by Mj Fields
I pressured her into telling me more about the man on the beach, the one she later kissed, and her eyes shined.
When I asked when she would see him again, she shook her head. “Not all moments are meant to be forever.”
The next day, I begged to go to Stonehenge and she almost missed her flight back to Paris.
The next day, like the Stonehenge shirt I made Mom not only buy but wear, my world was rocked.
During Better Living class, I’m called to the Dean of students’ office.
“We have someone who would like to talk to you,” he says, hurrying me to a conference room.
When he opens the door, I recognize the man… because I stalked his social media accounts… It’s the man who is taking over de la Porte, Bastien Josephs.
“Mr. Josephs, Miss Petrov is here.”
He stands when I step in and I look up at him. His pictures, although some near pornographic, do him no justice.
“Um, hi?”
He extends his hand. “Natasha, I’m—”
“I know who you are.” I’m immediately on edge.
“We all set then?” the dean asks.
He nods, “Yes, thank you.”
When the door is closed, he sits and waves to the seat across from him for me to do the same. “Can we talk?”
Why am I even here?
“Sure?”
Then I recognize something else in him… Oh. My. God.
“So, you said you know who I am. Your mother and I—”
“Uh, yeah, but I’m sure she wouldn’t want me talking to you about it. She didn’t even mention it on the phone.”
“Mention?”
I grab my phone and open it, then push it across the table.
He sighs, “Well, shit, this just got awkward.”
“You don’t say.” I am so freaking uncomfortable right now, I want to be invisible.
“Well, yeah,” he stammers, and I feel better, he’s as uncomfortable as I am. “So, I’m in love with your mother.”
What in the hell?!? “Dude, you’re what? Twenty-five?”
“You certainly are your mother’s daughter,” he tries to joke.
It’s not funny, it’s my mom he’s talking about.
“To make it even more awkward, I will tell you that I don’t care about age and the heart wants what the heart wants.”
I cover my face and groan.
He clears his throat. “I can see you’d rather be anywhere else but here at the moment.”
“That obvious?”
“Okay, look.” He pulls one of my old sketch pads from his briefcase. “This is amazing.”
I want to laugh; I mean, really, that’s an old trick… but at least he isn’t trying to get a priest in here… yet. “Does she know you’re trying to get her kid to like you by pretending to be interested in her drawings?”
“Well.” He laughs, “As a matter of fact, she hasn’t a clue I’m here and it’s probably going to piss her off.”
“Well, that’s pretty ignorant on your end.”
“I’d agree, but here’s the reality of it. Your designs are amazing. We just had a new designer bail on us. We have a show in less than a month, and these, these are better than hers were. I’d have discussed it with Angela, but I thought I had a better chance of getting you to agree.”
My inner voice comes right out of my mouth, “How’s that working out for you?”
“Not as well as I hoped.”
I look at him. “I’m a student.”
“I’m aware. And I know it will be time-consuming, but I did speak to the dean, and he agreed to let it be part of your final project.”
“You know I’m a freshman, right?”
“Yes, Natasha, I know. But your talent goes beyond your age. Just as my heart doesn’t see years. Neither are explainable, but both are true.”
I wanna throw up.
“Can you please pick what it is you’re doing here? Trying to sell me on your love for my mother, so she’ll, what, sleep with you or something?” He flinches. “Or get me to design a line so she’ll…” I pause. “Same desired outcome, I assume.”
He lets out a frustrated breath. “You aren’t making this easy, huh?”
If Mom likes him, I need to be alright with it. But I also need to, in a way, protect her. “She isn’t a toy.”
“I never played with toys.” After the words escape his mouth, he starts to blush.
I want to hide. “Ew, TMI.”
“That’s not what I’m saying. Shit, this is really not going well,” he admits.
“Right?”
Oddly, I feel more comfortable knowing he’s feeling it too.
“Natasha, I haven’t given a shit if someone liked me or not since… hell, school. But I’d really like it if you did.”
School? Okay, so he didn’t like school either. That’s telling.
I look for a way to prove a point. Then something catches my eye. “Is that a Rolex?”
He holds up his wrist. “This? Yeah.”
Gathering the courage it will take to drive this point home, I say, “Give it to me.”
“What?”
“Give it to me.”
He shrugs, takes it off and slides it over to me.
While he’s doing that, I slide my thrift store watch off my wrist and let it drop to the ground. Then I pick it up and look at it, drop it on the floor and pretend to stomp on it three times.
He doesn’t even flinch.
“Did that mean something to you?”
“No, not really.”
Grrr… “Give me something that does.”
We stare at each other for a few moments, and then I start to stand. “Well, I guess you’re not interested.”
“I see what you’re doing, but nothing material has ever meant shit to me. My word means shit to me. People mean shit to me.”
“My mother means everything to me.”
He smiles. “Then we have something in common.”
I walk toward the door.
“Natasha, please.”
I turn back. “I have a class to get to. My education means shit to me.”
“Great, then we have something else in common. Please, I have about twenty minutes before I have a plane to catch back to the Hamptons. The woman who did what my parents couldn’t is ill and needs me.”
“Where?”
“Fuck.”
The way he says the word, and the way he suddenly looks different, but familiar, it hits me. “Oh, my God, you’re syphilis guy?”
“Wow, that just doesn’t sound right.” He looks up at the ceiling. “A little help here?”
“Who are you talking to?”
He shakes his head in frustration. “That will not strengthen my cause.”
“Well, it can’t hurt it, syphilis guy.”
“Do you believe in angels, Natasha?”
Okay, he’s totally wearing me down. I like him.
Before I have a chance to answer, he says, “I do.”
“Clearly.”
“Please give me ten minutes of your time.” He sits back down.
I decide to give him what he asked for. No harm in it, and I want the truth. “So, you really want my designs or are you really into my mom?”
Without hesitation, he answers, “Both.”
“You’re young enough to know what the internet is capable of, syph—”
“My name is Bass, and I’ve never had syphilis,” he interrupts.
I want to smile, laugh even. I can tell he really likes her.
“I met your mom in the Hamptons. Neither of us knew each other and we played a little game.”
“If this is gonna get gross, I don’t want to hear it.”
He shakes his head and smiles. “Not gross, but confusing.”
I sit and he visibly relaxes.
“I saw her on the beach. She kicked off her shoes. I thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. I asked her…” His eyes widen, and he pauses in
thought. “She, um…”
“Skip that part.”
“The part when I may have said something inappropriate, and she may have walked away?”
Sounds just like my mom. “Yeah.”
“As luck would have it, she left her shoes. I picked them up and followed her.”
His face tenses. “Some dick was hitting on her and she saw me with her shoes. We danced.”
“On the beach?” I ask.
“An outdoor bar deck. I tried to convince her it would be fun to pretend we had just graduated college and had not a care in the world.”
“Why?”
“Because I knew I wanted her from the minute I saw her, and she was carrying a lot of stress. I wanted it gone, just as much as I wanted mine gone.”
Oh God, that’s so sweet.
He continues, “Then she was on the beach—”
I know this part, and I nearly clap because it’s playing like a movie in my head. “And I was on the phone with her.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know her as Angela. I called her Bridge, and I didn’t know you.”
He continues, and I can’t help but really like him. I cross my fingers and slide them under my legs. “If you wanna be with my mom, clean out your IG. She deserves better. If you want me to accept it, treat her like a princess.”
“I’ll clean out the account. The others are already done.”
I see hope in his eyes for the first time, and I have the same thing in my heart for Mom, hope. “If you came here to win me over, you wasted your time. If she’s happy, truly happy, I’m happy for her.”
“I promise I will do everything in my power.”
“Okay then.” I stand.
“Wait. What about the designs?”
“You can’t be serious,” I laugh.
“As a heart attack.”
He tells me that I will get the same contract Mona, the designer who bailed, was given and that I will be needed on weekends in Paris when I’m not too busy with school. “I expect you to really give a shit about this.”
My heart is about to explode. This is like a fairytale, for Mom and me, in two very different ways, but I need to make sure she really likes him. “While I’m considering, you have to do me a favor.”
“Shoot.”
I give him a list of movies he is required to watch, and he looks amused.
“Okay. And while I’m doing you a favor, you have to promise not to say anything to your mom until Friday night when you get to Paris. I’ll be there.”
Eekkk!!! Again, I try not to get too excited. “How will I get there?”
“You ever fly on a private jet?”
“No.” I do my best to hide my stupid grin.
“I’ll pick you up.”
He picks up my phone and punches in his contact information.
“I’ll try to clear my schedule.” I purposely roll my eyes.
“Natasha?”
“Yeah?”
“It was a pleasure meeting you.”
“Yeah, you too.”
Part II
Oliver (Welcome Home Soldier)
10
Oliver (Two Years Ago)
Eight years in the desert and I decide to spend my first night of freedom on a fucking beach.
This chick better know what she’s doing too, or I’m gonna regret coming back from places I can buy a pro deep throat and piece of ass that knows damn well there is no cuddling afterward.
Suzie Sunshine here, seemed like the perfect choice in the bar full of available ass. I picked her based on my best friend… more like a brother’s requirement for a one-night stand.
Older, so there would be no bullshit about babies or marriage. Indentation on the ring finger, means either recently divorced or looking for some stranger love. And the one that got her in this position, on her knees in the sand… she rubbed me through my denim before I even offered her a drink, or a couple hours of fucking with no strings or regrets. I know there was another, but I’ll be damned if I can remember it right now.
Holding a fence post in one hand to steady me, and a bottle of Jameson in the other, hoping it knocks me on my ass, I watch her lick her lips as she unzips my jeans.
I’m half hard and hoping.
Hoping a few more slugs off the bottle and she’ll blur so I won’t see her face.
Hoping she stops needing a nod to encourage her to continue.
Hoping she can suck a golf ball through a garden hose.
And hoping she is not expecting the favor returned in oral fashion.
Not sure if it is the smell of the ocean, the breeze, the fact that there isn’t fucking missiles whistling above me, or the fact that Suzie bypassed golf ball and is sucking so hard she damn near sucks my balls through my cock, but I come hard, and I come fast.
Fuck, that wasn’t supposed to happen, I think as she sits back on her heels, wiping her chin with one hand, fingering herself with the other.
“You need yours?” She nods like a bobble head. I pull her up. “Turn around and hold on to the fence.”
“Do you need time, to you know… recover?”
I chuckle as I rip the condom open with my teeth and sheath my cock. “No ma’am. As long as your pussy’s wet, we’re good to go.”
“Youth.” She smiles at me from over her shoulder, and I rub my cock against her heat.
“Hold steady,” I wink.
And I actually let her do so before ramming in her hot box so hard she would have been face first into the wood.
Why do I give a fuck?
Because I’m a fucking gentleman, that’s why.
When I wake in the sand, I do so with a headache from hell. But at least I fucking slept. It’s been eighteen months since that’s happened.
When I stand and button my pants, instead of being pissed off, I force myself to think the way Maisie, who is the mother every kid should have, tried to reprogram my fucked-up head to think. I try to find something to be thankful for. So, I’m fucking thankful my pants aren’t around my damn ankles.
I look at the Atlantic Ocean and feel almost relaxed. Almost.
When I reach in my pocket to grab my phone to check the time, it’s gone, and so is my cash.
I should be pissed, really fucking pissed, but again, I ask myself, what would Maisie say? The sun is shining, I’m in one piece, and… well, I fucking deserved that shit. ‘Cause I don’t remember anything past her crying out, Joe, the name I gave her, instead of Oliver, and God, because she was one of two things, thanking him for the several orgasms she had, or praying to him she’d survive it. Due to experience, I’d bet, both.
At least she didn’t snag my keys.
And what would I be thankful for here, Maisie? I ask the sky. Well, it’s a good goddamn thing I didn’t bring her back to my motel room, everything would have been gone.
Everything, I laugh at the thought. Only thing that means shit to me are my tags.
Welcome home, soldier, I think as I start walking down the beach, welcome fucking home.
If I’m honest with myself, Maisie’s right, it’s hard to be pissed off when you’re looking at the ocean. It has a way of swallowing you whole before you even get wet. And Christ, after all these months, I’m fucking thirsty.
After spending the better part of the past eight years in the desert, it’s no wonder that she, the ocean, can soothe my soul.
Still, it’s nearly impossible not to be pissed off, but pissed off isn’t a place I want to be, not anymore. And I’m making a real fucking effort to look forward.
I’m 30 days from free.
Four days ago, I walked through security after getting off the plane that carried me and my brothers in arms home.
I watched as their mothers, wives, children, and loved ones rushed to them in relief, in answered prayers, in greeting, in… love.
I watched them, wondering, still wondering… why after all these fucking years, it didn’t appeal to me.
It’s a beautiful moment. A moment I have
experienced a handful of times, each one of them anticipating the desire to have that, to have normal… whatever the fuck that is, I laugh at myself.
Two days ago, I was ending my eight-year career in the US Army as a Staff Sergeant, with the reenlistment carrot of more money, and a better rank, being dangled in front of me. I declined and took the 30 days leave for some much-needed R & R that was owed to me.
Yesterday I left Ft. Bragg en route to Virginia, on Roxie, my Fat Boy. Something about the open road and the breeze allows for the false illusion of freedom. Kind of like getting lost in a movie, or book, but with your own words and thoughts mixed with the adrenaline caused by speed.
After checking into the motel, I didn’t really plan on spending the day drinking my face off, just planned to have a couple before I faced the past one last time. Which I obviously didn’t do; and instead of having a couple drinks in me, before facing it, I’ll go with a hangover. Place makes me sick anyway, so what the fuck ever.
Walking into a shitty motel room that anyone would turn up their nose at, except men like me, I look at the clock. It’s five in the morning Eastern standard time. After setting the alarm, I flop on the bed to sleep off this hangover for a couple hours.
Panic hits, I instinctively and blindly search for my rifle, and when I can’t find it, I jump up and survey my surroundings.
“Fuck," I sigh trying to catch my breath and calm my racing heart when I realize I’m not there anymore. I’m not fucking there.
Instead of sleeping another hour, I decide I might as well get ready.
After showering, I dress, pack up my duffel and head out.
I swing my leg over the seat of Roxie, and strap on my skull cap. Turning the key, the roar of Roxie’s engine thunders and is in stark comparison to the clear skies and calm water I see across the highway.
The irony is not lost on me.
Some may not get the irony in it, but every soldier I know certainly does.
Now on the open road, I let my thoughts free, hoping they fly off in the breeze, knowing they won’t.
“Welcome home, soldier,” I sigh as I increase my speed.
We go months dealing with the same people, day after day, after day. No rest, no reprieve. We work, eat, strategize, fight, live and some die with each other. Your CO is having a shit day, you bet your ass you are too. Your buddy eats beans at chow, you’re gonna smell it. You hate the guy playing guitar every fucking night, singing about his cheating wife, or dead dog. Your girl might as well have cheated, and your dog might as well have died too. And those are the good fucking days. Those are your ‘weekends.’
