Yeh, mate. Pick your moments. That hadn’t been it.
“I wasn’t drunk, or whatever you’re thinking,” I finally said. “Not when I enlisted. Before that? Maybe. I hadn’t been feeling good about my life for a long time. Thought that was just growing up, maybe. Or maybe I didn’t think much at all.”
“How long ago?” she asked.
“Six years. Almost exactly. It was my birthday, in fact. Turning twenty-five, drinking much too much, out at a bar with some mates. In Sydney, that was. Too loud and too entitled. Went back to my hotel with somebody I didn’t know, paid her fare home at four in the morning, walked into a flash bathroom on the fifty-second floor of a very flash hotel, in a suite that looked out onto Darling Harbour, looked in the mirror, and thought, ‘What the hell are you doing, mate?’ I didn’t care about her and she didn’t care about me, I’d been halfway bored even in the midst of having sex, and as soon as we were done, I’d wanted her to leave. Maybe that made one too many times like that, or a hundred times too many, if I’m honest. I didn’t know if any of her own mates had even checked on her after she’d left with me. I’d turned twenty-five during those couple hours, and I wasn’t looking at a man I wanted to see. I wasn’t looking at the man I wanted to be. I thought—there must be something more than this, because I can’t live this way anymore. It was all good, money and sex and autographs and all, except it wasn’t, because it wasn’t anything more than that.”
“So you went out and joined the Army,” Karen said. “Wow.”
“Nah. Thought those things, that’s all, and couldn’t quite shake them loose once I had. The next time I flew home, there was a recruiting poster in the airport. Sounds stupid, maybe, but I looked at that photo and thought, ‘Can’t be worse.’ That’s the day I walked in and joined up.”
“And you found out you loved it.”
I laughed. “Are you joking? No. I thought, ‘What the hell have you gone and done now, you wanker?’ It was about as big a shock to the system as a man could get. I thought I was tough. No chance. There I was, spoilt rich boy who thought a hard day was a couple hours in the gym and ten more standing around in my undies, having a stylist mist me off when I got warm. Now, I had no privacy, bad food, not enough sleep, the kind of exercise that’s more like torture, and a drill instructor and a barracks full of recruits who knew who I was and couldn’t wait to take the piss. I’d joined up in winter, more fool me. I was cold, I was wet, parts of me hurt that I hadn’t known could hurt, and I had to suck it up and do it anyway, because otherwise, everybody would be right that I couldn’t take it. And then I went on for explosives training, and I wasn’t just wet and sore and cold, I was terrified, too. Half of me was thinking I couldn’t do it, and the other half was refusing to let that be true. That half won. I did it because I couldn’t stand to quit, and that’s the truth.”
“But that’s not how you feel now.”
Dusk had fallen while we’d been talking, and in a few minutes, the stars would start to appear. I’d thought I’d seen stars before I’d gone to Afghanistan. I’d never seen stars, though, like the ones in the mountains there, where the air was thin and the closest electric light was tens of kilometers away. Where the sky was lit with clouds made of thousands of pinpricks of soft light, and they looked like a blanket you could wrap around yourself, but in fact, you were still cold and still tense, and there was no blanket at all. Where life was so close to death, you could nearly taste both of them.
I hadn’t told anybody all this before, or actually—any of this. Why was I telling somebody I’d met only days earlier? I’d touched her ankle, and almost nothing else, so why did it feel like more?
Intimacy, I guess you’d say, or not. The way you could be inside a woman and not feel like you were touching her at all. And the way you could touch another woman, and feel her touching you, when she was a meter away.
I said, “Two things. A couple weeks apart. The first one was driving down a street behind another armored vehicle, and having nobody look at us, the way they never do. Ghosting you, like you aren’t there. I saw something that didn’t fit, something odd thrown onto a rubbish heap beside the road. Backpack, I realized. A big one. Blue. I remember exactly what it looked like, the webbing straps and all. I thought, Nobody would’ve thrown that away, not here, and got on the radio. Before I even got the words out, that first vehicle went up like you’d chucked a firework, and we were in a firefight. My first one, and I didn’t have a chance to be scared anymore. Or maybe it wasn’t that at all. All I know is, my brain went cold, and everything got sharper. Vision. Hearing. Everything. Time slowed down. First time I saw somebody die, and the first time I made it happen, too. The first time I shot somebody and watched him fall. I helped drag the bodies of our own dead into our vehicle after a bit, blokes who’d been my mates and were just meat now, and I was still in that other space. That night, though . . . it all came home. When I closed my eyes, I saw my mates again.”
“And they could’ve been you,” Karen said. “Just luck.”
“That part?” I said. “That part, I barely felt. Maybe because I already knew that. Maybe I’d already stopped thinking of myself as special. As separate. Whatever.”
“You said two things,” she said. “What was the second one?”
“Same, and not. The first time I saw that wrong thing and got to it first. The first time I neutralized an IED. It was a pressure cooker full of nails, with bits of rusty scrap metal and hunks of rotten meat, because that’s what they do to make it worse. Get some rust, get some spoiled meat, drive those bacteria into somebody’s body, and you’ve got infection that’ll never clear. That time, though, nobody got hurt and nobody died, because I stopped it. First time I’d ever done it all by myself. I put myself in harm’s way, and I knew why I was doing it. Things got sharp again, like the first time, and different, too.”
I was right back there. The taste of dust on my tongue, the tire tracks in the fine brown silt on the road, how warm the sun had been, the sting of the sweat in my eyes, and the way I’d controlled my breathing and had taken it one step at a time, because I knew what to do. “There’s this . . . shift,” I said slowly, not sure why I was trying so hard to help her see it, “when you get to where you’re ready every minute. Every move you make, you’re making with intention. Every place you look, you’re aware of what you’re seeing, and you’re evaluating it. Every second of the day, you’re alive, because you know you may not be in the next second. And you’ve switched from thinking of yourself, of what you want, of protecting yourself, to thinking about keeping other people safe. When you’re so sure that’s what you have to do, it’s not even a decision. That’s the change. I wasn’t nearly as worried that I’d blow myself up as that I’d get it wrong and blow up other people. That’s what’s better than being in that hotel bathroom, looking in that mirror, and having it all—easy sex, pricey drinks, flash car, all that flattery. Once you flip that switch, I’m not sure you ever really go back.”
Karen didn’t answer for a minute, but finally, she asked, her voice low in the gathering darkness, “Is it worth your leg?”
She’d said it softly, but the question lay there, sharp as a knife, and I had to think to answer it. “Dunno,” I said. “When I was first recovering, when they’d just sewn me up, and I’d look down the bed and see nothing there but a bandaged stump, and get this hollow place in my stomach, this panic? A fella came in to talk to me. Fella with one hand. He didn’t say much, just showed me everything he could do with his prosthesis. And I lay there, half-gone on pain meds, and asked him, ‘What would you give to have it back?’”
I had to stop for a minute and look at the stars. They were beginning to wink into view now, looking like they always did, like they always would, and not, because the light I saw was coming to me from a century ago, or more. Because nothing stayed the same, and nothing lasted forever. Which made the good things you had now, the things that mattered, all the more precious.
Karen didn’t
say anything for a minute, but finally, she asked, “What did he say?”
I looked at her, and she reached her hand across the space between us and took mine. Lacing her fingers through mine. Holding on.
So I told her. “He said, ‘I’d give anything to have the arm back, mate. Anything except my wife and kids. Anything except my mates. I’d give anything, except I wouldn’t, I guess, because there are still a few things that matter more.’ And I thought—if I’d stood there in the Auckland airport and looked at that recruiting poster, and known I’d lose my leg? I wouldn’t have enlisted. I’d have found some other way to go on. Good way, bad way—I don’t know. I’d have kept my leg, and I’d have kept my face. I’m not sure I miss my face. I know I miss my leg. I dream I have it, and it’s a shock every time when I wake up and find out again that I don’t.”
“So you’re sorry,” Karen said. “It wasn’t worth it after all.” No judgment in her voice, just thoughtfulness. Almost . . . wonder, like she was trying with all her intensity and all her mental candlepower to get inside my head, to know what it was like to be me. I wasn’t sure how well that would work. Since I’d lost the leg, I didn’t even always know what it was like to be me.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I reckon it’s what he said. The leg matters more than almost anything, and there’s no perspective and no wisdom or whatever other bloody thing people talk about you getting in exchange that makes up for it. It’s more than almost anything, but it’s not more than everything. If I’d never signed up? If I’d never taken that first ride on the bus to Basic Training, never got my hair buzzed off and my ego battered? If I’d never sweated through all that heat and run through all that mud? If I didn’t know what it’s like to take a life, and I didn’t know what it’s like to hold a mate while he dies? I’d have my leg, and I wouldn’t have to remember those things, but I’d have lost all those times when I did something that mattered. I don’t know which is better. I just know that if I hadn’t done it, I’d be a different man. And I’m not. I’m this man. I’m here now, and there’s no going back.”
Karen
I was having a hard time breathing. It was what Jax was saying, and it was his voice saying it, deep and rich as that winter ale. It was the stars, and the green darkness of the bush beyond us as the last light faded from the sky. He hadn’t even touched the rest of his wine, which meant that explanation hadn’t come from alcohol. It had come from needing to say it.
I said, “I admire you.” I couldn’t think of what else to say, since “I want to climb into your lap, kiss my way down that scar on the side of your face, and see if you can possibly want to hold me right now as much as I want to hold you” probably wasn’t right. Besides, it was true. He was the sexiest man I’d ever met, but he was so much more than that.
He said, “Because I got myself blown up? Don’t.” He didn’t sound smooth anymore, and now, he pulled his hand away, stood up, grabbed our plates, and said, “We should do the washing-up,” which wasn’t exactly leaning over and brushing his lips over mine, was it? He headed over to the kitchen tent with the dishes, and I’d swear he was limping.
“Wait,” I said, scrambling to my feet. One of said feet had gone to sleep, both soles were bruised, and I was limping myself. Or lurching, you could call it. I was dirty, too.
Oh, God. I probably smelled. I had a horrifying memory of him kneeling in front of me, cleaning me off after I’d been chasing that guy, and then standing behind me, helping me fly-fish. When women were trying to attract this kind of guy, they wore perfume. Dressed up. Took showers.
“Wait,” I said again, focusing on the “friend” part, since the “girl” part was clearly out of the question. “Why was that wrong to say? Why shouldn’t I admire you? And you’re stiff. You were hurting this morning, and you’re hurting more now. You need to take a bath, not do the dishes. Could you give yourself a break and let me take care of things? Also, what response were you going for? Because you’re seriously confusing me.”
What is your problem? I wanted to say, but I thought I knew what his problem was. That he’d put himself out there too much, and he was regretting it. I knew what my problem was, too. That I’d start thinking he was attracted to me, and then he’d pull away and act repelled.
I knew I wasn’t girly, and I sure wasn’t sweet. I was impulsive and outspoken and way too assertive for most men, and I hated being vulnerable, which meant I couldn’t make them feel like heroes. I was pretty sure that what Jax needed was for a woman to burn for him, to want him for exactly the man he was now, but I was also pretty sure that I wasn’t the woman he had in mind to do it. Whatever he’d said, he needed to be a hero.
He finished dumping fish bones into the rubbish, turned around at the sink as the water ran, and said, “Why should you admire me for missing a leg, or walking on an artificial one, or whatever it is you’re thinking? What was my choice? Giving up and dying? You should be admiring the blokes who didn’t come home instead. The one who was faster than I was, for instance, when that truck came up to the gate. Admire him. I didn’t do anything this time except get myself blown up, and I’m not hurting that much. I’m good.”
I moved around him and started scrubbing plates and cutlery, splashing water onto my shirt in the inadequate lantern light, something he no doubt would never have done. He didn’t want me to touch him, but he’d wanted to share his story, or why would he have said it? And now he was running away from it as fast as he could. I said, “You’re making me kind of crazy. You just told me all kinds of things that tell me exactly why I should admire you, and they have nothing to do with your leg. I’m not supposed to tell you how I feel, though, because it would interfere with your internal narrative. All right, fine. I think you’re being idiotic, how’s that? You’re trying not to show emotional weakness, which is unhelpful to personal growth and doesn’t work that well anyway, because everybody can see you doing it, so what’s the point? I might know about that, because I might be the same way. Also, you are the neatest cook I’ve ever seen. You cleaned everything up before we even ate. So now I think you’re obsessive, too. Congratulations.”
He might be smiling now. I couldn’t quite see. We were back to Buddy Mode, then. If he was going to treat me that way, though, I could wish he wasn’t leaning against the counter about eight inches from me while he did it, where I could practically feel his heat.
I hated being fussed over with a passion, and I hated being pitied more than that, so—yes, I got it. But there was also that other thing—that I was as aware of him as if he had tentacles coming out of his body and wrapping around mine. Or maybe coming from his mind and into mine, which was even scarier. Like he could see me, and he could touch me.
“And you’re doing a sort of giant-spider deal now,” I told him, because if you named something, you could be in control of it. “Maybe you could stop with the charisma and all, if you’re going to be rejecting me because I heard your moment of self-reflection. The combination is confusing me.”
He ran a hand over his perfectly neat hair and blew out a breath, then laughed softly, which wasn’t attractive much. “Right,” he said. “Arsehole thing to say, when you were being kind. Listening, and all that. And you could be a bit confusing yourself. I’m a giant spider and charismatic? You wouldn’t think it was possible. Don’t care much for spiders, myself. How am I one?”
I waved a soapy hand. “Like in a horror movie. You’ve got this thing going on where you’re pulling me, like I want to step closer so you’ll hold me. Except that if I do that, you’ll probably tell me that I shouldn’t be attracted to you, because you’ve got scars. Or I shouldn’t be attracted to you, because handsomeness is superficial. I can’t figure out which one is the problem.” Distance. Distance was good. Also admitting the attraction, since I was sure he’d figured it out. I was stuck with him for another week, and if I didn’t redefine this, it was going to be a mighty humiliating week. This thing right here—that I wasn’t the kind of woman a man longed for
, the kind he burned to have, and I never would be—was the way I wanted to be pitied absolutely least.
“I’m missing a leg, also,” he said. “There’s that.”
“Thanks for pointing it out,” I said. “I hadn’t noticed. I’ve got scars, too, you know.”
He stopped smiling. I couldn’t quite see, but I could tell. He said, “You don’t know what scars are.”
Whoa. Before, we’d been . . . well, not flirting, because that was too superficial for what I was feeling. Dancing, you could call it, held close one minute, spinning away the next, but always reacting to each other. Now, I was just mad. I’d sure stopped dancing. “And you know this how?”
A long pause, and he picked up a tea towel and started drying dishes. “I apologize. Again. You lost your job and your boyfriend and so forth. It was scarring.”
I could have said something. I could have explained. I didn’t want to get into some sort of Dueling Banjos trauma-topping contest, though. He was off-balance, so was I, and suffering wasn’t a contest anyway. If I’d wanted to hold him just now? If I still did? I’d already been through the five hundred reasons that was a bad idea, starting with “in no shape for this” and “volunteering for pain,” ending with “possibly adversarial business relationship,” and stopping off at all sorts of unfortunate stations along the way, like, “What if he pushes you away, his face twisting in revulsion?” Because if this was his courting technique, he sucked at it, and I’d bet he didn’t. He was a seriously charming guy. He just wasn’t serious about charming me.
Kiwi Rules (New Zealand Ever After Book 1) Page 13
