by Melinda Minx
I look at him in disbelief.
“You said you were going to leave after we did it,” he says. “I want you around, Sophie. Let’s go on a real date Saturday night. There’s a new Greek place open over in Stockton, we can—”
“Mason,” I say, looking down at the bulge in his pants, “at least let me…”
“No,” he says. “I want you to really think about what you want, Sophie.”
“You’re just mad,” I say. “That I said I was going to leave. You think I’m doing it out of revenge? Because you left me?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t think that’s your motivation, no. But even if it was, I’d deserve it. I know what I want, though, Sophie, and it’s more than one unforgettable night. Get dressed.”
“Marv’s crew is coming in,” Melanie shouts.
I turn the bottle of ketchup over and shake. Nothing comes out.
“Come the fuck on!” I hiss.
I shake the bottle harder, and it all comes out. It spills out all over the fries, and the fish.
“Fuck!” I shout. Then I whisper in a seething anger, “Mr. Garland just has to have his fries drenched in ketchup. Like he can’t do it himself? Why do we have a ketchup bottle on every damn table? And why do we get glass ones?”
Melanie grabs me by the arms. “Sophie, what the hell is wrong with you? You’re acting like you just went cold turkey, but you don’t even smoke.”
Cold turkey. Yeah. I went cold turkey off Mason Steel. He denied me what I wanted, and he did it with a smug fucking grin. That asshole. And now he thinks he can just take me out to some Greek restaurant, as if I wasn’t furious with him.
“Look on the bright side,” Melanie says. “Mason’s going to be here soon.”
I shoot daggers at her.
“Oh,” she says, her face tightening. “So he’s what’s wrong? What happened?”
“He thinks he gets to be in control.”
Melanie laughs. “A man like that? I’d let him be in control. Men like that were born to be in control.”
I grind my teeth together while throwing the plate of food away. It’s a waste, but there’s no way to get that much ketchup off everything. The fish and fries will be soggy and red.
“After he did what he did,” I say, “he should be begging me for every last touch.”
Melanie laughs. “You going to dump his ass then?”
No. Of course not. Not after he made me cum again and left me wanting for more. I felt it again, a hint of what it felt like when I was eighteen. I was wrong. He was that good. We were that good.
“Guess not,” Melanie says. “So it sounds like he’s in control.”
“He’s not though,” I say. “If I could resist him, he’d be begging me…”
He was all but begging me, and then I gave an inch. Now he wants ten miles. I let him in too easily. I should have fought harder.
“He’s a fisherman,” Melanie says. “He’s got a hook in you, and if you keep fighting, you’ll wear yourself out. Then he’ll have you where he really wants you. Don’t fight him, not yet, just let him reel you in. Once he takes that hook out of you, then you fight him back.”
“I’m so sick of fishing metaphors, Melanie,” I sigh, staring down at the ruined, ketchup-stained food.
But she’s right. If I fight back, it will just take longer to get what I want. I should just go along with him, let him think he’s in control, and just when he thinks he’s won, that’s when I’ll fight back.
Marv’s crew stomps into the Crab Shack, Mason last. He grins at me as he walks in, and I flash him a big smile as I hand Mr. Garland his plate.
Samuel and Ashton elbow Mason and give me knowing looks.
I walk up to them and smile. “What did Mason tell you guys?”
The two are suddenly tight-lipped.
“Samuel?” I ask. I know he’s easier to open up, like a grilled oyster.
“Uh,” he mumbles. “Mason won’t tell us anything. We just...we just saw you smiling at each other.”
“He hasn’t told you anything?” I ask.
Mason smirks at me and crosses his arms.
“It almost sounds like he’s ashamed? What kind of fisherman doesn’t like to tell a good tale?”
“I’m a soldier first,” Mason says. “Fisherman second. A soldier can keep his lips sealed.”
“Well,” I say, leaning in toward Samuel and Ashton. “To tell you the truth, there isn’t much to tell. Mason probably just doesn’t want to admit he’s got a long way to go with me. He didn’t even seal the deal.”
Samuel’s and Ashton’s eyes bulge, and Mason leans in toward me.
“Nice try,” he whispers. “But I’m still doing this my way.”
I smile. “What do you guys want to eat?”
I take their orders and go back to work. I’m letting Mason think he’s got me right where he wants me. I have to at least pretend to fight him. But I’ll be patient. More patient than him.
My phone rings while I’m on break outside. It’s an unknown number, so I consider not answering it. I’ve got another ten minutes left on break, so I decide to answer.
“Hello?”
“Dr. Sinclaire?”
Dr. Sinclaire. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard anyone call me that, and hearing it is like being jolted awake from a long, lazy nap.
I sit up straighter where I’m seated on the bench. “Yes, this is she.”
“Dr. Sinclaire, this is Dr. Wood from Pfizer. We’ve reviewed your application and would like to invite you to our new lab in Boston for an interview.”
“Oh,” I say, my voice betraying my lack of enthusiasm.
“Are you still interested in the position?”
“Yes!” I say, forcing myself to sound more energetic. “I’m very excited about it, when would you like me to interview?”
“Would next Thursday at 2:00 p.m. work?”
It’s not like I have to check my calendar. I can just swap shifts with someone and drive into Boston.
“Yeah,” I say. “That works. I’ll see you then.”
“Great,” Dr. Wood says, “I’ll email you more details, including the exact address and interview location, tonight.”
I hang up the phone, and I hear Mason’s voice. “Dr. Sinclaire.”
I nearly jump. I turn around and see him standing there, leaning against the corner of the building with his arms crossed.
“How long have you been there?” I ask.
“Long enough. So you really are trying to leave Tuckett Bay?”
I bite my lip. “It won’t be for a while. I haven’t even interviewed yet.”
“It won’t be long, though,” he says. “I know you’re good at what you do. Now that you’re applying, you’ll find something sooner rather than later.”
He smiles. I expect him to be angry, or hurt, but he seems genuinely happy for me.
“What about you?” I ask. “You want to stay in Tuckett Bay.”
He shrugs. “I try to conquer just one objective at a time. My career will sort itself out later.”
I move to stand up, and he reaches a hand out for me. I grab hold of his strong hand, and he lifts me up effortlessly. I don’t let go of his hand.
“And what’s your current objective…what is your rank?”
“Huh?” he asks.
“Your rank, in the Special Forces.”
“Captain.”
“Captain Steel,” I say. “What is your current objective?”
He grins. “Is that revenge for me calling your Dr. Sinclaire?”
“Your objective, sir?”
“To have dinner with you on Saturday night,” he says. “Doctor.”
I shake my head. “I don’t believe you. You must have planned further ahead than that.”
He lets go of my hand and shrugs. “Well, I have to get back on the boat. There’s a lot of fish left to catch.”
“You think you already caught me?” I ask, as he turns his back to me.
&
nbsp; He looks over his shoulder and lets out a long sigh. “Sophie, I’m so tired of fishing metaphors.”
14
Mason
“Come on, man,” Samuel says. “I told you all about that hot college chick I fucked!”
Samuel drank a lot at lunch. Now he won’t shut up.
I throw the last fish onto the ice and glare up at him. “Sophie isn’t some college chick.”
“That’s why we wanna know so bad,” Samuel says.
“I was with her in high school, all right,” I say. “That enough for you?’
“So, you like, did it, in high school?” Samuel says. “Man, she must have been one hot piece of ass back—”
I grab him and shove him into the edge of the boat. I push him until he’s tipping out over the water, and I hold him there. One more good shove and he’d go down into the freezing water.
“Shit!” Marv yells over. “Mason, come on, man!”
“Don’t fucking talk about her like that,” I say. I lift him up until his feet are off the deck. His eyes widen.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” he wails. “Just let me go.”
I pull him by his collar back into the boat, and I throw him down onto the deck. “Mind your own fucking business,” I grunt.
I go back to work, and I know that none of those assholes are going to ask me about Sophie again.
I did realize something talking to Sophie. I realized that I have no real idea what I’m doing here. Aside from getting her back, I have no overall strategy. No plan for my life. In the Special Forces, it was as simple as doing what I was ordered to do. They basically told me where to sleep, where to shit, when to wake up. Fifteen years of that, and now, suddenly, the whole wide world is totally open to me. I can do anything I want; millions of choices are all laid out in front of me.
And the only thing I’m sure of is that I want Sophie? And then what? A girl—a woman—like Sophie isn’t going to want to hang around in Tuckett Bay forever, married to a fisherman.
I’ve got enough money, but it’s not about money. It’s about doing something with my life. Sophie will make me happy, I know that, but if I want to make her happy, I’ve gotta carve out a real life for myself.
15
Mason
2003, Iraq
“Big Steel, Little Steel,” Sanchez shouts.
Eric and I pop up and stand at attention. Eric is scowling. He hates being called “Little Steel.”
The victory celebrations from a few months back have died down, as all of us on the ground realized that we were going to be here for a long time. The guys planting bombs on the road and shooting at us apparently didn’t get the message that we’d already won.
“You two are on the team.”
Eric smiles wide and looks at me. I stay tight-lipped.
The team. We’ve been holding rifles in our hands since we landed, but the initial invasion was mostly completed by the more experienced soldiers. Neither of us has fired a shot. Sanchez’s team is stepping out of the relative safety of Baghdad to flush out insurgents. It’s our first time where Eric and I will really be in a small squad with a real risk of combat.
“We leave in an hour,” Sanchez says.
Once he’s out of earshot, Eric grins. “I’ll show them that I’m more than Little Steel.”
“Look,” I say, pulling him in by the collar. “Forget your ego for a minute. We gotta watch each other’s backs and get out of this alive.”
“Easy for you to say, Big Steel.”
He shoves me off him.
I know not to push him now. I’ll let him cool down rather than pressing the issue. The harder I ride him now, the more likely he is to get even more reckless. Fucking Eric.
I read Sophie’s last letter again, knowing it might be the last. I’ve already wrote her back, but I consider penning another letter. I’ve got an hour.
I hit my bunk in the barracks and grab a pen and paper. I stare at the blank sheet, and my mind wanders.
I start writing, not really thinking about what or why I’m writing. I scrawl as fast as I can, losing track of the time. When I’m done, I read the letter over.
“Shit,” I whisper. “I can’t send this to her unless I die.”
That’s what this is, I realize. It’s a letter to put in my pocket, and to tell everyone to send it to her if I die. I hold the letter in my hands. They’re shaking. I haven’t felt this afraid since I enlisted.
I tear the letter in half, fold it over, and tear again. When it’s nothing but shredded paper on the floor, my hands are calm. Steady. I’m not afraid.
I’m not going to fucking die. I’m going to fight. I’m going to survive. I won’t give her a letter from a dead man, I’ll come back to her alive.
The Humvee rolls across the road. The road is completely blown apart in places from the initial invasion. We’re all quiet and nervous as we ride. IEDs are nearly impossible to spot until they’ve blown up, and they can make short work of a fully armored Humvee. There’s no armor on the bottom.
Riding around in Humvees has been one of the most dangerous things we’ve done since going to war, but that’s about to change. Baghdad is small on the horizon behind us now, and we’re heading south along the Tigris River. Human civilization began here, but it sure doesn’t feel like it now.
As we approach a small town south of Baghdad, the driver pulls off the road and rolls down into the desert. We stop next to some brush, behind which there is another Humvee and a tent.
We step out and meet up with another squad. They are covered in sand and sweat, and they all have a crazed look in their eyes, like they just learned what war really is.
“We were stationed in town,” one of the soldiers said. “And a suicide bomber blew up in the market. All hell broke loose.”
“You didn’t hit ‘em back?” Eric asks.
I elbow him.
The solder gets up in Eric’s face. “Hit who back? He’d blown himself up! He’d blown a bunch of civilians up along with him, the ones who didn’t get killed or maimed were all screaming! You want me to shoot them?”
“So you just ran?” Eric asks.
“We regrouped,” an older guy with a thick grey moustache says, exiting the tent. “With you.”
Sanchez shakes hands with him, then introduces us. “This is Major Bachus. Do everything he fucking tells you to do if you want to get out of this alive.”
After the bombing, the Ba’ath loyalists retook the town. They fled Baghdad before the invasion—knowing the city would fall—and now they are making their move to either retake the city, or to make it so hard to hold that we just give up.
Bachus orders us to march on the town and flush the Ba’athists out before they can solidify their hold and threaten Baghdad.
“I didn’t think suicide bombings were these guys’ style,” Eric says.
We’re moving along in force toward the city on foot. More squads are mobilizing from different angles, cutting off all the roads. Once we’ve encircled the town, we’ll move in from all sides.
Sanchez shakes his head. “It’s not their style. Probably extremist Shiites did the bombing, which got the town to go along with the Ba’athists taking it back.”
“Bachus’s guys shouldn’t have run,” Eric says. “It makes us look weak.”
I grunt.
“You don’t got the balls for this, Big Steel?” Eric says, laughing.
“It’s not about balls,” I say. “I didn’t know what the hell a Ba’athist or a Shi’ite was a year ago, now I’m right in the middle of their shit? I don’t want to die for this. I gotta come back in one piece for Sophie.”
“If we die,” Eric says, “it’s for our country.”
“No one is dying,” Sanchez says, hitting us both hard on the back. “Keep your heads up and remember your training.”
“Heads down, though, if you hear a shot,” someone says.
Everyone laughs. Even me.
We enter a rocky landscape as the road goes from
destroyed pavement to potholed dirt. The road is squeezed on both sides by large boulders, which grow gradually into 100-foot high jagged peaks.
Sanchez gives us the order to fan out.
Eric and I take cover behind a large boulder, and I pull out my binoculars. I sweep across the rocky hills in front of us, overlooking the road. The only way into town is through here, and we have to make sure it’s not fortified before we continue through.
I check all across the peaks, and see no one. I look over toward Sanchez, and he gives us the all clear.
We begin down the road, and it soon feels as if the mountains are swallowing us whole. Halfway in, the mountains reach their zenith, and they soon become much shorter as we advance past the center.
That’s when we see the first jeep.
The sun hits it just right, reflecting itself off the Jeep’s windshield. It bursts just long enough for us all to have seen it, and then it’s only clearly visible when we squint.
I pull out my binoculars, and notice dozens of other jeeps behind.
“Shit!” I shout. My voice echoes among the rocks. “At least a dozen vehicles coming toward us.”
Sanchez shouts into his radio, calling for backup. Even as he yells into the receiver, he’s signaling for us all to fall back.
Bachus comes by his side, tears the receiver out of his hand, and gives a new signal.
Fortify.
Sanchez looks back at us with wide eyes. I can tell he doesn’t agree with the order, but he’s not willing to speak out against Bacchus.
He pauses for a few breaths, then shouts, “Fortify the mountains! Go!”
Eric and I start climbing.
Bacchus yells out to us, “Reinforcements will be here in ten minutes. We just have to hold them on the other side of this pass for five!”
Eric and I find a flat surface near the top of the peak. There’s some large boulders in front of us offering cover. We hunker down and watch the jeeps below. They are kicking up thick trails of dust as they barrel toward us.
