by Lucy Score
“Well, if it isn’t I Volunteer as Tribute,” Sophie said with a wink when Gloria slid onto a barstool. “What’ll it be?”
Sophie was pink-cheeked and hustling behind the bar, as much a Friday night staple in Benevolence as the band that crowded onto the tiny scrap of stage.
The twenty dollars she’d allotted herself for frivolous spending was burning a hole in the back pocket of her thrift store-find jeans. “A glass of house Chardonnay,” Gloria decided. God, these tiny daily decisions that she was now free to make, responsible to make, both thrilled and overwhelmed her.
“Coming right up,” Sophie said, expertly pulling two pints simultaneously while nudging the bar fridge shut with her hip.
Moments later a stemmed glass appeared in front of Gloria on a paper napkin.
“Hey, Gloria. It’s nice to see you out and about!” Harper floated up to the bar with an empty tray. Harper had taken on a Friday night shift at the bar to keep herself occupied and out of trouble while Luke was deployed. Rumor had it Luke wasn’t a fan of both his sister and girlfriend closing down the bar every Friday, but no one told Harper Wilde and Sophie Adler how to live their lives.
Gloria loved that about them.
“I’m celebrating my first full paycheck from Blooms,” Gloria confessed.
“Good for you!” Harper said, traying up a round of drinks as fast as Sophie poured them. “Claire says you’re doing a great job.”
“Thanks.” Gloria felt her blush deepen. “I really like it there. So, um. Have you heard from Luke?” She was going on a bit of a fishing expedition. If Harper had heard from Luke, she probably had news on Aldo.
The dreamy grin nearly split Harper’s face in two. “I had an email from him Wednesday, and I talked to him last week.” A love like the one that lit Harper’s gray eyes could survive the long distance. Gloria was sure of it.
She twirled the stem of her glass between her fingers. “Did he say how Aldo’s doing?”
“Ooooooooh,” Sophie cooed behind the bar. “Someone has a crush!”
Gloria felt herself turning an even brighter shade of pink. Was it only a crush, she wondered. Or did the potential of a future with the man make it something more? These were questions she’d like to ask the man in question who’d given her no way to contact him during his deployment. Whether that was Aldo being chivalrous and heroic or disinterested, she wasn’t certain.
“Stop picking on her,” Harper ordered. “Don’t mind Sophie. She thinks she’s Cupid.”
“By the way, you’re welcome,” Sophie said pointedly at Harper, winking.
“Anyway.” Harper rolled her eyes at Sophie. “Luke did mention that Aldo’s organizing some crazy boot camp workout competition with a bunch of the people from their unit. Tire flipping, rope climbing. He promised to email pictures.”
Gloria nodded and worried about how to beg for an email address without sounding desperate.
“I could give you his email address, you know,” Harper offered, reading her mind.
“Don’t you think that would be…weird?” Gloria asked even while her insides were screaming Get the email address!
Harper hefted her tray. “I think you guys waited long enough. Don’t you?” She headed into the crowd and called over her shoulder. “I’ll send you his email address.”
Gloria couldn’t stop the smile that overtook her face. Aldo may have wanted to protect her, but she needed to get used to making her own decisions. And she decided that she and Aldo should keep in touch.
“Ah, excuse me, Gloria?” Bob of Bob’s Fine Furnishings fame stood before her. “Rumor has it you’re handling the Fourth festivities.”
Gloria blinked, realizing this was the first time in her entire life that a man had approached her in a bar. He was, of course, married to Becky, twenty years his junior. But she was still counting it.
“Yes. Yes, I am,” she said with more confidence than she felt.
Bob bobbed his head. “Great. I have a question about the vendor fees for the festival. As a sponsor of the 5k, am I getting the same discount on my hot dog stand that I got last year or have the discounts changed?”
Gloria was only about one-third of the way through the two dented cardboard boxes filled with papers that Merle’s granddaughter had dropped off about an hour after her ill-conceived volunteering.
“I’m going to have to get back to you on that,” she said. “Can I have your email address?”
While Bob rummaged for paper and a pen, Mrs. Valencio from the grocery store bellied up with her empty cigarette holder and raspberry red hair. “Got a question for you on parking and the parade.” She launched into a recounting of the last seven years of Fourth of Julys and their inconveniences.
Gloria felt her eyes glazing over. All of Benevolence seemed to have appeared in front of her with questions.
Sophie shot her a quick grin and topped off Gloria’s glass.
An hour later, Gloria had a list of twenty-two email addresses, fifty-odd questions that she’d “get back to them on,” and a splitting headache. She chugged the ice water Sophie had thoughtfully left next to her empty wine glass.
“How’s my favorite bartender?”
Gloria lifted her head from the bar at the rich baritone.
Sophie rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “I bet you say that to all the bartenders, Linc, including Titus.”
Lincoln Reed, fire chief, ladies’ man, all American hunk of man candy, gave Gloria an assessing look.
“Well, well, well,” he said.
Sophie raised a perfectly arched eyebrow in his direction. “Down, boy. She’s new to the single life.”
“I’d be happy to ease you into it,” Linc winked. He was a shameless flirt but in a friendly, habitual way that had Gloria smiling shyly.
“That’s very generous,” she said, looking down at her hands clasped in her lap.
The band kicked into a ballad. Linc held out his hand and gave a mock bow. “Care to dance, Ms. Parker?”
Sophie gave her the “get your ass out on the floor” shoulder shimmy.
Exhausted, confused, and maybe the tiniest bit curious, Gloria took a subtle breath and put her hand in his. He led her toward the edge of the dance floor, his back muscles making a hypnotizing show under his tight gray t-shirt.
He was taller than Aldo but not as broad. And when he coaxed her into his arms—with a respectable distance—when he smiled down at her like she was the only woman in the room, Gloria felt nothing.
A man was flirting with her in a bar. A gorgeous, confident, sexy man. And she felt like she was dancing with a first cousin.
What had Aldo Moretta done to her?
21
“Let me get this straight.” Second Lieutenant Steph Oluo shot Aldo a look that told him he was a huge dumbass. “You didn’t give her any way to get in touch with you?”
Aldo brought one hand to his temple, keeping the other firmly on the wheel of the big-ass truck. His eyes never left the skinny village road they were navigating. “The spirits are telling me you are not impressed,” he said in his best psychic woo-woo voice.
Their small convoy was delivering food and supplies to Afghan forces outside the wire. Aldo had volunteered for the mission to keep the antsiness from eating him alive on base.
“Men are dumbasses,” Oluo snorted, her cool gray eyes scanning the buildings around them. They both were familiar enough with missions like this that they could banter without stealing focus from the necessary constant vigilance.
What might look like a sleepy village often was a hole for insurgent forces with snipers. Villagers, in their loose linen dress hurried about their days. Most pointedly ignoring the six-vehicle convoy that was plowing its way through their streets with guns at the ready.
“She’s been through a lot,” Aldo argued. He hadn’t shared Gloria’s secrets, just that she’d gotten out of a bad relationship.
“You could have been using these six months to, I don’t know, build up a rapport with
her,” Oluo pointed out. “You know, maybe be friends with the girl first before you try to jump her bones.”
“I’m not trying to jump her bones,” Aldo said defensively. He saw brake lights and rolled to a stop behind the truck in front of them. They both scanned the buildings around them for signs of activity. A minute passed in tense silence. He could feel something out there on the horizon. That tingle at the base of his spine had been honed by countless near misses. The last one, a sniper on a rooftop, had lined up a shot on Luke. Aldo had bruised his friend’s ribs in the rush tackle that had the bullet missing them both by inches.
“Seeing anything?” Aldo asked into the radio.
Static and squawking. “Nah. Just a goat herder with a livestock traffic jam.”
Neither Aldo nor his passenger relaxed until the truck in front of them shifted into gear. “All clear,” the radio squawked.
“You are too trying to jump her bones,” Oluo accused, picking up the thread of conversation where it had dropped. It was something they all excelled at after a few weeks of having normal, mundane tasks interrupted by threats and adrenaline.
“Okay, so maybe eventually—”
“Aha!”
“I don’t want to get in her way for a while. I want her to find the life she wants without building it around some—”
“Dumbass lieutenant?” Oluo supplied helpfully.
“I was going to say devastatingly handsome, romantic leading man.”
Oluo grunted, not sounding particularly impressed.
“She deserves this chance to be on her own,” Aldo pressed.
“Of course she does. But what if she meets some guy while you’re rolling around the desert for six months?”
“Five,” Aldo corrected her. He was counting not only the days but the hours. “And I just want her to be happy.” He’d die of a smashed-to-pieces heart. Or he’d wallow in self-pity for a year or so before swearing off women permanently and becoming some kind of mountain-dwelling hermit.
At least that was the plan.
“I don’t know,” Oluo teased. “Good-looking girl like that isn’t going to stay single for long.” Oluo knew what she was talking about. She came out to her parents at age eleven, insisting that her feelings for Miley Cyrus were not merely friendly. She’d been with her girlfriend, a kindergarten teacher, for four years.
“Gloria deserves a man who is going to look at her like she is the best thing in his life for the rest of hers,” Aldo said, gripping the wheel.
“Well, shit,” she laughed. “Never would have taken you for a softie. Maybe she’ll wait around for your dumb ass.”
She landed a punch on his shoulder.
And the world went to dust.
Pressure, a wave of it crushing his body against itself. Red and brown, swirling in front of him as his empty lungs begged for air. There was no sound, just a dull roar from far away. Nothing but pressure and dust.
He couldn’t tell where his body ended and the desert dirt began.
Was that gunfire? Why couldn’t he fucking move?
Move, Moretta! Move your fucking lard ass.
Was he dead? Fucking damn it all to hell! Had he died without getting another kiss from Gloria Parker?
“Gloria.”
“Stay with me, man. You hear me?”
Gunfire. Screaming. So much dust. And there was red, red, red everywhere.
He was moving. At least he thought he was. And then there was pain. Worse than the crushing pressure. Tearing, shredding, stabbing. His lower body was on fire. He couldn’t pinpoint a location as it raced through him, lighting up nerves.
“Medic! I need a fucking medic!”
He couldn’t move. Couldn’t open his eyes.
“If you die on me, buddy, I will never fucking forgive your ass!” Luke’s face wavered in front of him. His jaw was tight, and there was blood on his face.
“You hit?” Aldo rasped, the words ripping his throat open.
“No, you stupid son of a bitch, and don’t even think about dying.”
“Oluo?”
“I don’t know, man.”
“Gloria.”
Someone moved his hand over his chest pocket where he kept the picture of the woman he was pretty sure he loved.
If it was too late, he was pissed enough that he was coming back to haunt someone.
There were more hands moving over his body, more commands.
Stay down.
Hurry up.
It’s bad.
IED.
His leg. Jesus, his leg.
Don’t you fucking let him die.
Return fire.
I love you, man. You’re my best friend…
But Aldo was separate from it all, drifting away in the dust that would never settle. It didn’t hurt anymore.
22
“Look who’s awake,” croaked a voice that sounded vaguely familiar in a world of strange. It was coming from far away and Aldo realized he was wearing a headset.
“Oluo?” It felt like razor blades slicing open his throat. Everything was too bright here as if they were on the surface of the sun.
“Yeah, man.”
“Everyone else okay?” he rasped.
“Dunno,” Oluo responded. She sounded weak.
With heroic effort, Aldo managed to open one eye. A chopper. They were in the air.
“Don’t move, Lieutenant.” A different voice. This one attached to a grim-looking woman in blood-stained camo scrubs and blue surgical gloves.
“FST?” he read on her uniform.
“Forward surgical team,” she said briskly in his ears as she sank a needle the size of a canoe oar into his arm. “You and the second lieutenant are being airlifted to a combat support hospital.”
“Bagram?” he coughed. Goddammit. He needed to stop talking. Every word was slicing his dust-packed throat to ribbons.
“You’re saving me the trouble of asking you what day of the week it is,” she said calmly. Everything about her was all business. The sleek bun, the set of her jaw, the line carved between her eyebrows. The woman was a professional. A stunningly beautiful one. “I can’t give you any water because, as soon as we land, you’re going straight into surgery.”
Aldo felt a hand groping for his. Oluo. He squeezed it tight.
“How’s my girl here, doc?” Aldo asked. She was awake and alive, but the fact that Steph “Balls of Steel” Oluo was clinging to his hand meant that one of them was probably on death’s doorstep.
“Two GSWs. One to the shoulder, one in the gut. And a dump truck of desert grit in both,” Doctor Dreamy said conversationally in that faraway voice. “She’s gonna be fine.”
He blew out a breath, and the doctor looked down at him.
“Me?”
“Not great,” the doctor said, still seeming largely unconcerned. She hung a bag of plasma over him and leaned in. Aldo looked into eyes so green they made him think of spring. She had a deep scar that curved under her left eye. It only added to the mystery of her appeal.
“You can tell me straight if I’m gonna die.”
Her face softened, and she patted him on the chest. “I promise you’re going to come through this. Might not be pretty, but you give off a tough guy vibe, so I believe in you.”
“My leg…” He couldn’t get more words out. But he could tell by the set of her jaw that it was bad.
“I’m being straight with you. There’s a good chance we can’t save it,” she told him without looking down the stretcher. “But before you go all ‘I’m a cripple,’ ‘I’m half a man’ on me, I’ll remind you that prosthetics have never been better, and if you’re not a dumbass about it, you’ll probably be able to do everything you did before.”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“Chicks dig amputees, right, Oluo?” he asked weakly.
She choked out a laugh. “Fuck yeah, they do.” She squeezed his hand until it was the only thing he could feel.
Doctor Dreamy moved between her patients
, stepping over their joined hands like a ballerina on stage instead of a combat surgeon mid-flight. “I predict you both will be having ice cream for dinner together in forty-eight hours,” she told them, earning a snort from the lactose-intolerant Oluo.
“How’d it go down?” he asked, his brain scrambling over the events.
“IED, I think. Took out our truck. We started taking fire from both sides,” Oluo told him.
“How’d you get out?”
“Did a damn belly flop into the dirt and crawled into a goat shit-splattered alley. O’Connell found me and carried me like a goddamn baby.” Aldo wanted to laugh but didn’t think he’d survive it. The carrying would bother her more than the gunshot wounds.
“How did I get out?”
“Captain Garrison,” she said simply.
So he and Luke had traded another round of lifesaving. Aldo closed his eyes and sent out a silent thank you to his friend. This had better be the last fucking time unless one of them needed a kidney someday. They fell into a silence under the thrum of the copter blades.
“Anyone else hurt?”
“I don’t know man. It was chaos, and there was dust and blood freaking everywhere.” Her voice cracked, and he gripped her hand hard.
Aldo tried to turn his head in the cradle it was strapped into. “Oluo?”
“Yeah, man?” she said through gritted teeth as Doctor Dreamy cut the shoulder of her uniform open.
“Chicks dig bullet scars, too.”
She laughed, her teeth chattering now, and Aldo felt a tear leak from the corner of his eye. He was so damn tired. He hurt so damn much. And this was only the beginning.
They clung together like that as the doctor, speaking quietly into her headset, danced over and around them, poking, prodding, taping, until landing. Aldo weakly tried to reach for Doctor Dreamy as the ground team swarmed his stretcher. “Will you call my mom, doc? Tell her what you told me. No bullshit. Give it to her straight.”
