Ravel

by Ryan, Shari J.

  We settle down right in front of the tide and I dig my toes into the sand, throwing my head back to feel the hot rays burn into my cheeks.

  “We’re on the beach,” he says.

  I pull my sunglasses down onto the bridge of my nose and give him a “duh” look. “Obviously,” I laugh.

  “Well, people wear bathing suits on the beach.”

  “Turn around,” I tell him. I would like to take my shirt and shorts off without a set of eyes watching my awkward and completely unsmooth attempt at taking my clothes off.

  “You were just ogling me, girl, what the hell?” he laughs. “Plus, I—uh—sort of saw you naked last night.”

  “You did not. It was pitch black in your room.”

  “You have a point.” I know I do. With reluctance and a quick roll of his eyes, he shifts his body around. “You know, that dude over there, the one with a black rug lining his chest and his mouth hanging open? How come he gets to watch you take your clothes off, but I don’t?”

  Oh, gross. “Okay, okay, I’m done.” I pull my hair up off my neck and tie it up.

  “You can look now.” He only turns back toward the ocean though, avoiding me, so I plop into the sand and adjust the straps on my top.

  “Damn,” he says, without looking at me.

  “I know. I’m pretty spectacular,” I joke.

  He looks over at me, checking me out from head to toe. “Yeah, you’re okay.” He looks back out into the ocean. “I was talking about that wave, though.” While I know he’s joking, my cheeks burn from embarrassment and I bite down on my bottom lip, nodding my head. Ass. “Kidding, Daph. I’m trying not to look at you. Looking at you is like looking into the sun. A little too hot for my delicate eyes.”

  He doesn’t look at me at all. Like, it’s been ten minutes of us staring out into the water. If he’s playing with me, he has quite the stamina of dragging out a bad joke, but I can play, too. I stand up, aware of my bottoms being snugly pulled into my butt crack and I walk down to the water purposely bending over to cup some water in my hands.

  Before I can stand back up, he’s behind me with his arms wrapped around my waist and his lips on my shoulder. “What in the hell are you doing to me?” he mutters into my ear. “I have no restraint when it comes to you.”

  “I know,” I say with a smile.

  He walks us forward into the water and pushes us ahead until we’re floating along with the waves. “I’ll always remember this,” he says.

  “We can just live like this every day,” I say, confused as to why he’d have to remember this, like we’re temporary, like this is temporary. Is it?

  “I hope so.” The cool chill of the water feels a little colder against my skin right now as I analyze his words and what he means.

  “I’m not going anywhere, regardless of what the DNA test says,” I remind him, hoping that’s all this is. But the look on his face tells me that’s the least of his worries. What else is there to worry about? Why am I pretending I don’t know what the future holds? Why am I oblivious to what I know he’s thinking?

  “It’s going to happen at some point, Daph. It’s why I was hesitant with us in the first place. I’ll probably have to go back over there.” I don’t know if it’s fear of fighting in a war again or the fear of leaving me that I see in his eyes, but whatever it is, it hurts to look at.

  “Well, we’ll deal with life as it comes,” I tell him.

  “I told my officer I wanted to go back, but that was before—” His arms wrap around me, lifting me until my legs wrap around his waist. He brushes some wet strands of hair off my forehead and places his arm back around me. “Nothing could make me want to leave this—you.” His lips press against mine, but my mouth feels cold and stale. I feel like there’s more, and my chest aches for the information I’m not sure he has. He just got back a few weeks ago. How could he be thinking about leaving again so soon? “Look at me.”

  I realize my eyes are closed. I can’t look at him. If I open my eyes, he might see the fear and confuse it for the pain I told him he wouldn’t cause. What I’m truly fearful about is that we’re just starting out, and what if there isn’t enough to hold onto. I wish there was. I want there to be. There are wives and girlfriends who survive deployments every day, and I would have to be strong like them. “I can’t look at you right now,” I say softly.

  His thumb sweeps over my eyelid. “Please. I need to look into your eyes.”

  Regardless of how much I don’t want him to see, I open them, feeling the heaviness of my lashes as they expose the tears clouding my vision. “This isn’t a simple girlfriend/boyfriend situation. I want you to think about this. I probably shouldn’t have told you there was a chance I may never go back. The likelihood of me going back is extremely high,” he explains. My body stiffens in his hold. I wonder if he can feel my heart pounding in my chest. It hurts. Should it hurt? Why do all good things eventually end? Why bother starting anything with anyone? “If we do this, you and me, we need to be strong enough to survive a deployment. What Tara did is typical. I’m worried—“

  “You think I’d do that to you?” I snap at him, wondering if that’s what he’s getting at, while also realizing I’m saying I would wait for him. Would I?

  “I think it’s hard wondering if someone you care about is alive, or when you’ll hear from them again. When we go away, it’s like we become ghosts. Some—a lot of women have trouble loving a ghost.”

  “I’ll always remember this.” Now I understand why he said that, and now I know I’ll need memories to fill the void and replace his ghost.

  “I want to tell you not to think about deployment and to live each day without thinking about tomorrow because otherwise you’ll consume yourself with worry about when that day might come. That is, if this is something you want to do. You have a choice, Daph. I don’t. Not now.”

  I should think about this. I should weigh my options and realize how stupidly hard it will be to say good-bye to someone I’ll most definitely fall in love with. Heck, I’m already falling for him. Can I do this to myself? Can I be that person? One of those incredibly strong women who stay home for a year waiting by the phone every day with hopes that the person she loves is still alive.

  He’s not looking for an answer from me, but “I—“

  He places his finger over my lips. “I wasn’t asking you. I won’t ask you until it’s time for me to go. I told you I live each day like it’s my last. It’s for a good reason. If today is my last day on earth or on US soil for a year, I want it to be with you, in the middle of the water with your legs wrapped around me just like this, as I lose myself in the sea of your blue eyes.” I tighten my arms around his neck and place my chin down over his shoulder, inhaling the sweet scent of salty ocean water mixed with his soap.

  “But—“

  “Shh...”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CURRENT DAY

  KEMPER

  MAYBE I SHOULD just tell her, but I don’t want to ruin the weekend.

  “I want to eat up there,” she says, pointing to the pier.

  “You got it.” I take her by the hand, ready to trip over myself as her sundress blows with every breeze. The moon has already snuck out and I want to thank the man in the moon for this moment—for all of the memories today because God knows I’ll need them.

  Seated at the last table on the end of the pier, she looks up from her menu, directly into my eyes. I’ve come to know this look. “Tell me everything,” she says, as if she can read my mind.

  I laugh and place my menu down. “That’s a little vague, don’t you think?”

  “Okay then, what was it like over there?” The answer to that question is something no innocent civilian should have to hear about.

  “Surreal,” I say, knowing that won’t suffice as an answer, but it’s the truth. My first tour started shortly after high school graduation. My innocence was stripped from me within the first week when our mission was to step in and contain some riots occ
urring in the area. As bullets flew by me, I remember asking myself how the hell I ended up there only six months after high school graduation. When our unit also experienced several casualties that first week, everything became real, almost too real to comprehend. Then I got used to it and it was normal. How do you explain that?

  Thankfully, she doesn’t push for more information. Instead, there’s an apologetic expression written across her face. She looks like she thinks she went too far by asking me that. She didn’t, but there’s no simple answer. I just don’t know how to rehash what I’ve lived through. I want to tell her she wouldn’t understand, but that’s rude. In truth, I don’t want her to understand. If she is with me when I go back over there, I don’t want her mind filled with what I’ll be facing. I don’t want her to know the actual chances of me getting injured or killed. Maybe that’s not fair of me. Maybe that’s me not being fully honest, but I just want to protect her.

  “Hmm,” she expels a quiet sigh. “So, if you don’t want to talk about that, then tell me what attracted you to Tara.” I don’t know what’s with this uncomfortable version of twenty questions, but I’m thankful for the interruption when the waitress places bread down on our table. I want to stuff as much of it in my mouth as I can so she doesn’t expect me to answer, but Daphne is on to me. She takes the basket and pulls it in toward her.

  “What’s with all the questions?” I ask.

  “I want to know more about you,” she says. I know we’ve kept a lot of our past exactly where it should be, but it doesn’t exactly paint a good picture of why we are the way we are, or even who we are. “If you’re going away at some point, I want to feel like I know everything about you before you go.” In case I don’t ever come back. That’s the part she’s leaving off.

  “I met her at a party,” I say.

  “She’s pretty. Was it one of those moments where you saw the girl of your dreams and just had to talk to her, or did you bump into her, make her beer go flying and offer to get her a new one?”

  “Who are you?” I laugh. She lives inside of a romance book. “Actually, she was puking in the bathroom. I had to go real bad and knocked on the door for a half hour before she opened it.”

  “Love at first puke, huh?” Pretty much. I felt bad for her. She was in tears over some guy and I was drunk. Really drunk. After I used the bathroom, I found her still crying against the wall out in the hall.

  “We just ended up talking about things and uh—“

  “You slept with her,” she giggles. She’s not giggling inside though. I know women. I know exactly what she’s thinking right now. I slept with a chick an hour after meeting her.

  “Yep. That’s what I did,” I sigh heavily and take a sip of my beer. “Why do you want to hear this shit, Daph?”

  “Just curious,” she says, looking past me. When her eyes meet mine again, she says, “What made you want to talk to me and help me at the bar that night?”

  “That was different. I don’t generally pick up random girls and try to get them into bed.” I reach across the table, and she removes her hand from the bread she’s been holding hostage, thinking I’m reaching for her hand, but I really just want the bread. I snatch the bread from her and she slaps my hand.

  “Hey,” she squeaks.

  “Daphne. You literally took my breath away that night. I hadn’t thought about much besides Rex from the moment I stepped off the plane until the moment I sat down at the bar. Then you toasted to Rex.” I take a roll, place it on my plate and hand the basket back to her. “You have no idea what kind of gesture that was.”

  She looks kind of proud as she bites down on her bottom lip. “No one wants people to feel sorry for them. It adds to the pain, and it’s why I don’t have friends anymore. My friends spent so much time feeling sorry for me, and the decisions I made, that I didn’t want to be around them anymore. I know the situations are different, but I know what pain feels like.”

  I reach over and take her hand this time. “I don’t want you feeling anymore pain.” Which is exactly what’s going to happen when I leave you. Tara didn’t even cry when I was getting on the bus to leave for Afghanistan. Not one tear. Not that I wanted her to cry or anything, but she wasn’t even upset. I should have known right then and there how things would pan out, but I was more than a little naive. It was the first time I went on a deployment while in a relationship, and it sucked. I swore to myself I’d never do it again, but it looks like I might have to go back on that.

  “Pain is a part of life, as is love, hate, and happiness. It’s not something I’m running away from,” Daphne says.

  “How many times did he hurt you?” I’ve refrained from asking her this question, but since the gloves are apparently off right now, I want to know.

  She looks down and away from me, like she always does when I bring him up. I don’t understand why she can’t look at me. I’m not judging her. Doesn’t she know that? “He pushed me a lot, but it’s because he has a very quick boiling point. I always tried to avoid hot topics with him, but once in a while they’d come out when I wasn’t thinking clearly, or when I told him I wanted to leave him.”

  “You were being held hostage.” I want to say I don’t believe it, but some things never change. Trent was raised that way. “All he did was push you?” I can see it in her eyes—that isn’t all he did to her.

  She pushes the straw in her drink to the side and starts chugging her mixed drink. I reach over and take the glass from her hand. “Don’t,” she says, taking it back from me.

  “Tell me what happened,” I say with a little more firmness. I might even be snarling. I’m not trying to, but anger is raging through me. Maybe she shouldn’t tell me.

  This weekend was supposed to be a break, but I’m slowly learning there’s no such thing.

  She finishes her drink, and while I wish she wasn’t chugging the thing, maybe she’ll actually start talking now. As she pulls the glass away from her face, I see tears rolling down her cheeks, and the reflection of the water behind me in her eyes. “Want to know what else he did to me?” she croaks. I’ve never seen this side of Daphne before. She’s strong and hardly ever shows weakness, not even after she woke up from a concussion. No, I don’t think I want to know what else he did to her, but I have to know what I’m leaving her with when I go back overseas.

  “Every night...” she begins and I already don’t like where this is going. “...he forced me to, you know...” I don’t respond because I’m thinking the worst, while hoping it isn’t that bad, but I’m just in denial. “...give him head. He’d choke me until I threw up. Then when he couldn’t have me like that anymore, he’d hurt me in other ways. He’d tie me up sometimes so I couldn’t move while he did his worst. I cried the first few times because it hurt so much, but he didn’t care.” I know why she didn’t tell me this. It’s because I wouldn’t have slept with her last night. I would have made sure she felt no pain. I would have done everything in my power to make sure she wasn’t thinking about what that asshole did to her. He fucking raped her. Repeatedly.

  “You never wanted it? Him?” I ask her, having a hard time getting the words out of my mouth.

  “No. It would be like purposely burning myself every day.”

  “Daphne, he raped you. Every night.” I don’t know why I need to clarify this out loud, but although it seems almost unreal, I’m not questioning anything she’s saying because I know him. I know what Sloan did to my mother, and I know how long it took for my mother to get away from Sloan.

  “Like I said, every time I tried to break up with him, I got hurt and threatened,” she says, shrugging her shoulders.

  “I get it.” I’m going to kill him.

  After the waitress places our plates down in front of us, Daphne lifts her fork. Her hand is shaking as she twirls spaghetti around the prongs. She swallows the bite of food from her fork and looks back up at me. “My parents hate each other. I don’t know what a good relationship looks like. It would be like me telling you w
hat the color blue looks like if I were colorblind. I couldn’t. In the beginning, my relationship with Trent seemed like anything else I’d ever known. Over time, I realized something wasn’t right, but it was too late.”

  All I want to do right now is show her how amazing life can be, and what love is really supposed to feel like. “What are your dreams?” I ask, hoping to change the subject.

  She closes her eyes and looks up at the sky as a smile pinches at the corners of her mouth. “I think I’m living in one right now. You. Me. Here. This has to be some kind of dream.” She lowers her chin and looks over at me. “You’re some kind of dream, Kemper.”

  Awesome. How am I supposed to tell her that her dream is about to turn into a nightmare?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CURRENT DAY

  Dear Journal,

  The commissary finally called me back and told me I had the job. I start tomorrow, which is great. So now I have to go in and tell Jacey I quit, which is not so great. Since I took several days off because of my head and my fantasy getaway to Myrtle, I’m guessing she won’t find it extremely surprising, but she’s probably not happy about all the hours she’s likely putting in now. She had it easy with me. I needed the money and she was getting paid while I ran the bar. She was a good boss for the most part, and we have a solid relationship even though we hardly worked together. I’ve been working at Beer Bellies for two years and after the first year we just split the shifts. The bar hardly ever required more than one person on at a time unless the boys were home and celebrating, and even then, I still did most of the shifts myself.

  Fingers crossed that she takes this well.

  -Daphne

  DAPHNE

  IT’S AN HOUR BEFORE opening and I find Jacey behind the bar shining glasses. “Please tell me you’re coming back to work today, girl. I need the help.”