my feet, too, but I don’t say anything. I like watching him notice things in my home. 

He sits on the far end of the chartreuse sofa, close to Stevie on her marmalade-colored ottoman. They regard each other for a moment and Stevie is unmoving, her face stained with perpetual dismay. 

Quietly, I scour my records until I find it. I am very careful with my records, the way Rooster is with the Bronco. I listen to him breathe and very softly press the record down before letting the needle rest. Astral Weeks by Van Morrison starts after the record player thinking for only a moment.

I turn to Rooster and he is letting his temple rest on his fist, elbow propped on the arm of the couch. He’s been watching me and I think that’s why the back of my neck is so warm, so prickled. 

“Water,” I say, “or are you hungry?” 

Rooster shakes his head, not saying anything, just smiling. Just water, then.

I leave him alone as the violins and guitar cry over the speakers. I have it turned up just a hair too loud, which is how I always listen to my music. I want to hear nothing but the crackling, the singing, the instruments. 

The kitchen door closes behind me. He is alone in my living room, with my dead sister’s bitch cat that I felt responsible for after the fact, and I am getting so dizzy. I feel the tequila retreating, but that’s when Rooster comes in, trickling in at first then allowing the dam to crack. He pours onto me, over my head, and I feel like I’m swirling downstream.

But I am not. I am just standing right behind my kitchen door. The clock on the wall reads 1:49 AM. I take a deep, deep breath and then I grab two glasses from my cabinet. I fill them quickly, holding them still with one hand as I pour the pitcher of water. My hands are shaking. 

And when I come back to the living room, the kitchen door straining against my aching arm, I see Rooster on my couch and I nearly fall onto the ground. How long have I waited for a man like him to sit on my sofa, to politely keep his feet off my fragile table, to listen to my records? How long have I ached to bring someone something so simple as a glass of water after a night of drinking? How long have I waited for something--someone--so beautiful to sit in my home, my home they think smells like me, and wait for me to take care of them? He’s effervescent in the orange lights, inside the glow of the candles. It smells like cinnamon and oranges. 

And when I take a step closer to him, his eyes raise to mine. They way they raise, so organically, the smile on his lips so familiar and sweet. It seems like we’ve done this before, like he has always raised his eyes to me and I have always given him a glass with cold water in this living room. 

I realize, with a start, that Stevie is sitting on his lap. And I know that Rooster was not the one who sought her out because he is in the exact position he was when I left, except now he is delicately petting the top of her head and rubbing her ears between his two fingers. She is kneading him thoroughly and even though I know her claws are penetrating his clothing, he does not shy away from her. 

“I have never seen her do that,” I say, which is a partial lie because she used to sit on Maggie like that, every single day. 

But saying her name right now, letting it penetrate the air, it feels like something would crumble. Like maybe we are both dreaming and that would wake us up.

He smiles small, proud. He looks like a child given a compliment, a child who’s trying to be coy, who’s prideful but embarrassed at the revelation. 

I set his glass on the table and sink into the sofa beside him. There is a space between us, a small one, but he turns, laying his head back on the sofa. He swallows.

“Come here,” he says and I’m his. I am all in, falling head first, all his. 

I can do nothing but close the space between us, lay my head on his shoulder. His arm falls around me and Stevie is suddenly not just on his lap, but laying across his lap. Van Morrison is still singing and his glass is sweating onto the coaster and he’s just holding me. 

“Will you stay tonight?” 

And when I say it, it doesn’t feel vulnerable or juvenile. It sounds like the only thing that I could’ve said, the only possible next step in conversation.

“I was planning on it,” he breathes, “if you’d have me.” 

I want to tell him that I will always have him. I want to tell him about the way I would say his name any time he wanted--anytime at all. All the scenarios I’d daydreamed, all the phantom phone calls, faux conversations we’d had in the confines of my mind. I can’t say anything at all, though. 

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispers suddenly, his thumb pressing into the skin of my cheek, stroking it, “you’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen in my life.” 

I swallow hard and I know he feels it, my gulp. Our faces are very close and when I glance at him, he’s already looking at me. He looks so serious, almost painly serious, with his eyebrows pointed downwards and his lips almost turned into a grimace. He’s rapidly stroking my cheek, but then his fingers start to fall and they’re on my chin suddenly. He outlines the scar there, on the left side of my jaw, and I want to cry.

I want to tell him that he’s the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen in my entire life, that I don’t even hold a candle to his beauty. I want to tell him how badly I want to kiss his face, the scars on his cheeks and neck. I want to tell him how much I want him to wreck me. Ruin me.  

“What happened here?” He whispers. 

“I hit a tree coming down,” I say. 

What I mean is that when my sister and I ejected from our F-18 somewhere above Poland, just three days after our birthday, I watched her fall to her death when her parachute malfunctioned and actually severed from its cords at an almost perfect moment. I watched her fall from my own place in the sky, falling down so slowly, and I could do nothing. What I mean is that I descended for what felt like hours and I tried to keep my eyes on my sister, where I knew her body would be. What I mean is that when I neared the trees, I got caught in one, and in the struggle, I disconnected from my parachute too high up and my jaw fell victim to a jagged, snowy branch. My blood, leaking from my jaw like a spicket, kept me warm for hours.

He pushes hair from my face and then just pushes my head back so my jaw is on full display, my throat at his utter mercy. He touches the four freckles again and I shiver and I want him to keep touching me forever.

 He moves Stevie off his lap, but not like an asshole--just very softly lays her raggedy body back on her ottoman. She does not hiss or bite him, which she does to me if I attempt to breathe near her. I think I can even hear her purring. Bitch.  

Rooster moves back to me, tilts my chin back, pushes my shoulders against the couch and I really, truly, honestly cannot remember ever feeling the way I do right at this moment. I am alive and dead at the same time, almost gasping for breath and he hasn’t even ever kissed me. 

“I love that you said this was mine,” he whispers softly, both his hands holding it as I grip the sofa, “I don’t think you even know what you do to me.” 

His touch is cruelly light. The pads of his fingers couldn’t even squish an ant with the pressure he’s applying to my throat. And he’s just stroking me, looking up at my eyes as I try to even out my breathing. 

“When I saw you for the first time and you were already looking at me like you knew me,” Rooster whispers, “and you were so quick-witted and funny. I was trying to keep up with you--I still am.”

He presses down harder on my throat, but with all the weight of a stack of papers, a short book maybe. He’s just touching me. I can’t hardly breathe, but it isn’t his hands that are making my chest hurt. His words. Oh, fuck. Sometimes I feel like a dead girl walking, someone no one says anything to, someone no one gets too close to because maybe I will infect them with this loneliness, this sadness. 

“And when I came here for the first time, I could hear your music from down the block, even with my windows up. And you answered the door in that fuckin’ robe,” Rooster almost hisses, “and you didn’t even understand what you were doing to me. So sweet, so nurturing. Bounding around the house putting flowers in vases and asking me if I wanted a drink or to pick a record.”

A sound comes out of my throat and my head is spinning. That’s when he does it--leans forward and presses his lips against my throat. First it’s a little peck, his lips flush against my aorta--and then it drags down, down until it meets the freckle that sits nestled between my collarbones. He kisses my freckles and it’s like his hands were gasoline and his lips are the stricken match. I’m on fire. 

“And it’s not just the face and the body and the wit ,” he whispers, “it’s just like…you’re home to me. I barely even know you, but I really feel like I do. I feel like I could tell you anything in the world. I feel like you know a part of myself that I don’t even know yet.”

“You’re making me dizzy,” I whisper to him, then say after a beat, “don’t stop.” 

He is peppering kisses all over my neck and throat now, taking special care of the freckles and the scar that marks my chin. I remember how it bled, how warm my blood was in the frigid air--his lips are hotter than any blood that’s ever leaked from my body.

It is a frenzy, a frenzy of his lips on my throat and candles burning and Van Morrison playing and the clock racing towards dawn and I’m so dizzy. 

But then we are in my bathroom, the one my father had laid all the emerald-colored tiles for. The shower is on and the steam is filling the room exquisitely. The door is closed and the lights are off. There are candles lit here, too, ones that I use for baths in the claw-foot tub I’d been able to salvage. 

Rooster and I are just looking at each other, both of us still dressed. My neck is burning, the arousal is pooling in my belly and dripping, dripping…

And so I move to him first this time, closing the few feet between us. He stiffens and moves, hastily, to meet me toe-to-toe. I’m looking at his eyes, his pretty, pretty eyes and wondering what he’s thinking. But, on some level, I know. Me. He’s thinking of me.

I take his hand, the one resting at his side, and bring it to the zipper of my skirt, which is a silver circle. The skin between his eyebrows creases and he hooks his index finger in the zipper before he comes close to me, leaning his forehead against mine. I love when he puts weight on me--I hold him steady and his other hand comes around to rest on my hip. 

“This skirt,” he whispers, his voice breaking, “is going to be the death of me.” 

I swallow thickly. It’s embarrassing how badly I want this, want him. 

He pulls down slowly, so slowly that I almost want to bat his hands out of the way and pull the zipper down myself. But no, no. He’s taking his sweet, precious time. The entire room is foggy now and I strain to keep my breathing steady. He’s looking down at his finger in my zipper, at my skirt that’s unraveling. 

He stops suddenly. I want to cry, want to thrash, but then he looks at my face and his is so beautiful, so perfect. I’m biting my lip hard and he brings his hands to my face, to my cheeks and the pads of his fingers feel so familiar and safe. He tilts my face to his, searching my eyes, face pulled together in an almost painful sort of admiration. 

“You’re wrecking me, baby,” he whispers. 

“My condolences,” I whisper.

And then he closes the distance between my mouth and his. My breathing hitches when his lips touch mine because it has been so very, very long since anyone has kissed me at all. But no one has ever kissed me like this. I feel like Rooster and I are both on the verge of sobbing, like we are both so overcome with every possible emotion that we are going to collapse into each other. His lips are soft, plush, but he is not too gentle with me, not like before. He licks my bottom lip and carefully nips it and I open my mouth and his tongue is inside me and I feel like my knees are going to buckle. And then they do buckle, but he is quick to drop one of his arms to my waist. He holds me flush against him and I get nauseous feeling all the hard parts of him against all the soft parts of myself. 

When he pulls back from me, he rests his forehead against mine again for a moment and I’m gasping, reeling. Then he’s kissing every inch of my face, sloppy, sweet kisses. Then he’s moving lower and lower until he’s kneeling before me. I could cum from this--just this, him kneeling before me with his hands planted on my hips and his finger hooking in my zipper again.

“Will you let me undress you?” 

As if it’s even a question. I nod fervently because my voice will shatter --I will shatter-- if I speak. 

He unzips the rest of my skirt and it falls in a heap behind me and the air is so warm, his hands are so big and hot. I want to be the stick in his jet--I want him to crank me, squeeze me, break me. I want to be ripped apart by him. His hands are laying flat on the front of my hips, somewhere over my quaking ovaries, and his thumb are circling the skin there. 

I am painting above him, not brave enough to look down and see his eyes already trying to find mine. He leans forward and kisses the bottom of my belly and I feel like I’ve just taken off in a jet and the air is thin and the bottom is going to drop out from under me. When his lips graze my panties, I almost truly faint. 

“Bradley,” I call, searching for purchase, but the walls are too far away from me. 

He grips my hips and turns me easily, carefully. I am facing the wall now. His body moves behind me and I hear clothing dropping to the ground unceremoniously. His fingers find the hem of my tank, the one that Maggie had probably been taken out of by countless men, and I raise my arms over my head. I’m almost bare now before him. He kneels again, kissing the base of my spin, all along my hips, all along my thighs. 

And I’ve been kissed here before. I’ve been kissed here before many times, by many people, many different lips. And that makes my stomach coil and as if he can feel this, he rests his cheek flat against my back and whispers to me. 

“What’s wrong? Are you okay?” 

I nod, nod fast and hard, my chin hitting my chest. But I have to tell him. I have to. 

“I can’t have sex,” I whisper, “not tonight at least.” 

There’s a beat and I feel him nodding against my skin. 

“That’s just fine,” he whispers, but then says louder, “can I take care of you, though?”

And I feel like if he touches me, really touches me, then I won’t even exist anymore. Or maybe I don’t exist right now and if he touches me, I will burst into existence again, burning the atmosphere like a meteor. Maybe I will hit a tree on the way down and have a twin scar on the right side of my jaw. 

“If you want to,” is all I can manage to squeak out. 

His hands move, move, move until they’re on my belly again. He stands up and I can feel that he is naked behind me. I’m falling, squeezing my eyes shut, he’s holding me close. I’m trying very hard to not reach around and touch him, the way I had with the other men, the other women. So many of them, shuffling in and out, my eyes always half-shut and my mouth never open.

“I want to hear you say it,” he breathes against my ear, “I want to hear you say that you want me to take care of you.” 

I wonder if he knows how badly I do want him to take care of me. I want us to take care of each other. I want to wake him up with cups of coffee and sleepy kisses. I want him to dance with me in the kitchen, our meal burning away in the oven or on the stove, and dip me so deep that my hair brushes the floor. I want to towel him off after a rainstorm, like a trusty stray dog. I want him to hold me down against the sheets and be my weighted blanket. I want him to clean my living room and I’ll light candles and he’ll hum without knowing it, dusting my records or vacuuming my rugs. 

“I want it, Bradley,” I say, almost crying, “I want you so bad.” 

“Atta girl.” 

Then his fingers hook in my underwear and he pulls them down my parted legs. My cheek is making the wall sweat. My lungs feel cold and redhot at the same time. I am shaking. 

“Step out, baby,” he encourages and I do step, one at a time, one of his arms wrapped around my waist tightly and the other pulling my panties away from my ankles. 

I’m shivering even though the whole room has no doubt raised in temperature. He’s holding me to him like his life depends on it. He’s holding onto me the way his hand had held mine the first time we danced together, when I knew I wouldn’t float away when he was holding me. 

“Fuck, this is eaxclty what I thought you’d look like. So fucking gorgeous, baby.” 

When he says this, I almost want to snort. My body is not the incredible one here. I’ve seen his chest, his arms, his legs. Every part of him looks like a detailed sculpture, like he was expertly crafted and is meant to be wheeled into a museum for people to flock to. 

He kisses all the way up my spine, started dangerously close to my rear, and his mouth is wet and very warm. He’s kissing me in a sloppy way, too, like he can’t wait, can’t pace himself and go slower. 

Then, with his hands pressing into the fleshy part of my hips, he turns me around so he’s kneeling before, between my thighs. He’s looking up at me and his hair, his curls, are falling and his eyes are very dark, but kind. His hands are on my belly again and his cheek is pressed against my uterus again. It looks unholy to have a man, a man who could be sculpted out of fucking clay, to be kneeling on my bathroom floor that my father tiled. He’s stark and every single part of him is beautiful and flows perfectly to the next beautiful part. I want to cry. I want to laugh.

When is the right time to tell Rooster? When is the right time to tell him how many men have been in his positon? How do I tell him that I can’t remember the names of them, when one wet and sticky night blurred into the next? When I was chasing Vicodin with vodka? How do I tell him that I was full for months? Full of pills, full of random men’s cum, full of vodka, full of grief. 

Not now, I decide. Not now.

Chapter Text

Chapter Six 

(Technically) July 20th, 2019 

He’s still looking up at me and the way his eyes are glassy and shining through the steam from the shower is fucking unholy. I think that if Maggie’s religion was primping and prepping, her bible a blow dryer or eyeliner, then this is my religion. Rooster in my pretty bathroom, steam clouding our vision, his beautiful naked body very big and solid kneeling before me. My bible is the velvety, blonde hair on his head that I want to grip.

When I reach down for the first time and take his hair in my hands, my heart is sobbing in my throat. I feel like I’m going to explode. I am not holding his hair to bring to my body, to force his position forward, no. I am touching his hair softly, holding it the way I used to hold Maggie’s. He leans into my touch, and the lust nearly disappears and is replaced with a soppy kind of tenderness and comfort, so I squeeze my fingers together. Tugging on his hair. He moans and it is profane.  

He is looking into my eye very deeply and I am struggling for breath when his hands come up to separate my thighs. His hands are so large and I feel so sfe beneath them, even though I am almost nothing--his touches are making me smaller and bigger at the same time. I feel like I am standing on the highest mountain peak with every exhale, but with every inhale I think I’m finally disappearing, leaving, gone. 

“Open up for me, baby,” he says, his voice very deep and husky, “wanna make you feel good.”

How could I do anything but comply? Does he understand that he could do anything to me and I would want it? Even if I didn’t want it, yes I would. Because I know, because of the translucent thread or by some paranormal force, that he would never hurt me. He would never do anything to me that doesn’t make me ache with want, pining for him so badly that it prickles my eyes with tears.

And when I move, under the careful insistence of his flat palms, to spread my legs further for him, he moans deeply. It sends a shock wave of pleasure up my body. I don’t even care that I am wasting so much water, which is very unlike me.

“So fucking gorgeous, baby,” he repeats, “so ready for me.” 

And when his mouth comes down, it comes down like honey dripping off a spoon into hot tea. His tongue brings a redhot pleasure that makes my spine curve, my jaw set, but also a strange sense of comfort. His tongue feels like a wet washcloth over swollen eyes. His tongue feels like cold water over a fresh burn. His tongue feels like seeing an old friend at a coffee shop and talking to them like a day has not passed. 

Literally, his mouth is making me quiver. His breath is somehow hotter than the steam, his tongue is expansive and all-encompassing and is somehow everywhere I need it to be, his thick nose is nudging ridges and parts of myself that I have not let anyone touch in years. 

“You taste so good,” he mumbles against my slit, “so wet for me, baby. So perfect.” 

I am bucking into his mouth, my breathing is stuttering. I’m pulling his hair hard and when I do, he moans against me and it makes my belly drop low. There is a tightly wound piece of leather in my belly and he is stretching it thin, stretching it taut. It’s sturdy, always has been, but he’s stressing it to a point no one else has before. 

“Nobody’s ever made me cum before,” I whisper to him, “no one.” 

And I’m not lying and I’m not ashamed to tell him this, even if it makes me feel like a bad feminist. People tried to make me cum, one girl had even gone down on me for the better part of two hours, but I was always held back by something. Nobody could wear away the leather cord that nestled deep inside me. 

He pulls away and my legs are shaking when I look down at him. 

“I’m gonna make you cum,” he tells me, very seriously. 

I know he is. I know he isn’t lying. I don’t even need the invisible string to know this. His eyes are just the eyes that truth-tellers have. He means what he says when he says it, especially to women he’s going down on, especially to me.

I nod and he comes back to me, this time more ferociously. He laps at my wetness, taking special care of my clit, sucking it between his capable lips. His mustache is soaked, no doubt, and its coarse hairs scratch the most sensitive parts of myself at an almost languid pace. 

“So good,” I manage to squeak. 

His arms are wrapped around my thighs and he’s holding me close to him with his palms flat on my rear, like he thinks I am going to squirm away from him. He doesn’t know that I’m good, that I’m compliant. He doesn’t know that it’s all coming back to me now, all the parts of sex I’d forgotten about. How good I am at following directions. How good I am at staying still. 

Suddenly, his right arm leaves my ass. It slides down, down my legs and comes to lift my thigh. I am light as a feather suddenly and he tugs my leg up swiftly and settles the crook of my knee on his naked shoulder. 

I tilt my head back and moan because I’m suddenly so much more open to him. I am suddenly so much closer to him, my leg resting on his shoulder, my chest heaving, my lips tingling with his name.

“Good girl,” he says against me, “look at me, baby.” 

I do and I nearly cum, toes curling, when I see how dark and open his eyes are. He is drinking me in--in every single sense imaginable. 

“I’m close,” I whisper. 

He’s still holding my leg on his shoulder, supporting me, but it slinks away and comes to my cunt where his mouth is savoring me. He’s looking at my eyes through the murky air when his two fingers come to my sopping entrance. I almost shrink away because I am so close to the edge, so worried I will teeter and fall off it. 

He is quick to respond, holding onto my rear tightly with his one hand and his free hand coming up to rest on my belly. 

“I’ve got you, baby,” he whispers, “I want you to cum for me, honey. You can let go, I’ve got you, I’m right here.” 

His fingers are inside me suddenly, down to his knuckle and curling inside me so deep, so deliciously. I have never moaned in this way before--I sound almost like an animal in pain but I can’t help it. The leather cord is wearing fast, wearing so thin.

It’s when he moans my name against my clit, fingers curled so perfectly that the cord suddenly snaps and I have fallen over the edge. 

“Oh, fuck,” I whisper to him, back arching, fingers shivering, belly hot, “ oh, fuck, I’m cumming.” 

 And he holds true. He does have me, he’s holding me, he’s working me through it. He is generously lapping me, savoring me, letting my thighs squeeze his head, letting me come all the way down and onto his mouth. And when it’s over, when the aftershocks have even faded, he comes away from my cunt to gently freckle kisses all along the sensitive skin of my inner thighs. He carefully dismounts my leg from his shoulder and then he’s kissing my thighs again, all the way to my calves and up to my hips and I’m still trying to catch my breath whenever he kisses between my breasts and stands. 

Then I realize, with something that feels almost like fear, that he is the first person in the world to make me cum besides myself. And I know I have already told him this but it’s all dawning on me now, after. I have known him for a week. Well, a week and a day. The college boyfriend that doted on me but could never find the spot there yeah right there , the men that would eat my cunt for a few minutes and replace their ineffective tongues with their ineffective cocks, the well-meaning women that genuinely tried to give me release. And not only has Bradley made me cum--but it was very quick, almost too quick.  He didn’t just make it snap--he practically cut the leather cord with a freshly-sharpened knife. 

He stands and he’s suddenly taller than me again, suddenly larger than life. I feel very small, very warm. My cheeks are burning. He’s smiling down at me--his mustache is sheening with my slick. I shiver. 

He’s still looking down at me with that same sweet smile, even though I can feel his straining cock against my belly, begging for my attention. He kisses me on the mouth again, very sweet and small, and I can taste my must. 

He wraps his arms around my waist and they feel so big against me, his skin burning. He pulls and pulls until we are flush against another. There is no room between us, we are airtight. I bring my hands around his shoulders, too, and then we just hold each other. His body is solid like marble. 

He’s smiling--I can feel it against my skin.

“This might be redundant,” he says and my heart is bursting, “but I really, really like you, Faye.” 

We laugh and my lungs are straining. 

“I’ve never been able to let go like that before,” I whisper, “thank you.” 

Something in his chest stiffens when I thank him. I put my fingers in his hair and scratch his scalp softly. I feel like I already love parts of him, but maybe it’s because he just made me cum. I don’t know. Maybe I would love anyone that could make me cum. He pets my hair, too. 

“I could do that everyday for the rest of my life,” he offers. 

And I laugh again, but he doesn’t. My heart is hammering against my chest. I feel like I have to tell him everything right now, lay it all out and let him read everything, and then ask if he could really do that every single day forever. 

“Name your price,” I finally whisper back. 

He doesn’t laugh. Instead he says back, very seriously, “Another date. And a shower.” 

I nod, swallowing hard. My breath hitches when I let my hand wander to where he is hardest, pushing into my plush skin. Just my finger touching the delicate, soft skin makes him jolt. He hisses. 

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” he starts, coming back to look at me, “I really, really want you to. I mean--fuck, you can tell that I want you to. But I just…” 

I move my hand and he holds my cheek, smiling down at me. He has me in the palm of his hand. If he told me to do a backflip, I would do two. If he told me to keep a secret, I would die with it inside my mouth, pressed against my cheeks. If he told me to drive all the way to Maine while he slept in the passenger seat, I wouldn’t even play the music loud because I would want his slumber to be peaceful. 

Fuck. Oh, fuck. 

“I want this to be about you, okay? You just--you take care of everyone. Let me take care of you. Just this once, okay? Then I’ll be yours for the taking,” he chides. 

We laugh again. I lean forward and kiss the scar on his throat. He swallows hard. 

“Just this once. Got it, Bradley?” 

  ☾ ☽

When I wake up, it is very early. It is almost too early to be awake, those quiet hours between people who stay up and those who awaken before the sun rises. There is a blue light leaking in from my bay windows, filtering in through the sheer curtains. I have always liked waking up to sunlight, either never closing my blinds or investing in curtains that the sun can shine right through. 

My bedroom is dark besides a flickering candle on my dresser and it is the quietest it has ever been, too. My door is cracked, which it always is, which is something I can’t help. It’s like I’m waiting for someone to come home, even when I’m alone, or even when Bradley is in bed beside me. 

I move, just slightly to flex my foot, and feel something heavy and soft at my feet. I know without looking that Stevie is there. Stevie has never slept with me before. She is purring.

“Bitch,” I whisper, smiling.

I stare up at the vaulted ceiling, watching the fan lazily spin, and even wide awake like I am, everything feels good. Everything feels right. 

There is no record playing in the living room like there usually is--Rooster and I had fallen into bed with such heavy, tired limbs that I could not get myself to turn one on. I am surprised. I slept so soundly without it, which I have not done since Maggie died. Even when my bed was not empty, no one made the right noises. Some people snored loud, others quiet. Some people breathed thunderously and others talked in their sleep. It was not enough to lull me to sleep, no, it never was.

Rooster is latched onto me, which is exactly how we fell asleep. I am laying on my side, facing the wallpapered wall with its fruits and flowers and little creatures. And Rooster is behind me, conforming to my body so exactly, like we have done this since the beginning of everything. His legs are nestled behind mine, curled identically. One of his arms is secured around my waist and the other one is beneath my neck, where he holds my head back against his throat, beneath his jaw. Our feet are even tangled. 

And when we first got out of the shower last night, I was in my robe, almost completely sober. Rooster sat on my linen duvet very politely, a towel wrapped around his waist. And in the orange light of my bedroom, I rummaged in my drawers to find something that would fit him and he looked all around my room, the same way he looked around my kitchen days before. He was looking at all the photographs, all the art prints, all the special things I hung on the walls that I framed in gold. He was looking at the shelves of books, the special records I keep only in here. 

When I approached him, my heart in my throat and random paint-spattered pieces of clothing my father had left accidentally this time or that, his eyes flicker to mine. My hair was dripping down my robe and falling onto the rug. My cheeks were warm. 

He opened his arms for me and I stepped between his legs easily, so easily that it suddenly made me want to cry. Why did everything before this feel so hard? Being between his legs, his interlocked fingers resting on the lowest part of my back and his arms wrapped around my hips, it made me want to lay down. It made me want to rest. How had I not noticed how hard everything was before him? Sure, I knew what it was like for life to seem vacant and wrong. I knew the big parts of life being hard--funerals, wakes, those first shell-shocked weeks. But the parts like this, when I’m stepping between his legs, when I’m just in my bedroom with him--it was so easy now. Easy like it never had been before.

I set the clothes beside him and in the light, with no steam distorting our view of each other, he was even more beautiful than he had ever been before. There was a hint of a smile on his lips, his eyebrows were dipped and there was a wretchedly beautiful wrinkle between his brows. He looked at me like he had been looking at me forever, like he knew everything about me and more. Like he had always been there.

“Those your boyfriend’s clothes?” 

I bit a smile and put my fingers in his hair; his head became heavy in my hands instantaneously. Fuck, I lvoed that so much. 

Give me everything, I wanted to whisper to him, I want to be heavy with the weight of you.

“Dad’s,” I corrected quietly.

He smiled. His eyes were half-shut when my fingers were against his scalp. I knew that people liked that, when I touched their hair, when I played with it. Whenever we had exams coming up in the academy or a particularly challenging week ahead, I would have a train of people on my living room floor that begged for me to touch their hair. Bob, Maggie, Maneater, Jagger. Each of them would tilt their heads back into my lap and I would rub my fingers along their warm scalps and scratch behind their ears while a movie mindlessly played before us.

“You close with your parents?”

He asked this slyly, like it was a natural part of conversation and not him secretly trying to get to know me better. It made me throat ache. 

“Used to be,” I said honestly, “we all took losing Maggie differently. They clammed up.” 

I didn’t know why I was being so honest, so achingly, stupidly honest. But I was and he was nodding like yes, he absolutely understood that. It used to make me so mad when people would pretend to know what I was going through. But not Rooster. He understood perfectly. 

“That must’ve been difficult,” he whispered, “it still must be.” 

Like you wouldn’t believe, Bradley. Like you wouldn’t believe.

“I’m tough,” I whispered back. 

He was grinning then, pulling me closer to him and oh, God. He was so beautiful. 

“Oh, believe me,” he whispered, “I know.” 

I wanted to laugh. I wanted to tell him that I had come apart in his hands in mere minutes after never being able to cum for anyone else before. Was that tough? Was that exemplifying my strong will? I was basically a teenage boy in the bathroom. A virgin.

“You’re good at that,” Rooster whispered, head falling harder into my hands.

I smiled down at him. His throat was on display and the scars there were begging for my touch. I didn’t move my fingers from his hair, though. His eyes slipped shut in quiet pleasure. 

“I’ve been told that a few times,” I whispered. 

“I’m not your first?” 

My lips were quivering. I could not take it any longer--I leaned forward and pressed my lips to his forehead, so smooth and warm. His skin was still a little bit wet from his dripping hair. He leaned into my lips. It felt so good when he gave me all that weight to shoulder. I wanted him to lay his life down in my lap so I could rub it between my fingers.

“Well, we know I’m your first in one category…” he said, a teasing lilt in his voice. 

I kissed his forehead again and hugged his head to me. His arms tightened around my waist. 

“First pilot,” I teased back. 

He laughed and the vibrations almost made me cry. 

“First in flight.” 

“Okay, North Carolina, get dressed. I’ve gotta get ready for bed.” 

We detangled ourselves from each other and I pretended like everything was perfectly fine, even though there was a want between my thighs again, even though there was that lump in my throat again when I thought of Rooster being alone in the world.

He dropped the towel and the blush that colored my cheeks made me turn away from him. I dropped my robe, too, and lotioned myself carefully. The muffled sounds of transferring clothing echoed in the quiet room, but things didn’t feel incorrect. It felt right that we were so quietly getting ready for bed. 

“You’ve body is…” Rooster sighed, “like, it’s almost sacrilegious, Faye.” 

My chest was glowing bright, strawberry red. My throat was so tight that I could barely choke out a laugh. I was dizzy all over again. He made me feel like a virgin when he talked to me like that.

“You’re one to talk,” I said finally, “you look like you were made in a lab. Like, the perfect human specimen.” 

There was that throaty laugh again. Without looking at him, even though I felt his eyes on my body, I slipped into a pair of cotton panties and a Navy sweatshirt. I could almost hear him swallowing from behind me, waiting for my eyes to find his. I slipped my feet into a pair of thick socks. 

“You sleep with socks on?” 

I peeked over my shoulder--Rooster was smiling at me, lop-sided. He was holding the towel now, dressed. 

“Yes,” I said, “dealbreaker?” 

His smile grew and grew until he was grinning. He shrugged one time, very small, shaking his head. I turned back towards the dresser before a grin split my face. I walked to the bathroom, pretending like I wasn’t the happiest I’d been since the dawn of time. 

When I brushed my teeth and washed my face and pressed cream beneath my eyes and brushed my wet hair, he stood behind me, just watching me in the mirror. He brushed his teeth and washed his face a few moments after me, pleased to no end that I was someone that always had spare toothbrushes.

“You’re perfect,” he’d said when I presented him with a toothbrush.

I had rolled my eyes, pretending like a blush wasn’t creeping down my chest. 

We got into bed at the same time, coming under the covers together. My legs were very soft against the sheets and the pillows were very fluffy beneath my head. All the throw pillows were in their basket and the linen sheets and duvet smelled like laundry soap and fresh air. I always hung my bedding out to dry outside. 

Rooster brought the bedding to his face and inhaled deeply, smiling. 

“I just love everything in your house,” Rooster had said, “everything feels special here. There’s a place for everything. Feels like a real home.” 

We were laying beside each other then, our ankles crossed and his hand over mine. We were both looking up at the ceiling, the room almost entirely dark. My throat was still tight. 

“You know,” I whispered, “if you lived here, this is where I’d keep you.” 

I pointed to the sheets. 

He laughed and came closer to me, kissing my shoulder softly. 

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. 

There was a beat of silence and I closed my eyes. I listened to his breathing, to his careful eyes looking at the ceiling, to his foot rubbing against the sheets incessantly. My limbs were growing heavy, very heavy.

“Can I ask you something?” 

“Leona,” I’d responded, not opening my eyes. 

He smiled, coming close to me again, turning his body to face mine. His hand fell over my belly.  

“Saw it on your ID, honey. A doner, too, huh? Aren’t you the ideal citizen?” 

I smiled. He kissed my shoulder. Even through the thick cotton of my sweatshirt, his lips were warm. 

“I feel like I should ask you all the dating questions. Favorite color, favorite ice cream flavor, what you’re looking for…” 

Rooster trailed off and waited patiently for my response. Finally, I opened my eyes and turned to him, smiling softly. He was looking at me with parted lips. And for the first time, I was scared--scared that we wouldn’t want the same thing and then I would have this taken from me. 

“Green. Lavender honey from a place in Missouri called Sparky’s, if we’re getting specific. In general, coffee probably,” I smiled, “and I am looking for whatever you’re looking for, Bradley.” 

His hand came to rest on my cheek. Half his face was smushed by the pillow and still he was beautiful, achingly so. Ungodly. 

“Do you only have sex with people you’re dating?

His question did not feel like prying. He asked it softly, calmly. He was curious. But there was a fist squeezing my heart again. How did I tell him? Did I tell him? 

“Yes. Now, at least.” 

And that was all I’d said. He nodded. 

“And how many dates do I have to take you on before I can ask you to be my girl?”

The fist released suddenly. I took a deep breath, fighting a giddiness that rapidly climbed my body. 

“No minimum,” I said, “but you have to go to the farmer’s market with me in the morning.”

“I’m an early riser,” he’d told me. 

“I’m an earlier riser,” I’d shot back. 

And then things were quiet for a little while. He was just breathing on me and I was trying to think of something to keep me awake--but my eyelids were growing heavier and heavier and the linen was hugging my body so perfectly and being with him made me want to sleep, made me want to rest. 

“What about you?” I finally whispered, “favorite color, ice cream flavor? What you want?” 

His hand was still on my cheek and he was stroking my skin softly, so softly. 

“Orange. Cherry garcia.” 

I quirked a brow at him, but he saw me, even in the dark. Cherry garcia?  

“Dealbreaker?” he’d whispered. 

“No,” I whispered back, “it makes you a little bit more approachable.” 

He pinched my cheek and I wormed myself closer to his body and he accepted me with an impeccable grace. 

“Do you know what I want, Faye?” 

“What do you want, Bradley?” 

“You,” he answered, “every little bit of you.” 

I was trying not to let him see how choked up I suddenly was. He was staring at me in the dark, eyes unblinking and full of something that was so, so close to love. Adoration or devotion, maybe. But more than that. I was measuring my heartbeat, my swallows. 

A week. One week. One week and one day. I repeated it to myself over and over again, trying to spray pesticide on the flowers that were blooming in my belly, in my chest. I had only known this man for one week and one day. I couldn’t be ready to let go, not yet, not just yet. 

“And when the mission is over and you leave?” 

I was surprised that I’d even said it. His thumb didn’t stutter on my cheek. He took it all with an ease that I had never known before. 

“Sorry,” I followed quickly, “sorry, that wasn’t fair.”

But I was right. What would happen then? This man, this man that made me cum in under five minutes with his mouth, with the devotion for my pleasure, this man who wanted to just take care of me. How could I know this man and then go back to my solitary life? My life before wasn’t even bad. I had friends that would get cocktails with me if I asked. I love my house. I knew myself inside and out, which is what happens when you spend so much time by yourself. There will always be something to work on in the house, something to read, places to go, sand to recline on. I’ll be okay. And I will pretend that when I think about him leaving that my heart doesn’t turn itself inside out. 

“It was fair,” he said softly, “but maybe it’s more of a ‘cross that bridge when we get there’ type of thing.” 

I nodded once, twice. 

“Okay,” I agreed, “we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.” 

I am trying to be very still. I want Rooster to sleep in my bed, on my down-pillows and my linen covers and my knitted blankets. I know he sleeps on base right now in temporary dormitories. I remember what it was like--the mattresses that are all springs and the blankets that are scratchy and the pillows that are flat and hard like sheetrock. He deserves to rest. 

Steview stirs. The bed vibrates when she stretches her body out and yawns. She mews and it’s the sweetest she’s ever sounded. When I glance down at her, she’s sitting expectantly at the end of the bed, slow-blinking at me and Rooster. 

“Good morning,” I whisper, “you big ol’ softie.” 

She blinks at me for another minute before yawning and bringing her paw to her pink mouth, where she starts her morning grooming. But she doesn’t meow loud enough to wake Rooster up and she doesn’t jump off the bed as soon as I acknowledge her. Rooster even makes the Abominable Bitch soft.

It makes my heart squeeze. 

Yellow light is starting to compete with the blue light as the sun begins to rise and I want to stay in bed with Rooster, but more than that, I want to get dressed and get to the farmer’s market before they run out of the sourdough bread I like. 

So I carefully detach myself from him, one limb at a time, holding my breath. 

He is breathing deeply, eyes moving rapidly beneath his eyelids. The hairs of his mustache are messy and the hair on his head is a mess of pillow-smashed curls. His eyelashes bat against his cheeks and pink roses have bloomed there, too, very sweet and small. Every time he swallows, his mouth parts slightly and he looks like an angel. Really, he does. Carefully, I lean forward and kiss one of the scars on his cheek, just soft enough to let him keep sleeping. 

Before I can even step away from the bed, Stevie suddenly saunters up and lays in the spot I’d been occupying. Bitch. But then Rooster, in his sleepy daze, throws an arm around her and pulls her close to his chest. She submits and purrs against his chest, eyes slipping shut. Double bitch.

And for the first time in a long time, I don’t blast a record through my speakers. No Joni Mitchell, no Blondie, no Rolling Stones. Not this morning. Not when Rooster is sleeping in my bed with my asshole cat that only likes him. This morning, I will be quiet. 

I do everything in near-silence. Put my baggy dungarees on with an even baggier sweater. Pull my hair out of my face with a clip. Shimmy mascara over my lashes and vaseline over my lips. Spritz my perfume on my pressure points and my hair. Slip old tennis shoes on. Gather the canvas bags I keep folded up in my closet. Watch him sleep for a few more minutes, debating on taking a picture of it to gaze at on lonely nights and mornings. 

And it’s just when I’m stepping over the bedroom threshold into the hallways that there is a stirring in the sheets. I freeze, glancing over my shoulder, and there is Bradley Bradshaw sitting straight up in my bed. The covers are pooled in his lap where his hands rest, his eyes are half-shut and full of sleepy sand, his dirty-blonde curls are sticking up in every direction, there are indentions on his chest and body from where he pressed into me. Stevie is still a heap of white fluff beside him, purring for his attention. 

He inhales harshly through his nose, blinking rapidly. And it makes my heart throb, throb with that familiar grief. The one I felt when I watched him look up at the moon the night we danced at The Hard Deck. The one I’d felt when we were dancing and he was twirling me and his hair was shining beneath the lights. The one I’d felt the night before whenever I’d chided that he was the first pilot I’d ever had a sexual encounter with. 

Maybe I feel it now because he’s in my dad’s shirt and my dad has a pot belly and Rooster doesn’t so the shirt hangs on him loosely. It’s an old Steely Dan shirt, one my father had gotten in 1974 when the band had played in St. Louis. My dad worshiped its authenticity and put it on whenever he could, the tee so worn that maroon-colored cotton was almost translucent, the pinup model riding a bullet merely a suggestion rather than an exuberant logo. My dad had left it here, probably on purpose, just a few days after I’d gotten back from rehab. I was fragile, so fragile, and a year older than I’d been the last time I’d seen him. We had worked in my bathroom for hours, the shirt becoming stained with grout and paint and dust. It was in the dryer when he left my house and when I’d told him that he’d left it here, he told me to take good care of it. 

So maybe that’s why I am so weak in the knees right now, looking at Rooster dressed in my father’s shirt, glazed in ridiculously golden sunlight. He’s watching me watch him, but still trying to wake up, blinking the sleep away. Rooster is the first person to wear that shirt besides my father, besides me, besides Maggie, besides my mother. And he looks perfect in it--fucking perfect.

“Come back,” he says, his voice impossibly deeper and thick with sleep. 

“I’ll never get back up if I get back in,” I tell him, leaning against the doorframe. 

He stretches and his muscles ripple. I bite my lip. Fuck, he looks so good in my bed. 

“Kind of the point,” he whispers. 

He smiles and even half-asleep, he looks cheeky as ever. 

“Why don’t you sleep in? I know the dormitory beds are bad,” I say, “I’ll be back in an hour. I can make us breakfast.” 

He considers this, rubbing his eyes, then slouching a little bit. I know he is still tired, his muscles are probably sore. His jaw is probably sore, even. He sighs deeply, eyes raking up my body and landing on my eyes. 

“Jesus Christ,” he whispers, “don’t you ever look bad?” 

I bite my lip again and pretend like I’m not smashing my thighs together as tightly as I can, just watching him watch me. 

“One hour,” I promise, “how do you like your eggs? Coffee?” 

He thinks for a minute, suddenly realizing the pool of fur laying in the sheets with him is Stevie. He rubs her ears affectionately, smiling small. Then he finds my eyes again. 

“Runny. Cream and sugar--like a little bit too much of each.”

I am all the way out the door, stepping into the driveway, when I realize it. Rooster’s Bronco is the only vehicle there, parked straight and gleaming pleasantly beneath the rising sun. 

When I come back into the bedroom, cheeks pink, Rooster is laying down again. He’s somewhere between awake and asleep when I whisper his name. He shoots up immediately, sitting up with reddened cheeks. 

“Do you trust me?” 

He quirks his eyebrow at me but nods slowly. 

“Can I have the keys to the Bronco?”

Chapter Text

July 22nd, 2019

There is a new kind of beauty in San Diego now and it is making my throat tight with a sweet kind of grief. It’s a kind of beautiful that I never noticed before--or maybe I had a long time ago and had forgotten it by now, fleeting from my memory like the flap of a hummingbird's wing--and it makes me want to cry knowing that I didn’t see it for so long. 

As I drive onto base, everything is stationary: the jets, the planes, the hangars, the buildings, the concrete, the vans. All is quiet and very, very still. The morning light is still that pretty blue, the color it fades to just before sunrise. I can still see the moon, too, stationed discreetly in the sky. It’s the same waning gibbous from before, the one I’d wanted to point out to Rooster. But even if the sky and the ground and everything in between it are stationary--the base doesn’t appear lifeless. Tranquil. Yes, that’s the word. Everything looks tranquil. 

Even on my drive from my home to Miramar, things looked brand new, even if I knew they weren’t. The bright orange poppies in my neighbors yard, the swaying palm trees lining every street, the glittering ocean, the golden sand. It was like a film had been raised from my eyes and I was a virgin to my surroundings.

As I walk from my car to the entrance, the air is beginning to warm, but there is a breeze. It’s the kind of weather that makes me want to listen to Joni Mitchell and pretend like I was raised here, in San Diego, and not in a land-locked state in the midwest. And the air smells like the ocean, like jet fuel. Like Rooster.

He left my home very late into the evening on Sunday. I had made him a breakfast of toasted sourdough with butter and jam, runny eggs, and fresh strawberries. We’d ate it on my brick patio, under the expansive canopy that shielded us from the July heat. We’d drawn breakfast out for a couple hours, talking about music and movies and mustaches and alcohol. He had four cups of overly-sweetened coffee. 

“Aren’t you going to say something about it?” He’d asked after his second cup, nodding to the stoneware mug in his hand. 

I’d smiled, shaking my head. The truth was that I could drink my lattes unflavored. I could drink my coffee black. I could drink a dry cappuccino. I could drink the gross drip coffee on base without so much as a grimace. But if he wanted to drink his coffee with a ghast amount of cream and cane sugar, I was more than happy to provide it for him. 

“I’m not a coffee snob,” I’d told him, tipping a piece of jammy toast in my runny yolks, “don’t worry.”

And then after we finished breakfast, he fell into place at my copper sink. Wordlessly we stood beside each other. I handed him sticky plates and mugs and juice glasses and he quietly hummed, scrubbing them in sudsy water. My throat was dry the entire time I watched him work, dry because I was stunned into a certain comfortable silence. And up until that very weekend, those words had never fit together, not in my life. 

His face was slack as he dipped his hands into the water, hair drooping on his forehead in a way that I’d never seen before. His lips were a pretty pink, his cheeks warm and soft. His hip was pressed against mine and his mustache was tame and blonde above his top lip. He looked very, very soft. 

“What are you humming?” I’d asked quietly, drying a plate. 

He glanced at me through his lashes, smiling cheekily. 

“Sweet Thing,” he’d told me. 

After we’d put the clean dishes away, I’d meandered into the bedroom to make the bed, but found that it was already made. Not only was it made, but it was made correctly. If there was one thing that I had never found men to do correctly, it was making the bed. But the duvet was even straightened and free from wrinkles. He’d even folded the knit blankets I kept at the bottom of the bed and now Stevie was sleeping on one. 

He came up behind me then, snaking his arms around my waist and my body, without me giving explicit permission, completely relaxed onto his. He kissed the side of my face, breathing in my shampoo and perfume and sweat from the farmer’s market. 

“Did I do it right?” 

I nodded immediately. 

“Yes,” I said, “first man to ever do that in the history of ever.” 

He chuckled, hands resting very peacefully on my belly, fingers interlocked. 

“Eager to please you, Lieutenant Ledger.” 

When we sat on my living room couch, the room was becoming stifling. Rooster’s hair was beginning to plaster itself to his perfect forehead and he pointed to the window unit that had shit out weeks before. 

“Mind if I take a look?” 

I shook my head, shrugging. 

“G’head,” I said, sighing, “I can plaster a wall and lay tile, but my talents are moot when it comes to wires and buttons.” 

When he raised himself from my couch, I watched him walk across the room, his legs very long and lean and his body very tall. He leaned over the unit and lifted the cover carefully, taking his time looking at the inside wires and buttons and bits that puzzled me. His eyes were very soft and when the crinkle between his brows returned, I thought I would melt on the couch. Even if the window unit had been working, I would have melted. 

“Why don’t you put a record on, honey?” He said, turning to me, “this might be noisy. Where’s your tool box?” 

I was trying to pretend like I wasn’t choked up. I pretended to think so he wouldn’t hear the crack in my voice, which I knew would be present if I so much as opened my mouth to breathe. He was smiling at me, lowering to his knees so he wouldn’t have to hang his head over the unit. 

“I’ll grab the tools,” I finally managed to squeak, standing from the couch. 

He watched me with a dizzying amount of admiration in his eyes. And there was that feeling again, like we’d been doing this since the dawn of time. It was like he always lived here, with me in my house. It was like I was the one who would patch the walls and level the frames and he was the one who would rewire electrical sockets and tinker away on gadgets I considered broken. 

I felt like I’d witnessed something for the first time, something that would happen again and again and again. I could imagine me telling him something was broken and him playfully rolling his eyes and asking for the toolbox. And as much as I would pretend to be annoyed by that, he would have the thing up and running in no time. I already knew he was that type of man. A fixer. 

After I settled the toolbox before him, he wrapped his arm around my naked meg and pressed a kiss to my hip, pulling me close to him. He smelled like strawberries and the ginger-scented body wash from my shower. 

Like a reflex, my fingers found his hair. I kept my hand on his head for a long time, smiling down at him with an almost giddy grin. He kissed my hip a few more times before he sighed and nodded towards the record player. 

“I’ll never get anything done if you’re standing here, honey,” he’d whispered. 

And so I had walked over to the record player, almost in a daze. And then he started tinkering on the unit and I scanned over my albums for a long time, pretending like I didn’t see him glancing over at my thinking form every few minutes. 

Dedicated To The One I Love by The Mama’s & The Papa’s started over the speakers. I turned it up loud, the way I liked it, smiling. 

Rooster was smiling when I turned around, shaking his head lightly, laughing. He was wrist-deep in the window unit. So I pretended to make myself busy, going back into the kitchen and wiping down the counters even though they’d already been wiped down. I refilled the lavender’s water and cut the stems again. My heart was filled with honey just knowing that Rooster was in the other room. 

And just when the record silenced, ready to be flipped, I walked through the kitchen door to an icy blast of hair on my legs. 

I almost gasped, but caught it in my throat. I stood, frozen in the doorway, grinning. Rooster was loading tools into the toolbox carefully, making sure he was putting them in the right place. In the crackling silence of the record, I stared at him, his pretty face. 

“You are the perfect human specimen,” I said. 

His face snapped up to mine and he smiled, coy. 

“It was a simple fix, really. I’m sure you would’ve gotten it eventually.” 

To celebrate the newfound chill in the living room, Rooster had sunk into the couch and brought me down on top of him, pulling a thick knitted blanket on top of us. He was like concrete beneath me-- very hard and warm, like he’d been baking in the sun. I imagined drawing on him with sidewalk chalk and repairing his cracks. 

His legs were open enough so that mine fell in between his before he wrapped his around me. My head was resting in the perfect spot on his chest--I could hear his steady heartbeat thumping beneath my ear, my hair. Our bellies were parallel and his hands came around to hold me on my back, keeping me steady. He hummed, content, and turned on an old movie, kissing the top of my head affectionately. 

He held me very tightly, fingers eventually moving to unfasten the straps of my overalls so he could pull them down just enough to get his hands beneath my sweater. And if he had been any other man, I would have hated the presumption. But he didn’t do anything except keep the pads of his fingers on the warm skin of my back. He grazed me, up and down, still humming very lightly. 

“You’re gonna make me fall back asleep,” I’d whispered.

He kissed the top of my head and my eyelids drooped. Stand By Me was playing mindlessly on my TV, Stevie was lying beside the couch--anything to be closer to Rooster. THe sunlight streamed into the room so beautifully and there was finally cool air in there and the blanket was so warm and soft. 

“Go ahead,” he’d whispered, “I’ve got you, baby.” 

Like my body had needed verbal consent, I fell asleep fast and hard. I’d dreamed a silent dream, a sun-soaked one where Maggie was drinking a cocktail on a rooftop bar. I had dreams like those often--Maggie alive and doing mundane things. Most often, I could not reach her, could not touch her. 

And when I woke up, my eyes wet and dry at the same time, the clock read 4PM. Rooster was asleep below me, breathing steadily and softly. His arms were still wrapped tightly around my waist, squeezing my body into his. His lips were resting on my hair and when he exhaled, warm breath tickled all the way down my spine. 

Then it was my turn to let him sleep and I did, my eyes half-closed. Lazily, I started running my finger along his ribs, marking each muscle I felt beneath my father’s shirt. Then I wrote the alphabet. He did not stir at all. 

I bit my lip and wrote, ‘You make me feel good’ over the worn cotton. His breathing was still steady. Then I wrote, ‘You make me want to be alive’ and he slumbered on. I kissed his chest twice, inhaling him, wondering if he smelled so sweet because of my house. 

And without stirring even slightly, his fingers twitched themselves into position. He started to graze my back and it was only a moment later that I realized he was writing on my skin, too. I almost gasped, almost leapt out of his arms, but kept very quiet and still. I had to focus on his fingers and not my rapid breathing. 

A-W-A-K-E. 

“Aren’t you sneaky,” I whispered to him. 

Y-E-S

I laughed. And in response, he finally stirred. Stirred to kiss the top of my head, to hold me closer to him. He held me tightly around the waist and pulled me up so our faces were hovering each other’s. With both our eyes tired, we smiled at each other. 

“You’re a sap,” he whispered to me. 

I beamed. 

“You’re cheeky.” 

He pushed hair behind my ear, beaming back at me. 

“Only for you, honey.” 

And when we parted, it was a bitter sweet kind of goodbye. He toyed with the idea of staying again but didn’t have his flight suit or service khakis. So he drove me to The Hard Deck, the windows down, dusk fallen. He was playing Hotel California by the Eagles and I was resting my head against his shoulder as he drove. His hand was holding my thigh, gripping my skin there softly. Thumb stroking softly, just like always.

Then there was the goodbye. It was silly, we both felt it. There was a mutual pining, a want, but neither of us verbalized it explicitly. I wanted him to stay at my house always. He wanted to come back. But it was like we were both reminding ourselves how much of a whirlwind it had all been. A week and two days. That was all. 

“I’ll see you at work?” 

“I think I know where to find you,” I whispered. 

Then we kissed--a polite, sweet kiss. He held me close and tugged on the ends of my hair softly, humming into my mouth. And when he pulled away from me, he rested his forehead against mine and smiled. 

“Counting down the minutes.”

“Now who’s the sap?” 

The air conditioning blasts me almost expertly when I walk into the building. The lights are already on, which means that someone else is already here, someone who made the motion-sensored lights blink to life when they entered the building.

I’m still lugging my heavy leather bag, trying to keep my mules on my feet as I drag myself down the hallway. Despite the new beauty of San Diego, I am still so very tired. I did not get home until after midnight and even now, it’s barely six in the morning. And even when I got home, I could not sleep as well as I had with Rooster. Without the tightness of his arms, the solidness of his chest. My attempts at sleeping were almost fruitless. Even when I tried desperately to get release, working my fingers between my quivering thighs, nothing compared. Ruined. He ruined me . 

But despite the heaviness of my limbs and the sand in my eyes, what propels me forward is something between fondness and reverence. Another part of it was the heat already radiating from my core. 

And he’s there, standing before his father’s portrait. Except as soon as my figure appears at the end of the hall, he turns towards me with a grin eating his face. Fuck. He’s so gorgeous. He’s wearing his flight suit, except the top half is unzipped completely and rests below his waist. His muscles are rippling and he’s not even doing anything--just standing there. And instead of his chest being completely uncovered, he’s wearing a tank-top. One of the cheap ones that is translucent, one that would be easy to rip--

“Hey you,” he calls as I make my way down the hall. 

I am biting my lip hard, overwhelmed with a strange sense of joy and a desire so thick that it could not be severed with a saw. He’s standing with his hands resting at his sides, his hair just carefully moussed and he’s beaming.

“Hey yourself,” I whisper back, dropping my leather bag on the floor, closing the space between our lips hastily. 

My kisses are hungry and fast because he has awoken something inside me, something that was sleeping deep within my body, something that makes my skin burn every time he looks at me. Even six hours without him is too much. 

He takes me in stride, wrapping one arm around my back and letting the other one come to my cheek. It is the same kind of kiss that our first kiss was--his tongue is inside my mouth and I am tasting every bit of his lips and tongue and swallowing him. It is nothing like the last polite kiss we shared. 

“Missed you,” he mumbles into my mouth, moving to press sloppy wet kisses along my jawline and throat, “missed you too much.” 

And before I even know what’s happening, he’s gently pressing his fingers into my hips before he moves his hands down to my thighs, where he pulls until I get the message. I jump and for only a moment worry that I will be too much for him to hold, my cheeks rosy--but then he holds my ass in his hands and I wrap my legs around his hips and he is as sturdy as a streetlight rooted in concrete. 

He walks to the side of the hallway with no portraits and lets my bottom rest on the railing. The metal is cold against me, even through my cotton dress. I moan quietly into his mouth and he is kissing back up my throat and his tongue is in my mouth again. 

“Are we alone?” I ask between kisses.

“Yes, baby,” he whispers, “first ones here.” 

My skin is on fire--everywhere he touches, I burn and burn and burn until the air conditioning is useless. I feel the heat everywhere--between my legs, on my chest, in my cheeks. It’s consuming me and the feeling of his thick body between my legs is enough to make me want to crumble. 

“I wanna taste you again, baby,” he whispers and I am melting into the wall, biting my moans, “wanna make you cum again, please. Please.” 

And then it’s like someone pours a cup of icy water all over me. 

“We work here,” I say, suddenly embarrassed, growing hotter by the minute. 

Rooster pulls away to look at me and it really isn’t fair because his eyes are lustful and so beautiful and so shiny beneath the lights. Fuck. I would do anything he told me to. 

“Come to my room,” he whispers. 

And if I had met him in the year after Maggie died, I would have not thought twice about it. I would have followed him down the hall, high, and let him drag me into his dorm. Even if he had roommates, even if they were in there, even if they were sleeping--I would have done whatever he wanted me to do. It had happened numerous times--boys bringing me back to their dirty apartments, their roommates watching at first and then joining because my silence was as good as any o h, yeah, baby come here and give me that cock.  

I have been so humiliated, so dehumanized. The worst things in the world that could happen have happened to me. The stuff my mother warned my sister and I about before we went off to college actually happened to me except I wasn’t in college. I was 25-years-old, high on pills, and the loneliest I’d ever been in my life. And even when I was degraded by these men and their grubby roommates and their ugly brothers or cousins or coworkers, I always asked if I could sleep there. And maybe that was the most humiliating part of it all. I was desperate for companionship. Even if they had just slapped me in the face with their penis. 

But I’m better now. And I work at this place and I like my job and I want to remain here for as long as I can. But his fingers are dancing their way down my thighs and I can feel how achingly hard he is in his suit and I want to cry, want to choke up. 

“I have to be good,” I whisper to Rooster, fingers in his hair. 

He kisses my neck and then he kisses the perfect spot and I have a river flowing in my underwear. 

“You’re so fucking good, baby,” he whispers, “ideal citizen and everything, remember?” 

How do I tell him that he’s the first person that’s made me be bad in the years since I’ve cut out the pills and started therapy? How do I tell him about the darkest time in my life, all the brutalizing and mortifying? How will he understand that I was bad once--that I’m trying very hard not to slip back there?

“I haven’t always been good,” I barely whisper, “I’m trying really hard to stay good.”

And if I really hadn’t wanted to, we wouldn’t. He would set me down and we would wipe our mouths and he would resituate my dress and I would fix his hair and then we would talk about, like, the weather or something. But I want him so bad. I have never wanted anyone more in my life, never wanted anything more at this moment. 

“Don’t you want me to make you feel good? It’ll be quick, baby, I made you cum in five minutes last time--!” 

I cut him off with another kiss on the mouth and one of his hands is coming down, down my thigh and towards my center. And if he feels how wet I am for him, knows how badly I want him, then I will be done for. 

“Wait,” I say suddenly and his hand freezes in the middle of my thigh. 

He pulls back, sobering himself, looking down at me. 

“Did I hurt you, baby?” 

He is searching my face now, starting to pull away, but I hold his shoulders and bring his body back to mine. He’s so hard I could actually cry. 

“Promise me,” I whisper, voice shaking, “everything will be okay.” 

He nods fervently, bringing his hand up to hold my cheek. I lean into his touch and he presses his thumb into my cheek, looking into my eyes very deeply. 

“Everything’s gonna be more than okay,” he whispers, “I promise.” 

And that was all I could take. It was a short walk from our place in Memorial Hall to the dorms. It was only 6:30 by then and training didn’t start until 10. The time we had almost made me choke. 

Just before we start down the dorm hall, Rooster holds a finger up to his lips and I nod, pretending to zip my mouth shut. He grins and keeps a delicate hold on my hands, hastily and quietly walking to the last door on the right. Rooster’s room. 

And once we are inside with the door closed, I don’t even have time to register the suitcases or the clothes neatly folded in them. I don’t even have time to look at the frames sitting on the old dressers or the books on the bedside table. He is pushing, pulling, tugging me until I am at the end of his twin-sized bed. 

“You’re all I can think about,” he whispers, one hand on the middle of my chest to keep me pressed against the bed, “your sweet cunt, your moans. Fuck, even the way you smell, baby. You drive me wild.” 

His bed is made and the horrible mattress is creaking beneath our movement and his lips are already on my belly, where he kisses fervently. He is hiking my dress up with one hand, the other rising to my throat. He doesn’t choke me--but just holds it there, holds me in place. 

“Spread your legs a little wider for me, baby,” he whispers, finally getting my dress to pool at my hips. 

And when I do spread my legs wider, he purrs in approval. And wordlessly, he suddenly leans up and hooks his arms underneath my knees and tugs me to the end of the bed skillfully. I keep my legs open for him, stifling a moan. 

“So good for me,” he whispers. 

He’s standing over me now, looking down at me through his lashes, his eyes dark. It’s fucking obscene the way he’s looking down at me. Adam's apple bobbing as he swallows, his chest glistening with sweat already, his cock straining against the canvas fly suit. 

And then as he looks into my eyes, as my chest heaves and a fire lights in my belly, he leans down and hooks his fingers in my panties. He pulls them down my body so slowly--achingly slowly. He watches my eyes, my face, and I am trying to stay still, stay quiet. I’m trying to be good. 

And when my panties are in his hands, he nearly moans. 

“You’re so wet for me, baby,” he whispers, tucking the panties into the pocket of his flightsuit, “for good luck.” 

“Kiss me,” I whisper desperately, wanting a million things to happen at once. 

He does come up to kiss me, kisses me sweetly and desperately. And then unexpectedly, perfectly, his fingers find my cunt. It is like my clit and his fingers are old friends, well-acquainted. Like they’re fucking magnetic. And it’s a good thing his mouth is over mine because he has to swallow my moan, my sharp intake of breath. 

And it’s so easy for him to touch me because I am so wet, so ready for him. I’m very slick against his fingers and the pressure of just his two fingers on my clit is enough to make me want to squirm against him. But I don’t. I submit, let my head fall into the bed, let the waves of pleasure rock over me. 

“You’re doing so good,” he mumbles against my cheeks as he peppers kisses across them, “so good, baby.” 

“I’m good,” I squeak out. 

He moans quietly, but it still vibrates from his chest onto mine. 

“Tell me what you want,” he says breathlessly, hovering above me, his fingers still working me in tight circles. 

I can hardly talk. 

“Make me cum,” I whisper through grit teeth, “please.” 

And then his kisses are sloppy again as he moves down my body, pressing his fingers into my nipples a few times, laughing when it makes my chest puff up with a breath. And then he’s kissing my belly and hips, kissing my thighs. 

He stands up again and when he does, I can see how badly he wants me. Needs me. His face is red, he’s very hard, straining painfully against his flight suit. He’s watching me with dark eyes, heaving breaths. 

And silently, he wraps his fingers around one of my ankles and brings my foot up to rest on his chest. Then he takes the mule off my foot, carefully setting it on the bed beside me. He mirrors his actions with my other foot and then has both of my heels resting on his shoulders. I’m gripping the sheets, anticipation warming my fingers. 

He slowly kisses each of my ankles, taking special care of the knobby bone. He goes back and forth, kissing all the way down my calves and past my knees, sinking to the floor before me. 

Oh, fuck. 

He is closing in on my thighs, mustache rubbing the sensitive skin there almost raw. I want to cry. I want to yell out his name. But I just bring my hand to my mouth and bite down hard on my thumb. 

“Good girl,” he whispers, his breath fanning out over my center, “I’ve got you now, baby, okay? Just relax.” 

I am almost too good at obeying. I stay still, not bringing my thighs against his face when he licks a long, thick stripe up my wetness. I moan unto my skin, tears pricking my eyes. Both my knees are hooked over his shoulders and he suddenly goes from licking slow, long stripes to mercilessly sucking on my clit. His hands are holding the base of my thighs close to him, flush against him. 

“F-fuck,” I say, my voice hardly even a whisper, “that’s so good.” 

He is sucking very hard, his mustache rubbing against the most sensitive part of me and there is no break between the bombs of pleasure that are exploding from inside me. I am shaking already, staring up at the ceiling, trying to keep my cries in my throat. 

His tongue moves down for a quick, hot minute and laps at my entrance. It is obscenely hot. I think about his hard cock being there instead of his tongue and it almost pushes me over the edge already. 

The leather cord, the one Rooster practically cut through, is rapidly untethering. He moves back up to my clit and starts rapid figure-eights with his tongue rigid. It is almost too much--the bubbling pleasure, his big hands holding me against him, the squadron all slumbering in the rooms beside us. 

“You’re so close already,” he whispers into me, “so good for me, taking my tongue so well.” 

I reach out for purchase and find his hair, wrapping my fingers around it to keep me grounded, keep me here in this bed with my teeth clamping down on the side of my thumb. 

“I’m close,” I say breathlessly. 

“You can cum, baby,” he whispers against me again, “I’ve got you, I’ve got you.” 

And the cord snaps so suddenly, so suddenly it even surprises me. I writhe on the bed, swallowing my moans, my chest heaving, body convulsing as the orgasm rocks through me. It feels like someone has dumped a bucket of warm water over me after being locked outside in the cold. I am shaking around him and his tongue is still merciless, so merciless that I start to move away from him, but he holds tight to me. 

I wriggle against his mouth, caught somewhere between the intense pleasure and the overstimulation of it all. 

“Bradley,” I whisper, “please!” 

And then he pulls back. He is panting and I am panting. I look down at him, resting on my elbows and he’s grinning. His mustache is wet. It makes me push my thighs together, an aftershock of pleasure rippling through me. 

“Lay down,” I whisper, my voice deep and husky, “please.” 

His eyebrows raise--but quickly, he comes to the bed, laying beside me. We kiss again and I taste myself and it makes me dizzy. He is still touching me all over, my body is still burning. 

“Can’t have sex,” I whisper, pained. 

He nods. 

“I know, that’s okay.” 

That’s when I move to sit up above his body. It is a twin bed and Bradley looks comically large on it, but more than that, he looks so fucking horny. His cheeks are flushed, my wetness dribbles down his chin and the tip of his nose. His arms are rippling, hands tensing because they want to be against my skin. He’s straining--every single part of him. Straining and yearning. 

Wordlessly, my hand falls along his crotch. He hisses, hips bucking, and this time I lean down to kiss his parted lips. His eyes are screwed shut as I just gingerly touch him over his flight suit, taking special care to rub my thumb along the tip. 

He’s big. Fuck, I can tell right now. And he doesn’t lack in girth either. My mouth waters when I look down at him and see him gazing back up at me through half-shut eyes. 

And then I move to his zipper. He grabs onto my dress where it pools over my knees and pulls me closer to him, eyes closed again. 

“Fuck,” he curses, “oh, baby, you’re wrecking me.” 

I unzip hastily, hungry for him, and his cock is straining against his briefs. It’s weeping. I almost cum again just from looking at it. I touch him there, over the slick material of his briefs and it’s his turn to tilt his chin towards the ceiling and bite down on his lip hard. 

He’s big. He’s very, very big. Big and warm and veiny. I pump him a few times, wrapping my hand around him in his briefs the best that I can. His chest is heaving, he’s gasping for breath, eyebrows pulled together and mouth open wide. 

When I reach inside and touch the soft skin of his cock, he almost moans out loud until he turns his head into his shoulder to muffle the moans. One of his hands finds my leg and he hooks his arm under my knee, pulling my crouched body closer to him. He just holds me there and I gather saliva on my palm and pump him once, twice, three times. 

His cock is genuinely so beautiful. It isn’t something I can say to him, not right now. But it is. It’s tip is a perfect pink and it is thick and long and veins run all along it like the ridges on a globe. 

“I want you so bad, honey,” he whispers, voice cracking. 

I straddle him then, mind swimming, chest aching with want want want. 

His eyes widen, chest stuttering. He opens his mouth to speak but I shake my head, looking down at him with red cheeks. 

I hold my finger over my mouth. Shhh. 

He nods, swallowing dryly. I can feel the heat of him below me. I swallow roughly. And with his cock laying flat against his belly, I bring myself down against it. He is not inside me, but rather rubbing against me, against the part of me that wants this part of him so badly. 

The veins in his neck throb and he holds my knees with a grip like a vice. He feels so good against me, so warm, so thick. I move slowly at first, just getting used to feeling him against me, his hardness. 

He’s coming undone beneath me, hair disheveled, mustache even messy somehow. His throat strains to conceal the moans I know want to come out of his mouth and into mine. And just when his shut eyes flutter open to look into mine, I start moving my hips faster, grinding against him at a medium pace. 

He squeezes his eyes shut again and holds me closer to him bringing a hand up to rest on my belly to help keep me steady. 

Nothing has ever felt so right.

I move quickly now, jerking my hips, feeling another orgasm on my horizon closing in on me. Fuck. I am never able to cum with anyone else and suddenly Bradley Bradshaw waltzes into my life and can’t stop making me cum? I bite my lip hard, pearls of pleasure filling every inch of me. Everything feels good--how slick I am against him, his grip on my legs, the breath in my throat. 

“Faye,” he cries quietly, “oh, baby.” 

“Love your cock,” I manage to whisper, “so perfect for me.” 

He whimpers. I’m moving rapidly and he is tense beneath me, head jerking back and forth, throat straining with every swallow. He is pushing his head back into the pillows, biting down on his lip hard. 

Suddenly his hands move to grab onto my hips--his grip is just as tight.

“Hold onto my arms, it’s okay,” he whispers hoarsely. 

I do, I do hold onto his forearms. They’re so muscular--rippling. And again I think about being the joystick in his F-18. Push me. Pull me.

“This feel good?” he asks when he sets the pace. 

And what a question that is. I cannot speak because my own gratification is rapidly heading towards us, clouding my vision with tears, pausing my heart, tripping my breath. He moves us very rapidly, bringing his legs up just to get all that much more length against my warm center.

“You’re gonna cum again,” he whispers breathlessly, “you’re gonna let go again.” 

I can do nothing but nod, nod wildly. I am going to cum again, I can’t help it. He is very solid beneath me in a different way--a way that seems mildly fragile, but still perfect for me. 

My head is tipped all the way back now, fingers digging into his forearms as he moves my body against his, panting out hot breaths. 

The leather cord is weaker now, already pulled taut, and it is rapidly thinning again. I can feel it burning in my belly. Not even just his cock against my heat is doing it to me--it’s his hands that hold my hips so securely, the rippling muscles of his forearms, the soft material of his briefs against my ass. 

It’s because we are so close together, closer than I’ve been to anyone in years. 

And just thinking that makes the cord snap. 

He brings one of his hands up to my mouth and clamps down hard as I convulse and tense against him, dripping onto his underwear, his cock. The pleasure is red hot intense--it makes my toes curl, my scalp prickle. He starts moving his hips more lazily, slower. And then he cums, too--the warmth spreads out on his belly and my knees. 

Then we sit there, me on top of him, both of us covered in cum. And I hold the hand that’s over my mouth and kiss his palm a few times, peppering a few more kisses on his wrists. 

He’s looking up at me, his eyes glazed over with that dangerous mix of admiration and devotion. It’s too close to looking like love. It resembles it almost identically. 

“C’mere,” he whispers, tugging my arm. 

I come down over him, my dress fanning out over us. His cum will be on the inside of the skirt now and the thought makes an aftershock shiver through me. 

We lay with each other, my head tucked under his chin, my underwear in his pocket, just catching our breaths. I want to tell him everything about myself, but I never want this moment to move. I want to stay here forever.

“You cum quick for me,” he says. 

It isn’t cocky, it isnt’ conceited. He’s noting it as his fingers drift up and down the column of my spine. 

But I still blush. 

“Can’t help it,” I whisper, “you’re good at what you do.”

Maybe he wants to ask me if it’s really just that? Just his experience alone is making me cum so quick? It’s like he knows distantly how many sexual partners I’ve had and understands that, on some level, at least one of them had to be good at oral. So if it isn’t just his experience, then is it the invisible string? Is it the strange sense of familiarity and comfort we get when we’re around each other? 

 “Faye, I--!” 

From deep inside my leather bag, Elton John starts singing at full volume. 

Hold me closer, tiny dancer / Count the headlights on the highway / Lay me down in sheets of linen / You had a busy day today

Rooster and I scramble identically, getting tangled up in cum and my dress and each other’s limbs while my phone rings away. It’s so loud that it practically bounces off the walls and fuck, oh fuck. 

Hold me closer, tiny dancer /  Count the headlights on the highway / Lay me down in sheets of linen / You had a busy day today

Rooster makes it to my bag first, fruitlessly reaching inside to find my phone. But then the ringing stops. I’m on my knees beside the bed now, my eyes wide. Surely, everyone heard it. The walls are concrete, but not soundproof. 

Rooster’s cheeks are red, but he tosses me my bag with a smile. I fish my phone out finally from the bottom of the bag and before I can silence it, my text tone rings out and echoes in the room three times very sharply.

Missed Call From Bobby

Bobby: I think Rooster has the same ringtone as you, that’s so weird!

Bobby: Wait a minute…

Bobby: Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3…

And just as I flick my phone onto silent, another message comes through. 

Bobby: You are so in Rooster’s room right now!!!

Bobby: Faye Ledger, you’re a wild child! Love this for you. Want to grab a coffee?

Rooster is chuckling, laying on top of me as I lay on the floor, holding Bob’s messages over my face. My cheeks are burning. Fuck. Rooster’s head falls between my breasts and I let my phone fall to the floor, holding him against me. 

“I have to go,” I whisper, smiling. 

He holds onto me tighter. My chest aches. 

“Let me get you ready,” he whispers. 

He sits up and  pulls my dress back down so it falls to its original midi length. He pulls the sleeves of my white t-shirt back down my biceps and fixes the thick straps of my dress before pressing a kiss to my throat. He wipes under my eyes with careful thumbs and by my mouth, too. 

Very tenderly, he presses my shoes back on my feet too, kissing each of my knees before he gives me a few more pecks on the mouth. 

“We’ll catch up later?” 

I nod, standing. My legs feel wobbly and my heart feels too big for my chest after he’s taken care of me so expertly. I want to lay on his floor forever and have his head resting on my belly, over my dress, where his cum is staining the inside fabric. 

He quickly covers himself, tucks himself away, zips his flight suit. I am still weak at the knees just thinking about him, his cock against me. But he smiles at me, that sweet smile and those sweet cheeks. He presses a kiss onto my hair and sighs. 

“Better get going, Lieutenant Ledger. I’ll make sure it’s clear.” 

He crosses to the door and I wish for a fleeting moment that I could stay in his dorm and look around at all his things--everything he deems important, deems special. I want to look at the items he diligently carries with him from base to base, from one temporary house to another. 

Rooster carefully peeks out into the hallway and his body stiffens. 

“Bob,” Rooster says coolly, voice thick with sex, “hi.” 

I come up behind Rooster and Bob catches my eyes, smiling with rosy cheeks. His glasses are perched on the end of his nose very cutely. I want to squish his cheeks. 

“My ride’s here,” I whisper to Rooster, squeezing his bicep

Rooster raises his arm and I duck beneath it, giving him a final smile before I take Bob’s arm in my own. Rooster is smiling in that special way, like he wants to cry tears of joy. He looks freshly fucked, too, standing there with his mussed hair and matted mustache. He leans up against the doorway, the early morning sun kissing his hair perfectly. He looks so handsome standing there--it makes me want to cry. 

“Does she have a curfew?” Bob finally teases.

Dammit, Bob. I pinch his arm softly, wrinkling my nose at him. He’s so pleased with himself, pulling my arm against his tighter. Rooster laughs loudly before catching himself, glancing at the closed doors around us. I smile, too. How could I not smile when Rooster is laughing?  

And just as we are about to turn the corner down the hall, I throw one more glance at Rooster and he is still looking at me. He nods, eyebrows furrowed slightly, but a smile still on his lips. He holds his hand over his heart and frowns, feigning a broken one. Boy, does he know how to make a girl swoon. 

Then we turn the corner and it’s just me and Bob walking down the hallway, my hair probably messy and remnants of mascara probably gathered beneath my eyes still. 

“Well, well, well,” Bob starts softly, “if this isn’t how Faye got her funk back.” 

After a moment, a moment where I roll my eyes and pretend like I’m not blushing, Bob nudges me again. 

“Rooster is a good one, Faye. I won’t force you to talk about it, okay? But just know,” Bob searches the floor, bringing his other hand over my warm fingers, “I’m happy for you. And I’m not judging you.” 

I lean my head onto Bob’s shoulder so he won’t see the tears that have gathered in my eyes. It feels so good to have Bob here, to have Rooster here. It makes my heart beat twice as fast, twice as hard. It’s like there’s a safety net under me always--even if I’m just walking down the sidewalk. 

“You know, I’ve been good,” I whisper to him. 

The sun has risen completely now and the building is starting to get busier. Bob is already in his service khakis and I try hard not to wet the shoulder of his uniform with silly, little tears. People hustle past us, looking down at their phones or talking on their phones or trying to read something as they blindly walk down the hall. The windows filter in the golden light of the day and I know if I pressed my fingers to the glass, it would be very warm. 

“You’ve always been good, Faye,” Bob says, squeezing my fingers, “you were just lost there for a while. We found you, though.” 

And he’s being truthful. 

I was on thin ice with the Navy after Maggie’s death. A thrice-extended bereavement leave, a pill addiction, irresponsible sex-life that was suddenly not very private after I visited the infirmary on a random Tuesday in the first August without my sister. And it was him, Admiral Simpson, who plucked me up and out of the cold water when the ice finally cracked. It was him who knew everything that I had done to myself, him who helped me get back to the person I was before, before everything. 

And it was Admiral Simpson who drove me all those desolate hours and empty miles to the rehabilitation center in Phoenix where I stayed for months. When Bob caught wind of this, one of the only people to know outside my family, he was the one that visited me there. He did not miss a single visitation day, coming up to two times a week. And he wasn’t like my parents who would sit there and not know what to say and who would cry if I said anything at all, even if it was honest. Bob would play chess with me or settle down on the couches there for a movie. He let me talk about the crash, about Maggie, about the pills, about the illness, about the baby. And he never faltered. I always secretly, very secretly, thought that if Bob had been there during the aftermath of Maggie’s death that maybe I wouldn’t have fallen down so deeply. 

So when I tell people that I want to be good, tell people that I am being good, I mean it. I don’t want to go back there. 

“No crying in the Navy,” Bob teases as we step outside into the heat of the day. 

“Yes, Lieutenant,” I sniffle. 

And then Bob stops and turns towards me and I turn towards him. He squints in the sunlight, shielding his eyes with a hand against his eyebrows. His face is kind and pink, he’s smiling at me in a sad way. He just looks so much like my best friend--I wouldn’t know how else to describe Bob. 

“You know, you aren’t doing anything wrong, right? Nothing says you can’t have some fun with Rooster.” 

And that’s when my mouth goes completely dry. I search his face and his smile fades very slowly as he looks down at mine, at my wet eyes and rosy cheeks. Oh. I can feel him thinking it. Oh, I see. It’s when my stupid lip begins to stupid quiver and he sighs. 

“Okay, alright,” Bob says, holding the back of my head and bringing it to his chest softly, “so maybe it’s a little bit more than a little bit of fun?” 

“I don’t know,” I say against him. He still smells like a freshly washed baby. 

“Well, what do you know, honey?” 

I sigh into him. Nothing. I feel like I know nothing right now. 

“He’s wrecking me in, like, the best way possible.” 

Bob chuckles then sighs, coming up to pinch the bridge of his nose. 

“Oh, boy.”

Chapter Text

July 24th, 2019

There is an obsessiveness about Rooster, but it is not an unwelcome obsessiveness, nothing devient about it. When I sit in the lounge with the other aviators--some of them talking lowly and waiting with unshielded impatience and others trying to get some shut-eye on the brown couches--and listen to the radio during dogfights, his obsession for preservation is wildly apparent. The way he preserves his speed, preserves the safety of himself and others. He is a natural-born leader when he’s in the air and falls into the position easily, as easily as falling into bed at the end of a long day. 

I think this stems from the loss of his father, a freak accident that was never on anyone’s radar--the kind of accident that people don’t even think of happening because it was truly perfect conditions when it occurred. Maybe he’s obsessed with the preservation of his team because he remembers what it was like when his father died and his mother was left by herself to not only pick up the pieces but to raise Rooster all by herself, something she never agreed to. What a lonely life she must’ve had, when a piece of herself was missing, gone forever, with no goodbye. A wound that never healed. And when I think this, my throat aches because it is how I feel about myself, my life--Maggie gone, my life emptier than it was supposed to be.

Sometimes, when I catch him looking down at the watch that I know was his father’s or when I pass Memorial Hall and Rooster is standing before Goose’s portrait with a deep want pulsing in his body, I want to tell him that I know what his mother must have felt like. I want to tell him that I lost a part of myself, too, and I never got to say goodbye. Maggie and Goose died similarly--in front of the person that loved them most, their life forever stalled right there in that horrifying moment. I want to tell him that I wish there was a part of Maggie, even if it was only half of her, that I could hold close and watch breathe and sneeze and hiccup and cry and laugh and grow. I want to tell Rooster that he probably saved his mother, unknowingly, his entire life. 

I don’t tell him this, though. I don’t tell him because even if there is an invisible string connecting us, even if things have been far too perfect, even if things have been frightfully easy for us, even if our time together has felt like a dream--I don’t know him the way I wish I did. 

“ I feel like you know a part of myself that I don’t even know yet,” he had told me that very first night he came to my house, when Stevie was on his lap and the tequila was fading and he was creeping into my body. 

And I feel like he’s obsessed with me--with my home, with my cat, with my opinion. 

“I just--I want Admiral Simpson to respect me,” I’d told Bob, the styrofoam of my empty coffee cup partially destroyed beneath the wrath of my freezing fingers, “his approval means a lot to me. And, like, he was the one that picked me up by the bootstraps and I don’t want anyone to think that I’m just like--that I’m just like fucking a random pilot in the dorms or that I’m fucking--fuck, like multiple pilots or--!” 

Bob’s laughter, a dry and quiet kind of laughter, interrupted me. I blushed bright baby pink--I had a tendency to ramble when upset, especially when it was with someone I was comfortable with, and honestly--especially if it was Bob. 

He was reclined on the ugly brown couch in the lounge, which was both remarkably empty and remarkably bright, sunshine glimmering off every surface brightly. Bob had his own cup of coffee, half-full, which he sipped as I spoke. 

“Faye, you should give yourself more credit. Sure, you had some help when you were down, but ultimately you made the decision to get back up. Right?” 

I looked at his eyes, his earnest blue eyes that had never been anything but. His glasses were pristine, which I knew was because of the piece of velvet he kept in his pockets at all times to cleanse them, and his hair was brushed and neatly gelled. And his mouth, which was smiling softly, had never said anything even resembling unkind. 

He had played this part before many times, either talking Maggie out of fucking an army boy with a dirty mouth or trying to ease my worries about an upcoming assignment. And he had played the part of listener more than anything, nodding and smiling or frowning, reaching a consoling hand at the right moment. He was just plain good at being there, just plain good at listening. 

“Right,” I mumbled, but then I thought of my underwear in the pocket of Rooster’s flightsuit and then I was blushing all over again, “maybe I just shouldn’t mess around on base anymore.” 

He nodded, smiling with his nose crinkled. 

“That might be a good idea,” he said, “and maybe you shouldn’t tell anyone about it except for me. You know, just until you know what’s happening for sure, right?” 

I nodded rapidly. 

“You’re right, you’re so right. Bob…do you know why they call him Rooster?”

Bob had genuinely cocked his head then, leaning forward slightly with a question written all over his face. He was earnestly wondering, waiting for me to tell him why. 

He paused there for a long moment, looking up at me as I smiled guiltily, swallowing my laughter. And I watched his face fall then contort to a look of childlife embarrassment. His mouth opened and closed and then his eyes fluttered to his coffee cup, his cheeks blushed deeply. 

“I had to, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Maggie just possessed me.” 

Bob took a drink from his cup, shaking his head, smiling now. He was still very red. 

“Evidently so.”  

Ever since our encounter in his dorm, ever since Bob saved us from being caught by anyone else in the squadron, we have not so much as kissed each other on the job. I had told Rooster some of my conversation with Bob that evening, about my concerns with professionalism, my desire to keep work at work and home at home.

And he listened, nodded, then smiled. 

“Whatever you want,” he told me, “you call the shots, Lieutenant Ledger.”

But now that we are measuring our glances on base and only ghosting our fingers over each other when no one else is around to see, he is on my doorstep every single night, the Bronco parked right beside my car. I welcome him into my home each evening, never stopping to pause my record or the dinner on the stove. 

And then I’ll hurry back to the kitchen, my body flushed already, and he will put his bag in its unofficial-official location in my closet right beside my empty suitcases. Then he’ll make a pit-stop by the ottoman to pet Stevie for a few minutes, inhaling my home and dinner on the stove or in the oven. Then he comes through my kitchen doors-- with that fucking smile under his mustache and he’s wearing a t-shirt that hugs his body and his eyes are soft with sleep and his shoulders are practically glued to his ears with the stress of the mission--and sees me in my slippers and with my hair in a clip and my hands messy with flour or meat. And we just look at each other, drinking each other in for the first time, pretending like our stolen glances at work never happened at all. 

Then he’ll kiss me, wrap his arms around my waist and watch me whisk parmesan into an alfredo sauce or take steamed broccoli off a burner. And his body is so perfectly molded to mine that I want to let everything burn, want to just sink into his body and live in his arms forever. I want to just give up and let him carry me through life. 

But instead, I’ll kiss his shoulder and ask him if he wants a glass of wine at dinner. 

He kisses the top of my head before he grabs the wine glasses, which he found one evening while searching my cabinets and drawers out of an untamable wave of curiosity. And when I’m busy grabbing a loaf of bread from the stove or my hands are massaging kale, he will flip the record or pick a new one when the static at the end of a record curses through the speakers. 

And then when we eat dinner at the table and I’ve lit taper candles and finally turned the music down, he pulls my chair out for me and never starts eating until I’ve taken the first bite. He will ask me a million questions, internalizing every bit of our workday just for that moment--asking me what I thought when Hangman said this or when Maverick did that.

He has sunk comfortably into this repetition and I think that as much as he does this because he wants to, it is also maybe because I told him about my deep love for rigid routines. 

Right now it is a Wednesday and the sun is thinking about setting, falling deeper into the sky as it fades to an orange-gold. The clouds dotting the sky are beginning to pinken around the edges and the breeze is sweet and cool. It is maybe the coolest it has been all summer--all the windows in my house are open and the curtains are billowing softly. I have even lit incense so my house smells like patchouli and lavender. 

It is heading towards six in the evening and there is a sheet of carrots roasting in the oven, two chicken breasts sizzling in rosemary and olive oil on the stove, and raw cookie dough wrapped in the fridge to chill. 

I am leaning against the kitchen counter, biting my lip, straining to remember if the dough needs to be chilled overnight when my phone buzzes on the counter. 

Tramp: Grabbing a few bottles of that wine you like. Need anything else for dinner? Dessert? 

Me: Got it all covered here. Brown butter chocolate chip cookie dough is chilling now :) 

Me: Thanks for the wine, too. Trying to get into my pants or something? 

Tramp: Says the one with cookies baking…

Tramp: ;)

I can’t help the grin that is fighting its way to my lips, the blood that rushes straight to my head whenever I see his stupid nickname appear on my lockscreen. Fucking Rooster. 

I cross the kitchen and step into the living room, which smells like outside. The trees, the grass, the mud, the crisp evening air. Stevie is blinking at me from her usual spot, perched very still and silently. I only have to look at my collection for a moment before I know what I want to play. 

ABBA’s Voulez-Vous album starts as I walk back through the kitchen door. It smells like rosemary and garlic in here and the chicken is beginning to brown when I peer over the pan. It smells like Sunday nights when Maggie was alive--when I would make anyone in our squadron dinner in my old apartment, squeezing everyone into my living room and shooing everyone out of my galley kitchen when they attempted to help me. It reminds me of the four or five bottles of wine--all my favorite brand of prosecco--that would end up in my fridge because no one dared to show up empty-handed. 

I used to keep my records in wooden crates back then, stacked on top of each other under my thrifted record player. And everyone would take a crate and sift through, pulling records they wanted to listen to. And inevitably, Maggie would pick a Fleetwood Mac album and get everyone up and dancing while I minced garlic and mashed potatoes. I never felt left out--I used to live for those moments. Moments where everyone danced around my old coffee table and Bob warned everyone that they were being too loud and Maggie pretended like she knew how to read palms. When we would eat on the floor, sitting on couch cushions and balancing our plates on our knees. When we were all very young and nothing felt permanent.

And right now the music is so loud, loud like it was in my apartment all those years ago -- the song Angeleyes is playing -- that I almost don’t hear the front door open and close. I almost don’t hear Rooster mockingly crooning, “Honey, I’m home!” when he steps into the foyer. I almost don’t hear the brown paper bag in his arms rustle as he tries to take his boots off with no hands. I almost don’t hear it all, but I do. 

So when he’s standing in my entryway with my big wooden door locked behind him, dressed in jean shorts and an old UVA sweatshirt with his aviators pushing back into his curls and he’s singing along to ABBA under his breath, I am standing at the top of the stairs, smiling. 

It isn’t until he starts for the stairs that he notices me. He pauses, his feet scissored on different steps, and his eyes fall to my slippered feet and climb up, up my body until they’re resting on mine. The fist, the one that lives deep inside me, is clenching every muscle in my chest. This is how it goes when he sees me--his lips part before they break into a grin, his eyes glaze over with that look of devotion and affection, his body tenses and relaxes at the same time but in vastly different ways. 

When I see him for the first time in my home and not on base, my entire body feels like a San Diego summer: like golden sunshine and endless blue skies, like melted ice cream and scorching asphalt. I am blushing when I think about his mustache and how wet I want it to be, how soon I want his head between my legs again, how badly I want his body against mine. 

“You really are stupid pretty, Faye,” Rooster sighs, shaking his head thoughtfully, “I mean--just look at you, baby.” 

I have to roll my eyes to pretend like my stomach isn’t sitting in my chest. Fuck. 

“Give me my wine,” I smile, then add lowly, “tramp.”

He tsks softly and ascends the stairs expeditiously, hand coming to rest on my lower back. The paper bag rustles between us as he presses his chest against mine, grinning down at me so sweetly that I make a mental note to schedule a teeth cleaning. 

“Gimme some sugar,” he says. 

And if any other man on the planet had said that to me, me right now at my big age of twenty-six-years-old, I would have laughed them right out the door. But when he says it with his dark-colored eyes and his glimmering lips and his mustache and his sultry body pressed against me, I can do nothing but press my mouth against his. And I am not sure if I will ever get used to kissing him--his mustache tingling the space between my mouth and nose, his tongue faintly running across my bottom lip, his nose pressed against the side of my own. 

If he pressed his lips to one of my pulse-points and felt just how badly he makes my heart race, I would be done for. 

When he pulls away from my mouth, his scorching breath fans over my skin that’s already growing damp at the thought of his mouth on me. He sprinkles kisses to my chin and jaw and my cheeks and my neck and I am already gasping for air, pulling him closer. 

“Wait,” I say breathlessly, smiling with my chest flushed, “chicken! Gonna burn!” 

And he lets me go and I fall back, empty, wishing he could just hold me all the time and I would never feel alone. He’s grinning at me, looking around the house at the open windows and incense and Stevie on her ottoman. And just as I am about to step into the kitchen, he gently holds my hair in his hands and tugs one time so I’m turning to him again. Then he holds both my cheeks in his hands, thumbs rubbing those familiar soft circles, and looks down at me. 

“This is the best part of my day,” he says and even though his voice is teasing, his face is not. His eyes are serious and his mouth is smiling but honest. 

And maybe he means that the best part of his day is coming home to my house, which feels like his now, and eating my dinner and buying me wine and washing our dishes and listening to records and making me cum. But maybe because of who I am or who he is, or because he’s 35 and I’m 26, I know that he means holding me, seeing me is the best part of his day.

I hold his wrists and they’re very solid and warm beneath my palms. I think I could hold them forever. And then I move his left palm to my lips, guiding it with my grip. I kiss him one time there, in the middle of his open hand, batting my eyelashes at him. His lips part and I watch his breath get caught in his throat.

“Hold that for me, will you?” I whisper to him.  

I close my fingers around his left hand and curl his fingers into a fist. Then I kiss his middle knuckle before turning away and going through the kitchen door. Without turning around, I know he watches my moving figure--his mouth still open slightly--until the door closes on me. 

It’s something my mother used to do with me and Maggie. I don’t know why I did it, why it has made my chest ache so badly--but I know that a certain nostalgic glee is climbing all the way up, up, up my throat. I had forgotten all about that and remembered so suddenly when I brought his palm to my mouth. 

Everything is so easy in our evenings. Once his bag is put away and he has greeted Stevie, he stands behind me, kissing my throat and holding my hips against his. 

“Smells incredible,” he mumbles against my skin. 

His jaw fits perfectly in the slope of my body where my neck gives into my shoulder. The weight of his head feels very normal, very safe--like wearing an apron when I cook, like putting gloves on in the winter, like taking a warm shower on cold mornings. 

“Thank you,” I say softly, “set the table, yeah?” 

“Aye-aye, Lieutenant.” 

Even all this is easy--he somehow has memorized where everything is in my kitchen. He knows which wine glasses I prefer and which plates are for everyday use and which ones are saved for special occasions. He knows where I keep linen napkins and silverware and trivets. He whistles the entire time he sets my sweet dining room table, smiling like it’s the only thing in the world he wants to do. 

“Let me get that,” he says, slipping a spare pair of oven mitts on before he opens the oven and retrieves the roasted carrots. 

He grins at me as he sets them on a trivet on the island. I want to faint. I want to cry. 

When we sit down to eat, each plated with a chicken breast and a heaping of roasted carrots and pieces of buttery sourdough, the song Lovers (Live A Little Longer) is playing. Just like always, he waits until I take a bite of chicken before he starts in on his food. It is an unspoken thing, something I’ve noticed because I watch him through my lashes. 

“You missed your calling,” Rooster says, nodding at his plate, “I don’t even like carrots.” 

This is what he does everytime I make him dinner and I know that it’s because his mother raised him with manners. He always opens the door for women, always acknowledges a new presence in the room, always makes sure I finish first. But his eyes are gleaming so prettily, so honestly that I know beneath those manners that he was raised with--he is just being painfully honest. 

“Heard Maverick talked to the Big Guy,” I say, meaning Ice. 

Rooster nods, exhaling from his nose. He shovels a bite into his mouth and sits back in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest. We are sitting across from each other, his back to one of the doors to the living room and my back against a warm window. 

“Hope he ripped him a new one,” Rooster says confidently. 

I take a sip of prosecco and it’s bubbly and dry on my tongue. He’s watching me and I set my elbows on the table before giving him a very small shrug. 

“You’re hard on him,” I say slowly, metering my tone and phrasing, “I’m sure it’s warranted. Is it?” 

Rooster is looking past me now. He is nodding slowly, biting his lips, thinking of what to say to me next. I take another bite. 

He answers while I’m chewing, “We have a history.” 

Another sip of prosecco and his eyes find mine. I’m smiling teasingly, cutting another bite for myself. He’s watching me with his hands on either side of his plate. 

“Mysterious,” I whisper, but don’t press. 

He chuckles. 

“Hangman’s got a thing for you,” Rooster says, adopting my teasing smile, “making goo-goo eyes at you all day today. Puffing up his chest, practicing his cock-walk.” 

“I thought only rooster’s did that?” 

I bite my lip when he narrows his eyes into mine. 

“I think I even heard him ask Bob about you,” he teases, nonchalantly shrugging. 

“And what did he ask Bob?” 

A beat passes. Rooster is teasing me. It makes me giddy. I remain composed, though--lips on the surface of my wine glass, fork resting softly in my left hand. 

“If you were looking for a new pilot,” he answers finally. 

Then a stone sinks in my belly. And I don’t mean for it to happen but my face drops, drops like my heart in my chest, like my eyes dropping from Rooster’s to the taper candle instead. I can feel it--the gloss over my eyes, the slack in my brow, the frown pulling my lips, the blush creeping out of my cheeks and into my hands--and I can feel Rooster stiffen across from me. 

I can’t help it and I don’t want it to happen and I don’t mean for it to happen, but I think about the day Maggie died. I think about trekking through the snow and the gnarly tree roots and mud until I found her on the forest floor, lying on her back in the tuft of her parachute. And from far away, I wondered if she was just sleeping, just hit her head and lost consciousness on the way down. But when I came closer, stood above her and saw her unmoving eyes and her bloody scalp and her contorted limbs--I knew that she was dead. I think about our jet that exploded in the air and the twenty-mile radius our shrapnel covered. I think about how I laid beside her, somewhere between awake and asleep, somewhere between alive and dead for eleven hours before my ESAT turned on. I don’t remember moving my fingers to it, don’t remember turning it. It was off and then it was on and Search and Rescue was hovering above me. 

I look up at Rooster and smile again, pretending like there are no tears dotting the corners of my eyes, pretending like I’m not choking back a lump in my throat. Pretending like I’m not thinking about Maggie’s body.

He’s across from me, his plate abandoned, hands holding either side of the table like he’s getting ready to push himself up and come to me. He doesn’t soften when I smile--his eyes search mine like he’s looking for some kind of injury, like he thinks my wounds are visible. External. 

“Already found myself a pilot,” I say, but my voice cracks. 

I take another drink and start cutting my chicken again. 

“What happened just now?” 

His confidence never ceases to amaze me, to knock the breath out of my mouth. He will bring to light any part of a conversation, mention any look or expression and press about it. 

“You know I’m never going to fly again, right?” 

I say this without looking up. 

He breathes. His hands are still framing his plate, curled into soft fists. 

“I guess I didn’t know that,” he says, “I thought eventually you would get back up there.” 

This isn't like falling off a horse. You don’t just pull yourself up by the bootstraps and hop back on. Maybe it would be like that if a horse stomped my sister to death and dragged her around a loose-dirt arena for hours. 

“Nope,” I say, trying to sound casual, trying so hard to blink my tears away, “I’m fine where I am.” 

And usually when I tell people this, they shift uncomfortably, but nod. Usually when I tell people this, they aren’t Naval Aviators and they don’t really understand the brevity of what I’ve said. Usually people just assume I won’t get back up there. 

But not Rooster. 

“Doesn’t that feel kind of like a waste?” 

When he asks this, his voice is even and steady. He is not being malicious, never is. He is just asking me a question over the dinner I made for us, at the table he set. 

I cross my arms before my plate and meet his eyes. The taper candles are burning lower and lower, wax melting onto the clay holders. I search his face--his open eyes, his neutral mouth. 

“A waste of what? Naval resources? Training?” I wish I didn't sound bitter, but I do. 

He doesn’t flinch. 

“Talent,” he answers. 

Just like that, he’s knocked me off my feet again. Sometimes I am ready for a fight--my tone dripping in bitterness, the stone in my belly growing steadily until it’s a fucking boulder and crompressing my lungs. Sometimes I am already putting up the defense, balling my fists, narrowing my eyes. Maybe I’m protecting my peace--maybe I’m protecting my open wounds. 

I square my jaw. He’s still watching me softly. The record has finished and turns emptily. I cannot stand the silence. 

“I’m gonna pick a new record,” I whisper, balling my linen and putting it on the table. 

He doesn’t move from his spot, but his eyes follow me all the way past the table and out to the living room. When the door shuts behind me, shields me from Rooster, I have to hold my knees and take a deep, deep breath. 

Somehow he is the first person that has ever challenged me that way--somehow he is the first person who has argued with me without actually arguing with me.

“Fuck,” I whisper, searching the shelf for a new record, hastily wiping the bitter tears from my cheeks. 

The windows are still open and the sun is setting finally and the room glows orange. I graze my fingers over the records, shaking a little bit. I hastily turn on Seasons of Your Day by Mazzy Star and let a few seconds of In the Kingdom play while I wipe my cheeks hastily. I think of Bob’s teasing words; no crying in the Navy.

I walk back into the kitchen and Rooster hasn’t resumed eating. It makes me ache. I want to touch him, his shoulder, but I feel too fucked up suddenly. Like I have witnessed things people shouldn’t and it has permanently damaged me--damaged my heart and the way I feel things. 

Like he knows this, he reaches out and holds my wrist as I am passing him to my own plate. His fingers hold my wrist securely, but not tightly. He is begging me, silently, to look at him. That’s all it takes to make my head turn. His face looks like the word please. He’s begging me, begging me. 

“The wound is still fresh,” I say, sounding less bitter and more sad, “and you didn’t say anything wrong, but I just--I just won’t fly again. There’s not even a question. I just…can’t. I can’t, Bradley. I won’t.” 

He is nodding and shaking his head almost at the same time, lips parted. He pulls me closer to him by the wrist until I’m sitting on his knee. He wraps his arms around my torso--my arms, my waist--and secures his hands in my lap as he kisses my hair and neck. 

“I didn’t mean to fight you,” he tells me, “you don’t have to explain yourself, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, baby.” 

“You didn’t know,” I whisper, “I’m not mad at you. It just…hurts still.” 

A beat passes and he rests his nose on my neck, pushing through my hair. 

“Where does it hurt, honey?” 

For a moment, all I can hear is the flickering candle, Mazzy Star, and Rooster’s breath mirroring my own. He tightens his arms around me and I lean back just enough to straighten my back, giving him more of my weight. His legs, his glorious thighs, split so I sit lower on him. I rest my cheek against his forehead, heart steady. 

“Here,” I say, pointing to my chest. 

Like I’m nothing, like the laws of gravity are not applicable to me, he scoops me up in his arms tightly. I stiffen, but then he’s kissing the side of my neck and standing, carrying me to the living room. It’s almost completely dark now. 

He lays me down on the rug, hovering over me as I lay very still, very compliant. 

“Here?” he asks, pointing to the same spot I had pointed to. 

I bite my lip and nod and his head comes down slowly. He presses his lips to the middle of my chest, over my heart, and lingers there just breathing into my knit sweater. His hands are on either side of my arms and he keeps his face there a moment longer, pressing another quick kiss before he comes up to look at me. 

I’m trying very hard not to cry. 

“Where else?” He asks and he means it and I know he’s really asking me what happened to me? What happened to me when my sister died? Why won’t I fly again? 

With shaking fingers, I point to the scar on my jaw. The tree branch. 

He wastes no time, moving up to press slow, sensual kisses along the entire scar. It is a jagged one, white now, but used to be bright pink on my face. It starts almost at my ear and runs all along my jawline, stopping at the point of my chin. My face is hot.

“Where else?” He mumbles against my skin. 

His mustache prickles me, feels so good.

“My vocal cords,” I whisper, “they were bruised. From…” 

I can’t make myself say it. Bruised from screaming, screaming my sister’s name, wailing like a banshee when I saw her dead body on the parachute. 

He doesn’t ask. He kisses all along my throat, his right hand holding my waist. 

“The pressure--it burst my eardrum on my right side.” 

 He moves up slowly, sprinkling an abundance of warm kisses on my ear.

I point to my forehead. My concussion. 

“I hit my head coming down, too.” 

His lips are there again and he’s still holding me tight under him. 

“I was so confused,” I whisper to him, “I would get lost driving around my hometown. I would get lost on base.” 

He nods, still kissing my head. 

“Tell me everywhere it hurt, baby,” he whispers. 

“Here,” I say pointing to my right shoulder, “dislocated when I punched out.” 

His hair tickles me when his lips come down on my shoulder. 

“And I had frostbite on both my hands. Moderate. All my fingers.” 

He sits up and moves so he is straddling me. I love his weight on top of me. It makes me want to close my eyes, put up my hands, and fall asleep. He’s looking down at me with very soft, very serious eyes. He takes my right hand, never breaking his eyes away from mine, and kisses the tips of each of my fingers. I am the one that has to close my eyes--I feel like I”m burning up, I feel like I’m on fire. 

Common Burn is playing. 

“Look at me, honey,” he whispers, picking my left hand up, “wanna see your pretty eyes. Pretty, brown eyes.” 

When I open my eyes, he’s kissing my left fingers--starting at my thumb and ending on my pinkie. My chest is almost heaving now. 

“Here,” I point to my left wrist, “sprained.” 

He pulls my left wrist to his mouth and kisses all the way around it, holding my open hand against his face so he can kiss my palm. And he doesn’t say it, doesn’t say anything, but closes my fingers softly so I am holding his kiss. Here, hold this for me, would you?

“Four ribs on my left side,” I tell him, “the tree.” 

So he finally lowers himself, his fingers pulling at the hem of my sweater, nudging it up and up until my skin gooses in the crisp air conditioning. I almost squirm at the feeling of his lips there, but instead I just close my eyes. Wasn’t it enough that I’d lost my sister? Wasn’t it enough that I’d watched her die? I was in so much genuine pain after she died, physically and emotionally and mentally. That’s how the vicodin had started--very seriously, very truthfully. I needed to not feel the ache in my ribs and the throb in my head and the scabs on my fingers. 

He lays his cheek on my naked belly and my fingers find his hair almost entirely on instinct. He relaxes into me and I hold him there against me. 

“Can I tell you something without you looking at me differently?” 

“Differently?” he asks softly. 

I screw my eyes shut. 

“Pitying me.” 

He nods, kissing the space between my ribs. I stare at the ceiling again. 

“When you have a twin…sometimes you can feel what they do,” I start and he stiffens against my, bringing his eyes to the underside of my jaw, “and I felt everything Maggie did. All the good parts--when she was happy, when she was in love. I knew what she was thinking and she knew what I was thinking, too. But I felt the bad parts, too--I knew when she was blushing and when she had a pimple coming on.” 

I take a deep breath and Rooster holds me tighter, like he knows what I’m going to say. 

“And so I felt it when she died,” I say calmly, breathing through my nose. 

And I’m going to say more, can feel the words dribbling up my throat, but I don’t. Nobody in the world needs to know what I felt that day. When her bladder released. When she screamed my name. When she cried all the way down. When she thrashed as her cords snapped. When she hit the ground. 

“Oh, Faye,” Rooster coos. 

He thinks about what to say and I know it’s because he wants to say, you poor baby.

“I’m so glad you’re alive.” 

I feel like he’s just pushed me off a skyscraper. Like I’m falling through the air, really free-falling, flailing. Like the wind has been knocked out of me. Because doesn’t he know that I wanted to be dead for a long time after she died? That I was barely keeping myself alive? That I never thought I would feel as happy as I do right now with him on top of me in my living room, on my rug, dinner forgotten and taper candles melting? Doesn’t he know that?

My mouth is dry. 

“You know, if I ever got into a jet again,” I started, sighing, “I would never fly with Hangman.” 

And then we are laughing, his chest rumbling against the flat part of my hips and my legs. His breath is hot on my bare skin and I want to stay here always. 

“Who would you fly with?” 

I pretend to think, feeling the blush evading my cheeks and chest. 

“Phoenix, probably,” I whisper. 

He groans against me while I laugh. 

“You’re breaking my heart over here, honey!”

Then we just lay there, on the floor. The wind blows gently into the room, tickling the exposed skin of my belly that Rooster’s hand is splayed over. He’s stroking me, just like he always does, and letting his head rest on my breasts. I’m playing with his hair, looking up at the ceiling with dry eyes. There is an uncertain weight rendering from my body and seeping into the rugs below me. My heart feels bigger than before. 

“Remember our first date?” He asks. 

I stifle a laugh. 

“What do you consider our first date?” 

He sighs into my skin, holding me tighter. 

“Flat Rock Beach,” he says softly, “cherry wine, figs.”

My throat feels tight. I nod, keep his hair between my fingers, keep holding him to me. 

“‘Course I do,” I whisper, “it was eight days ago.” 

He pinches my skin softly and I bite my lip. He moves so his chin is resting on my breast now, digging slightly into the soft tissue there. It’s so close to hurting me, but not close enough for me to tell him to move. I think even if he was hurting me, I would never push him away from me. 

“And remember when you told me to be angry?” 

I pull my brow together, biting a smile. 

“Yes,” I whisper. 

“Can I tell you what makes me angry--you know, give a little part of it away.” 

I am a puddle again, here on the floor. The lines on his forehead are faintly pressed into his skin when he brings his eyebrows together very slightly, just pinches them together as his eyes narrow. 

“Always.” 

He sighs before he says it and I can feel his pulse start to race on my thigh. 

“Maverick pulled my papers from the Naval Academy.” 

And I can see it with my own eyes--see the uncertain weight rendering and leaking onto my body from his. I want to take it in my hands and keep it safe, keep it with me. He doesn’t have to carry it anymore. 

My chest is tight. 

“Why would he do that?” I ask softly, raking my hands through his curls. 

Despite himself, his eyes slip shut and he sighs, leaning into my touch. It’s like whenever I touch him, he has no choice but to relax. It makes me want to kiss him all over. 

“I don’t know,” he whispers, “it was all I had left and he took it away from me. It took four years off my career, Faye. Four years.” 

I frown. Poor baby. I want to pity him. Instead, I sigh, keeping my fingers in his hair, keeping his chin on my breast. 

“He was close with your father,” I say and his eyes find mine, “wasn’t he?” 

He knows that I heard everything Hangman had said in the training room. Maverick was flying when Goose died.

“They were best friends,” Rooster whispers, his voice breaking very softly. 

I nod. 

“Maybe he didn’t want to lose you, Bradley.”

Chapter Text

July 25th, 2019

When I wake up, the sky hasn’t even begun to lighten. I have to blink a few times at the darkness and wait for my eyes to adjust before I can see anything--the carafe on my bedside table, the little flowers on my wallpaper, the little purring cotton ball tucked between Rooster’s parted ankles. And I have to blink a few more times and really strain, my neck vibrating, to read the clock on the wall. It’s only 4:43. Outside, the sky is still a solid sheet of obsidian, chiseled away haphazardly for only the brightest stars and the last quarter moon. 

There is no record playing. I don’t play records when I go to bed if Rooster is here with me. His breathing is steady and even--so achingly close to a snore but not quite there yet. I know that when he is older he will snore. 

“Dealbreaker?” He’d asked, grinning, when I told him my assumption

I just rolled my eyes and leaned into him because I was bursting from the inside out, because I was so giddy that my cheeks were filled with an excited gasp and my fingers were growing frigid. It felt like he had placed a firecracker in my belly, lit the fuse, kissed me long and deep, then ran like Hell to safety. Each day, it felt like we were drawing nearer and nearer to the bridge. And as we drew closer, we were stopping to pick wildflowers or climb trees--like we were dilly-dallying. 

When I hadn’t responded to him, he buried his nose in my hair and inhaled long and deep. His hand was resting on the back of my neck, his chin on top of my head. Tootsie was droning on the TV and two empty wine glasses sat before us on the coffee table. And the coffee table was suddenly not just full of old Rolling Stones magazines and candles, but aviator sunglasses and a worn leather wallet and a handsome vintage watch. 

We hadn’t said anything else then, because we didn’t need to. We didn’t need to.  

Sometimes he moans very quietly in his sleep and nuzzles himself deeper into my hair, the pillows like someone asked him a question he doesn’t want to answer. And when he’s here, sleeping in my sheets, everything about him overwhelms me. His sharp, peppery scent has perfumed the bedding. When he leaves very early in the morning before me, which is not often, I can still get a good whiff of him if I press my face into his pillow. Just his scent brings tears to my eyes, makes me wish I have known him forever, wish that our time together wasn’t ticking to a close. 

I can feel it--feel the rushing water approaching, can see the bridge looming largely on the horizon. It makes my toes curl to think about--makes me want to sob into my closed fist when I think about it. 

I will do whatever he wants. I will lay down on top of a puddle so he doesn’t have to get his boots wet. I will whisper his name whenever he needs to hear it. I will bathe in cherry wine. I will press kisses into his palms and curl his hands into fists to contain them. 

And as much as I like to think that I am not alone in this feeling, that he is mildly obsessed with me and definitely hungry for me and that there is an undeniable parallel between us, there is a little pearl of apprehension at the base of my back that rattles up, up, up my spine when I think of it. What if I’m just love-drunk? What if he tells me that it was fun while it lasted and never sets my kitchen table again? What if he says yes, yes, let’s be together but then grows tired of this routine that I treasure so dearly? What if he finds out about the other people that have been between my legs--the things I have done in my worst moments--and moves on? Could I take the empty spot in my closet where his duffel usually lies? Could I ever listen to Otis Redding again--or even Van Morrison? Would my body ever recover from the kisses, from his tongue, from his eyes, from the weight of him I have found so much comfort in? 

Oh, God. I could perish just thinking about his hands never touching my hips again.

Right now he’s lying on his belly, sprawled across the bed, limbs askew. It’s the rudest he ever is--when he spreads his lanky body out over my bed. But he doesn’t ever force me to a corner or the edge; his limbs are always over me. Now, his right arm is hooked around my hips and his right leg is tethering me to the bed. His face is pressed into the side of my neck; his parted lips are wet against my skin and when he breathes, my skin grows moist and warm. His nose, his thick nose, is pressed deeply into my jaw. His mustache cruelly scratches the delicate skin around my collarbones. Even his closed eyelids are pressed against my skin--I can feel him dreaming. 

We spent the day at the beach today. Dogfight Football--that’s what Maverick had called the game. To me, though, it looked more like articulated muscles shimmering beneath the California sun featuring a football. I sat in my beach chair, quietly watching with nothing to record. Everyone looked like they were plucked directly out of an anatomy textbook--nothing on their bodies was out of place. 

I was also the designated sunscreen applier--partly because my hands were not sandy and partly because Hangman had decided without asking me--and resident hydration station. Under the scalding sun, I would glance at my watch and call to the squadron every forty minutes. Obediently, they would jog over to my spot, gleaming chests panting. 

“My shoulders are feeling a little tender. You mind?” 

I squinted up at Hangman and he smirked down at me--his skin so tight and unblemished that it almost looked plastic. Little grains of golden sand were peppered all over his naked torso. He was holding a tube of sunscreen out to me, close to my face. 

Rooster pretended like he wasn’t glancing at us, chugging a bottle of water in a manner that can only be described as ravenous. Bob was smiling at me beside Phoenix, shaking his head at Hangman.

“Lieutenant Seresin, your skin must be so sensitive,” I said, taking the tube, “this is your fourth re-application.”

And even though I was pretending like I wasn’t looking at Rooster either--like he was just any other member of the squadron and not the man who had made me cum earlier that morning--he smirked beneath his mustache. 

Hangman shrugged at me, hands on his hips in faux sincerity. 

“It’s a Texas thing,” he said. 

I stood up then and he didn’t move--my chest was against his arm. His skin was burning, glistening. My skirt billowed in the breeze, breathing onto my sweaty thighs. 

“Turn around, stud,” I told him. 

He pretended like my words had burned him, flicking his hand and hooting lowly, eyebrows pulled together and grin toeing the line between shit-eating and delighted.

“Yes, ma’am!” 

The squadron was still hydrating gratefully beside me, still split up into their teams, lowly talking tactics as they slammed their water bottles. I didn’t have to look over to know that Bob and Rooster were watching me closely, bemused smiles on their lips. 

I lathered the warm, white zinc on my hands and then started on his shoulders which were not getting pink at all. He was very warm, slightly damp, and grains of sand dirtied the sunscreen as soon as I touched him. 

“You’ve got a sweet touch,” he sang to me. 

And even though he wasn’t facing me, I could see his smirk, hear it. 

“Relentless,” I sighed to him. 

“Am I wearing you down yet, darlin’?” 

That was the precise moment that Rooster fell in-step beside me. He loomed over me, a hunk of golden skin and rippling muscle and mustache and sunglasses, before grabbing the tube of sunscreen from the crook of my arm. He let his aviators fall down on his nose so he could give me a knowing wink. My knees almost buckled. 

“Hey, Hangman,” Rooster said jovially, moving to face Hangman as he poured a heavy dollop of the sunscreen into his hand, “your face feeling tender?”

Before Hangman could even think to respond, Rooster plastered the sunscreen to Hangman’s entire face--his entire perfect, plastic face. Then everyone was laughing, even Hangman, even Maverick. Lovingly, Rooster continued to spread the thick zinc all over his face and Hangman’s body loosened. 

“I think I got it,” Rooster said. 

Hangman’s face was white as chalk. Hangman wiped his lips free of sunscreen, nodding, looking down at his fingertips that were drenched. 

“Appreciate you, man,” he turned to me and I was still laughing, “how do I look, Clover? Tell it to me straight.” 

“Like a heartbreaker,” I told him. 

And then he sauntered forward, towards an unsuspecting Coyote. For a long few minutes, Rooster and I stood together beneath the beating sun, breathing each other in privately. We watched as Hangman rubbed his face against Coyote’s and the giddy squadron that hollered and encouraged the naughty behavior. And after a moment, I felt like I couldn’t even hear the squadron anymore. I felt like I could only hear the waves crashing in, racing to the shore in dazzling blue-green hues. I felt like I could only hear Rooster breathing beside me. 

He stepped closer to me slightly. Our arms brushed and it made me want so much more than that. I wanted to hold him, wanted to kiss his pretty, sweaty face. 

“Miss you,” I whispered to him through smiling lips. 

He glanced at me quickly, pressing into me harder. 

“Don’t even get me started.” 

Then he turned to me and his chest was so close to my lips, his musky scent so entirely intoxicating. He was so near and I wanted to reach out so bad, wanted to guide his hand to my hip--

“You’re getting a little pink,” he said, looking at me from above his sunglasses, “may I?” 

He held up his sunscreen-covered hands. I bit my lip, pulling my eyebrows together. No one was watching us, everyone too busy kicking up sand as they evaded the sunscreen- covered men that were multiplying with every victim they were able to catch and rub their cheeks onto. 

“Please,” I offered, pushing my hair behind my ears.

I squared my jaw and tilted my face up to him, pushing my sunglasses to the top of my head, closing my eyes against the hot sun. And even though I had my eyes closed, even though the sun was beating down on my face, I knew he was watching me the way lovers do. I felt his eyes on my slacked face, on my slight smile. I wanted to open my eyes, wanted to watch him watch me, but I couldn’t. Wouldn’t. 

“Heavenly,” was all Rooster could choke out, his voice hushed. 

He was watching rose petals kiss my cheeks then, staining me with their baby pink color. 

“Burning over here,” I whispered back, my voice thin. 

“I’ve got you, baby,” he whispered again. 

And then his hands were on my face, very softly rubbing the sunscreen into every surface. I wrinkled my nose at the smell, at the warmth of it, at the thickness of it. But I couldn’t let the smile fall from my lips--not when his palms were so delicately caressing my cheeks, not when his fingers were gingerly pushing any stray hairs off my face. 

I pursed my lips, looking at him through one squinted eye. He was smiling, his mustache the dirtiest blonde, his cheeks red with heat. He was still rubbing the lotion into my skin. 

“What do you want for dinner?” 

He shook his head lightly, sighing, smiling like he couldn’t believe I was real and asking him that. 

“I’ll make dinner.” 

“You can cook?” 

He pinched my jaw, just over the middle of my scar, but quickly smoothed his fingers over the spot. I laughed, pulling my shoulders up--an overwhelming feeling of loyalty washing over me.

“What kind of man do you think my mother raised?” 

And that softened me severely. So severely that I almost melted right into his arms. I wanted to ask him then, wanted to ask him right there where we stood, to tell me all about what kind of man his mother raised. I wanted him to tell me everything she taught him.

“A good one,” I whispered back just as he affectionately patted my cheek, symbolizing the completion of my sunscreen application. 

He was softly smiling at me then, almost stepping closer to me, almost falling into me before--

“Rooster, c’mon!”

Even though it’s almost five in the morning, even though dinner was hours ago--I feel so full. If not the glass of cherry wine or the steak tacos Rooster had dutifully grilled and assembled, then maybe I am full of this silly feeling. The contentedness of his lips against my throat, of his sleepy breath. The weight of him on my bed and my bitch cat that only likes him. Or maybe I’m still full because he had made me cum three times--twice before work and once before bed. Maybe I’m still full because his mustache left a burn on my lips--both of them. Maybe I’m still full because it only took him a swift four minutes to make me cum once he lowered his face between my legs and I saw stars, tingling with pure unabashed pleasure all over my being.

“I can feel you thinking,” Rooster suddenly whispers, voice thick with sleep, “what’s going on in that pretty head?” 

And another thing about Rooster is that he wakes up in total stealth--he does not need to stir and flutter his lashes. It’s like he knows he is always in complete, total control over his body and doesn’t need to open his eyes to prove to himself that he’s awake. 

He pulls me impossibly closer to him, humming very softly, throat vibrating against me. I lean against him, feeling his warmth and that sticky feeling that resembles love just a little bit too closely. 

“You okay?” he follows when I don’t answer. 

I am okay, I think. I think I am not ready for this to ever be over. 

“Yes,” I whisper back, “sorry to wake you, Bradley.”

He presses a wet kiss to my throat. I want to cry. 

“Don’t be sorry. I’m not,” he whispers, “Dreaming about you, anyway.” 

My heart swells.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Mmhmm.” 

He nuzzles closer to me. I almost can’t breathe because he’s holding me so tightly. His hand moves to rest over my belly, warm and expansive. He just holds it there, breathing into my skin, pushing his face into me. It’s the closest I’ve felt to anyone in the world since Maggie died. 

“It was a sex dream,” he says easily, coolly. 

Of course he’s not embarrassed to say this to me. Of course he doesn’t have any shame about this dream of his, dreaming about fucking me while I’m lying awake beside him in my bed. 

I bite my lip hard. Fuck. 

“How was it?” I ask. 

His thumb is rubbing circles over my belly, the same way he always does. And I can’t help it, but I wonder if I can live without this again, too. He has wrecked me, just like I told Bob. If Rooster left--there couldn’t ever be anyone else. No one comes close to him--no one ever did. Nobody ever will. 

“Hot,” he simply whispers, “can I ask you something?”

But I can feel him blinking against my skin now. His eyes are open--he’s awake.

“Of course,” I say, but my chest is tight, tightening. 

He carefully presses a few more kisses to my--his--throat, somehow finding my freckles even in the dark of the room. I swallow gently, gently as I can when I feel like I am about to implode. 

“Why do you wait? Trust me, I’m not complaining about anything--just I’m curious.” 

Now it’s my turn to stiffen, to answer easily and coolly and not be embarrassed about what I’m going to say. I can’t tell him, no, I can’t tell him yet. But I won’t lie to him either. I bring my fingers down over the warm hand over my belly and he exhales suddenly. 

“Fingers are so cold, baby,” he whispers, clutching my hand in his. 

And before I can say anything at all, he has disconnected from my neck and I’m cold there, too now. It’s a damp kind of cold, like moving from a sauna to a stagnant room, like moving from a hot tub to a swimming pool. 

He brings my fingers to his mouth and peppers kisses all over them, just like he did on my living room floor. His mouth his warm and soft and then he moves to sit up so he can hold my hand in both of his. He cups them over his mouth and breathes toasty breathes onto my skin. 

I’m swooning, really. I could faint.

“G’head,” he tells me in the dark, against my fingers, “m’listening.”

“I got fucked out,” I tell him finally. 

My voice cracks. I clear my throat. 

“Got too wild,” I say quieter.

What I really mean is that I fucked anyone who would fuck me. What I mean is that I stopped even using condoms after the second month. What I mean is that I never got myself on birth control. That I fucked without restraint, without resolution, for the better part of ten months after my sister died. That people choked me, spit on me, bit me, hit me, pinned me down. And I took all of it--never considered it nonconsensual. I said nothing. I didn’t move. Things happened to me and I let them. Then I let those people sleep in bed with me or I slept in their beds in their musky apartments with their dirty dogs and smelly kitchens. 

“You?” He asks, chuckling, “I’m having a hard time imagining that.” 

“Don’t try to imagine it,” I say and he chuckles even though I mean it. 

I want to ask him what we’re doing. I want to tell him the bridge is right here, at our feet. I want to fuck him, really, I do. I want to tell him that I don’t think I could even stomach anyone else if this was over. That he would be the last person to ever pick a record for dinner, that no one else would ever be allowed to drink out of my mugs ever again. 

“Time is it?” he yawns, letting my hand fall to my lap. 

I squint. 

“Almost five.” 

He nods, rubbing his eyes. He’s so beautiful, even here in the dark. The curve of his back, the muscles accidentally puckering beneath his hot skin as he moves. He turns to look at me, grinning. I’m mush at this point. 

“Got some time to kill,” he says, “what should we do?”

“Go back to sleep?” 

He kisses my arm and puts his hand on the middle of my chest. He’s so strong that I think he could push all the way through to my heart. He would hold it so gently. 

“No, you’ve got me up now, baby,” he whispers, “reap what you sow.”

It feels like a blur after that, a blur of wet lips and warm fingertips and elastic and ankles and hair and heat. It feels like I don’t know how we got to this moment but here we are: he’s holding my back against his front, one arm secured tightly around my throat and the other arm resting on my belly as his hand dips between my quivering legs. And he’s biting the skin by my ear so perfectly, halting to lick and kiss the skin, soothing it after abusing it. He’s stark, body pressed up against my own, and my right hand is wrapped around him. He’s hard beneath my palm, weeping against my fingers, so thick and long and perfect as I pump him. But we’re moving in slow-motion, worshiping every minute in this bed as the sun begins to rise. 

His moans vibrate his chest with such vibrato, such gust. He brings his mouth to my ear as his fingers rub slow, right circles over my clit. I’m so wet, so ready for him. There is an ache deep in my belly, deep in my entire being. I want him buried inside me. My entire body is sizzling--every nerve in my body is wide-awake and alive with overwhelming pleasure. He’s heaving breaths and I love the smell of him, his morning breath, his body. 

“So fucking good,” he whispers to me, “you’re so fucking good.”

His mouth hovers my ear and he kisses me there three, four times before pressing his nose into the side of my face. And the truth of it all is--this is why I can cum so quickly when he touches me. Because he’s here with me, he’s speaking to me, he’s touching me. Because I am so soft against his hardness, because he is peppering sopping kisses to my face. Because when he holds me down, it doesn’t feel like he’s holding me down. It feels like he’s keeping me close, keeping me weighted. 

“Talk to me, baby,” he breathes. 

If I open my mouth, I’m afraid I’ll say I love him. 

“Bradley,” I whisper instead, chest heaving. 

He groans against me, thrusting into my hand. I keep pumping, slightly quickening my pace, leaning my head against him. He’s feverishly kissing my face now, pulling me closer, closer. His fingers match my pace, too. 

And the room is paling, baby blue light streaming in from the window. And we’re covered in sweat, both of us on the edge of orgasm. He is biting down on my shoulder and the pain hurts so good, so fucking good. I am saying his name and he’s praising me. My body is jolting with bouts of intensity, pleasure touching every tip of my limbs. 

He says it then. 

“Fuck, baby, I think I’m falling in love with you.” 

I cum, then, my body heaving and convulsing and pulsing. And I can’t help it, I’m moaning, crying for him. And he cums right after me, white hot ribbons on my naked hip. Everything loosens, shifts. He lessens his grip on my throat and we try to catch our breath, but I can’t. My toes are curling, my skin goosing. 

He kisses my face. 

“Don’t move,” he tells me. 

He moves off the bed and I feel so light and I hate it. I want to be heavy. I want him to lay parallel on top of me until I can’t take it, until my lungs compress. He fumbles around in the bathroom and I know that I must look like I’m sleeping because I am so very still, naked body curved into a half-C. 

Had he said it? My brain pulses against my skull and I want to turn around, look him in his pretty eyes, and demand the truth. Had you said that? Had you mean it? Or were you just about to cum? 

“Here,” he whispers gently, suddenly standing on my side of the bed, kneeling on the floor, “I’ve got you, honey.”

I watch his face. His eyes are still drooping with sleep, but they glimmer in the faint morning light. His lips are pursed in concentration as he cleans his cum off my body with a warm, wet washcloth. He tenderly presses it to my skin while his other hand holds my hip in place. Once he’s finished, he inspects thoroughly and then glances at me, catching my gaze. A fist squeezes my heart. 

And like he knows what I’m thinking, like he can read my face like a book, he softens. His lips frown just slightly, brows coming together. He puts a hand on the back of my head, smoothing my hair. Sighing, he squints into my eyes. 

“You know me,” he says and the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention, “you know I’m not a liar.” 

It’s so like him--so incredibly like him to say that he’s falling in love with me thirteen days after we’ve met, when he was nudging me towards an orgasm, when he was moaning in my ear. So incredibly like him to say it then and there, then double down. So like him to clean me tenderly and quietly. So like him to tell me the truth again and again and again. 

He’s looking deep into my eyes and our invisible string is thickening, tightening. I take a deep breath, bring his hand to my mouth and kiss his palm. I don’t have to curl his fingers around the kiss--he does it by himself. He looks like he’s about to cry. 

“Don’t you want to ask me some questions before you decide that?” 

I stroke his cheek the way he strokes the surface of my skin and he’s frowning deeper now, coming closer to me. He kisses my forehead, my nose. Then he sighs, leans into my touch. I hold him there. 

“What should I ask?” 

And this is so like him, too. Saying that he will take me anyway I am, wants me exactly like this. That he doesn’t care about the before, only the after. He’s so soft, so honest, so open. He’s still naked kneeling before me, softening every moment that passes. 

I sigh and want to shake him. 

“Who was my last serious boyfriend? Who are my best friends? Do I want kids? Am I religious? Do I have a retirement plan?” 

I list them off, feeling a little bit rotten. But Rooster just smiles. He kisses the pulsepoint on my wrist, lips lingering there and I know that he can feel the quickening. 

“Bob’s your best friend. And I know for a fact that you have a retirement plan. C’mon, give me a little credit,” he says this with a smile plastered on his lips. 

I want to shake him again. Doesn’t he understand that these questions are the least important ones? Doesn’t he want to know how ran-through I am? Doesn’t he want to know that I was pregnant? Doesn’t he want to know that I had an STI? Doesn’t he want to know about the pills, the rehab? Doesn’t he want to know why I am so easily malleable during sex, why I am so obedient? 

Like he can hear every single thought running buckwild beneath my skull, he pulls his eyebrows together and caresses my forehead. He presses his fingers there. 

“S’okay,” he whispers, “don’t hurt yourself.” 

My ears are hot, my pulse quickening again. When I don’t smile, his thumb drifts to the wrinkle between my brows. He smooths it out and I can’t help the smile that bites my lips. 

“There she is,” he whispers, “of course I want to know those things. But I don’t need to know them to know what I’m feeling right now.” 

I lean into his touch, I cannot help it. And I look at his sweet, sweet face and I know that I am falling in love with him, too. I think I’ve been falling in love with him since the very start of it all when he slammed the door of his Bronco shut. When he called me little lady and opened the door for me.

My heart is hammering against my ribs. I have to tell him something, some parts of the truth. I can’t stop it, the words are rising, rising. It feels like anger--but so much worse than that. It’s anguish and it feels like needles pricking my eyes and nose. 

“Maybe you should’ve asked Bob what I was doing the year after my sister died,” I say, my voice unintentionally bitter, quivering, “maybe you should’ve asked him why Admiral Simpson has a soft spot for me.” 

And I can’t do this. I can’t lay here on this bed, my t-shirt bunched up on my chest, pinned under my arms. I can’t lay here almost naked and have him look down at me with the most earnest expression of concern invading his face. It’s worse than the pity I hate so much--it hurts, makes my ears burn, makes my lips tingle. I feel like my wound is opening again, like my skin is separating and I’m bleeding, and the sweat on my skin is going to infect it. 

So I get up, quickly, dropping his hands from mine. I separate our skin that never even really feels separate anymore. And I heave deep breaths as I scramble towards the end of the bed, desperate to feel the floor beneath my feet, to get away from his beautiful fucking face and serious eyes. 

“Faye,” he says, sounding surprised and wounded, “what just happened?” 

My mind is buzzing, clouding. 

“I need to take a shower,” I say, my back to him. 

I face the bathroom and the room is white now. I peel the shirt off my body, naked now, and start for the bathroom. I am going to cry. The lump in my throat is constricting the breaths I am trying to breathe, is making my chest bloom with hives. 

“C’mon,” Rooster says, “don’t do that. Don’t shut down.” 

Shut down? He doesn’t want me to shut down? Does he even understand what that means for me? That shutting down for me looks a lot like being a human fuck-doll. 

I put a hand over my chest and my heart is beating in my throat, thickening with saliva. 

“That’s not fair,” he tells me and I know without looking that he’s standing now, his cheeks pink, body flushed, “you can’t just walk away from this.” 

If I don’t get into my bathroom now, right now, I think I will end up a heap on the bedroom floor. I think I will just die, free-falling out over this landscape of refinished wood floors and expensive rugs and strewn panties and socks. 

“Listen,” I say finally, not looking at him still, “let’s just keep doing what we’re doing.”

And I want him to call my bluff. I want him to call my bluff so badly. I don’t want to just fuck around with him. I think I want to marry him--fuck, I think I want to have his babies. I want to lay down every single thing that is mine, that is his, and share them. I want to keep a tuft of his hair in the breast pocket of my shirts. I want to listen to his heavy nighttime breathing turn into snores over the years. 

I want him to know everything and I don’t want him to know everything. Because maybe if he knows everything, he won’t want me. Oh fuck, maybe he won’t want me. Maybe he doesn’t understand the reality of it all: that I can only take non-addictive prescriptions, that I have to call myself an addict for the rest of my life even if I am in recovery, that I was living in a rehabilitation center on my twenty-fifth birthday, that I had been infected with two different kind of viruses in between all people I fucked, that I could come face-to-face with someone that I let cum inside me and not recognize them. 

It makes my chest burn to think of him knowing these things. It makes my chest burn to think of him looking at me differently--a feeling so intoxicating, so anguished that it’s worse than any pity or concern anyone could have for me. I suddenly want to unzip myself and step out of my skin so he’s never touched me. I want to go back to the night we met, to ignore him, to sit in the corner of the bar with Bob all night and never look at him. I can’t take this hurt, this pain. So I wish none of this ever happened. 

Somehow, I am in the bathroom and all the lights are off so I’m blindly reaching inside to turn the handle. Hot water sprays out from the showerhead and I stand outside it for a moment, trying to catch my breath. Fuck. 

“Doing what we’re doing?” 

He’s standing in the doorway. I don’t look at him, but I can feel his fiery gaze on my cheek. 

“Yes,” I say meekly. 

I can feel how incredulous he looks, raising his hands in confusion, pulling his eyebrows together. I wish there was a record playing so I wouldn’t have to hear my own heart racing, wouldn’t have to hear his scoffing.

More than anything, I wish Maggie was here. I wish she was here to slap my cheeks and tell me to wake the fuck up. I can almost hear her saying, “Lock him down!” Fuck. She would’ve loved Rooster so much. 

“What do you think we’re doing here?” 

Blinking at the steam gathering inside the shower, I shake my head. 

“You told me we’d cross that bridge when we got there,” I say. 

“Well,” he says, his voice raising, “I think we’re here now, Faye.” 

I could say a million things. I could be unfair. I could tell him that he’s making all the choices, all the decisions. How am I supposed to know that we’re here? And I would be lying if I said that. I would be lying because I know we’re there, woke up thinking about it. I could tell him to just leave, just go and forget me. I could just weep and ask him to hold me. I could just tell him the truth and watch him pack up to leave. 

“You,” I start, “you shouldn’t want me.” 

“Don’t,” he says quickly, holding a flat palm to me, “don’t say that.” 

And before I can say anything else, he crosses the distance between us in a few short strides and turns the shower off. I don’t move, don’t take my eyes away from the disappeared stream. He’s looking down at me, hands on his hips, cheeks flushed. 

“C’mon,” he begs, voice straining, “don’t shut me out. Please.” 

Please. I could crumble. Doesn’t he understand that I am protecting him? 

“You don’t know me,” I whisper. 

When I say this, I know that it is cruel. I want it to be enough for him to be mad. I want him to just turn on his heel and walk away and give up. I want him to just walk the fuck away before I really, really love him. I don’t want to have to say anything meaner than that--I can’t say anything meaner than that, especially to him. 

“Oh, that’s what you think?” he laughs humorlessly, “that’s what you really think?”

I’m crying. My tears are hot and salty and pouring down my face that I can’t turn to his. I hardly nod. 

“I know you listen to your music just a hair too loud. Every single time. I know Penny keeps one bottle of lavender syrup at the bar just for you. I know you take care of everyone--me, Bob, even Maverick. You love prosecco. You go to the farmer’s market every Sunday. You only buy in-season produce,” his voice is harsh, biting, “and I know that you take care of Stevie because she was your sister’s cat. And you burn candles when you sleep--which is so dangerous, by the way. And I know all the places you hurt.” 

I’m shaking. I can’t breathe. I can’t fucking breathe. 

“You care about your job, you love your job. You love your routine. I know that you keep your grandma’s China in the cabinet above your stove and only use it for special occasions. You don’t own any albums after 2015. When you sleep, you are very still and completely silent--you never make a peep. And when you take notes at work, you get this silly look on your face like you can’t remember something. And I know you only cum for me, just me, so easily,” he continues, “and I know you’re the only person in the world that I’ve let drive the Bronco. And that when I saw you for the first time outside The Hard Deck and you were sunkissed and smiling at me, I felt like I’d known you forever. And when I came to your house for the first time, you made me feel like I already lived there. When we were on Flat Rock Beach and you made me a little piece of bread without even asking me, you made me feel like I was being taken care of. You can handle Seresin, even when I can’t. You don’t yell, even when you’re mad.”

My eyes are closed. I am holding my face, my shoulders are shaking. It feels like he’s peeling the skin off my body. 

“And I know that you feel fucked up because of what happened with your sister. And I don’t know what it feels like to lose your twin, but I know what it feels like when the person that knows you the most in the entire world dies. I know that it fucking sucks, Faye. I know that. I know that you talk about her, keep her memory alive,” his voice is breaking, “but I know you miss her more than anything and that you’d give your life to have her back. I know you feel alone, Faye. I know that. I know you think no one in the world understands you the way she did and no one ever will--and maybe that’s true. But you have to give me a chance, baby. You have to let me try.” 

I weep silently. He doesn’t know that. No, no. This is just mine. Only I know this. I can weep in bed beside another person and they will never know. I have wept in bed beside stranger’s and they didn’t even stir.

“I know all the generic stuff, too. I know you still get pictures printed so you can frame them. I know you’re witty--and so, so funny. I know you love to dance, but hate being the first person on the dance floor. You’re kind to a fault. You are the kind of person that keeps a bitchy cat because it’s the right thing to do,” his voice is falling, quieter now, “and even when you’re drunk, drunker than me, you take care of me. You take care of yourself. I know you can fill holes in walls and that you grew up in Topeka. I know you’re the most beautiful fucking person I’ve ever seen in my life and that you make my chest hurt when you look at me.” 

His fingers, his fingers that I ache for, wrap around my wrists. He pulls my hands away from my face and I feel like a panicked child trying desperately to hide their injury. I know my face is red and wet and that I look wrecked and freshly fucked. But he puts a finger under my chin and makes me look at him. His eyes are watery, too, his mouth a straight and serious line. 

“I know you’re scared. I know that. I know you, baby,” he whispers, presses his nose against mine, thumbing the tears off my cheeks pointlessly, “and you’re such a bad liar.” 

He holds the sides of my face, keeping my face tilted towards him and I sob very quietly, heaving, convulsing. And he doesn’t take his eyes off me, doesn’t move away. Fuck, he just stays right there, watching me break apart. 

When my weeping slows, the lump in my throat thinning, he starts the shower. He holds my waist as I climb in and then stands behind me, holding me, his face in the crook of my neck. He kisses my wet skin and washes my hair. He doesn’t ask me to speak. He washes my body with his hands. And then when I am clean, he kneels once again and towels me off and when I almost start to cry again he kisses all over my body and squeezes my skin. 

I don’t say anything until I walk into the kitchen after I have dried my hair and put a dress on. I don’t say anything until there’s mascara on my lashes and lipstick painting my pout. When I say something, it’s almost involuntary. 

Bradley is in my kitchen, his service khakis belted smartly and a white t-shirt hugging his arms perfectly. He’s standing over the stove and there’s bacon popping and eggs frying. When the Morning Comes by Hall and Oates is playing quietly. 

He doesn’t see me at first, see me watching him, that silly lump in my throat again. But I feel like I’m seeing him for the first time without those complicated feelings--all the feelings of inadequacy, all those silly feelings from before where I think he will leave me. His hair is gelled and his mustache is trimmed and he’s smiling. 

“Okay,” I whisper, “we’re at the bridge. What now?”

His face snaps towards me. He’s grinning, cheeks bright and pink. I push my hair over my shoulder, wishing that we had a million more days of this. Wishing so badly that the mission hadn’t been moved up a week. 

“We take it one day at a time,” he tells me. 

He’s looking at my lips. I lean against the island, crossing my arms, nodding. One day at a time. That means I don’t have to tell him everything at once--pour a glass of boiling water onto him. I can let it trickle. Yes, I will do that. 

“Deal.”

“Knew you’d come around,” he says before nodding, “now set the table for me, honey. Breakfast’s ready.”

  ☾ ☽

My fingers are sticky. They are sticky because I am lingering on my first glass of a virgin lavender limeade and instead of drinking it, I am digging my fingers in and putting sweet, tangy ice cubes in my mouth to suck on. 

I am sitting at the polished bar of The Hard Deck, the velvet seats soft against my thighs where my dress has risen. I have honey in my heart, slow-spreading and so, so sweet. But deep in my bones I am tired. I am the kind of tired one feels after weeping ferociously. The kind of tired where my eyes droop all day long, even when I’m in the lounge listening to the comm’s, which usually makes me feel jittery. I am the kind of tired that others are noticing. 

“You good?” Bob had asked as soon as I walked into the training room, trailing slowly behind Rooster. 

Rooster had glanced over his shoulder, looking right at me and through me at the same time. 

“Didn’t sleep well,” I told Bob, “just tired.”

And when I was walking down the hallway, holding a few notebooks against my chest, my eyes falling to count the tiles that I moseyed across, a certain voice echoed off the floor. 

“Lieutenant Ledger,” Admiral Simpson said, his polished shoes suddenly on the forty-seventh tile. 

I snapped to attention at once, squaring my jaw and bringing my feet together, saluting. He was standing in his service khakis, hair impeccably neat, eyebrows furrowed but face soft. We were alone in the hallway and I had to squint against the fluorescents above us. 

“Sir!”

“At ease, Clover. Are you doing okay?” 

When he asked this, it made my spine want to curl. It made me want to be a dead bug in the corner, ignored and hollow. I blinked a few times, trying to stop squinting at the lights above us. My hand fell and I nodded. 

“Yes, sir.” 

He said nothing, expression unchanged. He was searching my face. 

“Sir, I am more than happy to provide a sample for a drug test.” 

When I said it, my throat was very tight. I was on the verge of tears even though my morning had been so bitter-sweet. I felt like crying all the time today. 

He shook is head quickly, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. 

“No, that will not be necessary. I know this assignment has been challenging for you, even if you’re the right person for it,” he said softly, “if you need any time off, I would be happy to provide you with time off.” 

I shook my head profusely, holding the books to my chest tighter. 

“No, no. Just couldn’t sleep. Thank you, Cyclone.” 

And when I said his call-sign, he softened entirely. His shoulders dropped a few centimeters and the wrinkles on his forehead smoothed. He nodded once in acknowledgement and spun on his foot before continuing down the hall. 

Even Penny is watching me from the corner of her eye, hands mindlessly drying a glass behind the bar as I slouch on my stool. She hasn’t asked me, but I know she wants to. Penny is too polite to ask me. 

Bob is beside me, still in uniform, and he’s munching on peanuts as he tells Penny something about the weekend before. He’s so lively, even though I know all the aviators are on edge. How could they not be with the mission looming so closely? 

Behind us, the rest of the squadron are gathered at one of the pool tables or straggling by the dart board or sitting with frosty mugs of beer at one of the corner booths. Everyone is lively, just like Bob, even though their undereyes are littered with purple veins and pink skin. 

“She’s fine,” Bob tells Penny once he catches her gaze on me, “just tired.” 

He puts one of his hands on my shoulder. Bob is so warm. If we weren’t in The Hard Deck, I would lay my head on his shoulder and fall asleep and stay asleep for four days. I wish we were at my house, laying on my couch together, watching Dirty Dancing.   

“Stressed?” Penny asks, raising an eyebrow at me. 

I wish people didn’t worry about me the way they did. I wish people would just accept that I am tired--truly tired. Maybe if I explained what happened this morning, explained my wicked sobs and Rooster’s twisted lips, they would understand and let me be. 

“Maybe a smidge,” I smile softly, “but we should be asking Bob that. How are you, Bob?” 

Desperate to get Penny’s eyes off me, I lean my cheek into his hand that’s still holding my shoulder. He is embarrassed only for a small moment, smiling softly, blinking behind his glasses. His hair is beginning to fall from its gel. 

“I’m everything. Nervous, excited. Phoenix has the harder job,” he says, his eyes flickering to his feet, “she’s gotta get both of us back.” 

My throat feels tight. I won’t let my mind wander for too long about these things. Everyone here is the best of the best. The thought of even one of them not coming back to base, back to Miramar, back to their friends and family, back to me--it’s borderline unthinkable. Now I reach out, wiping my sticky hands on my dress, and push his glasses back up his nose. 

“You’re gonna be just fine,” I tell him and I mean it, I really do, “I’ll see to it.” 

He meets my eyes and something flashes in the blue of his--and I know what it is. I am his best friend. I know that he’s thinking it, the same way I am looking at him and adoring him, loving him. And maybe he’s thinking that since the worst has already happened to me, since he lost Maggie too, then nothing bad can happen to him. It feels like the unspoken law of shitty things. 

“Oh, you’re good,” Bob says, a teasing lilt in his voice, “very convincing. I believe you, really, I do.” 

Tiny Dancer starts on the jukebox. I am biting a grin, watching Bob bite a grin right back. This is our song. The first time we ever got drunk together, dragged to a frat party by Maggie, we danced on a dirty rug in the middle of a dimly-lit muggy room. We sang into each other’s mouths, laughing, kind of crying, too. 

“Too tired to dance?” 

My eyes are half-shut when I smile. 

“Never for you.” 

So Bob puts his hand out for me to take and I give him my sticky fingers. He leads me to the dance floor, which is almost completely empty. It’s that strange time between quitting time and the evening rush, which means people are sporadically huddled in their groups randomly around the bar. 

Rooster catches my eye, tucked into the corner of a booth, holding his chin in his hands. No one sees him when he smiles at me in a private way. And I lean my head, looking at his handsome face, and give him a sad kind of smile back. 

Bob smiling in that Bob way--lips quivering in a happy kind of embarrassment, one he can’t help, one that is intrinsic to him. He pulls me to him and parts of our body grace each other as I put my arms around his neck loosely. He holds firm to the curve of my waist, hands glued there--they will not go up or down. 

And we dance, smiling at each other, thinking about college, thinking about the frat party that made us infamous losers on Maggie’s college campus. She loved that we did it--loved that people confused her for me and asked her who that nerd was that she danced with at Sigma Delta’s party.

“Do you think she did this?” He asks softly as the sun painted the left side of his face, “the song?” 

I nod. 

“Of course she did.” 

And then I lay my head on his shoulder and we keep twirling slowly, not caring if we stumble over each other’s feet. He’s still smiling when he brings a hand up to smooth my hair, the way he used to do to Maggie and I all the time. He couldn’t believe that we put up with our hair being so long--always in the way. 

“You know,” Bob says, “you’ve been the best friend a guy could ask for.”

My throat constricts. I force myself to swallow and blink away the tears that come far too easily. He’s holding my waist again, cheek resting softly on my head. He smells like talcum powder and soap. 

“I wish you were always here, Bob.” 

He swallows and squeezes my waist one time. 

“Me too, Faye.” 

And when the chorus comes and the jukebox is inexplicably louder and the whole bar is singing, I lean away from him and he’s watching me the way best friends do--like he’s admiring me and loving me and giddy all at the same time, wrapped up in the soft expression of genuine joy. 

“Do you think he’ll leave,” I ask, swallowing hard, taking advantage of the heightened volume of the crowd, “when I tell him everything?” 

Bob glances nonchalantly at Rooster, who’s laughing at something Phoenix said, taking a sip of his golden ale. He looks so tired, so beautiful, so perfect. Everywhere he is, he looks like he belongs right there.

When Bob turns back to me, his expression is very serious. 

“Who could ever leave you?”

My eyes are watery. I bite my lip. 

“I could think of a few,” I say. 

Bob pulls his eyebrows together. When his glasses start to fall down his nose, I carefully push them back up his face. 

“Nobody’s ever wanted to leave you,” he says and then after a beat he asks, “can I recite a poem or is that too pretentious?” 

I shake my head, my lips pursed because I am going to cry if I speak. 

“It’s by Wendell Berry, called A Meeting. It goes like,” he clears his throat and I smile, “like this: ‘In a dream I meet my dead friend. He has, I know, gone long and far, and yet he is same for the dead are changeless. They grow no older. It is I who have changed, grown strange to what I once was. Yet I, the changed one, ask: “How you been?” He grins and looks at me. “I been eating peaches off some mighty fine trees.”’

And even though Bob is prone to stumble over his words and get shy in front of crowds and can be sitting in a room with someone for an hour before they notice, he recites the poem clearly and calmly in my ear as I rest my cheek on his shoulder. And I can almost imagine him when we were at Temple, him with his long hair and baby face, always cleaning his glasses and filling up my water bottle. I can see him digging the book of poetry out of his collection after Maggie died, blue eyes glossy as he let them fall over the lines again and again. Maybe he memorized it for this exact moment--maybe he was just waiting for me to be ready to hear it. 

“Again,” I choke. 

He recites it again as Elton John croons, as all the cigar-soaked shirts in the crowd sing brutishly along to Elton John. A peanut shell cracks under my heel, but I hear every single word he says. 

His hand comes to rest on the middle of my back and I get the sensation that Maggie is in the crowd, smiling at us, a bottle of beer in her hands. I imagine that she’s in her service khakis but her hair is falling down her back in glossy waves and she has quarters pressed into her palms. I imagine that she would be whispering to Rooster, telling him that she likes him, that if he died and broke my heart then she would kill him. I imagine her grin and the way she would come up to us after the song ended to congratulate us on our new romance, that teasing tilt in her voice. 

And the pain of losing her is still fresh, will always be fresh. Maybe it's because I’m too tired, or maybe it’s because I’m out of tears, but I do not cry when I think about these things. I just hold Bob, feel his hand on my back, and twirl around with him. 

Chapter Text

July 26th, 2019

The couch is dipping with the weight of our tangled bodies. Rooster is lying against the chartreuse fabric, flat on his back, eyes half-shut and mouth an undisturbed plane beneath his trimmed mustache. He is radiating a certain heat, one that isn’t just his hot blood and the perpetual stink of fuel that taints his peppery odor, and his fingers are absently grazing the skin in the middle of my back. He has found my spine, which I straighten just for him, and he marks each of my vertebrae from the base of my neck all the way to the waistband of my pajama pants. 

I’m squished on top of him: cheek pressed against the middle of his chest, the top of my head tucked safely beneath his chin, arms hugging him to me, my breasts flattened uncomfortably against the uniform plane of his belly and ribs, my hips just barely grazing the sofa between his spread legs.

He’s almost asleep, even though Stevie is draped between his right shoulder and the couch, making herself fit in whatever little bit of room he leaves for her. His breathing is long and deep. I can feel every breath that starts in his lungs and rises, rises, rises before it expels from his parted lips. 

I am not very comfortable, no not really, except this is the only place in the world that I want to be. I want to be here, on the couch that’s not new but very old. I want to be here, on his big body, listening to his breathing crescendo as he falls further into slumber. I want to be here, in the darkness of my living room, listening to a Sheryl Crow album while a maple-scented candle burns down on the coffee table. Here, where there’s Chinese takeout boxes stuffed in the back of the fridge and there’s two empty wine glasses in the kitchen sink. Where there’s a vase of dead lavender in the windowsill, happily drying out and crumbling in the California sun. Where there’s working air conditioning in every room and I don’t have to hand wash my dishes anymore and the lock on the backdoor doesn’t stick.

“Shh,” Rooster whispers, index finger settling the crease between my brow, “thinking too loud.” 

And I have to bite my lip even though I know he can feel the smile spreading to my cheeks as it grows and grows. 

“What’re you smiling at,” he whispers, his voice very sleepy and sweet, “too late to be smiling like that.” 

It’s not even eleven yet. I very softly press my lips to his chest and kiss him there, feeling his heart beating beneath my lips. So steady, so tranquil. He lets his hand fall on the back of my head, holding my skull and my hair and all my thoughts and all my words. 

“I wanna tell you something,” I whisper to him. 

I still feel like I’m going to faint when I say this to him. I’m letting it trickle, though. The boiling water, the truth. It is slow, very slow. My cup is overflowing, though, it really is. If someone bumped into me, it would spill all over the floor, the glass would shatter.

The last song on Tuesday Night Music Club is starting; I Shall Believe.  

He stills beneath me, grip on my hair tightening just slightly, just barely. Never enough to hurt me. 

“Tell me something, baby,” he whispers. 

Stevie is purring loudly, kneading Rooster’s sweatshirt with expert claws. 

Just like always, I can feel the words coming up my throat like bubbling vomit. It makes me want to clamp a hand over my mouth and take refuge in the bathroom, spewing all my syllables into an empty toilet bowl. But then he starts to brush his fingers through my hair, very softly detangling little bits and ghosting over my scalp when he starts at my roots. And then I feel like Maggie is right next to me, biting a silly grin, hands clasped as she begs me to keep him close. She was a truth-teller. She would want me to be a truth-teller, too. Even if it’s slow, so slow. Even if it hurts. 

“I’m in recovery,” I say, my tongue hot and bitter-tasting, “like addiction recovery.” 

His body doesn’t stiffen the way I thought it would. His fingers are still combing through my hair slowly, he’s still treating me like I’m a doll--very fragile, porcelain. My lips are still hovering his shirted chest and I’m breathing hot air onto the worn cotton--maybe I was too muffled for him to hear me. Fuck. The thought of repeating myself makes me want to wither away in a gust of hot wind. 

“Not alcohol, I hope,” he says. 

It disarms me. There’s a teasing lilt in his deep voice and he still sounds sleepy instead of suddenly wide-awake at this revelation. And just him saying that, just him nodding towards the kitchen where the empty wine glasses sit, it makes my shoulders deflate. I breathe a held breath onto him and let my eyes fall to his. 

He’s smiling at me in that sweet, tired way. His eyes are glimmering, shining as he surveys my expression. I am smiling and my cheeks are hot and I’m tired, too--suddenly so exhausted after telling him one small thing. 

“Pills,” I say softly, nodding, “vicodin. Xanax. Sometimes adderall.” 

He nods, his brow only slightly knitting. I know he wants more from me--he always, always wants more from me. And I somehow always have more to give to him. 

“The vicodin started truthfully. Prescribed after the accident,” I tell him, “and the xanax was prescribed, too. For panic attacks. PTSD, the whole thing. The adderall was to stay awake. I had, like, these foul nightmares after she died.”

I don’t even mean to tell him this, but here I am, my heart in my mouth and here he is, listening, his expression open wide and honest. His hand rests peacefully on the back of my neck now. He’s stroking my skin there with a calloused thumb. I have to swallow hard, with a struggle, because I feel like I’m swallowing sand. 

Open the door / And show me your face tonight / I know it's true / No one heals me like you / And you hold the key

“What were the nightmares?” 

If anyone else in the world asked, I wouldn’t be able to tell them. I would look at their face, at that strange expression that falls over people when someone starts talking about death, about loss. People get off on the morbidity of it all. People love the pain of others, love to screw their faces up and squint and sigh and apologize with half a heart. People love it when other people hurt and not them.

The words are coming out of my mouth before I can even stop them, though. 

“Everything is silent. I watch her fall a hundred times,” I whisper, “no words, no sound. Nothing. She’s there and then she isn’t.” 

Maybe I can tell him this, yes, I can and it feels easy. But I cannot tell him how bloody these silent dreams are--that I smell pennies when I wake up, that I am sweating and crying, that I have to stumble down the hallway and flip the record so that there is finally sound in my house. I cannot tell him this, no--it is my burden, my secret.

His eyes are soft, wide. 

“Do you have nightmares when I’m here?” 

My heart is going to stop. I smile and I feel like I’m going to cry again. I lean against his chest, letting my eyes fall to his throat, his perfect throat and the scars that scratch across it. 

“You know the answer to that,” I say because I feel like I’ll cry if I tell him the whole truth. The whole truth being that I’ve never had a bad dream in my life when he’s slept in my bed, that I have a hard time even having a bad day when he’s here in my life.

He nods, smoothing his hand on my forehead and pushing my hair out of my complexion. His breath is warm on my face--his breath smells like soy sauce and fried wontons. I could lie here and be breathed on by him forever and ever. I could, really, I could. 

“Well, then,” he whispers, sighing, securing his arms around me, “I’ll just have to stay.”

He looks like he belongs here, just like he always looks like he belongs wherever he is. But there is something holy about him here beneath me, on my couch in this quiet living room of mine. He hallows the room with his presence--makes everything glow. He blesses me, blesses Stevie. I don’t know if there is a God, don’t know if I hope for a God to be out there in the vast nothingness, but if there is--he must look like Bradley.

“Admiral Simpson,” I add, “he’s the one that picked me up. Extended my bereavement leave. Drove me out to Arizona to a facility on his own dime. Fed Stevie. Gave me the research job.”

Rooster hums. The soft spot. 

“Uncharacteristically warm of him,” he whispers, kissing my forehead. 

“He’s misunderstood,” I say, shaking my head, “no one else would’ve done that for me. Could’ve been dishonorably discharged.”

He’s smiling at me softly again, his eyes so tired.

“How long have you been sober?” 

I swallow. 

“It’ll be two years in August,” I tell him, “August eighth.”

He takes everything I’m saying, takes it so well, holding it in his big hands and his strong arms. I can feel him digesting all of it, can feel him adding all the new knowledge to my file. He squeezes my waist. 

“And now I wanna tell you something,” he says, “give and take, right?”

I nod because my throat is so tight. It’s my turn now, my turn to run my fingers over the highest point on his cheek bones, to let them fall to his jaw where they trace the bone. To touch him, to hold everything he gives me. 

“My last serious relationship was my second year of undergraduate. Lasted about eight months. Her name was Brigette. Ended amicably,” he tells me, watching my lips smile at him, “she still sends me Christmas cards. She just had her third baby a few months ago.”

Biting my lip, I nod, sinking all my weight onto him. He doesn’t shy away from it, doesn’t groan--he pulls me closer, so close that I think our skin would bind if we were to stay like this for much longer.

“Phoenix is my best friend here. But in college, I was close with a guy named Tommy. We still text every now and then--grab a beer when I’m passing through,” he says, “and when I was younger, my best friend was named Wade. He was my neighbor. Moved to Tennessee when we were in third grade and I never saw him again.” 

My heart has returned to its normal steady pace. I pinch his cheek. 

“Poor baby,” I coo. 

He pretends to be annoyed, rolling his eyes, furrowing his brows, but he doesn’t move to detach himself from me. In fact, he puts his legs over mine so I am pinned down. It feels good to be pinned by him.

And once my hand settles on his cheek and I’m looking at him with my eyes calm and quiet and sweet, his face becomes somber. Not a sad kind of somber--but a serious one. His brows are straight, mirroring his mouth, and his nostrils flare just slightly.  

“I think I want kids,” he says and his voice sounds hard, “but not until I’ve done enough.”

He means this: he thinks he wants kids, but not until he feels like he’s accomplished enough. He means he won’t settle down and have a baby until he’s done flying. And I know that he means this because of his father, his father that died so accidentally, so unceremoniously.

So I kiss his chest again, throat constricting when I think about it; being swollen with his child, skin stretching around a sweet little boy or girl, walking around the house in flowy dresses and bare feet. His hands holding my belly, his chin on my shoulder, sweet kisses on my throat. Endless sunlight streaming into our home, always being warm, no endings and no beginnings. Just this, a new life, a careful one. A precious one. 

“You?” he asks and his voice is a little bit hoarse. 

“Three,” I tell him and it makes my cheeks pink when a chuckle rumbles his chest, “wouldn’t ever want one of them to be alone.” 

What I mean is this: if one of them , God fucking forbid, died then there would be two left. And I don’t mean this selfishly--like I will still have two to love instead of one. I mean because they could lean on each other. They can mourn together. I was so, so alone when Maggie died. More alone than I had ever been in my entire life. More alone than what should be humanly possible

“We’ll be outnumbered,” he whispers. 

That’s when I know he sees it, too. Tiny toes in tiny socks. Binkies in the couch cushions, bottles in the sink. Bubbles in the bath, weeping cherry trees outside open bedroom windows, car seats in the Bronco, a bed that will never be big enough. Lullabies on the piano, Christmas Eves spent assembling dollhouses and gorging on sugar cookies and gingerbread, muslin blankets, stroller wheels on gravel. Film photos, golden skin against unblemished rosy cheeks, training wheels, banana pancakes. Pumpkin patches, birthday candles, endless laundry, the sweet stink of outdoors in tangled hair. He sees it. 

“Not up for the challenge?”

He narrows his eyes at me, squeezing the skin of my hips again. 

“‘M always up for the challenge, Faye.”

The record has ended. The softest of silences echoes in the living room, just louder than the blood rushing in my ears. Just louder than his heart beneath his skin, my hands. And I’m not afraid--I am not afraid of this quiet. I am not afraid that he knows about my recovery. 

Just like the way I feel about Bob, I feel like Rooster is finally close enough to me that he is behind my shield that deflects shitty things. He’s safe because the unthinkable has happened to me and it keeps him safe because I hold him against me. Even when he’s hundreds, thousands of miles away from me--I can touch him from here and he’ll be okay. Our string is elastic.

“I think your cat likes me,” Rooster whispers, smirking. 

Stevie is lying on her back now, her hind legs stretched out over the top of Rooster’s head and her front paws curled into themselves as she purrs, slumbering away. Bitch. I carefully raise my hand and bring it down between her ears, softly scratching her head. She mews, doesn’t stir, and keeps purring. 

“It’s your hands,” he tells me, “you’ve got the touch.” 

I purse my lips. 

“What touch?” 

There is that sober look on his face again, the serious one, the sweet one. But this time his cheeks are reddening, like he’s embarrassed even though it isn’t in his nature. He’s embarrassed only smally, despite himself. 

“The mom-touch,” he whispers. 

And now I’m blushing, now I’m mildly embarrassed. I’m embarrassed because I wonder if he can really hear everything I think. If he knows what is happening beneath my scalp, in my skull. If he knows that I’m thinking about having his children. If he knows that I am thinking about a vast future with him, a sweet and broad life, and I don’t even know his middle name. 

I want to tell him that he’s full of shit, but I know he’s not. No one has said those words to me, but they’ve shown me. They’ve asked me to play with their hair, to scratch their palms, to rub their backs. People have fallen asleep beneath my fingertips, pressed against my palms. 

Biting my lip, I just look at him and his sweet face. 

“Take me to bed,” I say to him finally.

“Aye-aye, honey.” 

And then it’s groaning and bones cracking and muscles unfolding as we separate ourselves from each other. It’s the routine I treasure. It’s Rooster blowing out the candles and grabbing our glasses of water to put in the sink. It’s me putting the vinyl away and turning the record-player off. It’s Stevie trailing behind Rooster like a love-drunk suitor, rubbing against his legs when he loads out dishes in the dishwasher he’d fixed the day before last. It’s me closing the curtains and fixing the pillows on the couch and Rooster folding a blanket. And then it’s us starting for the hallway at the same time and his arms wrapping around my waist and his lips on my throat and us just standing there, breathing each other in. 

Then it’s us in bed and he’s sprawled out and the fan is on and Stevie is preening, trying to find the spot closest to him, and there’s a candle lit. It’s us there in my bed with the curtains drawn closed, with his arms around me and I’m falling asleep, really falling when he whispers something into my skin. It’s quiet, very quiet, but I hear it. 

“Can I give you another piece?” 

I wish he knew that my hands are open for him, for every part of him, always. 

“Yes,” I say and now I sound like I’m on the verge of sleep, the way he had on the couch, “you don’t have to ask me, Bradley.” 

He kisses my neck, my freckles--the ones he can find in the dark, and exhales hot minty-breath over my face. I blink at the darkness and can only make out part of his silhouette when he sits up to look down at me. 

“My mom was really loving,” he whispers, one of his hands finding my hair again, “not in a polite way, not in the normal mom way. She loved in a big, exuberant way. It used to embarrass me--when she would go to my baseball games and actually weep when we won and run onto the field to kiss my face. I mean, what kid wouldn’t be embarrassed when their mom does that?”

I hold his hand in mine, kiss his knuckles and my eyes are watering. He’s still petting me. I lean into his touch and can feel adoration pouring out of his pores and into mine.

“When she loved someone, the whole room knew. And Faye,” his voice is hoarse, breaking as he lets his hand rest on my cheek, “she would’ve fucking loved you. She would’ve loved you so hard, so loud.” 

I don’t know what to say. I want to hold him against me. I know his cheeks are red. 

“It just makes me so mad that she’s gone,” he says, his body growing hot, “because what a shame that she never got to know you. What a waste. I have no one to take you home to, no one to show you off to.”

There’s precisely one beat where I reel, reel and reach for purchase. How can I explain to him that I don’t need to go home to any of his people to know that he’s good, he’s the one I want? How can I explain that I don’t need that, that he is more than enough? That he’s everything? 

“Bradley,” I finally whisper and that’s when his face falls back in my neck and a string inside him snaps. 

He weeps in the crook of my neck, his body convulsing in uniform sobs, his mouth open and sharply gasping for breaths. His tears are wetting my hair, my linen sheets. And I hold onto him very tightly--tighter than I’ve ever held onto anything. I hold onto him as tightly as I would have held on to Maggie if I’d known. 

“When she found out that it had spread, the-the cancer, she fucking apologized to me. She apologized to me. She said she was so sorry that she wouldn’t be there for me,” he sobs quietly, “said she’ll never forgive herself for leaving me.” 

How could anyone leave him alone in this world? Guilt climbs my body and sits on my chest heavier than all of Rooster’s weight. 

“And everything with Maverick and the mission and my fucking dad and it’s all just so--!” 

I kiss his face feverishly, pulling him away from me and moving us so he’s lying flat on his back and I’m hugging his ribs with my thighs. His hands secure themselves on my hips and I keep kissing his wet face, my lips salty, my own tears splashing onto his skin. He cries quieter now, softer. 

“It’s a lot,” I say against his skin, nuzzling my nose against his, “too much, even. For anyone. Especially you.” 

He nods, keeps nodding. And I keep kissing his face, keep giving him every piece of love that I have to give without even telling him that I love him. He’s gripping me tightly and I know he feels weighed down, like he wouldn’t be able to float away. Not when I’m holding him here on my bed. 

“You make me so happy,” he says, his voice so deep and very wet, “and I want to give you these things.” 

These things. He means a normal life. He means a mother-in-law and a father-in-law. He means a nice wedding, a marriage. He means coming home every night. He means children, three of them. He means love. 

“You’ve given me so much,” I whisper, “and I’ll take whatever you want me to have.”

 ☾ ☽

It is dark outside, but the sky is endlessly clear. The stars twinkle above and the waning crescent moon is a golden sliver lighting Flat Rock Beach. The ocean is very calm and soft tonight, which is the last Saturday before the squadron will embark on their mission. The waves kissing the shore are quiet beneath the booming conversations, beneath the speaker nestled in the sand.  

There is a certain chill in the air tonight, too. If I close my eyes, let my head fall back then it feels like the beginnings of a midwestern autumn. When we first reached the rock-walled beach, when Hangman and Coyote started assembling the firewood, I ached for home. I ached for Maggie. I ached for raking leaves into piles and jumping into them, for picking apples and carving pumpkins, for driving down country roads just to see the changing leaves. 

“Feels like Philly,” Bob had said to me, stepping beside me suddenly, “makes me miss it. Makes me miss college.” 

And while the squadron set up behind us, digging a circle around the sand for the pit and collecting anything resembling wood or paper and making trips up and down the stairs to unload the Bronco and set up the chairs, I smiled at Bob. We were so close to being alone, standing on the edge of the ocean, watching the pink sun sink.

“Would you go back,” I asked him, “if you got the chance?” 

I mean if he could go back in time--not just live in Philly. 

“Of course I would,” he whispered, “seeing you everyday, partying with Maggie on the weekends, reading Emily Brontë. Of course I would.”

I would, too. In a heartbeat. In a blink. In a breath.

Crystal Blue Persuasion by Tommy James is playing now.

Everyone is sitting in a foldable chair, mismatched ones I donated from deep within my garage. Maggie used to poke fun of me for buying them at garage sales and antique stores, but I was always the first to call when she had an invitation to a bonfire. 

I’m sitting between Bob and Phoenix now. Bob is wearing a suede jacket, the same one he’s worn since Temple and his eyes are gleaming with a sweet drunkenness. Phoenix is wearing a sweatshirt with her hair down and she’s drunk, too, tilting her head back and laughing big and loud at things that are mildly funny. 

It’s the first time I’ve seen most of the squadron in civilian clothing. It’s a sea of denim and sports-gray sweatshirts, of navy blue and cream, cable knit sweaters and tennis shoes. It makes everybody look impossibly softer, softer in a way I never pictured them to be. 

The fire before us burns tall and bright, flames licking the dark night. The flames are so tall and hot that we are all sitting a few feet away, and even then, our cheeks are all blooming. There is a barrier of thick, dark driftwood surrounding the fire, but carefully placed so it does not catch any sparks.

Across the bonfire, Rooster is sitting beside Hangman and Payback. He looks fucking beautiful draped in moonlight, radiating luminosity. Even if there was no light, though--I know he would glow just like he is now. He’s wearing his UVA sweatshirt under a leather bomber jacket, which is adorned with patches his father earned. He’s wearing a pair of faded Levi’s, too. His hair is not gelled and it’s curled so beautifully from the shower we shared before we rode to the beach together in the Bronco, two bottles of cherry wine in my lap.

There’s a paper cup in everyone’s hands, a box of some alcohol at their feet. Everyone, almost everyone, is drunk. Everyone is getting drunk like it’s the last time they’ll ever do this, like it’s their last Saturday here with their friends before everything changes. And it makes me want to know everyone, really know everyone, so they’ll be safe behind my barrier. Even just thinking that, thinking about their assignment barreling towards them, it makes my throat clog. 

“Is everyone drunk enough to play Never Have I Ever?” Coyote asks, his voice smooth and booming. 

My belly aches. I catch Rooster’s eyes, just once very expertly, and he drops his eye in one sultry wink before taking a long drink of cherry wine. My teeth are on the verge of chattering and I’m pulling into myself beneath the sweater that is definitely not thick enough--but his eyes, oh his eyes, they’re enough to make my fingers uncurl themselves. 

“Hell yeah,” Fanboy says, raising his beer in the air. 

“Oh, boy,” Bob mutters to me and Phoenix, “buckle in, ladies.” 

My chest is heavy, my vision just beginning to blur around the edges. I’m getting that loose feeling, like my joints are held together by chewing gum. 

“I’ll start,” Hangman grins, “never have I ever slept with someone twice my age.” 

There is a slight chorus of groans, a few of the pilots chuckling, others keeping their drinks firm in their laps. And if we were playing with someone else, if Hangman wasn’t the one asking, I think I could get away with taking a drink slyly. But he’s watching us all: his eyes darting around the fire.

And my heart is really hammering now and I thought I would be drunk enough to play this, that it wouldn’t matter if people knew, that no one would care. But there’s a pit in my belly growing, growing. I can’t remember his name, or really his face, but I remember the gray hair on his chest and the sag in his throat and the little blue pill he chased with a shot of vodka. 

Hangman catches me with my cup at my lips and I take the smallest of drinks, deciding to hold his gaze. His mouth is slightly ajar, his eyes widening. But he does something I didn’t think him capable of: he doesn’t draw attention to me. He glances around again, scouting out any other gazes. But it’s just us--me and Hangman. 

I blink at him and his eyes fall to my hands, which are cold. 

“Rooster,” Coyote sings, “your turn!”

Rooster is drunk, drunk enough that he’s laughing at everything, drunk enough that he keeps trying to watch my face across the fire and his eyes are warm enough to make my fingers bend. 

“Alright,” Rooster starts, smoothing his mustache, “never have I ever hooked up with someone I met online.” 

More laughter, some people drinking, everyone’s eyes darting around the circle. I take a drink--but so does Coyote, so does Hangman, so does Phoenix. So I am not alone. But I know my cup will be empty soon. 

“Never have I ever hooked up with someone in the first twenty-four hours of knowing them,” Payback says, grinning. 

And this time, this time it’s just Hangman and I that drink. Rooster is watching me, a smile faltering on his lips and I suddenly feel like this is all a mistake, like we shouldn’t be playing this game. Not now, not tonight. But maybe I’m just drunk. Maybe his smile isn’t faltering at all--maybe I’m just feeling sensitive. 

“Is anyone here capable of not turning every game we play sexual,” Phoenix snarks, rolling her eyes, “I mean, really?”

Phoenix is ignored largely. She leans back in her chair, pushing a tuft of dark hair from her face. She catches my glance and holds it with her deep eyes, shaking her head with her eyebrows raised. It’s the first time we’ve shared the silent language of friends. These fuckin’ guys, am I right? 

Fanboy is tapping his chin. I am sinking further into my chair, gripping my paper cup. 

“Never have I ever been turned down.” 

And thank God that the cherry wine doesn’t have to scald my mouth this time. I keep it there, in my hands, on my lap. Fuck. I feel like I need to bend over and catch my breath. My cheeks are burning. 

Almost everyone drinks--save Bob and Phoenix and myself. 

“Bob?” Hangman asks, quirking a brow. 

“Hey,” I say, pointing at Hangman with a tight smile, “maybe you have something to learn from Bob.” 

Phoenix guffaws at this and points her finger at Hangman, too, her cheeks pink. 

“Yeah, stop treating women like fire hydrants, you dog. Then see if you get turned down.” 

Hangman’s ego is impenetrable. He says nothing but he’s grinning truly, eyes crinkling, bringing his cup to his lips for an innocent drink. He winks at Phoenix before she settles back into her seat, grumbling playfully. 

The attention is off me, Rooster is not looking at me. Everything is okay. Everything is fine. But there is a sinking sort of feeling in my chest and it’s deepening with each minute that passes. I think I should maybe walk away, pretend that I want to look at the water.

“Here, boys,” Phoenix starts, “this is how you do it: never have I ever had a crush on a coworker.”

And now there are rose petals in my belly, tickling the lining of my sloshing stomach, fluttering down my thighs and to my curled toes. I am blushing when I bring the cup to my lips and sip again--Hangman and Rooster are the only other two that drink and they are both watching me. 

“Who would have thought,” Payback quips, nudging Rooster. 

Rooster is looking at me still, his eyes soft, his hair curly. He’s so sweet, so sweet it’s making my teeth ache. And now Hangman is looking between Rooster and I, so I turn my cheeks to the breeze and let the faux-autumn air cool my face. It’s okay. Everything is fine. 

“C’mon Clover,” Phoenix says, nudging me, “sock it to ‘em.” 

I screw my eyes closed, the vein on my temple throbbing. What haven’t I done? What have I never done? My throat is clogged suddenly. 

“Never have I ever…” I look out around me and everyone’s watching me, fingers eager, “had a brother?”

Hangman, Coyote, Fanboy, Bob, Phoenix, and Payback all drink. Just Bob, Rooster, and I keep our drinks settled on our laps. 

“So naughty,” Coyote laughs at me, “you kiss your mother with that mouth?” 

“No,” I quip, “but Bob does.”

And after everyone settles in, Bob is blushing with all the eyes on him. I am looking at his smooth cheek, free from blemishes and hair. His blue eyes which watch the fire, untrained. His twisted lips, the blood in his cheeks. 

“Okay,” Bob says softly, “never have I ever flown an F-18.” 

I squeeze his arms as everyone around us groans, bringing their drinks to their lips. I feel like he did this for me. I don’t have to drink. He isn’t being inherently sexual. And then I know it’s for me when he glances at me and nods one time. I’ve got you.

Then it goes back to Coyote, who’s smirking already. 

“Alright,” he says, searching the group, “never have I ever had a threesome.”

I am the only one that drinks and the wine may as well be vinegar as it runs down my throat, burning, burning. But only a few people are looking at me--Rooster, Phoenix, Bob. Everyone else is watching Hangman, who didn’t drink. 

“I don’t like sharing,” Hangman answers with a shrug. 

Dirty Laundry by Don Henley is playing now. 

“Clover,” Phoenix whispers, her brows pulled together, “damn, girl.” 

It feels like I’m naked and tied to a stake, feels like I’m being slowly spun over the fire and everyone is watching my skin sizzle and crack. Feels like everyone’s mouths are salivating, feels like I can’t say anything and that I can only watch them with glassy eyes. Feels like I’m gagged by an apple and the juice is running down my chin. 

“It was a long time ago ,” Bob quickly, quietly says. 

He only says it loud enough for Phoenix and I to hear.  

Rooster doesn’t say anything. I squeeze my paper cup. I shouldn’t be here. But before I can get up, before I can think of a reason to walk away, Hangman starts. 

“Never have I ever had sex with more than three people in one day.” 

Then it happens. I am the only one that drinks and I try to make my body small, try to keep my paper cup as low as possible. But now my paper cup is empty, the fire is roaring, and I think everyone is watching me. 

When you need a bit of lovin' / 'Cause your man is out of town / That's the time you get me runnin' / And you know I'll be around

No one says anything for a long moment and I can practically feel Bob scouring his brain for something, anything to say. Maybe I can feel it because my brain is similarly reacting--my skull actually aches because of how hard I’m thinking. There’s nothing, though. I don’t have anything to say. I know, just know, that people will know that I’m lying if I try anything.

“How many?” 

It’s Coyote that asks. His voice is deep and on the verge of laughter--somewhere between very serious and not serious at all. Bile rises in my throat.

Bob is quick to turn to him. 

“That’s not how you play the game,” he says, “Rooster, it’s your turn.” 

But I can feel it--I can feel the way the group is suddenly tense. I can feel everyone swimming in their drinks, blinking past the fire at me, wondering if they were comprehending everything correctly. Wondering if I am as fucked up as I’m portraying myself right now. Everyone is wondering if they’re just drunk, if I’m drunk.

Rooster doesn’t say anything.

“Well, now we’re all dying to know,” Hangman says, a grin twitching his lips, “c’mon.” 

My lips quiver. 

“This isn’t how you play the game,” Phoenix echoes Bob before turning to Rooster, “Bradshaw, go.”

But Rooster isn’t saying anything.

“What is it?” Hangman says again. 

I swallow. He doesn’t have to say it. I know what he’s asking. I know what he wants to know. He leans forward in his chair, closer to me, closer to the fire. His eyes look black in the night, but his teeth look long and sharp as he grins. This is not the Hangman I danced with at The Hard Deck--I’m not sure who this is. I glance at his feet and there are maybe nine or ten crushed beer cans nestled in the sand. 

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” Hangman says before winking. 

My body count. They want to know. And I don’t know. Even if the slick snake of shame wasn’t coiling itself around my entire body and constricting me, even if I didn’t want to lean forward and vomit on the sand, I just don’t know. It’s plain and simple--cut and dry. 

“Hangman,” Rooster warns suddenly, his voice cracking.

It’s less of a warning. It’s more of a wavering suggestion.  

“Stop,” Bob commands, voice suddenly louder than the fire, the waves. 

A silence engulfs us, but Hangman is still leaning forward, watching me closely. He licks his lips, bites down and waits for me. 

I rack my brain, trying to think of something Maggie would say, trying desperately to think of a quip. I can’t, though. I can’t think--much less think of a witty response. I have nothing to say. My throat is dry. Fuck. 

“Don’t be shy,” Hangman whispers to me, “what, don’t kiss and tell?” 

“Why do you care, Bagman?” 

It’s Phoenix that finally says this, her tone biting. 

“Lay off,” Bob repeats, “really, man. You’re drunk.”

“Everyone’s fuckin’ drunk,” Hangman spits. 

I look at Rooster and he’s already looking at me, has been looking at me. My vision is fuzzy, my head is stuffy. But Rooster is watching me with his eyebrows pulled together, his lips twisted into an almost pained grimace. His cheeks are flaxen.

Under his gaze, under everyone’s gaze, I feel so ugly suddenly. In every single sense of the word--I feel ugly. Down to my molecules, to the dust that makes up my soul.  

“Not judging,” Hangman shrugs, “just curious, darlin’.” 

I feel his eyes on my cheek as I watch Rooster. 

There’s another pause and I just watch Rooster’s eyes, his eyes that are very glossy and very still. And that biting feeling comes back, that fist around my heart, that cold rush of panic. When he knows, he will leave. When I tell him, he’ll leave. He will leave and I will be ruined and alone. Bob will leave. I will be the kind of lonely that makes me want to sleep with a record on, that makes me want to invite strangers into my house, into me. 

“Here,” Hangman says, his smirk growing, spreading, “let me narrow it down. What number is Bob, what number is Rooster, and what number will I be?” 

For a moment, I’m sure lightning has struck. There’s a flash of light, of sound and Hangman is suddenly clutching his lip and his eyes are wide and his chair is rocking like he’s been hit directly. But then I see Bob standing from his seat, his bottle of cider tipped over in the sand and he looks equally as surprised as he holds his fist to his face and inspects his knuckles--which are split. 

The flash--it wasn’t lightning. Bob has leapt from his seat and punched Hangman square in the mouth. Hebusted Hangman’s perfect lip, busted it in half. And now Hangman and Bob are staring at each other and I don’t know who’s more bewildered.

No one moves, no one even breathes. I feel like I could faint. 

“You shouldn’t talk to her like that,” Bob says loudly, pushing his glasses back up on his nose, “you shouldn’t talk to anyone like that, man.” 

And now the shame, the hot slinky shame, is holding me tighter and tighter. I can’t breathe. Even when Hangman stands up and comes nose to nose with Bob, even as Coyote and Payback go to put their arms in front of Hangman’s chest and as Phoenix puts her hands on Bob’s shoulders, I can’t catch my breath. Now it’s not just the shame, but it’s a deep humiliation and it’s painted bright red and it’s flooding me like I’ve just jumped into the ocean. 

“C’mon,” Phoenix is saying to Bob, “walk it off.” 

Bob doesn’t need to be told again. He turns on his heel and looks at me. He looks bigger than I’ve ever seen him. His shoulders are broad, his chest is straight, his jaw is squared. The bonfire reflects off his glasses and his eyes look like they’re on fire. 

If It Wasn’t For The Nights by ABBA starts. It makes my fingers cold. 

He silently, very silently, holds his hand out for me and I take it. It’s his bloody hand--the one where the skin between his knuckles are split. If I could speak, I would tell him that I want to cry. I can’t, though, so I hold his hand and he squeezes me and pulls me from my chair.

“C’mon,” he whispers to me, “let’s go for a walk.”

The three of us start down the beach, and Bob is holding my hand tight, pulling me closer to him. He’s very warm in his suede jacket and very solid beside me. Phoenix is silent before she looks at our clasped hands, looks at Bob’s knuckles. 

“Nice form,” she whispers to him, kicking sand under her tennis shoes, “he had it coming.” 

And we are gaining distance from the group so quickly that my head is spinning, really spinning and when I turn over my shoulder, I realize that there are tears on my cheeks. The fire is growing smaller in the distance and Hangman is still standing behind a makeshift barrier of muscular arms and he’s watching us walk away. There is still a chorus of voices, loud and lilted, and Rooster is watching me walk away with his hands on his hips. He’s watching me, watching Bob tug me further down the beach. But he isn’t moving.  

“Fuck, I can’t believe I just did that,” Bob whispers, chuckling incredibly, “are you okay, Faye?” 

I feel like I’m sinking into the freezing sand with every step I take, feel like I’m falling into the earth. I think, very suddenly, of the day of the accident when I thought the sea would rise up and eat Maggie and I whole. When everything felt bigger than us. 

“Hangman had it coming,” Phoenix repeats, panting, “fuck, he gets like this when he’s drunk. Are you okay?” 

I stop then. I can’t help it--my feet won’t move. Bob and Phoenix turn to me and they are so much bigger than me here, standing straight while I cower. Fuck, I hate not having the other part of myself. I hate that Maggie wasn’t there to diffuse the situation. I hate that she died and that I filled myself the only way I knew how. I hate that this is all happening because of me, because of her, because of that day. 

“Your hand,” I croak finally, holding his bloody hand in both of mine.

His hand is shaking in mine, his skin cold. Bob’s chest is falling and rising rapidly. Phoenix is standing with her hand on his shoulder still, watching my face as I inspect his fist. 

Even if I wanted to tell them what I am thinking, even if I try to explain the shame and the hot burn of humiliation, they will not understand. 

“It’s fine,” Bobs says, quieter now, “doesn’t hurt. That bad, at least.” 

“You’ve never punched anyone before,” I tell Bob, and now I’m really crying, looking at Bob’s perfect skin that is broken and bloody, “oh, Bob. Your hand.” 

Then Bob and Phoenix are just looking at me. Bob knows me, knows me so thoroughly, knows that what I am saying is only a fraction of what I’m thinking. He knows that my gentle touch is just a facade, that I am burning from the inside out, that grief is swallowing me whole. Phoenix, who is sobering up by the second, is biting her lip hard. Maybe she thinks I’m too drunk to understand everything that happened. Maybe she thinks I just have thick skin. Maybe she doesn’t know what to think. 

Bob moves swiftly, shrugging his jacket off. He stands behind me and drapes it over my shoulders, rubbing his hands up and down my arms. It smells so much like him--like everything that’s clean, everything that’s bright. It smells like cramming for an essay in Charles Library at two in the morning, five cups of coffee between us, smells like tired eyes and old books and uncomfortable chairs. He smells like the best part of my life--the part of my life that happened without me even knowing it.

“I’ll take you home,” he tells me before catching Phoenix’s gaze, “you alright?” 

She nods one time, harshly. Of course she’s good, of course she’s alright. She can handle her own. Fuck, she reminds me of Maggie. Always down to snap the boys back in their order. 

“Let me grab your stuff, Faye,” Phoenix pleads. 

I sniffle hard and shake my head, wiping my cheeks very suddenly. I’m so fucking embarrassed. I’m so embarrassed that it’s their last weekend before the mission, so embarrassed that Bob had to defend me, so embarrassed that I couldn’t just make my voice work. Maybe a simple fuck off, Bagman would’ve diffused the tense atmosphere. 

“No,” I quickly say, turning already, “no, I got it. It’s okay. It’s fine.” 

And I’m already walking away before they can say anything. I don’t think they follow me. The dark night is swallowing me whole, and I am in the no-man’s land between the bonfire and Bob’s bloody knuckles. I think I can feel the heat of the fire from a mile away and as I get closer, I can hear Hangman. 

“--didn’t have to be a big deal. Who fucking cares? It’s sex, grow up.” 

I am close enough that I can smell the sweet smoke. The breeze bites my cheeks and I keep walking, keep trucking, but almost fumble when I put my arms in the sleeves of Bob’s suede jacket. I button myself in, feeling my nose tingle with more tears, but I don’t stop my pace. Being buttoned up in his coat, I feel like Bob is holding me. He’s given me his coat before, given Maggie his coat before, would give anyone the coat off his back.  

Coyote and Fanboy are by the water, gathering saltwater in empty paper cups and glass bottles to put the fire out. Rooster is standing beside Payback, both their backs to me as they guard Hangman from walking in the direction of Bob and Phoenix. There’s blood dribbling down Hangman’s chin, a straight stream. 

Then I slow down when I reach the chairs. The never-ending pit in my belly is growing broader and deeper. I want to be turned inside out--to simply pop right out of existence. But I keep my feet moving, sand kicking under my feet. 

Hangman is shaking his head, hair messier and softer than I’ve ever seen before. He’s rubbing his eyes, bringing his fingers to his lips, licking the blood on his lip. His face is red like a poppy flower. 

He sees me first, before anyone else. 

I can’t help it--when his eyes find me, I stand completely still, right behind the chair I had been sitting in before everything happened. Where I was sitting when he humiliated me in front of everyone, when Rooster was catapulted into the ugly history of mine before I could do anything about it. 

Like there’s another force, like someone is scoring this moment; If It Wasn’t For The Nights ends and Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door by Bob Dylan starts. Everything feels softer, even the roaring fire that is lighting half my body as I stand before the men.  

Rooster and Payback are looking at me now, too. There’s sand in my teeth that crunches under my molars when I bite down. I won’t look at Rooster or even Payback. I’m only looking at Hangman and his hateful gaze.

“Your boyfriend okay?” Hangman sneers. 

“Relax,” Rooster warns, snapping his attention back to Hangman. 

“Calm down, man,” Payback pleads, still sounding drunk, sounding genuinely exhausted.

Hangman’s eyes are burning my skin. I think I can feel his anger and it’s hotter than the fire. So I lean down and pick up my purse, the one I’d set just beside the leg of my chair. Carefully, I pack Bob’s things in there--his wallet, keys, phone. Then I rummage in my bag for a moment, opening the plastic first-aid baggy I keep in there always. 

My throat aches and I approach Hangman with lead shoes. His eyes are still hot, his gaze still like a blade slicing me in half. Rooster and Payback part just so, making a small opening for me when I am close enough to touch him. He even smells angry--smells like beer, like smoke, like skin and sweat.

 I feel like I’m knockin’ on Heaven’s door

He’s glaring at me. It makes my eyes water--and as soon as they water, warm tears spill onto my cheeks. I bite my lip to rid it of its quiver and don’t bother moving to wipe my tears away. Who fucking cares? Grow up.  

Silently, very softly, I raise my hand and start to bring it to him. He flinches and for one terrifying moment, my belly drops and I wonder if I am not supposed to be here, if he is not in his right mind. But there’s something in my gut, something deep in my gut, that tells me that Hangman’s hands will stay at his sides. So I keep nearing him and gently press a cotton ball to his lip to soak up the blood. 

Then he goes completely still. He just gazes down at me, his entire face going slack, the crinkle of his brow smoothing. His shoulders fall. I keep my finger there for a moment, applying pressure. The blood soaks through the cotton rapidly and makes the pad of my finger warm. His breath is hot and yeasty as it fans out over my hand and wrist.

Glancing at Payback, I catch his eyes. 

“Hold it there,” I whisper and my voice sounds shaky, “it’ll stop the bleeding.”

For a moment, he just stares at me, stares at me like I’ve grown a second head. Then he nods rapidly, bringing his hands over mine. When I release the cotton ball, the pad of my index finger is stained red with Hangman’s blood.

I have to walk away then. I have to walk away then without looking at Rooster, without looking at Fanboy and Coyote’s approaching figures. I have to walk away from the chairs and the paper cups and the fire because if I don’t, I will fall apart. The gum holding my joints together will separate and I will crumble piece by piece until I am as good as driftwood here in the sand. 

And when I think I hear Rooster whisper my name, I don’t turn around. 

 ☾ ☽

Bob is sitting beside me on the couch and we are both looking at the blank television before us, at our reflection in the black mirror. I’ve settled my cheek against the shoulder of his sweatshirt and his head is on top of mine. We are both in our socks now and his jacket is hanging by the front door. His hand is wrapped in gauze and bandages, slathered in neosporin. 

Levon by Elton John is playing now--Bob’s pick. 

We haven’t spoken very much to each other, no, not since we walked through the front door and I asked him to sit in a kitchen chair so I could bandage him up good, clean him up. It’s a comfortable silence, but it’s a silence that is just buying time until we have to speak to each other about what happened.

I chew my lip, clearing my throat. 

“Say something,” I finally whisper to Bob. 

I’m not crying anymore and I’m not as drunk anymore, but my throat still aches and my voice still cracks when I speak. The vein across my nose throbs.

“Okay,” Bob starts, sounding pained, “please don’t be mad at me.” 

I shake my head and sink into his shoulder further. I have never been mad at Bob. How could I ever be mad at him? Especially when he was the one that took action--he was the one that dismantled the imbalance of power between me and Hangman. Him--not me, not Rooster. Not Maggie.

“I couldn’t be,” I say, “even if I tried, I couldn’t.” 

He sighs and pushes his glasses back up his nose. 

“He can’t talk to you like that,” he follows softly, “I couldn’t sit there and hear that. You understand that, right?” 

Nodding, I suck in a stuttered breath. My lungs feel like they’re full of cotton. 

“I know you’re tense, too,” I whisper, “the mission. I know.” 

And like it’s too painful to even talk about, Bob just nods, nods his head. We let the mission go unuttered. 

We sit there in the quiet music for a minute. Stevie is sitting at the top of the stairs, blinking at Bob because he’s inexplicably not Rooster. There are candles lit--there are always candles lit. The window-unit is humming quietly beneath the record. 

“Don’t know what game he’s playing at,” Bob mutters and I know, somehow, that he’s talking about Hangman, “asking me about you and if you have a boyfriend, then pulling that stunt.” 

Bob’s fist clench and I bring my hand over his very softly.

“My hero,” I whisper to him and I try very hard to not sound condescending because a part of me, a part of me deep inside, really means it, “but don’t get yourself in trouble.” 

The air changes--it feels like we are on a swing set together, feels like we are subdued mid-air with our mouths open and our hair floating in the atmosphere. We are about to fall backwards rapidly, our bellies dropping, the breath leaving our lungs. 

“You know it’s what she would’ve done.” 

I do know that. If I close my eyes, if I think back to the moment and imagine Maggie there, I can see it. I can see her sitting beside me, can see her leaping out of her chair like a mad woman and scratching the plastic varnish off Hangman’s pretty face. Except I don’t think she would’ve stopped until the other men physically peeled her off him. I imagine her biting him, tearing his skin, pulling his hair. She could be a wild animal when she wanted to be. She would attack a man for me--even if it was another pilot. 

“Yeah, she would’ve. But you’re not her,” I say and I am choking through my words, tears plucking my eyes again, “and I don’t need you to be.” 

It is so hard for me to say that to him. So hard that I have to screw my eyes shut. Because I am telling the truth--he is my best friend. He doesn’t have to be more than that--shouldn’t have to be more than that. No one can fill her shoes and I have to accept that, even if it burns the wound on my chest.

Instead of speaking, either because he has to screw his eyes shut too or maybe because he is hurting or maybe because he misses her as much as I do, he squeezes me. 

“You’re okay?” He asks. 

“I’m embarrassed,” I say, sighing, “shouldn’t have played.” 

“You didn’t know they were going to be gross,” he says, “how could you have known?”

I sniffle. I wipe my face with my hands and my skin is warm under my cold fingers. 

“They’re Navy boys, of course they were going to get gross. Should’ve lied,” I mumble, which is true, “should’ve just pretended like I didn’t know how to play.” 

Bob swallows, squeezes me again. 

“You’re not a liar, though,” he says, “even when you should be.” 

My belly aches and my throat hurts. This feels like the first night in my life that Rooster isn’t here. It’s almost midnight, minutes dragging past us like both their legs are broken, and he’s not here to put our cups in the dishwasher. He’s not here to fold up the blankets on the couch. He’s not here to put his face in my neck. 

“Bob,” I whisper, “I think I might be in love with Rooster.” 

He nods, not stiffening like I thought he would. I don’t know if it’s because he’s my best friend or if it’s because he is just a human being with eyes, but he isn’t surprised. 

“I know, Fee,” he whispers, “everyone knows, I think.” 

It’s the first time he’s used my nickname since I was in rehab. It’s what he calls me when he pities me--it’s what he calls me in place of a pet name. It’s what he calls me when he really wants to call me honey or sweetheart, but never wants to offend me with a silly pet-name.  

I want to fold myself up in an envelope and mail myself to another country. I want to cry again, but I don’t. I just sigh. 

“How?” 

Bob laughs quietly. 

“Don’t worry,” he says, “it’s not you that gives it away. It’s Rooster.” 

Then I see Rooster’s face--his face across the fire as he stared at me. It was so blank, so emotionless, so still. Maybe he was just drunk. Or maybe it was his face when he fell out of love with me. The thought makes me want to rip the velvet couch fabric under my fingernails. 

“Asking me all about you whenever he gets the chance,” Bob starts, softly scratching my arm, “always talking about you, your house--even Stevie. Tells all of us about your records, about your cooking. Not to mention he’s never in his dorm.”

There’s a beat where I’m trying to swallow the bile rising in my throat.

“He let him talk to me like that,” I whisper.

Bob nods, sighing. 

“I know he did,” he whispers, “but don’t get yourself worked up about it. Rooster is a good guy, really. Maybe he just froze.”

A coil of anxiety springs through my belly and up into my chest. I can’t remember how to steady my own heart. I can’t remember how to lessen the rapidity of my pulse. 

“And if tonight ruined it?”

He shakes his head. 

“It’s not that fragile,” he whispers, “give him some credit.” 

Give him some credit. The words are familiar, uttered between Rooster and I in my most vulnerable hour. It makes me think of our flushed naked bodies. It makes me think of telling him what I was so scared of, reminds me of his reluctance to leave me.

“Bob,” I whisper and the honesty is sitting heavy in my gut, “I don’t know how many people have fucked me.”

He stiffens for only a moment and I suck in a breath. 

“Whatever number you think, it’s higher,” I whisper, “it genuinely disgusts me.” 

Bob sits up then and I’m reeling at the sudden loss of contact. He’s looking at me through his glasses very seriously, his hair clean and soft, his cheeks red and his eyebrows knit. 

“Don’t do that,” he commands, “don’t do that to yourself, Fee. You fucked up. Okay. So what? Everyone fucks up.”

My mouth is full of sand again. 

“You picked yourself up, didn’t you? You aren’t stuck, are you?” 

I want to tell him that I do feel stuck sometimes, that sometimes I think that I have lead shoes on, that sometimes I can hardly stand to walk around this world without Maggie here with me. I want to tell him that when he and Rooster aren’t here, I’m dazed. Going through the motions. 

“Listen,” Bob says, softer now, coming closer to me now, “you aren’t as fucked up as you feel. And I know you feel fucked up. But you’re still you--even without her here, you’re still you. You’re still my best friend. You’re still you and you still deserve to live.” 

It feels like I’m coming up for air after living underwater my entire life. Like I have just been sleep-walking, like everything has been a dream. I have had moments of being awake and years of sleepwalking. 

“You’re my best friend,” is all I can muster in return. 

Bob wraps his arms around me and holds me securely. I am not sobbing, but I’m very close to it. My throat is warm, very warm. 

And after a long moment, he pulls away and is smiling sheepishly. He smooths his hand over my hair. 

“Do you happen to know where my phone ended up?” 

So I’m up and laughing, pushing tears from my cheeks like unwanted pests, composing myself. The record spins soundlessly. 

“Flip it,” I command over my shoulder and Bob sallutes. 

I navigate my dark hallways and step into my bedroom, which feels suddenly very cold and very empty. My bed looks very big when it’s made up without Rooster in it. My purse is sitting at the end of the bed, on a throw blanket. 

My phone is singing in the purse, muffled, Elton John crooning beneath first aid baggies and chapstick and sunglasses and packets of gum. I have to dig for a moment before I find my phone. The call ended by then. 

Three Missed Calls from Tramp

Two New Voicemails from Tramp

One Missed Call from Unknown

One New Message from Unknown

Four New Messages from Tramp

I sit on the end of my bed, thumbing the notifications, opening the messages from Rooster first. My heart is beating in my throat. Fuck. Fuck. I’m terrified. 

Tramp: We need to talk

Tramp: I’m sorry I didn’t take you home

Tramp: Please answer 

Tramp: Can I come over? Please. I want to see you. I’m so sorry

I feel like I’m going to vomit. With shaking hands, I click on the first voicemail. Immediately, I know that Rooster was in the Bronco when he left it forty minutes ago. The engine purrs and the wind whips in through the soft top. I can almost see his blonde hair waving in the wind, his cheeks warm and wet, his throat tight. 

“Faye,” he starts and his voice sounds groggy and sad, “I hope you’re not ignoring my calls. I hope you’re--fuck, I hope you’re okay. I’m sorry--I’m really, really sorry. I’m the sorriest I’ve ever been in my life. I don’t know what happened, I think I froze, I think I just…”

There’s a few moments where he doesn’t speak, where all I can hear is static and his deep breaths. He’s driving in complete silence--the radio is not on like it usually is. It’s just him and the Bronco.

“Please call me back.” 

The voicemail cuts off there. I scramble to press the other one, which is new, brand new. It’s only been a few minutes since he left it, all those minutes I was sitting here at the end of the bed. 

“Faye,” he sighs, “it’s okay if you don’t want to talk to me. It’s fine. I just, fuck…I just really want to be with you. Can I come over? You don’t have to say yes, honey, you don’t, but I just. I want to see you. Want to hold you. We need to talk.” 

Wherever he was when he left the voicemail, it’s quieter. Everything he says echoes, too, like he’s standing on tile in a long hallway by himself. He sounds more alone than I think he’s ever sounded before. I almost throw up thinking about him being all by himself. 

Before I call him, which makes me want to barf, I click on the Unknown Number’s message. It’s a short message. No emojis, no anything. Just words and punctuation.

Unknown: Went too far. Didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. Hope Bob’s hand is okay cuz my mouth is fucked. Plz don’t block my #.

Here it is. A message from Hangman, a missed call from Hangman. I reread it for a few minutes, digesting, wondering if I am really truly seeing this or if it’s something I’ve imagined. No, it’s real. It’s real and right in front of me in my hands. 

“Fee, y’alright?” 

I clear my throat before I yell back to Bob, trying to catch my breath. 

“Yeah,” I call, “coming.”

Chapter Text

July 28th, 2019

“Just stay,” I tell Bob, “we can pop popcorn and have a pillow fight.”

He’s smiling again, small and shy, but I know tonight has placed a heaviness on Bob’s chest--one that he will have to carry with him all week. It’s an additional weight, piling on top of the mission, on top of taking care of me, on top of being friends with these people. He doesn’t say any of this, but I know it--from the crinkle between his brows, from the flex in his jaw, from the clench in his fists. 

“I’ll puke if I call him,” I said to Bob after he scrolled through the messages, listened to the voicemails. 

Bob nodded solemnly, sighing. His face was pinched in that Bob way, when he surveyed tough situations, when he had to make a decision. I knew without really knowing that this was the expression his face held when he was in the back of a jet. 

“Then don’t call him, Fee.”

We take turns showering--washing sand out of our hair, brushing grainy sugar out of our molars, pressing lotion into our wind-whipped skin. I give him a pair of sweatpants and they’re too loose around his hips, but too tight around his calves and they’re pink and paint-stained. He wears them with a self-assurance--with a certain reverence.  

We plug our phones in the kitchen at the same time, silencing them, quietly entering an agreement with each other that we will let Saturday pass and open the door for Sunday together--without our phones, without any messages from the squadron.

I go through the motions of the evening without Rooster and pretend like my heart isn’t aching. I load our glasses into the dishwasher and Stevie watches from afar. I fold up the throw blankets, I turn the record player off and put away the Elton John vinyl. I put bedding on the couch for Bob and check his bandages a final time before I tuck him in with cotton sheets and wool blankets. I turn all the lights off, but leave the lamp by the couch on so the room is lit with a slight orange glow. I don’t put another vinyl on the record player--don’t want to bother Bob. Maybe just knowing I’m not alone in the house, maybe just Bob being just down the hall, will ward off the nightmares.

I am pretending, of course, that I am okay without Rooster here. I am still pretending that his face, his blank stare, isn’t glistening behind my eyes each time I blink. Pretending like I won’t have my silent dreams tonight--about Maggie, about Rooster, about Hangman. 

Sitting on the edge of the couch, I absently let my fingers skim the surface of Bob’s bandages, just buying myself time before I have to mosy into that empty, empty bedroom of mine and try to sleep in the bed that’s been so full of Rooster lately. Fuck, I know his pillow will fucking stink of him. The cologne made of skin and black pepper and jet fuel and soap. 

Bob is watching me with his eyebrow slightly furrowed, squished into his goose-down pillow. 

“What are you gonna do?” he whispers. 

I smile, not meeting his eyes. What am I gonna do? 

“I don’t know,” I whisper, “my feelings are hurt.”

Bob nods. 

“Valid,” he breathes, “what am I gonna do?” 

I let my entire hand fall over Bob’s. Mine is warm and soft and so is his--we are both lotioned and smell of ginger soap and willow-bark lotion. I keep my grip there and softly stroke the top of his hand--the way Rooster strokes mine, always in little circles like he’s trying to rub a small stain out of my skin. My throat fucking hurts. 

“Technically,” I whisper, “Hangman’s your bitch now, right?” 

Bob cracks a grin and a tiny bit of my shame, a tiny bit of my pain, a tiny bit of my humiliation flees. He has taken a few ounces off the massive weight on my chest with that toothy grin. 

He ducks to catch my gaze and I finally bring my eyes to his. His glasses are falling down his nose, kind of crooked, but his eyes are very clear and kind. He nods, furrowing his brow just slightly. 

“Everything will be better in the morning,” I whisper to him, willing my flat mouth to smile, “nothing bad can happen on a Sunday, right?” 

Bob leans over and knocks on the wooden coffee table and I follow suit quickly. 

“Goodnight, Fee,” he whispers.

Aching, I want to tell him that I’m suddenly too scared to walk down the hallway to my room. Let me sleep on the couch with you, Bob. I’ll be good. I won’t snore and I won’t take all the blankets. I won’t even move. It’ll just be for tonight. I won’t even ask you for what I really want--which is for your body to lay on top of mine and weigh me down to the sofa. Don’t let me float away. 

“Night, Bobby.”

I put my lead shoes on before I walk down the hallway and try very hard to rub the tingle out of my nose. But my eyes are watering and I am holding onto the walls even though I could live in my house in total darkness and not so much as bump into a dresser or trip on a doorstop. 

The door--I keep it open like I always do. But when I get into my bed and the sheets are frigid and make my skin goose, when I don’t bother lighting a candle, when I can’t make myself scoot away from my side of the bed--I wish the door was closed so I could cry, could mourn privately. 

My bed feels like it’s made of sin. My linens feel unholy. My pillows feel impious. 

So I just lay here, looking up at my ceiling, thinking of all the times before when I have looked up. I think of Rooster’s head between my legs, of his stark body flushed as he followed me to the shower when I pretended like he didn’t really know me. For just a second, just one second, I close my eyes and think I’ll be able to sleep like this; in my cold bed that feels dirty despite being sunbleached, with these thoughts of Rooster’s endless skin, with my Rooster-scented pillow just a few inches from my face, with hot tears boiling the skin on my cheeks. 

Then I think about his faltering smile, about the shake in his voice when he whispered my name. I think about what the back of my head looked like to him. Then I’ve been jolted awake with a thunderous clap of anxiety.

It’s 3:39 AM when I sit up and squint in the dark, my heart hammering in my chest. Fuck. 

Maggie would have loved Rooster. I have thought this before, yes, but now as I lie here and blink at my ceiling in my bed that is too big, I think it again. Maggie with her chipped teeth and blonde freckles and sweet laugh--she really, really would have loved Rooster. She would tease him relentlessly, which is what she always did to people she loved, and he would meet her halfway. I think they would have battled for my attention, tugging on my arms, kissing my cheeks. I think she would have pretended to be grossed out when he kissed me, but at the end of the day, she would’ve squeezed his shoulder and told him that she was happy he was a part of my life.  

I can see her at our wedding, at first covertly wiping her tears and smiling pretty for pictures, but then coming undone after a few shots of gin. I think she would have cried during her speech, telling me how much she loved me, telling Rooster that she loved him almost just as much. Later, though, when she throbbed with a headache she would have pretended like she didn’t remember saying that at all. I think when we had children, she would have been the first one to hold our baby. I think she would weep when she held my first son or first daughter and Rooster would put his hands on her shoulders as she cradled their tiny head. 

I think I know even what she would have said to him. 

“Thank God,” she would say through her tears, “he looks just like Faye.”

But sitting here, blinking up at my ceiling, I know that it is all over. There will be no wedding and no children. There will be no family dinners, no teasing, no connection. If not because Maggie is dead and gone--then because my relationship with Rooster is withering every moment that passes. 

And that is how the night drags on and on until the white morning light streams in through the window. My pillows are drenched in tears by then. 

My muscles sting when I step out of bed--that dull sting after a fitful night’s rest, when the day sprawls out before me and I know I have to mull through it carefully, softly, tiredly. I get ready in silence, complete silence. There is a distinct sense that I am simply going through the motions--everything is mechanical. 

Bob is still sleeping on the couch when I sneak into the kitchen to grab my phone off the charger. I won’t look at the notifications, quickly clear every single one before I plug headphones in. Linger by The Cranberries starts as I pour food into Stevie’s bowl.

I scrawl a quick note to Bob and leave it on the fridge in my dark shorthand. 

Old habits die hard--farmer’s market run. Be back soon. Breakfast? Kisses, Fee  

So when I walk out the front door with my face washed and a denim jacket shrugged over my shoulders, when I lock the front door behind me with Bob still slumbering on the sofa and a tote bag tucked in my arm, when I feel the early morning chill and the sporadic pockets of heat from the sun--I am stuck still in my place because the Bronco is pulling into my driveway, bouncing over the curb just as I turn to face the morning. 

I think we see each other at the same time, the exact moment that Rooster throws the shift into park and reaches for the door handle. I can’t move, not even a breath can expand my chest. He is still, too, and his undereyes are littered with purple veins. 

You know I’m such a fool for you / You got me wrapped around your finger / Do you have to let it linger?

When he steps out of the car, not breaking his gaze, I almost fall onto my brick porch. I almost just lay myself out there under the canopy of shade, almost let my limbs dismember, almost just lie back and die. 

But instead, I let my hands drop to my thighs.

I can see him struggle to swallow, even from right here. He’s still wearing his UVA sweatshirt and jeans--he hasn’t changed. His eyes are rimmed with crimson and his face is somehow flushed and flaxen at the same time. His curls, which usually look somewhat managed, are messy. Truly messy--like he just ran his hands through his hair all night then came on over to my house. 

The morning light is that precious pale blue, baby blue. And before I can stop myself I think that this shade of blue--so soft and fresh--would be the color I would paint our baby’s walls. Oh, no. Fuck. 

He’s just looking up at me, his lips pulled down, his eyes glassy. I wonder what I look like to him, standing on my porch with headphones in, with my hair pulled back, with my cheeks puffy and pink. Do I look as ugly as I felt last night? Does he think I’m ugly now that he knows?

His mouth moves, but my music is too loud. I rip a headphone out and he staggers in place, like I’ve just executed him, like I’ve shot an arrow through his gut. 

There are birds singing in the eucalyptus trees in my lawn. Somewhere down the street, someone is mowing their grass. Inside, I know Bob is sleeping silently. I know Stevie is quietly crunching her dry food. The Cranberries are still playing through my headphones, even though only one of them is plugged into my head. My mom loves The Cranberries. 

He’s so tall, so broad--but right now his shoulders are pulled together and his feet look unsteady on the ground where they stand. He’s thinking about coming closer to me and I really, really don’t know what I want. 

I think I could throw up if he said one word to me--if he came here to break it off with me or came here to say sorry or if he came here to cry into my neck again, to give me one last little piece before he never speaks to me again. But there is also our invisible string, the one that is slacked as its ever been right now--and I want it to be slacking because we are so close that there’s no endings and no beginnings between my body and his. Not because we’re too far apart. 

I want him to lay in my bed. I want him to wear my oven mitts and pull bread out of my oven. I want to taste his tears on my tongue. I want to swallow him whole and I want to be swallowed whole. 

“Hi,” I whisper to him, voice just loud enough for me to hear over my music. 

He hears me, though.

“Hey,” he chokes back to me. 

A ray of sun punctures a cotton cloud and kisses the stairs before me, like its guiding me down, like its guiding me to him. I don’t move, though. Can’t move. 

I take my other headphone out and let my arms hang limp beside me. My belly hurts. Everything hurts--even my hair, even my fingernails. I’m so tired, too--can feel my eyes drooping and my spine curving. 

“Can I come in?” 

His vulnerability feels like a punch in the gut. 

I feel myself shaking my head before I can really even process what I’m saying no to. 

“Bob’s sleeping in the living room,” I say quietly, “don’t want to wake him.”

Rooster nods, eyes falling to the tennis shoes on my feet. He sniffles, eyes lingering there for a few moments. I think he’s trying to figure out what he’s going to say to me--what he’s going to say when he calls this whole thing off, when he tells me this was all a mistake.  

“Come sit on my porch,” I whisper finally.

And it takes less than one minute for him to cross the driveway, climb the steps and stop on the stair just below me.

He smells like he’s been crying. I would die if I knew he’d been crying alone in his dorm, on his terrible twin-sized mattress.

“We should talk,” he says, like I don’t already know this. 

“Okay,” I say. 

He’s so close--so achingly close to me and I know that I shouldn’t touch him. I know that his skin beneath my palms, beneath my lips will make the ache widen. I know that everything will hurt more when he finally tells me that he’s pulling away, turning his cheek. But I know that it would feel good--for a few, fleeting moments--it would feel perfect. I would be at peace. Bliss. I will feel bliss if I touch him. 

So I don’t do that--don’t reach for him. 

Before we can sit down, he angles his face towards mine and his cheeks are reddening by the minute despite the chill in the early morning air. He sniffles again and his eyes are open so widely, so truthfully that I reach out and touch the railing to steady myself, to plant myself here. 

Even his mustache looks messy when I’m this close to him--untrimmed, untamed.

Here it is, this tiny bit of space between us, but it feels like much more than one step. It feels like he is on one side of a crowded room and I’m on the other. It feels like we are on separate peaks of the same mountain, like we have to yell to hear each other and the air is thin. Between us, in this small space, there is a valley of uncertainty. My history that I have not told him--the people that have fucked me, the baby that didn’t stay, the hours I spent with my sister’s corpse--lies here like jagged rocks. His silence is vast, overcasting every single bit of centimeter between us. 

Rooster let him speak to me like that. And I can’t stop thinking about his fucking face.

I almost want to tell him that I can’t talk now. I can’t talk right now because I am embarrassed to even be in his gaze. I can’t talk now because I want to be by myself, mourning what has somehow never begun yet felt never-ending, felt timeless. I can’t talk because my throat is caked with tears and dried bile. 

“Faye,” he says, his voice deep and gravelly. 

My name on his tongue--it makes something break down inside me. I want to throw my arms around his shoulders and breathe in his dirty hair and his salty skin and tell him that nothing else matters. I want to wrap my legs around his hips and beg him to just fucking hold me, just for one more minute. One last time. 

“Don’t,” I whisper, blinking at the sky, “I won’t make you say it.”

I hold my hand up to him weakly, heart racing. I can’t look at him.

“What do you think I’m going to say?”

His voice is flat--quiet. 

He’s being too gentle with me. If he ends it, I want it to be big and loud. I want him to sever our string and vow to never look at my face again. That is the only way I could live without him, the only way I could propel myself forward in this life--if I knew that there was no chance of us reconciling.

I hate that I know him. That I know that he could never end things between us like that. That he would never raise his voice, his hand. Even if I repulsed him--even if I had hurt him more than anyone else in the entire world--he would never hate me. The same way that I would never, could never, hate him. 

When I scoff, I sound bitter. Bitter and angry, hateful. 

“No harm, no foul,” I whisper and it really is breaking me, making my face pull together in that stupid anguished expression that just happens when I cry, “we can just be friends.”

I’m lying. I am lying through my teeth and to him. We could never be friends--not after this. Not after he’s been the only person in the world to make me cum. Not when he’s the only face I want to see at the end of any day, every day. Not when he’s set my kitchen table and bought my favorite Prosecco. 

No. We couldn’t be friends. But it feels like the right thing to say. 

My hand is still in the air between us, in all that empty air, and I have never felt uglier in my life. My thighs ache. I screw my eyes closed, wishing things were different, trying to remember what life was like before Rooster was here. 

Then he does it. He wraps his fingers around my wrist and brings his mouth to the sacred skin of my palm. His breath is hot, very hot, when he lets his lips ghost over the skin. It feels holy when he kisses the spot in the middle of my open hand. The ugliness I feel--that vapid ugliness--lessens suddenly.

“Don’t say that,” he breathes against me and he doesn’t sound flat and quiet--he sounds desperate, “please don’t say that, baby.” 

He kisses my palm once, twice more before I can even look at him. 

I think this is a dream--I think I finally fell asleep in my sacreligious bed. I think I am dreaming that he’s here in the pocket of sunshine, I think I am dreaming about his lips against me. I think I will wake up sweating and smell pennies and instead of being here with him, my face will have inadvertently moved into his pillow. I got confused, smelled his scent so thick and strong, and dreamed him here. When I wake up, I will have to lay on the floor beside Bob and stare at the ceiling until he wakes up--just to hear someone else breathing. 

But then I see him and he is opaque--he’s sturdy, real. He is stroking my hand with a rapidity I have never seen him possess. It very nearly hurts, stings. 

“Bradley,” I manage to choke. 

What I mean by this is: please love me. Forgive everything I did before I saw you for the first time. Hold me. Don’t let me go. 

The world feels quiet when he sinks, lowering his denim-clad knees to the cold brick stairs, keeping my hand in his, keeping his eyes on mine. He’s looking up at me and his face looks like the word please. My hand is trembling in his, my fingers crisp. 

He swallows hard.  

“I’m sorry,” he says clearly, loudly, still desperate, “I’m so sorry, Faye.” 

I bite my lip so hard that I taste blood. 

I’m blinking at the sky, which is growing bluer and bluer each moment that passes. There is a lump lodged in my throat so uncomfortably that I can’t even take a deep breath. 

“Baby,” Rooster whispers, “look at me, please. Look at me.” 

I shake my head. I’m woozy. 

“Can’t,” I whisper, “I can’t.” 

I can’t because I still feel mildly gruesome. I can still feel everyone’s curious gaze, the tense air when everyone was gaslighting themselves into thinking they were too drunk to understand what was happening, can still feel Hangman’s hot blood on my pointer finger. 

“Please,” he says and he is begging me, begging me.

“I didn’t want you to know any of it,” I whisper, “not yet. I feel so disgusting.” 

 I think of Bob’s words last night, the ones he bit at me softly: “Listen, you aren’t as fucked up as you feel. And I know you feel fucked up. But you’re still you--even without her here, you’re still you. You’re still my best friend. You’re still you and you still deserve to live.” 

“I’m sorry,” Rooster repeats, “I’m sorry I just sat there.” 

He did do that. He just sat there. He sat there while I was burned alive in front of his friends, his fellow aviators. I was burned alive in front of the people that are supposed to consider themselves my equals. What am I supposed to do with that? 

Sticky words are slithering up my throat once more and I can’t cover my mouth, can’t turn back around and go inside and lock the door behind me. Can’t leave him when he’s on his knees on my stairs. 

“Before you can decide this,” I say and I still can’t look at him as I gesture between us, “I’ll just get it over with, okay? I’ll just fucking say everything.” 

Now my head is so heavy that it falls, hangs down. I stare down at my tennis shoes--he is a glimmering mirage in my peripheral vision. And before he can say anything at all, I start talking--the words staining my lips bright red.

“I did some really fucked up stuff when I was high. I would let anyone fuck me. It didn’t matter. Old men, girls, middle-aged women, couples, college students. It didn’t matter,” I say, my voice tinging on broken, “Ten months. Anyone who would--did.”

I wipe my hand over my face and my own fingers feel foreign--like the fingers on an ice sculpture. I’m melting. 

“But it really wasn’t about the sex ever. It was about,” I heave a breath and my throat feels like its closing, “being close to another human. It was about those moments after when they would stay until I fell asleep or when I would spend the night in their beds. It was fucking pathetic.”

I’m back there now--back to the ten months of being full. I can feel the strange hands and the strange bodies against mine. It always felt like I had my eyes closed, like I was in limbo, like I wasn’t really there. 

I was on the outside looking in--looking at myself as her skull was pounded against a headboard with a man four times her size between her legs. Looking at myself as her face was pushed into a springy mattress that smelled like cigar smoke and armpit. Looking at myself as she was handed a wad of twenties from a very confused older gentleman, one that couldn’t stay hard for her, one that muttered something about a wife back home. 

“I never used protection. It wasn’t just that I was fucked up on pills, but I just didn’t care. And then one day in August, I had a terrible sore throat. Bob called me, heard my voice, and made an appointment for me at the clinic on base. So I went in and it was the first time I’d been on base since Maggie died,” I am whispering now, whispering so softly to Rooster, “and they told me I had syphilis. And that I was pregnant.” 

Rooster is staring up at me, I can feel it--his eyes are warmer than the sun. He stiffens, but does not release my hand. 

I find his eyes. I’m crying. 

“I was pregnant and alone then I was not pregnant and in rehab on my twenty-fifth birthday,” I say, “and I don’t know if you want to know or if you’d ask, but no, I don’t know who the father was. No way of knowing. Revolving door and all. And I’m clean. Callibate since August 8th, 2017.”

He’s silent--again. He’s just looking up at me, his mouth pulled into a frown and his eyes big and brown and sad. He’s trying to read my face and I’m trying to read his--neither attempt is fruitful. 

It makes me want to lay down on the grass and decompose. It makes me want to go back inside and close every blind. It makes me want to shake Bob awake and ask for him to hold me. But I am standing here with Rooster holding my hand still, his eyes watery. He’s on his knees still. 

It’s when my eyes flutter shut that he finally moves--moves to wrap his arms around my waist. His head sinks into my belly as he secures me against him. His face is warm and wet and he’s panting as he hugs me to him. 

“I wish I had known you then,” he says, “I would’ve taken care of you.” 

That’s all there is to it--whatever edge I thought we were teetering on, we aren’t anymore. We are in the middle of a solid-oak table and the floor below us is made of feathers and cotton batting. 

He’s game. He knows the ugliest things about me and here he is--peppering kisses across my hips and my belly. I’m so shocked, my heart sinking down from my throat and back into my chest, that it takes me a moment to let my hands fall in his hair. 

“I don’t care, Faye,” he says, muffled by my jacket, “I’m all in. I won’t let you down again, baby, I promise. Forgive me, please. Please.”

If Maggie was here, if she had nursed my aching heart through the night, she would have told me to keep him close. She would have told me to open my heart and let him inside. She would have told me to fall in love whenever, wherever. 

And how could I look at him on his knees on my porch at seven twenty-two on a Sunday morning, his hair dirty and his clothes crumpled, and not forgive him? 

“Forgiven,” I whisper, my voice crumbling, “all the way.”

  ☾ ☽

All the windows are open. A breeze floats inside my home from the approaching California dusk, a deep blue-purple fading the sky slowly. The sun is being swallowed by the ocean and lavender clouds mull across the sky aimlessly. 

The living room smells alive--like it’s living and breathing. The air is fresh and cool and carries the scent of freshly cut grass and the white yarrow flowers that grow in abundance in my backyard. All the lights are off here, in the living room, and I’ve lit a few sweet-smelling candles. The TV is off and the record player is on.  

Blue by Joni Mitchell, which is a record I consider sacred, is spinning. This Flight Tonight is playing now. Both my copies of the album are old--original pressings--which my father had gifted to me and Maggie when we moved to California. 

“Quintessential in any California home,” my father had told us the night before we departed, a sad smile tugging at his lips, “but don’t forget your old folks in the Midwest.”

You got the touch so gentle and sweet / But you've got that look so critical / Now I can't talk to you baby / I get so weak

 Rooster is behind the kitchen door, pouring us glasses of prosecco. I know that Stevie is in the kitchen with him now, too, mewling and preening for any glance he will throw her way. And I can’t see him but I know that he is smiling. He has been smiling all day, a sweet kind of smile, that relieved kind of smile when things fell apart but then came back together. The smile of someone that has been forgiven thoroughly. 

I did let him inside my house. 

We tip-toed past Bob’s sleeping figure, which was very polite and quiet even as tired as he was. Stevie followed Rooster to the bedroom and made sure to perch herself on the bed before I quietly closed the door. 

I sat on the bed, muscles screaming, while he undressed and started the shower. He stood in the doorway of the bathroom for a moment, naked before me, and just watched me watch him. He was a never-ending plane of beauty. I thought of the first time I’d seen him naked, which was in that very bathroom, when I had decided that he had been sculpted out of clay. He was the kind of beautiful that knocked the air right out of my lungs--it made me long for an oxygen mask, an inhaler. 

“You gonna be here when I get out?” He’d asked. 

Maybe he was joking on the surface--with that slight smile and those crinkles beside his eyes, but beneath it, there was a sincerity. An earnest sincerity, one that was new to us--to this. 

I nodded softly, gesturing to the bed. 

“Right here,” I promised. 

And without me having to ask him, he left the bathroom door open while he showered. 

That’s when I laid down--when he hummed lowly to himself beneath the sound of running water slapping the tiles, when steam plumed and rose to the ceiling and fogged the mirrors. It was those sounds, those simple sounds, that I had missed so badly. Sounds no record player could imitate, sounds no record player could fill the void of. Little human sounds. Even if they were minuscule, even if they were fleeting--they were here now.  

I woke up four hours later--I was in the exact spot I’d fallen asleep in, my denim jacket wrapped around my frame, my hair still clipped back, still facing the open bathroom door. But my shoes had been taken off and set beside the bed and a wool blanket was pulled over me. Golden late-morning sunlight was streaming into the bedroom by then. 

When I walked into the living room, it was empty. The lights were off, but the curtains were pinned back so the room was bright and clear. Stevie was not perched on her loyal ottoman and that’s how I knew Rooster was still home--I knew she must’ve been trailing after him wherever he was. 

Pushing through the kitchen door, I was immediately immersed in the remnants of a late breakfast. The sweet scent of confectioner sugar and maple syrup sweetly flooded the air, but the kitchen looked almost entirely clean save a mixing bowl in the sink and a copper pan on the stove. 

“Hey,” Bob said, suddenly appearing in the back door, holding an empty plate and half-drunk juice glass, “sleepy-head.” 

Bob was dressed in my clothing still, but his hair was combed and his cheeks were lively again instead of the pale white-rice color they possessed the night before. He was smiling at me and it felt like the first time I’d seen him happy since the bonfire. 

“Deeply,” I said softly, my voice groggy, “pancakes?”

Bob glanced at his empty plate then nodded to the microwave. 

“We made you a plate,” he said, “g’head, I’ll finish cleaning up in here. He’s out back.”

I was the kind of discombobulated I always felt after taking long naps, which was precisely why I never took naps. I was blinking, still trying to get my bearings, and I could feel the heat of the pillows against my cheeks still. 

Bob was whistling, smiling a tight-lipped smile at me when he crossed the kitchen and grabbed the copper pan from behind me. 

“Told you everything would be okay,” Bob said quietly, glancing at me from the corner of his eyes, “I’d never lie to you.” 

My head was still heavy with sleep, my chest weighted with the sweet relief of the morning. I was so glad, suddenly, that it had not been a dream.

Bob handed me my plate and gently nudged me towards the door before settling in at the sink, turning the faucet on and plugging the drain. 

Rooster was sitting on my brick patio, under the shade of my canopy, sipping coffee I knew had too much sugar and cream. He was looking out across the backyard at the pockets of wildflowers that sprouted along the fenceline. His face was shining beneath the sun, eyes still tired even if the rest of his place was slack. He looked the most tired I had ever seen him--and maybe the most beautiful. He was wearing my father’s Steely Dan shirt again. When I stepped closer to him, my knees feeling weak and my throat throbbing, I saw Stevie lying on her back beside his chair--sprawled out in the sun.

He didn’t notice me until I sat my plate beside his and settled into the chair beside him. He grinned at me, softening impossibly. I was too tired, too happy, too sad, too anxious, too elated to say anything yet. I smiled softly, the muscles in my face aching enormously. 

He was surveying my face, eyes falling from my rust-colored cheeks to my fluttering lashes. Maybe he thought that last night had physically maimed me.

Wordlessly, he watched me cut into the pancakes, smiling. 

“Missed you,” he whispered, his voice strained. 

I knew then that he hadn’t just meant during my nap. That when he came out of the shower and saw me sleeping in my outside clothes, my shoes still on and my hair still clipped, he ached. He ached the same way I would have ached for him if I’d seen him curled up there. He didn’t mean that he had only missed me then, no--he had missed me long and hard during the night, the way I’d missed him.

“Don’t even get me started,” I whispered back, blinking my dry eyes. 

He reached out then, swiping a gentle thumb across my cheek. And just that, just his hand on my face and holding my skin there, was enough to make me pause. I let my cutlery fall to my plate where it clattered. I let my head dip into his palm. I let my eyes fall shut one more time. I sat beneath the shade but still felt the heat, the sweetness, of the sun. I felt love for him even without me saying it--even without him saying it.

After just a few moments of that, a few moments where all I could hear was the sound of my soft breaths and Bob distantly dipping his hands in sudsy water, I knew that whatever was going to happen I was so glad to have had his love here with me. Even if it was only for now. Even if his time here was transient. 

“Pillow lines on your cheek,” he chuckled, running his fingers along them. 

That was when I opened my eyes and drank him in again. I kissed his hand as it fell from my cheek and shrugged, resuming my eating. 

“Finally got some sleep,” I’d simply said. 

He nodded soberly. 

“Bob’s good company,” he said, “we have a lot in common.” 

I raised my brow and Rooster sat back, a grin spreading across his features. He took a sip from his mug and sighed loudly, winking. 

“You.” 

I am lying on the couch now, tired down deep in my bones, very still. My eyes are heavy and I don’t know if it is because of all the tears I’ve shed or because I am an adult woman running on a four hour nap and two cups of black coffee. How would one know?

“Hungry?” Rooster called behind the kitchen door. 

“No,” I answered, “still full.” 

Still full. Yes, yes. Still full. 

When he pushes through the kitchen door, lit by the edison bulbs glowing yellow in my kitchen, he grins at me very sweetly. He holds the kitchen door open for another moment after he’s passed through and Stevie meanders out behind him, sauntering. 

“Bitch,” I whisper to her, shaking my head. 

He lets the door fall shut before he sets one of the glasses on the table, handing me the other one. I take it but I’m too tired to sit up. So I just hold it, watching the bubbles race towards the top. 

“I was thinking,” Rooster says as he sits on the edge of the couch, lifting my head so it rests on his thighs. His fingers find my hair and it is taking everything in my body to not drift off to sleep now. 

“Uh-oh,” I whisper and he pinches me and it feels so good to be here. 

“Maybe we could ride together,” he says quietly, and I can feel the breath that is stuck in his lungs, “you know, to work.” 

I blink. Riding together to work, abstractly, seems very docile. People carpool, right? But after Saturday night, after today, what would people think? Would Admiral Simpson hear word that I am canoodling with a certain pilot and think I’m spiraling again? Will it make Hangman even more relentless--?

“Shh,” Rooster whispers. 

His finger, his sweet familiar finger, smooths that familiar wrinkle between my brows softly. He lets it rest there, softly stroking my skin.

How does he know me so intrinsically? How does he pinpoint every bit of my concern and smooth it out as easily as he smooths the wrinkle of my brow?And suddenly, I am overwhelmed with all this love in my body for him. I want to kiss every inch of him, want him to fall to his knees and attach himself to me again, want to marry him right here in this living room with a Van Morrison record spinning. 

“Mine or yours,” it’s all I can manage to whisper, to choke up.

He’s chuckling, I’m sputtering out something that resembles a laugh. I want this to stay, stay right here on my couch, more than anything. I turn so my nose is against his pantleg, and I keep my face there, just smelling him and trying to remember this exact moment. This moment right now, on the last Sunday before the mission, when I want to tell him that I love him. When I want to tell him that if my sister was alive, she would love him relentlessly. I want to tell him that when we have children, I will miss her more than anything, that when we get married I will weep. But I say nothing, just inhale his scent, just feel his body here and listen to all the little noises he makes. 

Star bright, star bright / You got the lovin' that I like, all right

Chapter Text

July 29th, 2019

The morning feels short. From the moment Rooster and I are awake we are helping each other: kissing each other’s closed lips and pulling the other out of bed, brushing out teeth at the same time but taking turns spitting into the basin. 

I dress myself in the dark, slipping into a cold pair of slacks and a cotton shirt that will hardly touch my skin--it’s supposed to be a scorcher today. And I leave Rooster in the bedroom, belting his pants, to start the coffee maker. It all feels very routine, very easy. 

He pours the coffee and I feed Stevie. The house was very dark, very quiet. 

In the foyer, as I am slipping into my block-heeled mules, Rooster leans against the doorway and watches me. His eyes are gleaming in the morning light, which is only just bright enough for us to see each other. His mouth is pink and clean and smooth. 

“What?” I whisper to him.

He exhales softly--his cotton tee ripples with his breath. He pulls his eyebrows together as he watches me, shaking his head just slightly. 

“I’m still sorry,” he says and his voice is not shy and quiet--it is clear and steady, “that I froze. That I didn’t know what to do.”

 He says this like I haven’t already forgiven every single bit of him--like we didn’t sleep in the same bed last night, like he didn’t wake me up by pressing kisses against my throat and slamming his hand down on my alarm. He says this like we did not shower together last night, holding each other under a stream of boiling water. He says this like he hasn’t already said it before. 

“Bob handled it,” I say, just as clear and steady, except I’m smiling just slightly. 

His eyes fall from mine to the middle of my chest. He stares there for a long moment, still just slightly shaking his head, his eyes untrained.

“You would’ve said something if it was me he was pounding into,” he says, pulling his arms to cross over his chest. 

I think of when Hangman brought up Goose--when they almost fought, when Hangman stalked out like a tomcat and had the audacity to wink at me. But I say nothing to Rooster. He is still staring at my chest, right where my heart is beating, when I cross the small space between us. Tenderly, I put my hands on his cheeks and hold him for a moment. I savor it--savor his warmth beneath me.  

“C’mon,” I whisper, smiling, “it’s take-your-girlfriend-to-work day. Can’t be late.” 

And then he brings his eyes to mine and a smile is dominating his face, eating his pretty pink mouth. I smooth my thumbs over his mustache and grow woozy just feeling it under the pads of my fingers. 

“Girlfriend, huh?” 

I bite my lip, nodding, pretending like my heart isn’t about to fall out of my body. 

“Maybe,” I say, still smiling, “unless you’ve had a change of heart--ow!”

He releases the skin of my hip from between his two fingers and now we’re both laughing, my mouth held open in mock-astoundment. He smooths his hand over my hip where he pinched even though he didn’t truly hurt me, would never, could never. 

My heart pulses because we have these things between us that are only ours. He pinches when I tease, I kiss his palms when he’s sweet, he smoothes the crease between my brows when I’m thinking too hard, and I take little pieces of his anger when his arms are full. Yes, these are only ours, him and mine. It makes my chest ache with want to be able to share these things with someone again, these small little actions that feel so minute and so gargantuan at the same time. 

“Kiss me, baby,” he says, crooning. 

And when we do kiss, he holds my body close to his, presses every one of my hills against every one of his valleys. I am throbbing entirely, tangling my hands in the ungelled parts of his hair, pouring every ounce of affection into his mouth and out of mine.

When he pulls back, still pressed tightly against me, he looks down at me with that silly loved-up expression that makes my knees weak. He pushes my hair behind my ears, kisses both of my temples. 

“Ohhh,” he sighs, still crooning just a little bit in that knucklehead way, “that feels good.”

It makes my chest tingle. Even in the darkness, even that early in the morning, he is so hauntingly beautiful. He was like a statue, standing tall and proud and broad, right here in my entryway. Something that could hold my coat at the end of a long day, but also something I want to see every time I come in and out of that door.

“That might’ve been a dealbreaker for me--hey!”

Then he’s all over me, pinching my hips and grabbing my arms and kissing my face. It’s good--just thoroughly, intrinsically good. We could stay right here and be good forever. 

The rising sun is lemon yellow, feeble and pale, against the cornflower-blue sky. It is a cloudless day and I sit in the middle of the bench on our first drive to work together, in the same car. 

And when we walk into the building together, our skin goosing under the fluorescents because of the frigid air conditioning, we have one more moment of aloneness before the building becomes crowded. I am holding the leather strap on my shoulder, biting a grin, and he has his hands on his hips. It is the moment right before I go left and he goes right. 

“See you in there,” I smile. 

He nods. I know he wants to kiss me again. 

“Looking forward to it,” he returns, pretending to be all sorts of casual, his jaw flexed, his eyes fixed on mine, “Lieutenant Ledger.” 

It is quiet when I walk into the lounge after lunch. The country radio station Hangman always tunes into is playing very lowly on the portable radio beside him, on the couch where he’s lounging. It’s playing so lowly that I can’t even make out what song is on, even as I set my bag down on one of the counters. The oscillating fan is on and whirring discreetly in the corner, sending sporadic wafts of cool air around the stuffy room. The sun is pouring in, golden as ever before, shimmering against the bleached tiles. 

My heels are the loudest sound in the room--maybe even the entire hallway.

Hangman glances up through his lashes at first--and I know it’s because he wants to make sure whoever just came in is worth turning his face for--then turns slightly on the couch to behold me unloading my bag. His face is still one of the most handsome ones I’ve ever seen--smooth and tan, but with just enough fine lines to make him seem real. His lip, though--his lip is swollen slightly and bruised the color of a pale plum. It’s scabbed over by now, just a line of red where his lip broke. 

Bob really got him good. It makes me want to hug Bob, look at his knuckles again. I’m still in mild disbelief that Bob even knew how to hold his fist, let alone the fact that he sprang into the action so suddenly and completely. Maggie would’ve bought him a beer for what he did to Hangman’s pretty mouth.  

“Clover,” Hangman nods and for once, his voice isn’t dripping with that melodramatic gallant tone. 

He sounds, at least I think, normal.

“Lieutenant,” I greet.

It’s the first time I’ve spoken to him since the bonfire, since he said what he said and did what he did. My voice sounds firm, but not unfriendly.

“No ‘Bagman’?” he asks softly before he sighs, “can’t tell if that’s better or worse.”

Everyone is calling him Bagman again--and they’re not being subtle about it. Politely, I give a single dry chuckle. Just one hah. Just one forceful exhale through my nose. He doesn’t turn away from me, even when I look back to the desk, setting my pens and highlighters beside my dictionary. 

His messages--I still haven’t responded to any of them. After the initial text, the one Rooster read with a sneer, only one more was sent. He didn’t try to call again and leave a voicemail, no, no. Just one more five-word message. 

Do you hate me now?

It was sent after Rooster and I had already showered and gone to bed, when we were already sleeping together, when I was praising a higher power for the hunk of man drooling into my naked neck and being lulled to sleep by his loud, heavy breathing. 

This is to say that it was sent late--too late for someone who has to be on base as early as he does. I imagine that maybe he laid awake and replayed the sequence in his head. Maybe he keeps having nightmares about it. Maybe he keeps thinking back to just one thing, one small part of it. Maybe the small part he incessantly thinks about is the blistering, inadvertent tears on my face when I staunched his wound. Maybe it’s my silence that he thinks about, the way I stared at him doe-eyed and slack-jawed as he mouthed off to me. Maybe, and I think this is the most likely scenario, he keeps finding himself awake thinking about the one moment we shared just before he did what he did; when he didn’t draw attention to me, when there was a secret between us, when he was just watching me and I was just watching him. 

Or maybe his ego is so inflated that he just can’t stand to be hated by anyone. This, though--this feels less likely.  

I know his shoulders are stiff now--I know he’s tense. I wish that I could just turn around and tell him to move on--that there are more important things to focus on other than the shitty things he said to me. It’s true, at least partly. When I think about what he said, or how he looked at me, it makes my throat tighten and alarm bells cry inside my skull. When I think about the pile of empty cans at his feet or the way he leaned forward to come close to me or the way he bit his words at me before I pressed cotton to his lips--it makes me want to draw into myself. 

I am still somehow embarrassed by what he did, what he said. 

“Everyone thinks Hangman’s the asshole,” Bob had told me during our lunch break, “so don’t fret.”

I was eating an apple then, sitting with him in the cafeteria at a table in the corner. We were sitting by ourselves, both of us propping our feet in empty chairs. I was strategically eating half of the apple in hopes he would grade me a granola bar.

I nodded. 

It was so like Bob to find that out, perusing conversations stealthily until he attained the general consensus. It was so like Bob to synthesize the information with his own free will and then relay it to me like it was his genuine job. 

“Doesn’t everyone always think he’s the asshole?” 

Bob, who was finishing his salad, pushed his glasses back up his nose as he eyed me. He chewed for a long moment, narrowing his eyes. Then he pointed his fork at me, swallowing hard. 

“Are you implying that my internal investigation is ineffective, Faye?” 

He’d been nothing short of perfect since the bonfire--validating me but not condescending me. Now he was back to calling me everything else besides Fee--which meant whatever pity he felt for me was dissipating. He was stepping down from his position as surrogate sibling, at least in one small way. He was back to teasing me, chiding with me. 

It made me heave a breath I didn’t even know I was holding.  

Even with my back turned, I know Hangman’s eyes haven’t left my form. I know he’s still watching me. And I can feel it, sense it, when he opens his mouth to say something to me--can feel that little intake of breath and the muscles in his face working to speak.

“Listen, I--!”

That’s when Rooster walks into the room, just as I turn to look at Hangman over my shoulder, at his bobbing Adam’s apple and sweat-spackled forehead. If Rooster heard anything Hangman said when he was walking into the room, he doesn’t show it. 

He’s smiling as soon as he sees me, but in a smaller way now than yesterday. I know the mission is weighing heavy on him, especially today when they are relentlessly running the fruitless simulation. His shoulders are pulled together tightly, just like Hangman’s, but his eyes are soft when he looks at me. 

“Hey, you,” I say softly, smiling, letting my hand rest on the table. 

His smile broadens a hair, just a hair. I think he is just about to reach out for me, just about to push my hair behind my ear or lay his hand over my own, when he suddenly realizes Hangman is in the room. 

I watch it--watch his eyes dart between Hangman and myself, watch the way his smile begins to falter. But then he’s looking at me again. 

“Hey yourself, Ledger,” he sighs, “who’s up?”

“Blue team,” Hangman says before I can, “Coyote, Phoenix, Bob.”

Rooster just nods, not breaking his eyes from mine. Still, I know, Hangman is looking at me, my back turned to him. It makes my throat burn.  

When Rooster is this close to me, I can see the sweat in his pretty hair from where his helmet was secured on his head. I can see how red his cheeks are, how bitten his lips seem. He’s stressed. No doubt about it. It makes me want to kiss his face all over, makes me want to serve him dinner in bed, makes me want to wrap my lips around him.

“Coffee?” Rooster asks. 

He’s close to me now, close enough that I can feel the naked skin of his arms against mine, close enough that my fingertips are tingling and my lungs are shivering and my knees are weakening. I want to touch him always--but especially when we are this close. 

“Yes,” I tell him, my voice thin, “please.”

“I take mine regular,” Hangman calls, smirking. 

Rooster pretends not to hear him, doesn’t even glance in Hangman’s direction. 

He winks at me, flirty and sweet, and lets our arms graze as he walks past me. He doesn’t have to ask me how I take my coffee, doesn’t have to ask how much I want. He throws one more glance at me before he enters the hallway again and I smile my prettiest smile. 

“What were you saying,” I immediately ask once Rooster’s form has disappeared, “before?” 

I don’t even turn around. I don’t know if I can look at him when he’s being sincere. So I make my hands busy with papers and pens and clips and sticky notes, pretend like I can’t feel the intensity of his gaze. 

“I know I’m a dick,” he says, “and I know I’m especially a dick when I drink too much, which I did.”

He sounds genuinely awkward for the first time, his smooth voice suddenly jagged as he navigates pauses and stammers. I still can’t get myself to turn around.

“I went…too far. I know I hurt your feelings,” he sighs. 

I nod. 

“Humiliated me,” I add and my tone is just as thin as before.

He inhales sharply and I think if I was watching him, he would be nodding, his eyes untrained as he stared down at the floor. 

“For what it’s worth,” he adds quietly, softly, “I am sorry.”

I am sorry. 

It almost knocks me off my feet. Hangman is the kind of guy no one has to know very long before they immediately understand that he isn’t a “sorry” kind of guy. It stuns me into complete silence. 

The silence between us swallows him and I let it, try to look busy still, try to look like I’m organizing my things and preparing my setup, preparing to listen to the comms, re-engaging after our lunch break. But I can’t get myself to move. 

“I take it you probably don’t like me very much now,” he adds.

I know then and there that he also isn’t someone who can sit in silence. He squirms in it--it makes him crazy. 

“I never said that,” I say quickly, finally turning so he can see my cheek.

Maybe I mean it, too. Maybe I just can’t help it. Maybe it’s because the man that danced with me at The Hard Deck, the one who was so cocky and sure of himself but still sweet with me, is still inside him somewhere. Maybe it’s because I knew even at the bonfire that he had drank too much--everyone did. Maybe it’s because I want to be punished for what I did and he was my unknowing, unlikely punisher. Or maybe he’s just too pretty to not like. 

He’s just looking at me, his face somehow both anguished and soft. His brows are pulled together and his lips are tightly pressed against another in a straight line. His forehead is lined with worry and so are the crinkled beside his eyes, but his gaze is soft now. 

Maybe he wants to say more. His jaw flexes, he inhales through his nose deeply, but then Rooster walks back into the room with two paper cups of coffee, beaming at me. 

“Thanks,” I say, taking the steaming cup into my palms. 

The heat burns intensely through the paper material--and in some ways, it brings me back to where I am right now: I am at work, in the lounge, and I have a job to complete.

Rooster is searching my face and just his eyes on me make me want to melt into the tiles. I want to lean forward and kiss him on his pretty mouth, on his perfect lips. But I just smile at him, biting my lip. Then I settle into the chair and pick up a pen. 

Hangman abruptly turns his portable radio off--a louder quietness fills the lounge. I can feel Rooster and him looking at each other, can hear the rustling of Hangman standing up and readjusting his uniform. Before I can even take the cap off my pen, before I can really blur them out and listen in on the comms, Rooster falls in place beside me with his cup of sugary coffee and Hangman falls into place a few seats away from me with his hands folded. 

The tension is palpable. Neither men are willing to speak first.

But I am at work--it would be silly for me to engage in whatever conversation is necessary between the pilots. 

“Could you turn the comm up?” Hangman asks.

His voice is still that same soft voice from before--the one that seems achingly normal.

Without looking between the two of them, I turn the dial on the radio and begin transcribing. Their eyes are burning holes into both sides of my face--both my cheeks are flushed and I can feel the blood spreading to my neck and chest. 

“Is it hot in here?” Hangman asks. 

I say nothing--wish the world would gobble me up. 

 ☾ ☽

There is a water spot on the drop ceiling, brown and big and ugly.  

I am sitting here in the waiting room of the closest hospital to base and I know that it is warm in here. I know that it is crowded with crying babies and crying mothers and whining children and bleeding men and pregnant teenagers. I know that the lights above me are bright white but feel like they’re neon. I know that the air conditioning isn’t working and that the staff is overworked and underpaid. I know that outside the sun is beginning to sink.  

But I can’t get myself to move--can’t adjust, can’t blink, can hardly breathe. And I can’t look away from the ugly, stupid water spot on the ceiling.

Vaguely, I’m aware that Hangman is on one side of me and Rooster is on the other. I know, I think I know, that they are both standing instead of sitting because they gave their seats to an elderly woman and a pregnant woman respectively. 

We listened to the bird strike--the three of us. We all listened to Bob and Phoenix burn in, listened to Maverick direct them to eject. Listened to their voices scream through the comms. 

“We’re going down, Phoenix! We’re going in! We’re going in!”

I don’t know how I did it, but I did not panic at first. I trailed behind Rooster and Hangman as they hurried to Hondo. I think my ears rang from the moment I heard the calls for ejection. And when Rooster and Hangman started for the parking lot, I was right behind them, my vision tunneling. 

Yes, yes, I was watching them in their flight suits and I could see the blue of the sky and feel the heat of the sun--but I was not really there, no. 

I was back up in our jet on that October day, in the endless blue sky, soaring above the snowy terrain of Somewhere, Europe. I was behind my sister, looking at her pink helmet with the scratches on the back. I was turning my cheek and spotting the third dagger. I was watching Maneater switch to guns. I was being pressed against my seat as we bustered. I was pressing the flare-deployment button and nothing was happening. I was listening to my sister call for help, listening to her scream mayday! Mayday! I was pulling my ejection handle, bursting into the sky in tandem with my twin. And then I was watching her die. That’s where I was--from start to finish, from top to bottom--that’s where I really was. Even when I was in the front seat of the Bronco, my hands folded in my lap, my eyes blinking at the road--I wasn’t there. 

I’m still not here. No, not really. 

When Maverick comes down the hallway, when Hangman and Rooster jump forward to speak to him, I don’t think I can move. They’re a million miles away on the other side of the waiting room and I am stuck here, in this stupid little chair, and the pregnant woman beside me is crying. 

Rooster keeps turning to look at me over his shoulder like I’m a toddler bound to wander off--or maybe that’s just how boyfriends are supposed to check in on their shell-shocked girlfriends. I don’t know. 

And very suddenly, all three of the men are looking at me, I can feel it. So I grip the sides of the chair, grip them until my knuckles are as white as rice, and pry myself out of the seated position. Even though I feel like I’m in the endless blue of an October sky, even though I feel like the plane is about to drop out from under me, I square my shoulders and walk in a straight and narrow line to the three of them. 

“Lieutenant Ledger,” Maverick says and his voice sounds so hollow and deep and if Bob is gone I think I will die, just fucking die, and I will wait to do it until I am out of the hospital so they won’t put me on a crash cart and pump my heart and give me oxygen, “they’re going to keep them overnight for observation, but they’re alright. Cuts and bruises.” 

So that’s when I nod solemnly and excuse myself to the restroom.

My vision is tunneling, but I don’t want to touch the walls. Bob’s face, Bob’s sweet and cute and familiar face, is all I can see as I stumble down, down the hallway and into the public restroom. It’s too bright and smelly and pink and ugly in here. It smells like bile and shit and bleach and antiseptic all at once. And it’s much, much quieter here. So quiet that I can faintly hear Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go by Wham! playing over the speakers.  

“Fuck,” I whisper and it really does sound like I am saying it from behind myself, like my body and soul have untethered.

Locking myself in a stall, I don’t even have time to fall to my knees or wipe the yellow piss off the toilet seat before my body is reacting to the porcelain toilet under me. 

The bile is acidic, burns me all the way from deep in my gut to my throat and to my mouth. The bile is somewhere between green and brown--coffee and apple and granola bar--and my belly is quivering inside my body. 

Fuck. What would I do if Bob died? My best friend on this empty fucking planet. The only boy in the class, the only boy in our degree interested in learning about Virginia Woolf. The boy who sang into my mouth, his breath hot and scented like UV Blue, at a fraternity party on a dirty rug in a dirty house. The boy whose hair I would cut in my little galley kitchen, who always wanted to listen to Aretha Franklin and Elton John. The boy who would pick me up at my apartment with an umbrella and walk me to my classes. The boy who loved my sister as much as I did. The boy who turned into a man somewhere between graduating college and living beneath the California sun. The man who asked my sister’s dates for their ID’s, who kept a folder on his phone especially for them. The man who hates dancing but will always dance with me when our song comes on. The man who memorized poetry and never showed it off, never became cocksure about it--just said it quietly in my ear. 

If he died today, if he burned in, he would die with a mangled fist because of me. His body would be stunted, perfectly branded by the one and only time he ever punched someone. And it was because of me.

Him, that boy, that man. 

The world would be mighty empty without him--my life would be hollow, echoey. 

And I’m crying now, crying as puke spews out of my nostrils and I have to cough so I don’t choke, but maybe I’m crying because I couldn’t guard him. My shield, the shield I thought was supposed to protect everyone else I love, was penetrable. I had more faith in the universe, in whatever being is controlling this life, before. I thought that I would get just one really, really bad thing that would happen and the rest of my life would be pulling the shards of it out of my skin. I thought if I loved someone hard enough, deep enough, then the shitty parts of it would reflect off me and onto them like a burning ray of sunshine. I thought my shitty thing would be their shitty thing. I thought, if nothing else, that the people I loved would be safe. So, so safe.  

When my heaving is dry, when my belly is empty, I straighten myself out. I wipe my face in the mirror, pushing the black mascara staining my undereyes off my skin with shaking fingers. My mouth tastes putrid--I know my breath smells too. So I swish soap in my mouth, ignoring the bitterness, and wash myself thoroughly with water. 

I leave the bathroom, one foot in front of the other, and pretend like I am okay. I’m fine. I just feel like I’m going to faint. Hangman is standing against an outdated poster wall and when he sees me, he nods in my direction. A nod that says come here. 

When I’m standing in front of him, he looks down at me, starting to survey my features, but I wipe under my nose and speak before he can say anything. 

“Can I see him?” 

His open mouth closes. He nods. The blue of his eyes deepens as he stares at the white tile below my feet. 

“C’mon,” he offers, “I’ll walk you.” 

I don’t need to ask where Rooster is. His best friend burned in, too. I know exactly where he is, where he should be. And I know why Hangman was waiting for me outside the bathroom. 

“You okay, kid?” 

Kid. He’s never called me this before. I almost have to strain to hear him over the ringing in my ears. 

“Fine,” I say, my throat still burning from the bile. 

“I know we aren’t the best of friends,” he starts and I look around us, at the blue-green curtains and the foggy glass windows and the pale people in dirty beds and the nurses with their tired eyes and I want to cry again, “but if you want to talk…”

He leaves the end of his sentence open, open for me to finish. 

Shaking my head, I look at the floor. Count my steps. One, two. Three, four. My feet fucking hurt. 

“I don’t,” I say. 

And now we are in front of Bob’s hospital room. Hangman lets his head fall when we stand in the threshold, not pushing his luck. He won’t go in. 

It’s a private room, one that is nice and spacious--too nice and too spacious for just one person with some cuts and bruises. Navy perks. It’s still terribly outdated and smells too much like body and antiseptic. There’s steel appliances and beeping machines and blinking screens and sterile sheets and trash cans and moving beds. But there’s a nice, big window beside Bob’s bed. He's watching the sunset from his spot in the middle of his big, big bed.

I come rushing back into my body and it feels like running full force at a brick wall and making it to the other side. The ringing in my ear subsides, the vision that is tunneled broadens until I can even see the view from his window. I can feel my body again, every single part and every single nerve, and it hurts so good. 

“Floyd,” I choke out, putting my hands on my hips. 

Bob snaps his head in my direction. His face looks perfect--unblemished with wounds, no matter how minuscule. Thank fucking God. 

“Faye,” he says and his voice sounds so relieved, so sad. 

Swallowing feels like such a task. Hangman is looking at my face and I’m growing pink. 

“You’re grounded,” I say, pointing at him and I don’t mean to but I’m choked up again, my eyes watery, “forever. For the rest of your life.” 

Softly, I hear Hangman chuckle quietly. Then Hangman nods one time, sharply, his eyebrows furrowing. 

“I’ll leave you to it,” he mumbles and just before he spins on his heel and starts down the hallway, he glances at Bob, “don’t die on us, Floyd.”  

Bob is shrugging at me, smiling very small, very shyly. 

“You’re the boss,” he says to me, to Hangman. 

Hangman starts down the hallway by himself, his hands in fists by his side. And now I’m walking to him, putting my arms around him, being careful to navigate the IV in his arm, being careful with his body that suddenly feels very small and precious in my arms. 

Stay here. Stay here with me. Don’t move.

He still smells like he just took a shower, still smells like a clean infant. But he also smells like hand sanitizer and sweat and hospital laundry. His hospital shirt is thin and papery against my arms as I hug him to me, as I let my head fall onto his shoulder. 

“Scared me,” I choke, tears rolling down my face, “you asshole.” 

Even though he’s soft under me, I know that his face is becoming wet now, too. I know he was scared. I know that the breath was knocked out of his lungs when he launched out of the burning jet, I know his chest was heavy with the weight of the atmosphere. I know his belly dropped and he felt like he was soaring, falling. I know he thought of me, of Maggie. I know he was worried about Phoenix--I know he shot out first, flying high above the canyon and in those split seconds where he was alone, I know he was worried that he’d left her behind. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, “I’m sorry.” 

Maybe he’s saying sorry because he scared me. Maybe he’s saying sorry because he knows that if he died, knows that if he was gone, that I would be thoroughly and completely alone here. 

“Are you okay?” 

I pull back and my nose is running and I can smell the remnants of vomit that came out of my nose but I hold his arms in mine and try to see his body, even if my vision is obscured with fat tears. His hair is messy and I think there’s a cut there, splitting the skin of his scalp, but it’s small and bandaged. His hands are a bit gnarled, I can tell from the amount of bandage on them, but other than that he looks okay. Perfectly okay. 

“I was scared,” he says quietly and that’s when I realize his glasses are bent and sitting lopsided on his pale face, “but I’m okay. I’m good.” 

Chewing my lip, I nod, just watching his sweet face. I told him I would see to it that he is okay. And for some reason, as I watch his eyes land on the spot of vomit on my shirt, I know that I don’t have that ability. I cannot see to anything, not here, not when I’m on the ground. Perpetually below everyone, everything. 

I want to tell him that if I lost him, I wouldn’t be able to move on. But what good would it do? What purpose would it serve? 

So I just hold his face in my hands; my best friend. My hero. I can feel myself frowning.  

“You two did everything right. Everything. You’re the best WSO.”

The earnestness surprises him. His blue eyes glaze with tears and I stroke his cheeks very softly, very sweetly. The fluorescents are burning my skin. 

“Now that you’re grounded I am,” he whispers. 

I can’t help the wet laugh that falls from my mouth. It hurts and it feels so, so good at the same time. Sweet Bob, his face between both my hands. 

“Okay, I’m gonna say it,” I warn him, widening my eyes. 

He nods a few times. 

“I love you, Bob,” I say, shrugging, “just can’t help myself.” 

“Who could?” He asks. 

 ☾ ☽

We meet between Phoenix and Bob’s rooms, in the empty vast hallway that connects them. I am slumped over by now, too tired to straighten my shoulders, my belly very empty and my eyes suddenly too dry. No more tears to cry, no more bile to heave. 

Rooster doesn’t look much better. His hair is falling, his mustache drooping under his frowning lips. His flight suit is unzipped halfway, black t-shirt clinging to his skin. He can’t get himself to perk up either.

“Hey,” I whisper to him, meeting in the middle, face angled towards him, “she okay?” 

His hands very softly find my elbows and he holds them solidly, looking down at me with his brow furrowed deeply. He’s holding himself steady, grounding himself with my weight. It makes me plant my feet more surely on the tile. His eyes are downcast to look at my parted lips, my pale cheeks. 

“She’s fine,” he says, his voice crackly and deep, “Bob?” 

I nod, coming a little bit closer to him, close enough for my folded hands to touch his canvas flightsuit. 

“Fine,” I whisper. 

The intercom over us is mumbling something, there is distant 80s music playing somewhere near the nurse’s station, babies are crying, machines are beeping. And in this quiet, but also not-so-quiet, hallway we just stand there. His hands over my elbows, the backs of my hands pressed against the flat plane of his belly. We are both looking down at the floor, down at our feet.

“I’ll drive you home,” he whispers to me. 

I nod, looking at the stuff on the toe of his laced-up boots. 

“You aren’t staying?” 

I make my voice flat when I say it--can’t possibly give him anymore grief today. He’s been through enough--too much even. I just want to lay him down on my bed and let him sleep. 

He pushes my knotted hair off my shoulders then lets his hands come to my waist. He grips me, holding me tighter but not closer. My eyes flutter shut. His hands feel like bathing in a pool of warm, soapy water. 

“Have to go back to base,” he whispers, “but I’ll come back late tonight. That okay?”

That okay? As if he couldn’t show up on any day, any time and I wouldn’t have a glass of sparkling wine waiting for him. Like there wouldn’t already be cookies in the oven.

“Whatever you want, Bradley,” I whisper and I really mean it--mean it with every piece of myself. 

Finally, he closes the distance between us. When he wraps his arms around me, really wraps his arms around me, everything else melts away like we’ve just stepped into the shower together. All the shit, all the awful. Every single bit of the day washes away.

If only we were together during the worst parts of each other’s lives. If only he was here when I was discharged from the hospital after the accident, when I was wheeled outside the automatic hospital doors without my twin sister and my parents cried in strange silence. If only I was there when his mother passed, holding his hand as he held hers. If only we had stood beside each other at the funerals--then maybe we wouldn’t have been so lost. Then maybe things wouldn’t hurt so wholly. 

But then I jolt, jolt myself back to reality. Because if something bad could happen to Bob, Bob who I’ve known for what feels like my entire life, then something bad could absolutely happen to Rooster, too. And then it wouldn’t matter how lost either of us ever got because it would be over. Then I would be the one alone, standing over the grave, the blank shots of the rifles ringing through the--

Without a single word, Rooster kisses my throat very tenderly. He kisses my four freckles, still doesn’t speak. But it is enough. It is enough right now to keep me here with him. 

Rooster doesn’t release me, his nose finding its way back in my hair. I don’t interrupt him, just stand here, gripping him, digging my nails into his flight suit. Stay here with me, baby.

“Lead the way,” I whisper finally, pretending like I hadn’t just imagined standing over his open grave, pretending like the smile on my lips is really authentic, really me, “tramp.” 

When we walk back through the waiting room, we both see Hangman at the same time. He is leaning against the wall by the exit, his eyes on the floor as he incessantly rubs the scab on his lip. His hair is falling, too, but the most prevalent part of his being that Rooster and I seem to also both notice in tandem are the purple bags under his eyes. 

I think about his message late at night, think about how early he had been on base this morning. And now it’s night time and he is still here in this dingy waiting room. 

“Hangman,” Rooster says softly when we approach him, our hands joined. 

Hangman snaps to attention immediately, hands dropping to his sides, his lip red with irritation. 

He looks at Rooster with his bloodshot eyes widened just slightly--then flickers his eyes to mine. He looks small standing here by himself, like he is our forgotten child. And I wish I could help it, but my heart throbs because I suddenly want to take care of him, too. I want to run him a bath and let him stay in my bathroom for as long as he wants. I want to pour him a glass of wine and let him pick a movie. 

“They’re good?” 

He is looking between us again. I nod sharply. 

“Fine,” I whisper.

His shoulders drop, chest loosens. I wish that my fingers weren’t tingling, wish that my heart was not throbbing, wish my eyes weren’t so glossy right now. Rooster squeezes my hand and I squeeze his, too. I wish I could press my lips against his palm right now, right this moment. But Hangman is looking down at me very seriously, very gravely. 

“Can I walk out with you guys?” 

Then they’re both looking at me, both of them so exhausted, so stressed, so tight. I think about Bob calling me the boss, think about Rooster looking to me for every decision now. So I nod again, biting my lip. 

“Of course you can.” 

So we walk out together, the three of us. Our eyes are half-shut and our walks are stilted by tight joints and even tighter, more stressed muscles. The night is dark and wide and our cars are parked very far away. Fuck, my feet fucking hurt. 

“Hold on,” I mumble to them before we can even get ten feet from the hospital entrance. 

They both pause, looking back at me as I slip my shoes off and fall back onto the earth four inches shorter and a million pounds lighter. I have to smile at them, smile very small. Silently, Rooster reaches out and takes my shoes from me, holding them. It makes my throat tight--makes me think of the suitors that would hold Maggie’s shoes for her when she got tired of wearing them. Oh, Lord. 

“Do you want dinner, Hangman?” I ask. 

Rooster glances at me from the corner of his eye, mouth flat. I squeeze his hand again. It’s okay. It’s fine. And he seems to understand this--understand that I cannot help but forgive. I cannot help but move forward and take care of everyone. I have always had a soft spot for pilots. 

Hangman is pretending like he isn’t shocked. He’s blinking rapidly at the night around us, his hands in his pockets, his spine straightened. 

“That would be nice,” he says tightly, “thank you.”

Rooster drives me home silently, the headlights from Hangman’s purring Jaguar lighting our silhouettes. I am sitting in the middle of the bench, my head on Rooster’s shoulder. He drives with one hand, his legs spread, his arm draped over me and his free hand holding on tight to my arm. 

Going to California by Led Zeppelin is playing now. 

 It is peaceful in here, listening to the cars whizz past us, listening to the radio, feeling the night air leak in through the cracked windows. Life will not be peaceful for a long time after this. No, no. This feels like the last stop in a while. 

And when we pull onto Mulberry Street--the street with the house that I own, the street where my sister used to drive down all the time--he finally speaks. He clears his throat first and I look away from the eucalyptus trees and the purple sage and desert mariposas being illuminated by the Broncos headlights, look up at his serious face and his flexed jaw. He’s watching the road very seriously, his lips parted. 

“I love you,” he says and I hear it clear as day. 

It sounds like being called home when the streetlights turned on. It sounds like the dinner bell is ringing. It feels like my entire body is being dipped in nectar. It sounds perfectly correct. 

His grip on my arm tightens slightly, just enough for me to notice. He doesn’t tear his eyes away from the road, doesn’t dare glance at me. He just keeps watching the street before us, keeps waiting for my breathing to even out. 

“I know,” I finally say because I do know, I really do. 

His face slacks, his grip lessens. 

We pull into my driveway as Hangman parks on the sidestreet. And then Rooster looks at me and the motion light above my garage blinks on. We are just sitting, our thighs pressed together, looking at each other in the warm July air. Here we are, at my house, and he is not going to come inside. 

I stroke his cheek, his skin like smooth leather beneath my cold fingers.

“Come back, okay?” 

He nods, mouth flat, eyebrows pulled together. He’s looking at my mouth. 

“Okay,” he whispers.

And we both know what I mean. We both know that I mean tonight--and every single night after. He knows I mean the mission, if he’s chosen. We both know that I mean always. Come back always, okay?

He presses his lips to mine and we kiss softly, tenderly, sweetly.

And then I’m squeezing his knee and climbing out of his car and closing the door and standing there with my leather bag and my heels in my hands and waiting for Hangman to approach me, his hands in his pockets. He falls in-step beside me and we both wave to Rooster, who is watching us with his throat tight. 

We silently watch the Bronco pull out and start down the street, darkness falling over us, Rooster just a dot of cyan in the dark. Crickets are chirping and somewhere distantly, cars roar on the highway and seagulls cry out fleetingly. If we strain and don’t breathe, don’t make a sound, maybe we can hear the tide coming in.

“Do you like prosecco?” I ask, turning to Hangman. 

The motion-sensor light blinks off. 

It’s almost eleven o’clock when I set our bowls in the sink, dirtied with spinach and white-wine and little pieces of spaghetti. I refill our glasses, taking a deep breath alone in my dark kitchen, my cheeks red and my eyes tired. And then I hold them in my hands, push through the kitchen door, and return to the living room. 

Hangman is sitting against the marmalade ottoman, his legs spread open as he twiddles with the fibers in one of the rugs he sits on. He takes the glass from me thankfully, holding it with two hands. 

I go back to the couch, where I lay against its plushness, my feet on the coffee table. The candles are lit and the curtains are drawn. There is a distinct sense that we are both just waiting for Rooster to come back to us, to come home. 

The Rolling Stones’ album Sticky Fingers is spinning. Wild Horses is playing.

We haven’t said much to each other. He sat at my kitchen table while I cooked and was polite when I served him. We ate in almost complete silence, too, and I don’t know if it’s because we are so tired or maybe because the day has been so long. Or maybe we don’t have anything to say to each other. 

It’s only been an hour since Rooster left us here together, only an hour and a half since we left the hospital as a trio. Not very long at all since we came into the living room after dinner. 

In place of words, Hangman has been looking around my house with shining eyes. It’s the same way other people look at my house when they see it for the first time. Filled with so much color, so much exuberance. It is so interesting to see how I live, the researcher who exclusively wears linen earth tones. My home is beautiful, I know this. I know this because it has been built with my hands, with my brain, with my love. It is everything I have ever wanted in a home. 

Finally, he speaks. 

“Your house is nice,” he says quietly. 

I nod, glancing at him on my floor. He’s looking down into his glass. 

“Thank you,” I whisper, “took a long time to get it here.” 

Another beat passes and he sucks in a breath, looking up at me with his tired eyes and his mouth a singular plane on his face. A shadow is beginning to appear on his face--stubble, a very dark blonde. 

“I like you, you know,” he says and it’s not hasty or reckless. He just says it. 

My eyes fall to my glass, too. Fuck. I say nothing. My throat is tight. 

“You’re a good person,” he continues, “like an actual good person--no bullshit.” 

Graceless lady / You know who I am / You know I can't let you / Slide through my hands  

  I take a long, long drink. The bubbles are making my nose tingle. Stevie is sitting on top of the stairs, blinking slowly at Hangman the same way she blinked at Bob. Well, you definitely aren’t Him. 

“Thanks,” I mutter. 

I wish he would stop talking now. My heart is in my throat. But there is also that need to keep him talking, to let him cry on my shoulder, to spill all of his feelings so I can sweep them into a dustpan and keep the floor spick and span. 

“When I say I like you…” he trails off and I let him, blinking at the sofa, measuring my breaths, “but you haven’t thrown me a second glance. I know you only have eyes for Bradshaw.” 

Fuck. Fuck. 

“You two deserve each other,” he says again, “he’s crazy about you.”

My throat aches with a dry laugh. He’s looking at me.

I can’t help it--it’s the prosecco, it’s the image of Bob in a hospital bed, it’s Rooster’s confession in my driveway, it’s the ghost of my sister in the room with us. 

“Why’d you do it?”

I finally turn and look at his face. I can’t stop looking at the spot where his lip is split. His mouth is ajar, his hair is messy. He’s blinking at me, incessantly rubbing his finger around the rim of his glass. He knows what I’m asking. I don’t have to spell it out for him, I don’t have to point at the elephant standing in the corner. He just knows.

“I just told you why,” he says softly, shrugging. His voice is almost a whisper, which is the first time I have heard him speak so quietly. 

He sounds kind when he speaks to me quietly--sounds real and grounded.

Except he’s talking like he just tugged on my pigtails at recess. He’s talking like he just cut in line in the cafeteria and stuck his tongue out at me. He’s talking like he’s a little boy and I’m a little girl and we still abide by the societal rules of the youth. Be mean to girls when you like them. Pick on them. It makes me a little bit sick to my stomach. 

I actually scoff out loud, loud enough to make him blink in surprise. 

“How elementary of you,” I say, taking another long drink. 

He shakes his head, his eyes falling down to the empty space beside me. Don’t fucking sit here. Don’t move. I feel like anything in the world could happen if he moved and sat beside me. We are two people who should not be alone in a room together--two people so exhaustively different, so on two opposite ends of different spectrums. This empty couch around me, this space beside me--it is not for him. 

He doesn't move.   

“Never said I was a complicated guy,” he responds. 

There’s another beat and I can’t stop thinking about the way his entire body softened when I pressed the cotton to his lips, when I was crying and couldn’t help myself, when I felt like I was on fire. 

“But you don’t hate me,” he says before continuing, “you don’t even dislike me.” 

I shake my head, furrowing my eyebrows just slightly. 

“No,” I confirm verbally, rolling my cheek to my shoulder to look at him again. 

He has turned so his entire body faces me. He is still leaning up against the ottoman, his legs splayed before him, his feet slightly obscured by the couch. His face is warm in the candlelight. 

“Why not?” 

Now I blink in surprise. Why not?

“Because then what’s the point?” I say and I mean it, I really do. 

What is my purpose here, on this earth that my sister is buried in, if not to love? What is the point of my own being, my own entire being, if not to forgive and push forward? Who am I if I am not taking care of anyone--of everyone? What is the reason for my existence if not to nurture? 

I can’t say any of this to him, though--this I am crucially, keenly aware of. 

“The point of what?” He presses. 

I gesture to the air around me. 

“Of this,” I chuckle humorlessly, “of anything.”

He slouches back against the ottoman further, his chest sinking. 

“See,” he quietly says, eyes falling to the rugs, “there it is. That goodness.”

I want to roll my eyes. I want my sister to be here beside me to lighten Hangman up. He is so wholly deflated, sitting here in my house with his belly full of my pasta, and I don’t know how to pump all that cocksure air back inside him. 

“I’m not that good of a person,” my voice quivers, “you know that. Everyone does now.”

Even I know that blow is low when I say it. My face is hot. He doesn’t seem fazed. 

“Having a high body count doesn’t make you--!”

He stops talking when he meets my eyes. I can’t help the expression that holds my features--my eyebrows sloped, my mouth pursed, eyes narrowed. It is a mom look--a look of disappointment, a look that says shhh. A look that is still, in its own way, nurturing. 

But as soon as he feels his face flatten, he inflates a bit. He sits up a little straighter, setting his glass on the ground beside him. 

“Okay then,” he says, “I’ll bite. What makes you not that good of a person?”

 I gape at him for a moment, chest flushed. Fucking pilots. 

“Lots of things.” 

My addiction. The booze. Not knowing I was pregnant for fourteen weeks. Not knowing who the father was. Being in rehab on mine and my sister’s 25th birthday. Wanting to die with her in the woods. Wanting to make my parents whatever parents are when they lose all their children. 

“Like?”

 He’s really pressing now. 

I scoff again. 

“Why do you wanna know?” 

My voice is that silly, unintentional bitter voice that I get when I’m upset.

He gestures to me with wide eyes. Oh, right. Because he likes me. It makes me soften, makes me pull my legs into myself.

With my eyes downcast, I pick lint off my pants and say, “What, you want me to talk you out of having a crush on me?”

I don’t look up, but I see his head when it nods one time, just one solid jerk. Fucking Christ. But I am not ready to give him all the parts of myself that I have given Rooster--not ready to let him know me like Bob does  

“Because I’m still messed up after what happened to me,” I say, “and I saw things that nobody else should have to see.” 

He’s staring at me and my throat is raw. I take another drink, my face so hot that it could make a cake bake. 

“Like what?” 

I snap up at that. His face is soft, plain. He isn’t challenging me. He’s inviting me in a strange, strange way. But no. No, no. These things I’ve seen--they will be mine until I die. Because no one needs to know. I will put her to bed, let her rest, in that small way. No one needs to know about the smell of her body or the way her eyes were wide open. It’s just for me--we were born together and her death will die when I do. 

“You really, really don’t want to know.” 

When I say this to him, my voice is thin and flat. 

“What if I do?” 

I have to bite down hard on my lip. He sounds like Maggie--challenging me in that quiet, intense way. 

“Trust me, Jake,” I say a little bit louder now, emptying my glass before I finish, “you don’t .”

Then I stand up and cross the living room, through the kitchen door, and open my fridge. I am shaking so badly that I almost let the cold bottle slip out of my grip and onto the floor. But I just pour myself another drink and come back into the living room with my glass and the bottle. 

He watches me set the bottle on the table, watches me return to my spot, chewing my lip. 

“That doesn’t help,” he says. 

His voice is calm. That doesn’t help him not like me? I could puke again. 

“Well, fuck me then,” I sigh, exasperated, throwing my hand up and looking at him. 

Then I realize what I’ve said. We both shift in our spots and I shake my head, that silly blush creeping up my chest again. 

“I don’t listen to music past 2016,” I start and I don’t even have to tell him that it’s because it was the last year I was able to listen to music with my sister--the last year she was alive, “and I want to get married and have kids and buy project houses. I don’t want to be in the Navy forever.”

His face is pulling together, lips pursing, eyes narrowing.

 “Maybe I just don’t know you very well, but I’m guessing those are the last things that you want, right?” I ask. 

He nods. 

“Well,” I sigh, smiling, “there you go. Crush averted.”

A quietness falls over us. I get up and flip the record, running my cold hands over my face before I sit back on the couch. He is more pulled into himself now, his legs criss-crossed. 

There is a strange energy in the air--somewhere between buzzing and limp. He’s looking at me still, fingering the carpet beneath his hands. 

“Faye,” he says, his voice profoundly big and loud in this living room. 

It’s the first time he’s ever called me by my name--my actual name, the one that was dissected from my sister’s.

Our eyes meet. 

“I never meant to make you cry,” he says and I know, can tell, that he means it. 

I can’t help but smile. He is such an asshole. He would be so, so perfect for someone like Maggie. He could make a different girl very happy, fill her up so nicely with his words and that face and his body. 

But even as I sit here in his sweet gaze, I am radically and indisputably in love with Bradley Bradshaw. There is not even the beginnings of a single doubt. It is intrinsic to me, the same as forgiveness and kindness is to me. 

“No one ever does.”

After one more moment, one where he rakes his hands through his hair and finishes off his glass and throws his legs out in front of him again, he grins at me. His inflating bit by bit.

“You wanna know what made me text you?”

No, no. Not really. Not at all. Because this is making me very dizzy. Because this is making me ache for my sister in a way that I usually don’t ache for her. I wish I could go give her a panicked phone call in the privacy of my backyard and beg her to come save me. Fuck, she would have a hay-day with this. Relentlessly teasing the two pilots pining after me. Me of all people. Fuck.

I don’t answer, so he just says it, before I can stop him. 

“It was when you came back to get your things,” he says and he still sounds soft but there’s an edge to his voice, “and I said another shitty thing to you--on top of the shitty things that made Bob of all people actually punch me in the face--and instead of shitting on me too--you took care of me. My lip--the cotton. I made you cry and you were still cleaning up my face.”

It makes me embarrassed when he explains it. It makes me embarrassed because I did not attack him the way Maggie would have--all teeth and torn flesh and sharp nails and decisive strikes. No, no. I froze--just like Rooster--and let Hangman say all the shitty things that he said and then I went back and took care of him. 

“You don’t think that makes me weak?”

The voice that says this hardly sounds like my own--so meek, so doubtful. 

He shakes his head, eyebrows furrowing. 

“I think it makes you better than the rest of us,” he says gently, “tougher, really.”

“Tougher?” I echo.  

He’s watching me bite my lip. He nods again.

“Yes,” he confirms, “tougher.” 

I’m biting my lip so hard that I taste metal. I wish Rooster would come home now, right now, and interrupt whatever energy is invading this room. Hangman is being too friendly, too sweet--it’s starting to scare me. Maybe he’s delirious. Maybe today has traumatized him more than we thought before.

He’s just looking at me now, smiling faintly, softly. He’s looking at me the way Rooster looks at me--his eyes just a touch too bright, his face a touch too open and pretty. I swallow hard. 

Moonlight Mile is playing now. 

It’s when I move my eyes from his, my chest starting to hurt, that he looks down at his glass again. He sighs very deeply, seems to be thinking about something very hard. I wish we weren’t alone--I wish someone else was seeing him like this so they would understand why I am so soft in some spots. 

“It’s also when I realized you were too good for me,” he says, a little louder now. 

My chest is burning, pulsing. Fuck. I can’t get myself to say anything else--no words will come to me. Not now, not when he is being so obscurely soft. 

“I think I should go,” he tells me. 

I nod, biting my lip. 

“Okay.” 

So we stand up and he looks tired as he ever has before, his lip plum-colored and still swollen. The rest of his face is so pretty that it’s actually mildly offensive. He takes his glass to the kitchen without me saying anything and I trail behind him and cork the bottle before putting it on my fridge. 

There’s that silence again. We don’t say anything as he washed the glass with his hand, don’t say anything while he dries it with a linen tea towel, don’t say anything when he turns to me with his face golden and rosy.

I am just living to be lying by your side / But I'm just about a moonlight mile on down the road 

It isn’t until he’s on my front porch that we say anything to each other. I’m holding the door open with my foot, leaning against the doorway with my arms crossed. He is meandering down the steps, but pauses and turns to me. He looks very tired--his eyes are red. 

“Did I stand a chance?” He asks. 

How could I be anything but honest when he’s standing there looking like that?

“No,” I sigh, “you didn’t.”

This gives him some sort of solace. He nods, sucking his lip under his teeth. If his ego is wounded, he doesn’t say anything to me. He doesn’t let his expression run free with the good grief of the situation. 

“Right,” he says, nodding. 

“If you’re too tired,” I say because I have to, because I really have to, “you can sleep here. On the couch.”

He blinks at me a few times before roses paint his cheeks. He shakes his head determinedly. 

“No,” he tells me, “I might get the wrong idea.” 

He winks at me a final time before he finishes the trek to his car, which is parked dutifully on the street and glowing under the moonlight. 

Fucking Christ.

He waves from inside the car and I smile, raising my hand, too. It isn’t until he’s driving down the street that I finally close the door.

Chapter Text

July 30th, 2019

The first thing I hear when I wake up is the aimless spinning of Sticky Fingers. Static, constant static--that hollow kind of empty sound records make when they want, need, to be flipped. The living room smells like maple candle and there is still a lingering scent of garlic and sage flooding into the room from dinner earlier with Hangman. I have to blink a few times, blink at the flickering candlelight and the orange lamplight, to realize that I have fallen asleep on the couch.

Squinting through the dark, I have to stay very still and focused to read the time. It’s after three in the morning now. Shit. I fell asleep hard and fast--and accidentally--after I closed the door behind Hangman. 

“Oh no,” I whisper groggily, sitting up and running my hands through my hair, over my face. 

The window-unit is humming and Stevie has reclaimed her spot on the ottoman that Hangman was sitting against before he left, when he told me about his crush, when he pushed me to the limits. I can feel the seams of the couch pressed deeply into my face, into my skin. I’m flushed all over, red from my cheeks to my toes. Tonight doesn’t feel real at all.

“Everything okay?”

Jolting up, I whip my face towards the stairs and Rooster is standing there, his face pulled into an expression of actual, genuine concern. He has very clearly just walked into the door, somehow come into the house without me hearing it, tip-toeing up the stairs. He’s still in his flight suit, the poor thing, and he’s very pale. His eyebrows are pulled together and his mouth is closed tight. 

“God,” I start, holding my hand flat against my racing heart, “you scared me.”

But he’s home. He’s finally, finally home. 

Rooster shakes his head lightly, starting towards me. The house already feels warmer with him here, with him in my living room. He has somehow already taken his boots off--maybe did it when I was blinking myself out of a daze--and his socked feet make almost no sound as he crosses the living room. 

I lie back on the couch and God, I’m so tired. I want to pretend like I’m asleep still so he will carry me to bed. I want to lay beside him and just listen to him breathe. I want to be as close as possible, no layer of clothing between us--not a stitch. 

He kneels down and I turn on my side to get a good look at him, squinting at the darkness. With a sweet fondness in his eyes, he brings his hand to my cheek and strokes me there for a moment, just looking down at me. His hand is rough, but his touch is silky. 

This close to him, even in the dark, I can tell that something is wrong. Maybe not in a big, bad way--but there is definitely something wrong. His face looks like it’s been struck by wind, his eyes drooping and his lips chapped. His hair is entirely unkept, mustache too. His face is very pale besides his rosy cheeks which practically glow.

“How was Hangman?”

Needles prick my spine. Is there a point in telling him? Would it serve a purpose to tell him about everything I said to Hangman, everything he said to me? It is not that it is a secret, it is not something I will be dishonest about. It’s that it seems pointless to betray Hangman in this small way--I know that nothing will happen between us, know it the same way my body just knows how to breathe. 

“Fine,” I whisper in the dark, bringing my hand to his warm face, too, “pleasant, even.”

He leans into my touch and I feel like I’m holding the most important thing that’s ever graced this silly world here in my right palm, in this dark room. 

“Made pasta,” I add quietly, “I can reheat a bowl for you.”

Quickly, he shakes his head. Something is wrong! Something is wrong! My brain pounds on my skull.

“You okay, baby?” 

It’s me asking him this, me sitting up on the couch and moving my hand from his cheek to his forehead. He is warm but not fever stricken. He’s smiling softly, sadly at me. He wraps his fingers around my wrist and pulls my palm down over his mouth, pressing a long kiss there. It makes me so very soft. So soft that I lean forward and wrap my other arm around his neck, my left hand in his hair. 

“I’m fine,” he says against my skin, “just missed you.”  

“Where you been?” 

I lay my cheek against the top of his head and he finally moves, sinking lower onto the floor and laying his head on my lap. It looks like he’s a child praying and I am the altar. He wraps his arms around my waist and secures me against him, breathing in my pajamas. 

He shakes his head, sighing.

“On base. Had a fight with Maverick.”

My belly pulses. It was bound to happen sooner or later--the tension between them has been thicker than a lawn of overgrown bluegrass. His cheek is pressed against my thigh and I can feel the heat of his blush there. I scratch his scalp gently. 

“Do you wanna talk about it?” 

I ask him this with such a softness that he finally gives--all his weight falls onto my legs, my plush thighs, my skin. He holds me closer, tighter. I can almost not even breathe, but I say nothing. I want him to hold me here with this ferocious tightness. I want to be gripped like this . Hold me down, baby. 

“Said some bad stuff, baby,” he mumbles, his voice strained. 

I just hum, holding him against me, ghosting my fingers over his scalp and through his thick hair. How could I ever be mad at him? About anything--ever? What could this man say that was truly bad? Was he even capable of saying something big and bad?

“Wouldn’t be the first person in history to say something bad,” I whisper lowly, “especially after the couple weeks you’ve had.”

He sighs very deeply, so deeply that I think even his feet relax. Every bit of his weight is on me now. I could live like this forever and ever. I could just keep brushing his hair with my fingers and the candles could just keep burning and the record could keep spinning endlessly. 

“Admiral Kazansky is dead,” he whispers. 

My heart almost falls out of my body and tumbles there on my floor, leaving a trail of hot blood. But that’s the silly thing about living here on this earth, in these bodies: you can feel like you’re going to die over and over again without ever actually dying. People say that death is tricky, sly--but really it is living that should have this reputation. Living just happens everyday, even when it feels like the opposite of what one is doing. Living happens until it doesn’t.

Iceman is dead.

“Let me take care of you,” I whisper to him because it’s the only thing I know how to do--it’s the only thing in the world I can do for this beautiful man on his knees before me. 

He just nods against my thighs and I fold myself over him, hugging him against me. His body is warm and solid. I have the sense that he doesn't want me to move, needs me to stay folded over him very badly the way I am right now.

Then after a few moments, I heave myself out from under him and kiss the top of his head as he sinks further into the couch, on the warm spot where I was laying.    

I let him rest there on his knees as I blow out the candles and put the record away. I lock the doors and pull the curtains closed. I load the dishwasher and start it up. I refill Stevie’s water bowl. I call to him and ask if he wants any pasta and when he calls back something resembling a ‘no’. I turn the kitchen lights off. 

Then I lead him into the bedroom and Stevie, love drunk, jauntily follows down the dark hallway. Her man is here--finally. Finally. 

His eyes are almost completely closed when we step into the bathroom. I strike a match and light a few more candles in there, unwilling to turn the overhead light on. And he just stands against the door, watching me. 

He looks very sad, but also very peaceful. Like he knows, just as well as I do, that Admiral Kazansky had an expiration date that was appropriate. There was probably no blood, no screaming, no quivering final moments when he passed--it was probably sterile and safe and controlled. Maybe I know that Rooster is thinking it because that’s what I’m thinking. I’m thinking about the way some people get to die with all their dignity intact--some people get to die comfortably and it is as easy as just falling asleep, just letting go. And then there are others who don’t. They just simply don’t.

I unzip the rest of his flight suit and kneel on the cool tile to push it down his legs, let him step out of it, before I put it in the laundry basket in the corner. His legs are very long and very thick, but they shake very smally. They shake like they’re about to give out. 

Raising to my full height, I kiss his throat, my hands tugging on the hem of his black t-shirt. Poor baby. He’s been in the same clothes since this morning, very early this morning. He’s been fighting so hard, all day, and now he’s just feeling my lips on his throat while I slip his shirt off. 

He’s almost naked--so close to it that I can taste it. He’s blinking softly at me through the candlelight and I want to hold him with me, want to take care of him always. I want to make him happy. My lips are wet and gentle and the skin on his throat is raised with scars, bristly where he needs to shave in the morning. He smells so tired, too. Less like jet fuel and more like the stale crackers in the lounge, the burnt coffee at the coffee bar. 

 Just as my fingers find the band of his briefs, just as I am about to pull them down his legs with my lips spreading heat all across his chest, he pulls my hair into a makeshift ponytail in his palm and tugs one time very softly. 

“Get naked,” he says, his voice deep and strained, “please.”

There’s that silly word again. Please. As if he even has to say it--as if I wouldn’t do whatever he told me to do the minute he told me to do it. I want to tell him that I would genuinely take the clothes off my back to give to him, even if he just had a runny nose and needed a shirt sleeve. I would give him any part of my body, have already given him my throat, and it would genuinely be his. 

I hardly step away from him, just look at his eyes as they watch mine. I get naked there in his gaze, completely naked--and warmth blooms in my chest when I think about merely getting to touch my endless skin against his. When I think about his scent staining me, seeping into my pores. 

So now I am here, stark, and he’s just watching me with that look that he had in the car. He’s just watching me and he looks like he’s about to tell me that he loves me again. 

“Just wanna feel close to you,” is what he mumbles before he crosses the empty floor between us and presses himself against me, his mustache burning my nose as he crashes his lips onto mine.

It is not a polite kiss--it’s the hardest he’s ever kissed me. His lips are somehow brutal and lenient at the same time, and the kiss knocks me back against the wall, knocks the fucking breath out of my lungs. But he’s there, holding himself against me, pressed into me, gripping the sides of my face. His tongue is in my mouth and I’m opening myself for him, skin goosing. 

And with my open mouth, with my cheeks beneath his hands, with my belly pressed against his, with my chest heaving in absolute unison with his--I can feel how hard this day was for him. Yes, it was hard on me to hear Bob burn in and it was hard on me to remember my sister and hard on me to fucking throw up in the bathroom while George Michael echoed in the stalls--but Rooster. Oh, God, Rooster. How much more can he lose? He lost his father, lost his mother--he’s been alone for such a very long, hard time. And people just keep disappointing him--people just keep dying, leaving him. 

The mission--the mission that looms ahead of us--he could lose anything, anyone. He could lose Maverick--actually truly, thoroughly lose Maverick. He could get chosen. Fuck, he could go on the mission and get shot down by 5th-gen fighters or exploded by SAM’s. He could parachute to the ground and die there, too. Or he could live but someone else--Phoenix, Hangman, Coyote, Bob, anyone--could die. And then what? And then he has to keep pushing forward, keep living this life? It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair at all. 

Now, he’s moving away from my mouth and our chins are wet with each other’s spit and the room smells like oranges and lavender and he’s looking down at me with that crease between his brow. He’s searching my face--no, no not searching it. Memorizing it. Memorizing where one freckle ends and the other begins. Memorizing where my lips bow, where my cheeks hollow. He’s still holding my cheeks, holding me in place, his eyes everywhere on my face except my gaze. 

Then I get it. I know that he thinks he’s going to be chosen--he thinks he will die up there, somewhere over enemy territory--and before he does that, he wants to remember every little piece of my face. And in a way, it makes me feel like a puddle of syrup  there against the wall--what if I am the last thing he wants to think about as he burns in? What if just as he pulls the ejection handle, just as he shoots into the sky, he wants to think about his favorite freckle on my throat where my collar bones meet? 

But then it makes me mad--so mad that I can’t help it when tears surface in my eyes, my gaze glassy--that he thinks it’s okay. That he thinks that he can go into the sky and never come back down. That he thinks he can light candles in my kitchen and pick records to play in my living room and love my dead sister’s awful cat and then just stop doing those things. That he can come into my bed, touch the silkiest and most private parts of myself, then put his pants back on, walk out the door, and never, ever come back. That he can sit in my driveway in his dead father’s car and tell me he loves me so seriously, so meaningfully and then cease to exist. 

Does he understand that these things--these things that maybe he thinks are only significant to him--have changed the very being I embody? That my skin today is not the same skin I wore before I met him, before I saw him at The Hard Deck in that awful Hawaiian shirt. That before him, I can’t even fucking remember what I was doing. Does he understand that if he dies, if he leaves, then nothing will be the same? I will never listen to Led Zeppelin again, never play my Joni Mitchell record for anyone else. I will never let anyone else touch my skin, never let anyone else in my bed. I will be waiting for him, for death, for the rest of my life. 

“Don’t,” I manage to spew breathlessly, “don’t do that.”

 He doesn’t stop--still memorizing all the lines, the scar on my jaw, everything. Everywhere he looks my skin sizzles. 

“Stop,” I choke again, pressing my mouth to his. 

He kisses me slowly, lazily, and parts before I’m ready. 

His forehead is resting on mine and he feels feverish now as the steam clouds around us. 

“Can’t,” he whispers harshly, “I have to. Have to remember all of it.” 

I have to. His words echo in my silence. 

“That’s not fair,” I say softly and I wish that I could have that silly bitterness in my tone but he has completely subdued me by pressing his body against me, by pressing me against the wall, “what about me?”

At this, he closes his eyes, pressing his flat mouth to my forehead. His lips feel so good there, his mustache scratching my hairline. I’m so desperate to have him close, to keep him here, that I want to pierce his skin with my fingernails.  

“You?” he chuckles dryly and it sounds like he’s going to cry, going to yell, but he just keeps his lips pressed against my skin. 

And I think he wants to say something, say something more, but he doesn’t. He keeps himself there against me, silent. 

“Me,” I repeat, “what about me?”

It’s the most selfish I have ever been. I am being so, so selfish right here in this bathroom with my stark body flush against his. I’m selfish because I want him to come back and be here. I want him to live in my house and not just in my memory, my heart. I want him to fill me up. I want to be bursting at the seams with him. I want to marry him in my backyard and dance with our friends. I want to give him a son, a daughter. I want to take nighttime drives in his Bronco and paint walls with him and hold hands at the dinner table. I want it so bad that I am willing to give up every other thing. And it’s so selfish. 

He strokes my cheeks again, so soothing, so familiar. 

“I’m sorry, baby,” he whispers in the dark and his voice is straining.

The invisible string between us vibrates. It makes my knees weak. 

He’s sorry that he is going to leave me. He’s sorry he’s going to hang me out on a clothesline to dry on a sunny afternoon then leave me to be soaked by summer storms or bleached by an autumn sun. He’s sorry that I will have to keep mulling around this life by myself. He’s sorry that this is a new timeline and I am his mother and he is his father--his father in his final, most pure form. 

“I don’t want…” I feel like my words are figgy pudding in my throat, in my mouth, like they’re getting stuck in my teeth as I try to tell them to Rooster, “I don’t want to be alone.” 

Now I’m really selfish. Now I’m being unfair. I am supposed to tell him to come home and I’m supposed to smile pretty and pretend to be brave. I’m supposed to be the one that holds down the fort, barefoot and pregnant, waving him off with a big smile and a tea towel. But I can’t do that. Yes, in a strange way, I am telling him to come back. But more than that, I am being honest, too honest. I’m cracking the shell that protects the soft membrane that makes up my heart. I am showing him a new softness--a new vulnerability. 

It feels like I’m naked now only now after I’ve said this. Like I’m unzipping my skin and stepping out of it.

Yes, I have a lovely house. Yes, I know how to make salad dressings and I know how to roast a chicken. Yes, I light candles and burn incense on Sunday’s with all the windows open. Yes, I hang my sheets to dry in the sun and I dust religiously. Yes, I am clean and I don’t take pills and I always have cold prosecco in the fridge. Maybe it looks like I have my shit together--maybe it looks like I am the one who is supposed to hold it down for the both of us. But none of that matters, no, not really. They are all silly little things. None of it matters when I wake up with pennies in my mouth and sweat between my thighs. None of it really matters when I am holding him in my arms, when I am so close to him that we are almost one person. And none of it really matters when I think of him walking away and never coming back. 

It’s the first time I’ve ever said these words to living ears. I don’t want to be alone. Not just to Rooster--but to anyone. I never had to say it before Maggie died because I was never alone, not really. Even if she was a few hundred miles away, I wasn’t alone. Even when I would ask the people who fucked me to stay--I never said it was because I didn’t want to be alone. I just asked, cut and dry. And when my friends are in my house, drinking bubbly wine on my couch, and we’re all laughing and music is playing and I feel so happy that I could cry--it’s interrupted with the thought of the near future. I am happy and then I am sad because these moments of togetherness with anyone, when we are talking about college and our foods to order when we’re hungover, are not permanent. At the end of the day, everyone will leave. Maybe not forever--but for long enough. 

Except him. Except Rooster. Until now.  

“Please don’t say that to me,” he begs quietly, “breaking my heart, baby.”

If he goes, if he leaves, if he doesn’t come back--

“Don’t leave me,” I really beg now, my breath somehow hotter than the plumes of steam from the shower, “please don’t leave me.”

He swallows hard against my skin. 

“Can’t promise you anything,” his voice is strained with melancholy, “you know that, baby.”

I do know that, he’s right. Sure I know that. I am in the Navy, too. I remember my parents calling me before my first deployment and telling me, begging me, to stay alive and come home. They must’ve not called Maggie, not begged her like they begged me. 

“Yes, you can,” I utter, “you can.”

It happens naturally. 

He kisses my throat and I stare up at the ceiling and then he’s kissing my chest and my hands are in his hair. Then I’m pulling his briefs off and he’s pinching my hips and I’m wrapping my legs around him and we’re kissing, kissing each other so hard, so truly. 

He walks us into the shower and when he closes the glass door, I know that we are going to have sex for the first time in here, in my bathroom that my dad tiled, in the first room in the house where another person made me cum. The first place he ever made me cum.  

The water soaks us through to the bones and we are still kissing and I know he can’t feel my tears because the stream on our face, my hair plastering to my face and the gel rinsing out of his hair. It’s very warm in here, warm in the shower, warm in the steam, warm when I’m pressed against him. 

He sets my bottom on the ledge of shower and shampoo bottles go tumbling, but we don’t stop. I don’t think I can breathe without his lips on mine, don’t think I can live without him here.

“You’re breaking me down,” he mutters against me lips but he doesn’t stop kissing me, doesn’t stop touching me, holding me. 

His fingers drag from my rear across my hips and over my thighs until he’s where I need him the most, where I’m pulsing, where I’m aching for him. He rubs me very gently, without haste, and it makes me so dizzy that I can do nothing but lean back and let the intensity of his touch wash over me. It feels other-worldly good to be held, to be touched. Every nerve in my body feels it--every speck of dust in my lung feels it.

“Good,” I say. 

He laughs against my mouth and I laugh, too, but I’m still crying. He kisses up and down my chest, still stroking me, still strumming me so good, so gently. He knows that I need him to be gentle right now, knows that I’m close to the edge. 

“I love you,” he sighs and now his forehead is against mine and he’s looking down at me and there’s drops of water on his lashes, “I love you so much.” 

My throat feels dry now. I can’t say it back--can’t say anything right now. I’m almost weeping, almost sobbing. Almost choking on all this love, all this grief.  

He moans when he dips his fingers inside me, moans because I am so fucking ready for him, so ready for him to be the first person to fuck me since I got sober. It’s far from my first time having sex, but this still feels like I’m giving him something I’ve never given anyone else before. In a way, I am. I really am giving him a part of myself no one else has ever come close to. An orgasm, vulnerability. I don’t know.