by Jay McLean
Riley: He’s back.
Eric: ?
Riley: Dylan.
Eric: He is?
Riley: I think something’s wrong, E. I don’t know. Something’s happened.
Eric: What do you mean? Is he hurt?
Riley: Not that I know of.
Eric: Ask him.
Riley: He’s gone.
Eric: Gone where?
Riley: Out with some guys from his unit, I guess.
Eric: When did he get home?
Riley: A couple hours ago.
Eric: And he left you?
Riley: Yes.
Eric: Hold on.
Dylan: Really, Riley? You telling E about ourxbusiness? How close did you guys get while I was fuxking gone? Don’t accuse me of shit when you’fe talking to my brother behind mycback.
Riley: I’m worried.
After fifteen minutes of no response, I get out of bed, throw on some clothes and clean the living room, the kitchen, the bathrooms, the toilets, the garage, the everything. Because I’m lost.
So lost.
And scared.
I’m so damn scared.
It’s after three in the morning when I hear the front door open. I know because I’m sitting in bed, Kindle in my hand pretending to read like I’ve been doing for the past four hours. His footsteps are heavy as he trudges down the hallway, his body crashing into the walls. Muffled grunts belonging to two voices I don’t recognize get louder as they approach the bedroom.
Dylan stops in the doorway held up by two other guys.
He’s drunk.
Beyond drunk.
He doesn’t even see me watching him, his head lowered as he takes the few steps to get to the bed, falling chest first into it.
“Hey Riley,” one of the guys says. He’s built like Dylan with dark skin and even darker eyes. He doesn’t step foot in the room, just holds on to the doorframe. “Banks said we could crash in your guestroom.”
The leaner guy standing next to him laughs.
“What did you do to him?” I ask, shifting my gaze from Dylan’s passed out frame to them.
The darker guy struggles to stand upright, his hand going to his forehead in an attempted salute. “We didn’t do anything, Ma’am Sir Ma’am,” he almost shouts.
Frustrated, I kick off the sheets, ignoring Dylan’s moan as I stand up.
“Nice legs,” one of them says. I look up to see the leaner guy watching me, his eyes focused on my bare legs. “His pictures of you didn’t do justice, Ma’am.”
“Watch your fucking mouth, Leroy,” Dylan mumbles, his words muffled by the bed. He still hasn’t gotten up. His torso’s on the bed, his knees are on the floor.
I grab spare blankets out of the linen closet and open the door to the guestroom. They thank me, politely, before moving to opposite sides of the bed. Leroy murmurs something about how good it’ll be to sleep in an actual bed. I step into the room, closing the door behind me as they start to strip out of their clothes. “Did something happen over there?”
Leroy looks at me like I’m stupid. “Everything happens over there, Ma’am.”
“Quit calling me Ma’am. I’m younger than you are.”
He chuckles. “Sorry.”
“Where’s Dave?”
Leroy smirks. “What? We not good enough, Riley?”
“No.” I shake my head. “I just assumed that he’d be… where is he?”
Conway answers. “Dave’s… unavailable.”
“What happened in the past few weeks—”
Leroy sighs, cutting me off. “Good night, Ma’am.”
Forty-One
Dylan
“Thanks for letting us crash here for the weekend, Riley,” Conway says as Riley places the plate full of bacon, eggs and toast on the table in front of me. Even though I refuse to look at her, I know she’s watching me. I can feel it. She’s probably wondering when it was exactly that she agreed to having two strange men stay in our house.
If I could find it in myself to look at her, to actually speak to her, I’d tell her the answer was never. She never agreed to it, but I had no choice. Besides, I wanted them here. Because they’re the only ones who understood.
They called last night and asked if I wanted to escape. They didn’t ask if I wanted to hang out, go drinking or go somewhere and fucking talk. They said escape.
So we did. We escaped to a bar full of military veterans who didn’t fucking judge us. We drank and we drank and we drank some more, until the numb caused by the alcohol overpowered the fucking pain living and breathing in each of us.
But I felt it the most, and they knew that. I could tell by the way they looked at me, by the way they bought drink after drink after goddamn drink until I felt nothing.
And I wanted to feel nothing—especially after they kept patting me on the back, toasting to Dave and to me—his best friend. Every time they mentioned it I drank some more, praying that they were fucking wrong. Because I wasn’t his best friend. I wasn’t worthy of it.
If I was, I should’ve been able to stop him. But more than that, I should’ve been able to see it coming way before he bled his heart out to me.
All those times he wanted to talk. All those missed calls and messages I never fucking returned… He even sat and listened to me talk about Riley while he was fucking dying on the inside and he never said a word.
He shouldn’t have had to.
I should’ve known.
“I have to get to work,” Riley says, bringing me back to reality. “I’ll be home just after five but I can come by on my break if you guys need anything.”
“It’s the weekend,” I mutter and almost look up at her. Almost.
But what would I say?
How would she look at me?
“I’ve been working an extra day so I could get Fridays off for the next couple months… I wanted to drive down to see you earlier.”
My guilt and my fear outweigh everything else. I keep my eyes lowered but wide fucking open. Because if I close them, there’s darkness. And with darkness comes the need for light. And the only light I see is the one caused by his gun… right before he blew his fucking brains out.
One week.
He just needed to make it one fucking week and we could’ve survived the hell he thought would’ve been waiting for him at home. We could’ve done it together. Every single step.
Just one fucking week.
Why couldn’t he fucking handle it?
I stand quickly and march to the bedroom, slamming the door shut behind me. I need space. I need time. I need fucking sleep.
“I’d just leave him, Riley,” Conway says from the other side of the door.
“But if he’s—”
Leroy cuts her off. “Just trust us, okay? We know what we’re doing.”
I’m glad they fucking think so, because I know nothing.
Not a goddamn thing.
* * *
Grief is like a constant daze of a million fucking emotions and I don’t want to feel a single one. But it’s there. All of them. Eating away at my insides until all I want to do is fucking punch something. Maybe it’s a bad idea to have my brothers here—in my personal space—because they just seem to make it worse. Seeing them, knowing what we’ve been through, knowing what we’re one day going back to… I can’t fucking handle it.
We sit in the living room, watching mind-numbing TV because we can’t think of anything else to do that’ll take our minds off the pain.
The news has stopped reporting the events that go on over there. Apparently it’s not as important as some psycho chick in Texas claiming to have been impregnated by a fucking pig. Or a new flavor at Starbucks. Or Kanye. Who the fuck is Kanye? Whoever he is—he needs to get the hell off my television.
Conway and Leroy look up at me when the back door opens, their eyes as tired as mine. Then they shift to the empty packets of food and cans of soda splayed out all over the place. We probably should’ve cleaned up before Riley got home—bu
t I can’t find it in myself to care.
Riley seems to though. I can tell by the shock mixed with disappointment on her face as soon as she’s in my vision. It only lasts a second before she smiles. I look away and focus on the TV again. Now some woman with a huge ass is standing next to that Kanye dick. Great. I almost yell, “My fucking friend committed suicide serving this fucking country and this is the shit you come up with.” I don’t, of course, because that would make me insane.
Maybe that’s what grief does.
Makes you insane.
And that doesn’t even include the voices or the images plaguing my damn mind.
From the corner of my eye I see Riley squat down, placing Bacon on the floor. He runs straight to me and parks himself on my lap. I don’t know why he comes to me. I’ve barely spent time with the damn dog.
“Hey guys,” Riley says quietly.
They both wave—adding a smile faker than hers. “’Sup, Ry?” Conway replies.
“I take it you guys have eaten?” she asks.
We nod simultaneously, then go back to watching TV. “Kentucky Man Tries to Dig Up Dad So He Can ‘Go to Heaven,’” the reporter reads.
“What the fuck?” Conway mumbles.
Exactly, Conway. What the fucking fuck?
In the kitchen, I hear Riley opening and closing the fridge, and then doing the same with the cabinets. I’m pretty sure they ate everything in the house. Probably the only reason they stopped eating. She returns a moment later with her phone, keys and wallet in hand and another fake smile. “I’m going to the store to grab something for dinner. You guys want or need anything?”
Leroy says, reaching into his pocket, “A case of beer would go down well.”
Riley freezes.
I sigh. “We don’t keep alcohol in the house.”
“Why?”
I stop stroking Bacon and point to Riley. “Recovering alcoholic.”
Her gaze drops, her shoulders tense.
“Oh, shit,” Conway chimes in. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Riley says. But there’s a scowl on her face directed right at me.
I don’t see what the big deal is. It’s not like it’s a fucking secret. Besides, I could use a drink.
“Is it all right to leave Bacon here?” she says.
“Bacon?” Leroy asks.
“Our dog,” Riley replies.
“You named your dog Bacon?” he quips.
I sit up slightly. “Her dog. Not mine. And she fucking named him.”
“I’ll be back,” Riley says.
Leroy waits until we hear the front door close and Riley’s car start in the garage before turning to me. “Riley’s a nice girl, Banks.”
“I know that,” I say quickly.
“Do you? Because you’re kind of being an ass.”
My eyes snap to his and whatever he sees has his hands going up in surrender. “Sorry, man. Not my place.”
“I fucking hate Kanye,” Conway says, changing the subject.
They go back to watching the television, and I go back to drowning in a million different emotions. But there’s one that never seems to fade, always forefront, always leading the charge.
Guilt.
Riley
Even though it wasn’t a lie—that I am a recovering alcoholic—Dylan’s never used that term before. Not to me, and hopefully not to anyone else. It hurt. It hurt so damn much that now I’m sitting in my car—a car he made me—crying my eyes out in the almost empty parking lot at the store.
I can’t be angry, I try to convince myself, because he’s not being himself.
“It isn’t you,” I whisper, wiping the tears off my cheek. I flip the visor and check my face in the mirror. “It isn’t you,” I repeat, looking at the sad, broken eyes staring back at me.
If I say it enough, I might finally believe it.
I take my time in the store, not in any rush to go back to what awaits at the house. I push the cart aisle by aisle without really seeing anything through the tears clouding my vision. I grab enough food and snacks to feed an army—or three Marines—and make my way to the register. Still slow. Still avoiding.
“How you going, Riley?” Sally, the elderly clerk, asks.
I fake another smile. Maybe if I smile enough, I might finally believe I have a reason to do it.
She turns to me, clueless of my heartbreak. “How’s that boyfriend of yours doing?”
“Good,” I lie.
“You tell him we appreciate his service.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” I smile and nod.
She continues to make small talk as she checks out all the items. Her brother’s cousin’s son’s girlfriend’s sister’s boyfriend is a marine. Does my boyfriend know him? Am I having a party? What’s with all the food? Did I see the game over the weekend? Am I still swimming? There’s a sale on canned green beans if I wanted to stock up.
I want to roll my eyes.
I want even more to tell her to shut the hell up.
I do neither.
I stand.
I nod.
I smile.
I wait.
Which is exactly the same thing I do around Dylan. Because anything else would mean I’m letting the pain win.
I keep it together, just long enough to get out of the store and push my cart to my car. And then I let it out. Again and again. Over and over. Sob after sob. Tear after endless tear.
Then a message comes through on my phone.
Dylan: You been gome forever.
Riley: Leaving the store now, babe. I’ll be home soon.
Dylan: K. You get beers?
I inhale deeply, waiting for the calm to set in. It doesn’t.
Riley: Yes.
Then I go back into the store, buy a case of beer which is forbidden in our home, and listen to Sally tell me about her cat’s urinary tract infection.
I cry the entire drive home—only stopping when I pull into the garage. And then I repeat the same process I had when I got to the store. I wipe my tears, tell myself that it isn’t me. That it can’t be.
I carry the case of beer, struggling to unlock the back door, and walk into the living room. Nothing’s changed. “Here,” I say, opening the box and handing them one each.
“You’re the best, Riley. Honestly,” Conway says, reaching into his pocket. He pulls out his wallet but before he can do anything, Dylan interrupts.
“We got it.” He looks up at me, his right hand stroking Bacon. “Can you put the rest in the fridge?”
I’m getting really sick of fake smiling. “Sure.”
Once all the beers are put away, Conway walks into the kitchen, trashing his empty bottle. I reach into the fridge and grab another one for him but he declines. “I was just seeing if you needed help bringing any bags in.”
“Please.”
It takes both of us two trips to bring in all the groceries. He helps put them away before turning to me. “I take it this food’s for us?” he asks.
I nod.
“We really don’t want to inconvenience you in any way,” he says.
“It’s no problem. Make yourself at home.”
“We’re assholes. We ate all your food and didn’t even think about you. I really am sorry.” I can tell by the plea in his eyes that he means it. “It’s been a while since we’ve had access to that much food, you know? Occasionally we’ll get packages but they don’t last long between twelve men so…”
I shrug. “It’s honestly fine.”
He nods, his hands going in his pockets. But he doesn’t leave. He just stands there, as if waiting for me to say something more. I don’t. Finally, he breaks. “My parents moved up north when I left for basic. My girlfriend broke up with me while I was deployed. We shared a house. Now she’s living with her new boyfriend and I kind of got nowhere to go so Dylan’s really helping me out here…”
I turn around and run the water into a pot so I can start on my dinner. “I’m glad,” I tell him over my shoulder. “Not about
the girlfriend thing. I’m sorry about that. I meant that Dylan’s able to help you out. He’s a good man.”
And right on cue, Dylan walks into the kitchen holding Bacon under his arm like a football. He doesn’t speak, just opens the fridge, grabs another beer, and walks back out.
I switch my gaze back to Conway.
He shrugs. “You need help with dinner?”
“It’s fine. I was just going to make pasta real quick.”
He grins from ear to ear and rolls up his sleeves. I don’t think it’s me he’s smiling about. I think it’s the prospect of more food. “Put me to work, boss,” he says.
I tilt my head, eyeing him curiously. If something as simple as food can make him happy, then why doesn’t it do the same for Dylan?
Why can’t I make him happy?
We eat the pasta at the kitchen table after Conway clears it of all the other trash it was covered in. Leroy and Conway talk about the news they’d just seen. Dylan stares at his untouched plate. I stare at him. Then suddenly, he stands. “I’m going to bed,” he announces to no one in particular. He grabs another beer before he leaves, leaving me sitting with two people I know nothing about. I quickly finish my meal, tell them to leave everything and that I’ll take care of it in the morning.
Dylan’s already in bed, facing the wall when I enter the bedroom.
I go straight to the bathroom and turn on the shower. I spend as long in there as I did in the store and ignore the fact that he is now sitting on the edge of the bed watching me. And I avoid the thoughts running through my head—the million questions I’m too afraid to ask.
I step out when the water turns cold, reaching for the towel before I’m even fully out. I dry myself, my back turned to him. Watching him watch me would be too much, too intimate, and intimacy is the last—or maybe the only thing I want.
I can’t decide.
“Riley,” he says, his voice deep and demanding. I can feel him behind me, feel his heavy breaths on my neck.
Slowly, I turn to him, grasping my towel tighter.
I look into his eyes, look for a sign of what he’s feeling, what he’s wanting.
He gives nothing.
I move around him and stand in front of the mirror, forcing the tears away. “It’s good to see you’re getting on well with Bacon,” I murmur. “He really missed you while you were gone.”
