De La Porte Fashion: The Complete Box Set

by Mj Fields

  “Okay. And while I’m doing you a favor, you have to promise not to say anything to your mom until Friday night when you get to Paris. I’ll be there.”

  Eekkk!!! Again, I try not to get too excited. “How will I get there?”

  “You ever fly on a private jet?”

  “No.” I do my best to hide my stupid grin.

  “I’ll pick you up.”

  He picks up my phone and punches in his contact information.

  “I’ll try to clear my schedule.” I purposely roll my eyes.

  “Natasha?”

  “Yeah?”

  “It was a pleasure meeting you.”

  “Yeah, you too.”

  Part II

  Oliver (Welcome Home Soldier)

  Chapter Ten

  Oliver (Two Years Ago)

  Eight years in the desert and I decide to spend my first night of freedom on a fucking beach.

  This chick better know what she’s doing too, or I’m gonna regret coming back from places I can buy a pro deep throat and piece of ass that knows damn well there is no cuddling afterward.

  Suzie Sunshine here, seemed like the perfect choice in the bar full of available ass. I picked her based on my best friend… more like a brother’s requirement for a one-night stand.

  Older, so there would be no bullshit about babies or marriage. Indentation on the ring finger, means either recently divorced or looking for some stranger love. And the one that got her in this position, on her knees in the sand… she rubbed me through my denim before I even offered her a drink, or a couple hours of fucking with no strings or regrets. I know there was another, but I’ll be damned if I can remember it right now.

  Holding a fence post in one hand to steady me, and a bottle of Jameson in the other, hoping it knocks me on my ass, I watch her lick her lips as she unzips my jeans.

  I’m half hard and hoping.

  Hoping a few more slugs off the bottle and she’ll blur so I won’t see her face.

  Hoping she stops needing a nod to encourage her to continue.

  Hoping she can suck a golf ball through a garden hose.

  And hoping she is not expecting the favor returned in oral fashion.

  Not sure if it is the smell of the ocean, the breeze, the fact that there isn’t fucking missiles whistling above me, or the fact that Suzie bypassed golf ball and is sucking so hard she damn near sucks my balls through my cock, but I come hard, and I come fast.

  Fuck, that wasn’t supposed to happen, I think as she sits back on her heels, wiping her chin with one hand, fingering herself with the other.

  “You need yours?” She nods like a bobble head. I pull her up. “Turn around and hold on to the fence.”

  “Do you need time, to you know… recover?”

  I chuckle as I rip the condom open with my teeth and sheath my cock. “No ma’am. As long as your pussy’s wet, we’re good to go.”

  “Youth.” She smiles at me from over her shoulder, and I rub my cock against her heat.

  “Hold steady,” I wink.

  And I actually let her do so before ramming in her hot box so hard she would have been face first into the wood.

  Why do I give a fuck?

  Because I’m a fucking gentleman, that’s why.

  When I wake in the sand, I do so with a headache from hell. But at least I fucking slept. It’s been eighteen months since that’s happened.

  When I stand and button my pants, instead of being pissed off, I force myself to think the way Maisie, who is the mother every kid should have, tried to reprogram my fucked-up head to think. I try to find something to be thankful for. So, I’m fucking thankful my pants aren’t around my damn ankles.

  I look at the Atlantic Ocean and feel almost relaxed. Almost.

  When I reach in my pocket to grab my phone to check the time, it’s gone, and so is my cash.

  I should be pissed, really fucking pissed, but again, I ask myself, what would Maisie say? The sun is shining, I’m in one piece, and… well, I fucking deserved that shit. ‘Cause I don’t remember anything past her crying out, Joe, the name I gave her, instead of Oliver, and God, because she was one of two things, thanking him for the several orgasms she had, or praying to him she’d survive it. Due to experience, I’d bet, both.

  At least she didn’t snag my keys.

  And what would I be thankful for here, Maisie? I ask the sky. Well, it’s a good goddamn thing I didn’t bring her back to my motel room, everything would have been gone.

  Everything, I laugh at the thought. Only thing that means shit to me are my tags.

  Welcome home, soldier, I think as I start walking down the beach, welcome fucking home.

  If I’m honest with myself, Maisie’s right, it’s hard to be pissed off when you’re looking at the ocean. It has a way of swallowing you whole before you even get wet. And Christ, after all these months, I’m fucking thirsty.

  After spending the better part of the past eight years in the desert, it’s no wonder that she, the ocean, can soothe my soul.

  Still, it’s nearly impossible not to be pissed off, but pissed off isn’t a place I want to be, not anymore. And I’m making a real fucking effort to look forward.

  I’m 30 days from free.

  Four days ago, I walked through security after getting off the plane that carried me and my brothers in arms home.

  I watched as their mothers, wives, children, and loved ones rushed to them in relief, in answered prayers, in greeting, in… love.

  I watched them, wondering, still wondering… why after all these fucking years, it didn’t appeal to me.

  It’s a beautiful moment. A moment I have experienced a handful of times, each one of them anticipating the desire to have that, to have normal… whatever the fuck that is, I laugh at myself.

  Two days ago, I knew I was ending my eight-year career in the US Army as a Staff Sergeant, even though the reenlistment carrot of more money, and a better rank, was being dangled in front of me. I took terminal leave for the 30 days that was owed to me for the much-needed R & R.

  Yesterday I left Ft. Bragg en route to Virginia, on Roxie, my Fat Boy. Something about the open road and the breeze allows for the false illusion of freedom. Kind of like getting lost in a movie, or book, but with your own words and thoughts mixed with the adrenaline caused by speed.

  After checking into the motel, I didn’t really plan on spending the day drinking my face off, just planned to have a couple before I faced the past one last time. Which I obviously didn’t do; and instead of having a couple drinks in me, before facing it, I’ll go with a hangover. Place makes me sick anyway, so what the fuck ever.

  Walking into a shitty motel room that anyone would turn their nose up at, except men like me, I look at the clock. It’s five in the morning Eastern standard time. After setting the alarm, I flop on the bed to sleep off this hangover for a couple hours.

  Panic hits, I instinctively and blindly search for my rifle, and when I can’t find it, I jump up and survey my surroundings.

  “Fuck," I sigh trying to catch my breath and calm my racing heart when I realize I’m not there anymore. I’m not fucking there.

  Instead of sleeping another hour, I decide I might as well get ready.

  After showering, I dress, pack up my duffel and head out.

  I swing my leg over the seat of Roxie, and strap on my skull cap. Turning the key, the roar of Roxie’s engine thunders and is in stark comparison to the clear skies and calm water I see across the highway.

  The irony is not lost on me.

  Some may not get the irony in it, but every soldier I know certainly does.

  Now on the open road, I let my thoughts free, hoping they fly off in the breeze, knowing they won’t.

  “Welcome home, soldier,” I sigh as I increase my speed.

  We go months dealing with the same people, day after day, after day. No rest, no reprieve. We work, eat, strategize, fight, live and some die with each other. Your CO is having a shit day, you bet your as
s you are too. Your buddy eats beans at chow, you’re gonna smell it. You hate the guy playing guitar every fucking night, singing about his cheating wife, or dead dog. Your girl might as well have cheated, and your dog might as well have died too. And those are the good fucking days. Those are your ‘weekends.’

  Car bombs, roadside bombs, suicide bombers, mortars and playing dodgeball… with bullets. Not only seeing, but saving people who you can see absolutely hate you, and would gun you down if given the chance. Those days, well, they’re a fucking Friday morning.

  Your civilian weekdays, the days you curse the dawn, and have to force yourself out of bed because you just need an hour more sleep, because you stayed up too late Netflix and chilling. The days you have to put slippers on to warm your feet, the days you get stuck in traffic because of an accident that will force you to stay at work an extra hour, making you miss happy hour with the boys… you should consider yourself fucking lucky. A soldier’s weekdays are sometimes never ending. We fight to survive, then we fight harder, so you can… hit snooze. We may have to take a life to ensure we breathe, so you can put fucking slippers on. We may have to carry our brothers bleeding bodies to a hummer to take him back to get medical attention, and still go back to fighting while wondering if he’s alive. But bitch that you missed happy hour…

  That’s just a week. One fucking week.

  I just returned from fourteen months of the worst Monday a civilian has ever encountered. I have little, if any, empathy for anyone who’s having a bad hair day.

  I look down at my speedometer and realize I’ve hit ninety. I loosen my grip on the throttle and take in a deep fucking breath of freedom…and I try my best not to choke on it.

  Welcome home, soldier.

  We’re so fucking happy to come home, to our loved ones, and women… but not the kind who steal our fucking wallets, I think to myself.

  This happiness, this high, doesn’t come without a fall. Mine’s kicking my ass now. But theirs… theirs are worse.

  I’ve had brothers who see their wives, embrace them, fuck, I’ve seen them smell their hair, like I inhale the ocean breeze. They look like everything is finally alright, life is fucking good, until it isn’t.

  “It’s like a second first date for weeks, man,” one of my men, Cruise, told me after one of my many deployments. “When you first see her, touch her, hold her, smell her hair, thinking about its fucking time. Then you realize something’s not right. Something’s different. But you push through, because you know damn well, she’s going to be laid out in front of you when the kids are in bed, and you know what that pussy smells like, tastes like, and feels like, you’ve jerked off to the memory for months. You pray for that fucking minute it’s just you and her.”

  With my rank came responsibility, and that responsibility was brutal at war, and sometimes more so when dealing with the aftereffects of war. The problems we face trying to find our new normal is hell.

  “Then, then you realize, it’s not a second first date. She cut her hair, changed her fucking perfume, she smells different because she is different. She’s getting up and getting the kids ready for daycare, because she got a job to help make ends meet and you can’t keep them because you still can’t wake up without thinking you’re buried in sand. Takes a toll on you, on her, on the kids, who just wanna stay home with Daddy. Then she’s pushing you away. A month ago, she was a sex kitten fingering herself on Skype, now she’s pushing you away, because her needing your dick was bullshit. She was full of shit. She lied. She fucking lied.”

  Cruise was in my office after a call to his house for domestic violence after getting drunk for the tenth night in a row. The MP’s brought him in and I had to talk to him the next morning. He didn't lay a hand on her, but he busted up half the dishes in the kitchen, and he did it while his kids cried in a corner. It all started because his wife forgot to grab beer on her way home and he took it as her not giving a damn about him.

  After he saw a counselor, and they had counseling together, they worked it out. But they were the exception.

  Every combat deployment changes who you are. Every. Fucking. One. It doesn’t end with you, it spills over, effecting loved ones.

  I understand the depth of it and have avoided it, easily.

  This last deployment, I came home with every one of my men. Not one of us lost limb, nor life. But we all lost something else, a part of our souls.

  It was the perfect high to end my career with the United States Army.

  Yesterday, I drove as much as I could hugging the coast on US Highway 1. With the ocean to my right, the breeze in my face, and all the time I needed to decompress, and I knew damn well, I desperately needed it. It was like an IV mixed with time and normalcy pumping directly to my vein.

  I knew I needed one more night to face what I was about to face, so I took it.

  Now, as I head west, I glance in the rearview mirror as the ocean gets smaller and smaller, until it finally disappears.

  The closer I get to a place I called home for the first almost seventeen years of my life, the more I think about how fine a line it actually was. The line between right and wrong, insanity and sanity, home and happiness.

  Emporia, Virginia, I read the approaching sign and feel an invisible weight on my shoulders as I slow down.

  After the exit, I decide not to drive through the town, even though it’s shorter. I didn’t want to see the spots that hold the good memories, the corner diner, the playground, the ball field, and the school. Most kids I grew up with hated school; me, it was the only place I didn’t have to look over my shoulder all the damn time.

  I grew up here, grew up hard, grew up fast, and grew up fucking wrong.

  But it’s in the past.

  The past…

  Every soldier and civilian I know talks about Karma being a bitch. It’s true, Karma is a bitch, but it’s a threat. In the hurricane that is life, Karma would be a warning, not a watch. But the past is worse than Karma, and the past is no threat or warning, it’s an actual occurrence, one you watch for returning and pray it won’t.

  Instead of heading right to the main drag, I head left, and follow the highway to hell.

  Driving up the winding mountain road, I remember one night telling the old man I wanted to live in town. Bad move, since he was already in the hooch, and I immediately regretted it. After a backhand to the face, one I had learned to ‘take like a man, and not cry like a bitch’, he told me, “Shit flows downhill, and we ain’t shit.” My cheek still pulsing and painful was reminder enough to a ten-year-old dreaming of playing in the major leagues to shut his mouth, to hold back what was on the tip of my tongue. I wouldn’t be awarded the ‘privilege’ of walking five miles, uphill, after baseball practice if I mouthed off.

  We had one car, and my mother used it to get back and forth from her job in the mines, the old man was on disability, had been since I could remember, and drunk just as long. If I wanted to play kid games, walking was my only choice. And yeah, I wanted to play kid games. I would have played in pig shit if it kept me away from his repetitive drunken speeches about how his old man built this place. His job was to make sure it was kept so that he could give it to me.

  I didn’t want the shit hole. I have no idea why the hell he would.

  The house was decent to look at, but when it rained, when the wind blew, or when the snow fell, you could feel it through the logs my grandfather had cut down from the property to build the log house with. Twenty acres of a hill had been raped and was barren, and half an acre of flat land wasn’t what I would consider a fucking prime piece of property, but he sure as fuck did. You’d think there was gold underneath the soil, but there wasn’t shit but bones.

  I knew there wasn’t shit because when mom got laid off at the mines, she was convinced she could grow some fresh vegetables, to save us some money. Nothing grew but weeds.

  Then, because the two people who raised me and had done one hell of a job doing so, they decided to supplement their… loss of i
ncome. They became foster parents. No one questioned it. Why would they when Dick and Jane, no shit, that’s their names, had a proven track record of successful parenting. I was at the top of my class, a star athlete, and never gave anyone a problem.

  I was born into a family of good old boys, a flag waving, proud, military family. The way the old man made it sound, we were Army royalty. The reality, he and my grandfather were dishonorably discharged, both for incidents involving too much alcohol, and neither served in any conflict. My choice to enlist wasn’t to make the old man proud, it was my own backhand to his face the night Child Protective Services finally came in and took my parents out in handcuffs. I’d show him what military meant. And I’d do it honorably.

  Chapter Eleven

  Oliver

  I could have hopped a plane and left my bike at the place I hated, yet paid the damn taxes on since the day I was employed, but I feared it would tarnish. I also needed the open road to rid myself of the stench, and decompress further.

  I was headed to the Hamptons to meet my brother, one I chose, one who chose me, the one who lived with us, who didn’t take my advice as past foster siblings had, to do whatever he could to get out of the hell he’d landed in.

  When Bastian came to live with my family, he was different from the get-go. He didn't take the bait from my old man, who offered every one of the kids a drink, or a smoke. He had manners, good as any I’d ever seen, he gave a shit about grades, and he even signed up to play ball with me. And my father immediately hated him, almost as much as he hated me, almost.

  How the fuck could a kid be excited about the kind of life he and I both were destined to have? He had just come from some Fresh Air kid program, and was excited about life after high school. He told me we should both go to college.

  I told him he was bear shit crazy, which in case you aren’t aware, is crazier than bat shit.