One and Only Boxed Set

by Melanie Harlow

  She gave me a squeeze. “Then let’s go.”

  We rode home the same way we’d driven out earlier, but she seemed to hold me a little tighter, keep her body pressed even closer to mine. Her hands moved more, too—over my chest and abs, along my thighs. It might not end as graphically as my fantasy earlier this week, but it still felt pretty fucking good.

  Brie had hated the bike, never wanted to take it anywhere. It would mess up her hair, she said, or she wanted to wear a short skirt. Don’t you want me to look sexy when we go out? she’d ask with her usual pouty face. Don’t you want me to feel good about myself?

  Actually, I never wanted to go out to begin with. It always felt like her friends and her places and her ideas about how to have a good time. I never enjoyed any of it, and I’d have been happier staying in.

  Then stay in alone, she’d snap. I’m too young to sit around this house all the time. I want to go out. I want to have fun. I want to be around people who make me laugh. All you do is frustrate me.

  Sorry, I’d say, but I wouldn’t really be sorry. It was just what I was supposed to say, and I said it so often I thought maybe I should tattoo it across my mouth.

  I apologized a lot to Stella too, but that was different—she didn’t come looking for it. She didn’t try to guilt me into anything. But she didn’t let me get away with being a dickhead to her, and I liked it when she showed a little mettle and stood up for herself. So my sorries to her were genuine—I didn’t like disappointing her.

  I worried, of course, that I’d said too much on the walk back to the bike. Those were not things I’d ever planned on telling her, or anyone. The only person I’d ever spoken to like that was Mack, but I knew he’d never judge me. And I trusted him with my life. I always would.

  Stella was different. I wanted to trust her—I liked the idea of trusting her—but I struggled. Almost everyone I’d trusted in the past, every ideal I’d held close to my heart, had let me down somehow. I couldn’t even trust myself to tell friend from enemy.

  But I had to admit, some of the burden of loneliness had been lifted from me tonight as I’d spilled my guts. Maybe she didn’t fully understand, but at least she hadn’t appeared to be horrified. She hadn’t told me I was crazy. Nor had she insisted things would get better, and I just needed to forget it and move on. She’d let me talk, and she’d listened.

  It felt like a gift.

  “Tell me more about when you were young.”

  Stella lay on her side, facing me on the mattress with her hands tucked under her cheek. Her legs were tangled up with mine, the sweat still drying on our skin—we hadn’t even made it to the back door before our lips were locked, our hands tearing at each other’s clothes, our bodies craving to be skin to skin. Jackets, shoes, socks, jeans, shirts, underwear—we’d left a trail from the kitchen through the dining room into the bedroom.

  “What do you want to know?” I was on my back, one hand beneath my head, one hand on her thigh.

  “I don’t know. Anything. Were you happy?”

  I looked at the ceiling and thought about it. “Yeah. I was. We didn’t have much money or anything, but we were okay. My dad had a landscaping and snow removal business. My mom taught Sunday School at our church.”

  “You went to Sunday School?”

  I pinched her leg. “You don’t have to sound so surprised, you know.”

  She laughed. “Sorry. What’s your favorite childhood memory?”

  I didn’t even have to think about it. “My mom loved to bake, and every day when I came home from school, there would be something in the oven or already made, still warm. I’d sit down and gobble up cookies or brownies, and she’d sit with me and ask about my day.” I could still see her, chin on her hand, flour dusting her blouse, her long dark hair pushed back with a headband. I’d always loved her long hair as a kid. I was eighteen when it fell out after chemo, but I fucking cried like a baby alone in my room after seeing her for the first time.

  “Do you visit your parents a lot?”

  “No.” I hesitated, then thought fuck it. “My mom died of breast cancer right after I graduated from high school.”

  “I’m sorry.” She reached over and put a hand on my chest. “Want to tell me about her?”

  I didn’t want to look at her because I was scared I’d tear up. I never talked about my mom. Ever. Not even to Mack. But suddenly I needed to say her name. “Her name was Virginia, but everybody called her Jenny.”

  “What else?” Her fingertips brushed back and forth just below my collarbone.

  “She made me say my prayers every night before bed.”

  Stella laughed gently. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. She said I needed them because I was such a reckless kid. She was convinced I was going to break my neck one day. It’s kind of a miracle that I didn’t.”

  “Good thing you said them, then.”

  “She was like your grandmother, always baking things for other people or sending meals to anyone who was struggling. My dad used to get so mad because it’s not like we could afford to give food away.”

  “She sounds wonderful.”

  “She was.”

  “How about your dad? Do you see him often?”

  “Not really. My dad and I had a complicated relationship. He was hard on me growing up.”

  “Hard on you, how? Did he hit you?”

  “Yeah. But not my sisters. I probably deserved it, though.”

  “No child deserves to be hit. Ever.”

  I liked the ferocity in her voice, the moral certainty of her statement. I believed that too, but it was hard to reconcile that belief with the things I’d done, and it was a big part of why I couldn’t see myself as a father. But I didn’t want to get into that. “Well, that’s how he was raised, and there was always justification for it in the Bible, so that’s how it was. Whoever spares the rod hates his son.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine. It was a long time ago.” Even if sometimes it didn’t feel that way. “My mom tried to make up for it.”

  She was silent a moment. “Where’s your dad now?”

  “He remarried really quickly to a woman my sisters and I didn’t really take to. She moved into the house, and seeing her in it drove me fucking nuts. Sitting in my mom’s chair, moving around in her kitchen, sleeping in her bed …” I swallowed hard. “I had to get out of there.”

  “Is that when you enlisted?”

  “Kind of. It was either that or lose my fucking mind. I was just so angry all the time. Nothing seemed fair.”

  “I bet.”

  “I remember wanting to fight so badly. I couldn’t wait to go.”

  “And did it make you feel better? Was that the answer? I’m sorry,” she said right away, flattening her palm on my chest. “You don’t have to answer that. It’s a total therapist question.”

  I looked over at her and had to smile at her worried expression. “It’s okay. At first, it was the answer. I felt like I was doing something good, fighting against something bad. It was a relief in a way, to have somewhere to channel the rage. And to have that kind of purpose.” I looked at the ceiling again. “I felt like my mom would have been proud.”

  “Of course she would have.” Stella moved closer to me, wrapping an arm and a leg across my body.

  I put my arms around her and held her close. “It just wasn’t that clear-cut all the time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, like what I was talking about earlier. Sometimes it was hard to tell if we were actually accomplishing anything or not. There was a lack of … clarity as to what winning would look like. And there was a lot of death.” I swallowed hard. “It’s not an easy thing to live with.”

  “No. It can’t be.”

  “You have to do things you know are wrong on a human level. Things that violate your strongest moral convictions, but you can’t stop to think about that. You can’t stop to feel. So you learn to … kill your feelings too, I guess.”

>   She nodded. Pressed her lips to my shoulder.

  “Except …” Stop fucking talking, said a voice in my head. But I couldn’t. I fucking couldn’t. “You can’t just kill some feelings. Maybe you try, but it doesn’t work that way. You end up killing all of them.”

  Stella sniffled and nodded. Kissed my shoulder again.

  “Then you come home and you can’t talk about shit, and you realize how against the war everyone is, how no one thinks we should be there, nobody thinks it’s worth the cost, and you’re like … fuck you all. You sent us there. People are dying for this. People are killing for this. Was it all just political bullshit and lies? I violated some of my deepest held beliefs for this war. Was it worth it?”

  She wiped off her cheeks. “I don’t know.”

  Congratulations, asshole. You made her cry some more.

  “Is that why you think you don’t feel anything?” she asked quietly.

  “I know I don’t.”

  She picked her head up and looked at me. “I don’t believe you.”

  “It’s true.”

  “When you were talking about your mom just now, you felt something. I’m sure you did.”

  I set my jaw stubbornly. “That’s different. That’s a memory.”

  “Still. It made you feel something, didn’t it?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” I thought about the photos Bones kept sending me. How I could hardly stand to look at them.

  “You’re a man, Ryan, not a machine. But you had to perform like a machine during war, which you were carefully trained to do. Then you come home, and you’re expected to be a civilian again, but no one tells you how. No one tells you how to process all the grief and guilt and regret you’ve buried in order to do your job. They expect you to just ‘be a man’ and get on with it. That’s fucked up.”

  “Yeah. That’s exactly what it is.” I shouldn’t have been amazed at her ability to grasp the situation—I knew how good she was at reading people. And I liked how she didn’t insist I had to forgive myself. I didn’t want to be absolved of anything. I wasn’t like my father, who claimed absolution by quoting Proverbs. Maybe there was a God and maybe there wasn’t, but if there was, I sure as hell didn’t expect him to pardon me for what I’d done.

  Stella was looking at me like she wanted to say something else, but was holding back.

  “What?” I asked.

  She sat up and propped herself on one arm. “I want to ask you something, but I don’t want you to get mad at me.”

  “I won’t get mad at you,” I said.

  “Grams said you were married?”

  This was the last thing I wanted to talk about right now. But I felt like I owed her the truth. What else did I have to give her? “Yeah. I was.”

  “For how long?”

  “About five years. But I was away for about half the time. I re-enlisted right after we were married.”

  She nodded. “Is that what broke up the marriage? The separation?”

  I exhaled, putting my hands behind my head again. “It was a lot of things. I wasn’t a good husband.”

  “I don’t believe that either.”

  Christ, she was as stubborn as I was. “Ask her if you don’t believe me.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “I assume back in Cleveland with her new and much improved husband. They might even have a baby by now.”

  She thought for a moment. “You didn’t want kids?”

  “Nah. I’m not dad material.”

  “But do you want them? Even if you think you wouldn’t be good at it, I mean. Is being a father something you think about?”

  “No,” I lied. “No wife and kids for me. I’m not cut out for that kind of thing.”

  She traced a scar on my rib cage, her eyes on her fingers. “Is that because you think you’d disappoint them? You said something earlier on the porch about always setting yourself up to disappoint people.”

  Okay, now she was getting a little too deep inside my psyche. Better to retreat. “No. It’s because I don’t want them. I like living alone.”

  “That’s right. You told me that.”

  “What about you? Do you want kids?”

  She nodded. “Definitely.”

  I tucked some hair behind her ear, trying not to think about some other guy going to bed with her every night. Someone steady, with an MBA and a leather briefcase and a closet full of suits. Or at least a goddamn dresser. He’d support her career, too, coming home early a few nights a week to make a nutritious dinner for their two perfect kids. He’d deserve her.

  I couldn’t bear the thought.

  Quickly sitting up and flipping her onto her back, I braced myself above her. “So now I get to ask you about something you said earlier today.”

  “Okay.”

  “You said you’re always setting yourself up for disappointment. What was that all about?”

  “Oh.” She made a face. “I just always seem to pick the wrong guys.”

  I cocked my brow. “Am I Exhibit A?”

  She laughed. “No, silly. I mean to date. This isn’t a date, remember?”

  “Oh, right.” Although I kind of wished it was. I wished a lot of things right then. “So other guys have disappointed you?”

  “Yes.” Then she sighed. “Although it’s probably as much my fault as theirs. For example, the guy who just broke up with me on my birthday last week—”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute. Some asshole broke up with you on your birthday?”

  “Yes. It was really horrible and embarrassing. Not because I really cared for him, but because I should have seen it coming. We had no chemistry whatsoever. Zero. We never even had sex.”

  My jaw dropped. “What the fuck? Why not?”

  “That’s probably my fault too.” She kind of squirmed a little. “I’ve never been that into sex. I get too self-conscious.”

  “About what?”

  “I don’t know.” She turned her head to the side.

  “Fuck off. Yes, you do.” I was teasing her, but when she looked at me again, she was serious.

  “My body.”

  “Your body is absolutely perfect. On a scale of one to ten, it’s a twenty.”

  “And what I do with it. Or don’t do.”

  “You lost me.”

  She inhaled and exhaled slowly. “Someone once made me feel like I’m not good in bed. Not hot enough. Not sexy enough.”

  Fury surged through me like lightning. “Who?”

  “Just a guy in college.”

  “Well, I’d like to just pound my fist into his face.”

  She closed her eyes, shook her head lightly. “He doesn’t matter anymore. But the experience affected me a lot. Ever since then, I’ve tended to seek out men who don’t give off a strong sexual vibe, I guess because I’m looking for someone without a lot of notches on his bedpost to compare me to. That’s why I never go for guys I’m physically attracted to. I’m protecting myself. Well—until you.”

  “Good. I was starting to get a complex of my own.”

  That made her smile. “With you it’s different. Really different.”

  “I don’t make you nervous?”

  “I can’t say that exactly, but I’m less nervous with you than I’ve ever been.” She laughed, a little bashfully. “It might be that you have me too hot and bothered to remember I’m worried. My lizard brain takes over.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, your lizard brain is sexy as fuck.” I lowered my mouth to her throat and her collarbone and the top of her chest. “Along with the rest of you. I can’t seem to get enough.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.” My dick had barely had a rest but was already showing interest in round three.

  “You’re just saying that to make me feel better.” She hooked her legs over the backs of my thighs and slid her hands down over my ass.

  “I’m not. I’ve never wanted anyone this much. Or this often. Or so quickly. This probably isn’t the right time to say I want
ed to fuck you the moment your grandmother showed me your picture, but it’s the truth.” I kissed my way down her sternum.

  “Yeah, I’m not sure there’s ever a right time to say that. But I like it.”

  “Just wait, I’ve got all kinds of inappropriate shit in my head.”

  She laughed. “I do love getting inside your head.”

  I kissed the fullest part of one breast. “It’s a scary place. I wish it wasn’t, but it is.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  She’s telling the truth, I thought, moving up to kiss her lips again. She doesn’t mind the shit in my head. She understands me. She trusts me. She accepts me.

  She might even have been able to love me.

  Was it too late?

  Was I too fucked up to be good enough for her? I mean, what did I really have to offer? There was no way I could make her happy in the long run. I’d already made that mistake with someone way less worthy. Why would I ever repeat it?

  As for being happy myself, I’d given up on that idea years ago. When I closed my eyes at night, all I craved was the dark.

  But she made me want to dream again.

  Twenty

  Stella

  “I can’t even believe there’s any left. I thought for sure you’d have eaten the rest of this for breakfast yesterday.”

  I scooped up another bite of apple pie. It was still delicious, even chilled and two days old. Or maybe it was just that anything was going to taste good sitting on his lap in the kitchen at two in the morning, wearing nothing but the button-down shirt he’d had on at dinner while he wore nothing but jeans.

  “Believe me, I thought about it.” He reached onto the pie plate and grabbed a stray piece of crust. “But this one isn’t going to last much longer. I’m afraid you’re going to have to bake me another.”

  I laughed and fed him a bite. “I’m not going to have time. These things take all day. I’m supposed to leave tomorrow—or is it today? I can’t believe how late it is.”

  “Supposed to?” he asked. “Does that mean there’s a chance you could stay longer?”

  I thought for a second. Did I have anything I really couldn’t miss this weekend? “I guess I could stay through the weekend. I’m supposed to have brunch with my sister on Sunday, but she’d probably understand if I canceled.”