It wouldn’t be easy, and I was sure there’d still be plenty of tearful mornings like that one, but damn it, I couldn’t just give up. It just wasn’t me.
3
Bear
“You’re serious? He’s dead?” Clay whispered through the phone. I didn’t understand how he went so long without finding out, but I sure as hell didn’t mean for him to find out like that. I figured someone told him.
I guess I figured wrong.
There was a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes for what must be the billionth time. I sucked them back, swallowing the lump, and cleared my throat.
“Yeah, man. I didn’t know you didn’t…”
Clay always was the third part of our three musketeers. He couldn’t go into the service with us because he got disqualified and ever since, things were different. It seemed like he felt like more of an outsider. And it was kind of hard to argue with that, when I informed him our best friend killed himself three months ago and no one ever seemed to think to tell him.
How the hell did he not get the news about the funeral? I couldn’t come back for it for obvious reasons, but it blew my mind that no one reached out to Clay.
I guess they had other things on their minds.
Still, it’s fucked up that Clay had to out that one of his best friends since freaking kindergarten was dead, months after the fact. It was even more fucked up that I just assumed he was handling things better than I was and I never even bothered to reach out before then. Until I was back in our hometown with my tail between my legs.
“Shit,” Clay hissed after I told him everything that happened. “Fuck, man… That’s…”
“I know,” I sighed, scrubbing my hand over my face. There wasn’t really anything to say. And while I had months and months to come to terms with it all, Clay only just found out about it for the first time, so he was probably going to be a huge jumble of crazy mixed-up emotions.
Or, at least, that’s what I figured. Who the hell knew anymore? There was a time when I thought I knew those two guys better than anyone in the world. Better than I knew myself.
But I missed the warning signs. I hadn’t known Wyatt enough to save him, I hadn’t known what he was going through, and I still didn’t.
That’s probably one of the worst things about all of it. He had done that crazy, unthinkable, unimaginable thing that no one seemed to understand, and he never provided any explanation. No note, no video, no diary full of his descent.
Just an empty tent left splattered with pieces of my friend.
I should have been able to stop him. I should have been there. What if we’d played cards right after dinner instead of me telling him not to skip out on his weekly call to Lexi? What if I’d asked him how he was doing that night, instead of bitching about some stunt one of the sergeants pulled?
What if I’d said if Clay couldn’t join up, none of us should?
Would he still be here?
Would his kid still have a dad?
The thoughts killed me more than anything else. I remember how excited Wyatt was to be a dad, how much he loved showing off the pictures of Dallas that Lexi sent to him. Pictures of the first day of school, of his Halloween costumes. Pictures of him in Santa’s lap and hunting Easter eggs. Wyatt missed it all, and he’ll never get a chance to see it.
What the hell was he thinking?
That’s probably the one thing I’d never really understand. I’d never understand what pushed a guy who seemed to have everything to the point of making such a terrible, awful choice.
The silence on the phone went on long enough and Clay broke through it with a sigh. “So what are you doin’ back in town, man? I haven’t seen you in… what, five years?”
“’Bout that,” I agreed with a nod he couldn’t see.
“So?” he prompted.
I thought about coming up with some story about my time being up or something. I thought about lying to Clay, and my gut twisted with guilt. Maybe if Wyatt had been more honest with his friends and what he was dealing with, we wouldn’t have all been in that place, ripped apart from the inside.
I blew out a heavy breath and rubbed the back of my head, trying to come up with the right words. Being open and honest about feelings wasn’t exactly a strong suit of mine.
“I dunno man. With everything that happened with Wyatt… Something just kinda snapped in me. I tried to ignore it, but I kept having these dreams… night terrors, they call them. I’d be talking to him or something in the dream and he’d just pull out a gun and…” I swallowed, pushing the images away. The all-too-realistic images that my brain seemed to be all too adept at conjuring up. I swear it was like a recorded video playing on a loop in my head, not some pictures that my brain just made up by filling in the blanks.
“They made me talk to somebody and he recommended they discharge me. And that was that. The end of my fucking career in the military and I didn’t get any say in it.”
I realized too late that I probably shouldn’t have laid all this out on Clay right then. He probably had his own shit to deal with. He had his own family, his own kids. He didn’t need my problems piled up on him.
“I’m sorry… Forget I said anything about that. I’m just… frustrated,” I sighed. It wasn’t like it was ever my intention to make the Army a life-long career or anything. I just hated that the option got ripped away from me without me having any say in it. I hated that Wyatt took another thing from me, and I hated that it felt so wrong to be so angry at a dead guy.
“No, I get it. That sounds like a lot of bullshit. Listen, why don’t you come over tomorrow night for a welcome home dinner? It’ll be better to catch up in person than over the phone, don’t you think?”
For half a second, my immediate response was to make some comment about his vagina. We’re guys. We didn’t need to ‘catch up.’ We didn’t have long phone conversations or sit around gossiping over coffee.
But shit, maybe we should’ve. Maybe if we had we wouldn’t have guys that seemed perfectly fine blowing their brains out without warning.
So I didn’t make any snippy comment. I didn’t give him shit for wanting to reach out to me. Truth be told, I was glad for it. I was happy that I still had a friend like Clay that I knew I could count on. I was glad that even after all those years of not seeing each other, I could call him up and he’d immediately invite me over for family dinner.
“Yeah, sounds great. Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. It’s been way too long. Wait til you meet the kids,” he said, and I could hear his big proud papa grin through the phone.
I chuckled in spite of myself. “Can’t wait. Sounds like a good time.”
“I’ll see you then,” he said, and I started to pull the phone away, expecting the call to end, but with it a couple inches from my ear, I heard him say my name.
“Bear?”
“Yeah?”
“Call me anytime, man. I mean it,” he said, with a serious note in his voice that made that too-familiar fist close around my heart and squeeze.
“Thanks. I will.”
“Tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll text you a time after I talk it over with the missus.”
“Sounds good,” I answered, and finally, the call ended.
I dropped the phone on the bed next to me and sighed, closing my eyes so I didn’t have to look around the dingy hotel room I’d been calling home since I’d gotten back in town a week ago. For the past week, I’d basically just been hiding in that room, trying to work up the courage to tell people I was back.
Clay was the first.
The next person on my list was e way harder to call though. The only other person in this town who really mattered at all to me: Lexi.
Clay, Wyatt and I might have been the three musketeers, but Lexi was always there too. At least, after she and Wyatt met in fourth grade. Ever since then, she was a part of our group too.
There were, of course, the activities we wouldn’t let girls be a part of, and the older
we got, the more that became the case, but it mattered less and less once Lexi and Wyatt were old enough to understand the value of alone time.
The fact of the matter was, that I had no fucking idea what to say to her. Lexi had always been there, but we were never close. We never really had a conversation just the two of us. She was always with Wyatt and I always just tried to stay out of their way. But when we shipped off and Lexi was crying and worried about her husband, I promised her that I’d take care of him and make sure nothing happened. I’d make sure he got back to her safe and sound.
And I fucking failed.
I knew I should call her and tell her I was back in town, and I even went so far as to look at the phone, but as soon as I thought about calling her, I gave up the whole idea. I could just imagine how that would go. Hey, Lexi? Yeah, sorry I couldn’t save your husband because I had my own head too far up my ass to see anything was wrong. My bad.
No, no way in hell. Anything I thought to say to her sounded stupid. It seemed like it wasn’t enough. It seemed like nothing would ever be enough to right the wrong I’d done to her.
I thought about her at that funeral all alone, dressed in black, crying, no one there for her to lean on since I was still in Iraq and Clay was out of the loop. I thought about her those past few months, trying to get by, trying to get through the pain alone, the same way I had been. I knew I should’ve called her, but I just chickened out. I wasn’t what she needed. I couldn’t be that support, I couldn’t be that rock. I couldn’t even make a damn phone call.
And I knew I couldn’t avoid her forever. I knew the longer I was here, the more likely I was to run into her somewhere in town. And if that happened, if I just ran into her without telling her I’d been here all along, it’d only be obvious that I was avoiding her. So I needed to suck it up and do it. Rip the Band-Aid off, so to speak.
But I couldn’t do it right then. Not with a lump in my throat at just the thought of her navigating her life without Wyatt. As mad as I was about what his choice did to me, I was even angrier about how it’d hit his wife and kid. I was mad on their behalf, because they shouldn’t have had to go through it. They shouldn’t have to wonder why Wyatt didn’t want to stick around for them.
I wish I had answers. I wish I could tell them there’s an explanation, something no one could have seen or stopped. But there wasn’t. There wasn’t anything. No answers, no comfort, just confusion, loss, and hurt.
That was the legacy my best friend left behind. That was the mess he decided his loved ones deserved.
Thanks a lot, asshole, I thought, staring up at the ceiling as tears gathered in my eyes.
Then, just in case there was really an afterlife and he looked down on me in some way I added, I miss you.
4
Lexi
After a nice dinner and a glass of wine, I sat my mom down and told her I appreciated everything she’d done for me, but it was time for her to go home. She walked Dallas to the bus stop one last time that morning before I went into work. I felt good about the choice. It was time. There was no reason she should had stayed as long as she did other than me feeling sorry for myself.
But I could already tell that it was going to be harder than I had anticipated. Mom had been doing a lot for me. She’d been taking care of me when I wasn’t able to take care of myself, and it would be difficult to get back into the routine of things, but I had to.
Normally, on the days that I did make it in to work, my mom sent me off with a thermos of coffee. But she didn’t make one that morning. Probably was her subtle passive-aggressive way of pointing out how much she did for me.
I made a mental note to send her a gift basket or something for all her trouble, then I headed into the little kitchen inside the library’s back work room. There was a coffee pot and supplies in there that hadn’t been restocked for a while thanks to my self-indulgence. The milk went bad, and I wrinkled my nose as I poured it down the drain. Just the thought of drinking the coffee black was enough to give me heartburn, but at that point, it was that or no caffeine.
Considering I had spent another night barely sleeping while I cried until I ran out of tears, I just dealt with the heartburn.
I poured a mug, wincing as I took a sip, and suppressed the shudder that the bitterness sent down my spine. Day one without Mom, you can do this, Lexi.
The library didn’t open for another hour, so I headed to my computer, booted it up, and waited for it to do its updates. While I was at it, I went around and turned on all the computers, including the ones for patrons, letting them boot up too.
As soon as my computer was awake, it flashed a notification at me, reminding me how many unread emails I had in my inbox.
Yes, thank you. I knew I was ignoring my responsibilities, computer. I didn’t need a reminder.
The library’s weekly newsletter needed to be drafted, so I opened up my word processing program and stared at the blank page.
No, that wasn’t doing me any good. I had no idea where to even start. I hadn’t been there enough to know of anything to put in the newsletter, so the best bet was probably to stuff it full of the events going on in town.
Problem with that is that I had to wade through my emails to dig up that info.
Letting go of a deep sigh, straightening my shoulders like I’m headed for battle, I minimized the word processor and opened up my inbox.
Forty-five minutes later, an alarm went off, startling me out of my email-trance. I started just skimming the subject lines, but then one caught my eye and I pored over every message with great scrutiny even though my retention and comprehension was shot. The coffee in my mug was cold and stale, but I drank half of it, so I had enough caffeine to get me by until my Diet Coke at lunch.
That alarm meant it was time to open the doors, so I stepped back from the computer and grabbed my keys. I was actually two minutes late by the time I opened the door, but it wasn’t like there was anyone waiting to get in.
Most of the things the library got emails about were really pointless and kind of silly — a bird had pooped on someone’s car in the parking lot and they wanted us to do… something. What, I had no idea. Another person wrote in about the poor editing quality of the books, as if all the books in our library were written, edited, and produced specifically for that location and we should be ashamed of the quality control. Nevermind that some of the ‘typos’ they cited happen to just be archaic spellings.
Then there was the email that suggested we put the public computers in private locked rooms for patrons to better enjoy themselves without worrying about others looking over their shoulder. I closed that email real fast, as a creepy prickle went up the back of my neck as I read it.
There were really only a couple of messages that were relevant — purchase requests for new books, a reservation for a private room, the gardener contacting about his changing rates and availability. One by one, I worked my way through them, sipping on my stale coffee, thankful that there wasn’t anyone interrupting me. For the first time in what felt like forever, I was actually getting things done and focusing and not thinking about everything that had happened.
But of course, all good things must come to an end, and no sooner did I think about how grateful I was that no one had interrupted me, the bell above the door chimed as someone walked through.
I looked up and my heart screeched to a halt.
Not just someone.
Bear.
I hadn’t seen or heard from him since before everything with Wyatt happened, so the fact that he was there at my workplace was both strange and suspicious. I couldn’t believe how recognizable he was though. When they left together, they were both still kids, I swore, but Bear was definitely not a kid anymore. He grew up and he looked like he’d been through hell. He must have aged fifteen years in the five since I last saw him, but even that wasn’t enough to stop the rush of indignant anger that spread through my veins like wildfire.
He walked by the desk and locked with mine.
In that instant, my heart stopped, my breath caught in my chest, and I prepared to let him have it, but he didn’t stop. He just gave me a little nod, his lips twisting into the barest of smiles as he just kept walking right on past.
What. The. Hell.
I knew he had not just walk into my library and walk past me like that. I knew he hadn’t just come in there after never reaching out, with the plan to act like nothing ever happened and everything was fine.
Fuck that.
Without even thinking, I stepped from behind the desk and stalked after him, following him into the back stacks, cornering him, my whole body vibrated with rage.
“What the hell, Bear?” was the first thing that came out of my mouth. It wasn’t what I was expecting, but it got the point across well enough.
He didn’t respond and gave me a confused look. I shook my head and huffed.
“All this time and you never called or stopped by?” There was a point in time when I thought he and Clay considered me part of the group. Part of their cool kids club. But I’d always had that niggling fear that they were just putting up with me to make Wyatt happy. And now those fears come rushing back in full force because I didn’t know if Bear and Clay ever really liked me or if they just tolerated me, and what if that was the case and they didn’t feel the need to anymore?
I couldn’t bear the thought of losing them too, no matter how little we stayed in touch those days. I just couldn’t deal with Wyatt taking another thing from me.
Bear couldn’t meet my eyes, and he rubbed the back of his head absently, his blond hair cropped short in that military crew cut.
“I… I just got back,” he said, with guilt in his voice. There was no doubt about it. It was definitely guilt. And I didn’t know if it was guilt because he knew he should have called, or because he was lying to me.
I decided to take a shot in the dark.
A Baby for the Soldier (Boys of Rockford Series Book 2) Page 2
