Текст книги "Unraveled"
Автор книги: Jen Frederick
сообщить о нарушении
Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 18 страниц)
CHAPTER TWENTY
Samantha
ADAM’S CREW CAME IN THE night I returned from England.
“You look good,” Eve commented.
“Do I? Because I feel like shit.”
“Okay, I was lying to make you feel better. You look like you went on a bender in Reno and are still hung over, rather than a ten-day vacation to jolly England.”
“The Reno description is pretty close to how I feel. Besides England isn’t very sunny. Lots of rain.” It had mirrored my mood.
“Sorry I pushed you on soldier boy.”
I didn’t bother correcting her. Gray wasn’t even around to appreciate it. Oh Gray. That stupid asshole. I hated and loved him at the same time.
One by one Gray’s friends came up to the bar to tell me how much he missed me.
“How come he’s not here saying it?” I said curtly.
“Because if he’d stayed around till you got back, he’d be absent without leave, court martialed, and kicked to the curb,” Bo shot back just as curtly.
That shut me up, but I wasn’t interested in hearing reasonable things about Gray Phillips so I made Eve serve them the rest of the night.
They were persistent, though. Bo and Noah showed up the rest of the week I worked, and while they didn’t talk to me, I got the message. Gray missed me and he was showing me through his friends.
And it was working. Even Eve was impressed.
“He’s got good friends. You can tell a lot about a guy by his friends.”
It was true, but I wasn’t ready to forgive him. Eve just wanted me to get over it. We hadn’t made any extra tips because I didn’t want to kiss anyone but Gray, not even Eve.
When Bitsy, Mom, and I came home from England, I went with them. I wasn’t ready to go back to the condo, where now it was filled with my memories of Gray. At first my mom wanted to kill Gray—or at least file a police report—but then I explained that it wasn’t him but some other dude who’d hit me and that I’d hit him first. She dropped it after that.
But she frowned whenever she saw me in her house, and unlike after Will died, she started making comments about how little birds pushed out of the nest should learn to survive on their own. Her most recent comment was about how older sisters were supposed to be good examples for their younger sisters.
“Am I screwing you up, Bitsy?” I asked, dragging myself out of my bedroom about noon one day, wearing hobo overalls and not bothering to brush my hair.
“Nope. I’ve accepted that you are pathetic and weak and I’m the stronger sister,” Bitsy said airily. I winced but she wasn’t wrong so I just shut up and ate my cereal. Tired of my moroseness, she jabbed me with her finger. “Why’d you guys break up?”
God, what to tell Bitsy. “I think he got scared and then I got scared back.”
"Because you didn’t want to move to San Diego? So you're making him choose between the career he loves and you? What is it that you're giving up here? A knitting group?" Bitsy gave me no quarter.
“My family.” It was a weak argument, and I knew it.
"You'll always have us. It's not like Mom and Dad wouldn't pay for you to fly back every month if you wanted to."
"What are you going to do in three years?" Yes, I was changing the subject.
“Chicken,” she said softly. “One thing I liked about Gray was that you smiled a lot when he was around. Anyway, be a sad sack. I don’t care. I’m going to go to medical school and be a transplant surgeon. Save lives." She flexed her fingers.
“I thought you were going to law school?”
“No way!”
I reached across the table and patted her arm. “That’s awesome, but does Mom know this?”
“Of course,” Bitsy said, annoyed.
Then I laughed and couldn't stop. Bitsy stood up and stomped around the kitchen. "What's so funny?"
"Oh, Bitsy. I love you. You are the absolute best."
Whatever expectations people had of Bitsy, she didn't care. She made her own path. If my fifteen-year-old sister could do that, couldn't I be brave enough?
I MOVED BACK INTO THE condo. The sheets still smelled like Gray, and I cried the first time I washed them as if I were cleaning him out of my life. I couldn’t forget about him; he wouldn’t let me. At first, I received phone calls and then voice mail messages. I deleted his entry from my recent call list and binned the messages. After a week of silence from my end, he began texting me once a day, at the end of his day.
Initially, his texts made me angry and I deleted the messages without even reading them. In the second week, I began reading them and was surprised at how ordinary and conversational they were. It was like a diary entry of how he spent his days. And he ended each “conversation” all the same—late at night, right before he went to bed—he sent me a three word message.
I love you.
As July wound down, I started to prepare for classes at Central. When I thought about the fantasies I’d cooked up about Gray and me together on campus, my heart ached so much I actually had to rub my chest, but no amount of medicine was going to ease the pain. I attended two more painful lunches with Carolyn and David. Tucker came to both; he had been extra nice since the Gray incident. I was just glad he’d never brought it up.
When classes started, none of them interested me. I was both bored and extremely busy. Eighteen credit hours were too many for me, even though I’d quit bartending. Making friends with eighteen– and nineteen-year-olds was painful. The seniors were the only people my age, but I didn’t have anything in common with them either. Rather than go drinking with them, I would find myself down at Gatsby’s where Eve still worked. Sometimes I’d see AnnMarie or Grace or Bo or Noah around campus, but I avoided them as much as possible. I didn’t want to be around reminders of Gray.
I missed him though, so much. I missed his body next to mine. I missed his smell. I missed just talking to him. I’d never really given him a chance to explain and the distance from it all made me reflect on how maybe I couldn’t believe everything Ethan Drake had said to me. After all, he threatened to lie about what had happened between us, which had been a big old nothing up until I hit him and he returned the favor. But whenever I got to that point, I remembered Gray apologizing so profusely. What did he have to apologize for if he hadn’t meant to test me? That was a question that would only be answered if I talked to him.
And as every day passed and I ached all over for him, I could feel my defenses weakening and lowering. His persistent contact in spite of my stubborn silence made my insides mush. I started looking forward to his texts and wished he’d message me more often. Like five or ten times a day. By the end of the third week of classes, I’d made up my mind.
“He's texted me again,” I told Eve. “He has since I got back from London. Every night, two texts for over two months.” I was a little awed by his dedication.
“What do they say? Like sexy stuff or I miss you stuff? Or I’m a huge dickhead and I’m sorry stuff.”
I nodded. “All of it but mostly everyday texts. Today I received ‘Hey got caught about two steps from commissary during colors. Sux.’” I read it off my phone, then I tucked it away and played with the beer Eve had served me an hour ago. It was warm and tasted horrible.
“What's that mean?”
“If you're outside and they play this particular song, you can't move. You have to stand at attention, but if you're indoors then you can move about.”
“So like Simon Says, only military style.”
“Kind of. What do you think it means?”
“That the military likes to play games?”
“No, not colors, the texting,” I said impatiently.
“Dunno. He's weird, remember? We told you to stay away from him.”
“No, you told me to pursue him and then you high fived me after I told you I'd experienced the whole head-thrown-back, screaming orgasm thing, then you told me to stay away from him."
“Yeah I guess I did say all that, but I've always maintained he was weird. Your dates were like out of a Field & Stream magazine. Hunting, fishing?”
“Don’t forget the skydiving.”
“Yeah, the one date that ended with a near-death experience followed by a run in with a druggie who called you names and hit you.”
“I think I share too much with you,” I muttered.
"He’s a rebound guy. It’s easy to get over them.” Eve hummed “Summer Lovin’.”
"I don’t think I can. I love him," I admitted. Tears were forming and I picked up the soggy beverage napkin to dab them away.
Her humming stopped short. "No."
"Yes."
"You're crazy. He's your rebound guy. Now you can hook up with someone more permanent!” she cried.
"Why does he have to be the rebound guy?"
"Because that's how it works. You always have one person in between relationships who hits the reset button."
"The reset button on what? My feelings? My vagina? I think after two years I've been officially reset."
Eve looked at me uncertainly for a moment and then rallied. “I’ve got this great guy—” I waved her off.
“I think I’m a one man kind of girl. I know what it feels like to be in true love. It’s not just the longing for a body next to you, but his particular body. It’s his smell and his touch you miss. It’s his laughter and his sense of adventure.”
"So you're just going to go back to him after he did that totally douchebag move?"
"It was a douchebag move. Like in the pantheon of douchebaggery, he would be at least on the royal court."
"So you recognize this but you're still going?"
"Eve, I’ve spent my short life playing it safe. And I still got burned. I lost my husband and my heart currently feels like it was trampled by a rhinoceros. I can't hurt like this any more. So I'm going to take a chance. It might be the stupidest thing I do, but at least I'm doing something. I'm not waiting for life to come to me. I'm going out and leaping across the cavern and hoping somebody is there to catch me on the other side.”
"And if there isn't?"
"Then I fall and I get back up again. I go out to San Diego, and I tell him I'm going to give him another chance, and if he fucks up then I leave him. But at least I'm giving myself a chance at happiness.”
Eve looked at me with sad eyes, and she shook her head.
“I know you don't agree with me, but what’s the worst thing that can happen to me? The worst thing has already happened—I lost him. The best thing is that he realizes what a mistake he's made and he trusts me. But whatever it is, there's a connection between the two of us that I hadn't felt since I was with Will, and God, I know what a lucky bitch I am to get that feeling, to have that soul-deep connection with someone, not just once, but twice. I'm going to pursue that until it's dead and beaten into the ground. I could be a total fool for giving Gray another chance. But I'll be a fool who exhausted every avenue in front of her, and when I look back on this moment, I'll never wish I'd tried harder. I'll never say 'I wish I'd done something different,' which is what I've been saying since Will died. I wished I'd moved to Alaska with him. I wish I'd married him the first time he asked me, right out of high school. I wished I would've been more enthusiastic about his dreams instead of selfishly thinking about mine all the time. I'm going to do this, Eve."
Stunned in to silence by my monologue, she said nothing. Then she gave me a rueful smile and a small, one-armed hug. "Go get him, tiger."
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Gray
BACK AT THE BASE, MY days simultaneously ran together and refused to end. Every night I went home and worked on the afghan, or BG as I called it, because I was a Marine and we only ever referred to anything by its initials. BG stood for Big Gesture but could’ve also stood for Big Garbage, since that piece of shit looked like yarn that had been chewed up and vomited out by some large animal. Hopefully when I showed it to her she would realize it meant that I was placing her first in my life and that I was trusting her with my damaged heart, the one that I realized I now wore outside of my body, exposed.
I slept, ate, exercised, trained, worked. Whatever calling I thought I had here was missing. I'd left all my ambition and my soul at the feet of one girl. But she hadn't stomped on it. I'd been the one to grind all that we could have had into the dust with my size thirteen boot. Ironically, I was better suited to serving now. The fear I’d once had watching over these guys was nothing compared to the fear I’d had watching Sam fall out of the sky or the fear that burrowed deep in the back recesses of my mind that I’d never win her back. Those were real fears. The fear of leadership wasn’t even close.
"Marine, you are one sad sack." Captain Dailey looked up at me over his long, hawkish nose. The bushy, beetle-shaped eyebrows were furrowed together, forming one long, hairy snake over the tops of his eyes. I stared at the row of fur in fascination, waiting for it to crawl off. I was back in his office to hear yet another lecture on the glory of the Corps.
"Yessir." I snapped off a knife-sharp salute. You said, “Sir, yes sir,” even if your commanding officer told you to suck his dick.
"I haven't seen your reenlistment papers." I guess he’d conveniently forgotten I’d already told him I wasn’t reenlisting.
"No, sir."
"Why's that, Marine? You're too soft for us now?"
"No, sir." If anything I was more hardened and determined than ever. My goals had shifted but I wasn't revealing that to the captain.
He stared at me, trying to wait me out, but I'd learned a few things in my seven years of service and the mantra that they should never see you sweat was one of the important ones. Show a weakness and they'd needle you forever under the guise of making you a stronger warrior.
Maybe that was how you created a better Marine, but I wasn't convinced that trying to find someone's weakness and exploit it always made good sense—but I knew better than to tell the CO my thoughts on the matter. Instead I stood with my heels together so that I stood straight as a tree and as unmoving as a steel post. My arms were glued to my side, fingers pointed straight down. I could have been a plum line, my bearing was so perfectly erect and straight. I'd practiced this pose for years watching Dad and Pops. I'd stood in front of the mirror and saluted. I’d had the best salute in boot and was even praised for it, when they weren't busy spitting obscenities in my face and mocking me for being a hard charger.
My dad had never forced me into this. I had been happy I was going to fulfill the dreams he and Pops had of one of the Phillips boys carrying on the tradition. I'd even had those dreams myself. Of Carrie and I having a son who'd be in the Marines. And maybe he'd be an officer, and it'd be a proud moment for both of us where we'd choke back manly tears.
Being a Marine had been what I'd wanted to do for as long as I can remember and now I was going to give it up for a girl. But it all felt right to me.
Captain Dailey sighed and thrust his short fingers through his non-existent hair. "At ease, Marine."
I let my body relax, shoulders dropped, grateful for the rest. I folded my arms behind my back.
"I don't understand you, Phillips. You've an exemplary record, a high tolerance for bullshit, and a sterling family history in the Corps. You’ll probably make gunnery sergeant in record time. What's out there in the civilian world that's worth throwing this away for?"
I hoped the question was rhetorical because I didn't have a good answer. If pressed, I was going to lie and say college but I was afraid my lack of enthusiasm for sitting in a lecture hall with a couple hundred snot-nosed teenagers who thought it would be funny to make pew pew pew sounds when I walked by would be all too evident.
Captain Dailey didn't need an answer. He paced in front of me for ten minutes, giving me a lecture on the glories of being a Marine.
"It is an honor to be a Marine. We have the smallest number of men compared to any other military branch but we are the first to be called out. We stand constantly ready and can be shipped out in twenty-four hour notice because the president knows that we are always ready. The Marines were called on first to lead the charge into battle. The Marines were the first to orbit the moon. John Glenn was a Marine. John Wayne wanted to be one. The Marines are first, ready, able. Our fighting force is so fierce that the Germans called us Teufels Hunden."
He was really worked up using the German word so I threw him a bone. "Devil Dogs, sir!"
"That's right. We're the Devil Dogs, the first to go..." His steam was running out. Last to know. I finished the saying in my head.
He walked around and dropped heavily into his chair. "We need men like you, Staff Sergeant Phillips. Not just because of your record or your family legacy. You care about what happens to the other men here. You wear your leadership lightly and those under you know it. Think about it. There's always going to be room in the boat for you."
"Yes sir." I saluted.
"Dismissed." He waved a weary hand at me.
I walked as fast as I could without making it seem like I was running. Captain Dailey's speech was one I'd heard before in a million variations but it still struck me hard. I did love the Marines. I loved, in a non-sappy, brotherly way, the guys I slept beside in the sand for days without a shower.
I'd still stay close to those men. I stayed in contact with Bo and Noah and they'd been out for two years. I'd keep coming back here to Camp Pendleton to check in with old buddies. I'd be a Marine for life, even after I got out. No one would think less of me. I just had to convince myself of that. It was all worth it. Letting this go so that I could be with Sam.
Later that night, I texted her as I did every night.
Almost bit my tongue to prevent from laughing when a poolie (new guy for you Army folks) got my rank wrong today. They're supposed to greet every individual higher in rank than them with a salute and acknowledgement of rank. A lot just use "good morning, sir" no matter what time of day it is but this one said "Good morning, Gunnery Sergeant.” It was dusk. I patted him on the shoulder but I could hear a Lance Corporal chewing him out. I haven't heard back from you about my flying up to see you. I’m still working on getting some days off.
I debated telling her I was coming regardless but figured that sounded too threatening. I’d been texting her so that I was constantly in her thoughts, not so that I could creep her out. Of course, it was possible that she deleted my texts before even reading them. Or that she’d blocked me and I didn't know it. Could she do that?
I grilled myself a hamburger and washed it down with a bottle of Miller, and then took another bottle into my small living room. I flicked on the television to ESPN, picked up the instructional book I'd bought a week ago and the mess of yarn and needles. I was trying to knit the blue section of the flag with the white stars—the part that had stumped Sam—only doing it so that the stars were knitted into the pattern instead of added later. Intarsia was what Sam had called it. Fucking impossible is what it was.
I'd started and ripped out the section what seemed like a thousand times. It'd taken me a week just to figure out the basic stitches and how to get the tension right. I'd had to remind myself that I could do amazing things with weapons and tanks and even excelled at fine motor skill dexterity tasks, but holding two needles in one hand while threading yarn in and out was about the most complicated fucking thing I'd ever had to do.
What I currently had going was a lumpy mess with loose stitches creating a misshapen thing that looked like a geometry test gone wrong. There were no right angles, only waves of misstitched edges. But at this point, I wasn't ever going to finish if I started over, so I just went forward. It'd be the ugliest part of the flag, but somehow I'd gotten it into my head that if I presented this to Sam, she'd fall on her knees in joy.
In fact, I'd dreamed of that moment more than once. In my dreams, the stupid thing was perfectly created, but that didn't matter as much as Sam hugging it to her chest and then stripping down to her birthday suit and begging me to take her hard. Or sometimes I imagined that our reunion would start with my face between her legs. Either way, it ended with me doing her for hours as she gasped out my name in time to my thrusts. Unfortunately, since it was only a goddamn dream, I woke up with messed-up sheets, a hard-on, and an aching heart.
Weirdly, knitting actually made me feel closer to Sam. I imagined she was knitting at the same time that I was. Although given our two-hour time difference she was probably sleeping. Still, I felt some kind of kinship. I can't say that I understood why she liked knitting, but I hoped the effort would make her understand how much I loved her.
A knock interrupted both the Padres game and my futile struggles with the yarn and wooden poles. I stuck those under the sofa cushion. I didn't need that kind of hazing out on a training mission.
"What's up—” My greeting died in my throat as I gazed at the figure of my ex-girlfriend. The one who'd cheated on me with the local Marine recruiter. The one who nearly passed on her STI, had I not caught her in the act. Yeah, I had zero to say to her, and I let the door close.
Too quick for me, Carrie shot through a narrow opening and into my apartment. I needed to get into one of those condo units that had a security door in the front, like Sam's place. I grabbed the door and held it open so she was clear about where I wanted her to be. Outside.
"Scuttlebutt around base is that you met someone."
"Get out."
She ignored me and started to walk around the room. I could see a stray bit of yarn peeking out from the bottom of the cushion and panicked. Slamming the door shut, I strode over to the couch and sat on top of the cushion, hoping one of the wooden needles didn't stab me in the ass.
"What do you want?"
Carrie wandered around, putting her hands on my things. I wanted to get up and shove her out the door. It was like she was touching things and trying to put her stamp of ownership on it. Made me angry and annoyed. The only females I'd ever want in this place were Sam and my mom.
"Just wondered what you were up to. You haven't been out with the guys."
"Don't know why you're keeping tabs on me." I crossed my arms and hooked one ankle over the opposite knee. It was weird that she knew what I was doing.
“I still care about you." Carrie sat down next to me, so close I could smell the perfume and feel the heat off her body. She looked rail thin. I tried to move away but was stymied by the arm of the couch.
That horrifying statement and her placement right next to me made me jump up. I went over to the door. What if Sam came and saw her here? It was an irrational though, but still.
"Okay," I said, and then grimaced when I saw the tip of a knitting needle sticking out from beneath the cushion. If Carrie shifted just to her right, she might scrape her leg and then—oh fuck it. I walked back over and sat down next to her and pressed my bare calf against the needle in hopes of shoving it back. No go. The weight of my ass was preventing the needle from shifting and all I got was a sharp stab in the calf muscle.
Carrie had watched my gallop from the couch to the door back to the couch again in wide-eyed amazement but I couldn't look away from the door, praying Sam wouldn't suddenly show up. I checked my phone. Nothing.
I didn't know if I was relieved or pissed that the silence from her end continued. But that didn't stop the quickening of my heartbeat.
Carrie took my resettling by her side as an invitation and pressed one hand behind my neck and slid the other across my chest. It was an embrace, and she was marking me with her stupid perfume. I'd have to shower and then wash these clothes. I wanted to pick her up and carry her to the door but I wasn't ever going to touch her again.
"I don't know why you're here or what you want but you need to leave." I held myself stiff in her embrace so she could tell I did not want her touching me, much like I didn't want her touching anything in my home.
"Baby," she whispered in my ear, her minty breath wafting by my nose. "I miss you so much."
That was it. I stood up, uncaring about the knitting needle and only wanting her to leave.
"I don't miss you and I haven't for some time. Yes, I am seeing someone else and I care about her a lot. You need to leave now," I repeated.
She moved and then, as anticipated, scraped her leg along the needle. "Ouch, what is that?" She stood and lifted the cushion and found my mess of dark blue yarn under the couch.
"Oh my God." She crushed the mess against her chest. Shit, could I wash yarn? I strode over and yanked it out of her hands and threw it on a nearby chair.
"Get out," I repeated and pointed at the door.
"Did I turn you gay?" she cried.
"What?" Following her train of thought was like trying to keep track of a jumping bean.
"Did I turn you gay?" she asked again, trying to look sad but secretive pleasure flirted at the corners of her mouth. God, what did I ever find attractive about this woman? "When I had that fling with Lieutenant Maritz, did you turn to guys? Oh my God, Gray, tell me it isn't so!"
As if she could turn me gay. Was she fucking nuts? I shook my head at her presumptuousness. "You’re a dumb woman, Carrie. It doesn’t work that way. And guess what? I don't care what you think my sexual preference is as long as you understand it isn't you."
Carrie swayed over to me, swinging her skinny hips in an action that might've turned me on four years ago but now just looked like she had a weird hitch in her step. I swung the door open so she could take that hitch right on outside but she paused in front of me. The courtyard was occupied by a few people, but no one that looked like Sam. It was probably the first time in months that I'd been relieved I hadn't had a Sam sighting. Every other night I'd glance out there, hoping I'd see her come up the walk. No dice. But with Carrie standing far too close to me, I was glad that Sam was thousands of miles away.
"I'm glad I stopped by, Gray. I had this feeling that you needed me. You've been on my mind, and when I went down to the Enlisted Club and didn't see you, I was concerned. I'm glad I followed my instincts and came here." Carrie reached out a manicured finger and ran the tip down the front of my T-shirt.
The sad fact was that I had allowed Carrie to turn me off of women. I started mistrusting all of them because of her stupid behavior. I'd stopped thinking in terms of relationships. I'd only thought they were good for fucking and not much more. If the med student treated me like a human dildo it was because that's about how much emotion I'd put into it.
Sam was right. I had grieved and I was bitter. And I needed to let it all go.
"Thanks for your offer, but I'm not interested." How many times did I have to say that before she left? Carrie stepped even closer and the scent of her perfume made my stomach churn. I really needed her out of there and she clearly wasn't going on her own accord. Placing a hand on her chest, I stalled her progress and started sliding her out the door, slowly so not as to cause injury. I held both her biceps and easily lifted her over the threshold. The shock of it made her immobile for a minute and I was able to shut and then lock the door.
The yarn, needles, and mangled blue material looked like a nasty collection of fibers. I didn't have the time or patience tonight. Carrie knocked on the door but I ignored her, turning up the television louder to drown out her profanities. I left the TV and the knitting and went into the bedroom. Two beers and five instructional knitting videos on the iPad later, I went to sleep with renewed hope. One day closer to my End of Active Service date and one day closer to being with Sam.
"I REALLY NEED TO SEE you. Can you fit me in?" I begged. There was the sound of flipping pages as Dorothy looked through her appointment book.
"Can you be here in thirty minutes?" Dorothy asked.
"Yes." I jumped up and started stuffing my paraphernalia in my pack.
"I'll only have a little time for you in between my class," she warned.
"I'll take whatever you have. I just need to see you." I hung up before she could tell me no. Grabbing my pack, I looked twice to see if there was anyone I knew outside, and then sprinted to my truck. The drive to the shop was thirty minutes. I made it in twenty-five.
"Sergeant Phillips," a delighted squeal greeted me from Dorothy's mother. I leaned down and hugged the tiny German woman, placing a kiss on her parchment-thin skin.
"Hey, Mrs. Bend, good to see you."
Mrs. Bend dragged me over to the sofa in the back corner and tugged at my pack. I let her have it. The expression on her face was one of dismay as she pulled out the mess I'd made of the yarn I'd bought two weeks ago at her daughter's yarn shop. "What've you done, my dear boy?"
"Mrs. B, pardon my language, but this shit is hard." I tugged at one of the stray yarn threads that dangled off the needles. "I can sew on a patch or a button or even darn a hole in my sock if necessary, but this is beyond me."
Mrs. B flipped the knitted mess over a couple of times. Her purple fingernail pointed at a small white splotch in the middle. "And this is?" she asked.
"It's the star, Mrs. B." I leaned back and drew a hand over my face in frustration. "I'm never going to figure this out."
"Now, now, no need for that." She laid the yarn mess in my lap. "You'll have to take it apart though and restart. Let me watch you for a while to see if I can pinpoint where you’re going wrong."
As I unraveled the yarn Mrs. B asked, "Are you sure you want to start with the intarsia technique? It's quite difficult."
I nodded grimly. "You know the story, Mrs. B." I'd told Mrs. B and her daughter Dorothy the whole sad saga of my relationship with Sam and how I'd fucked it all up. Mrs. B patted my arm. This was my grand gesture. I was going to knit Sam an afghan and take it to her the next time I had a three-day leave, which might not be before my contract ran out if my CO had anything to say about it.
