Disarm (10 page)

ENEMY CONTACT

Dinner with the parents at P.F. Chang's was not nearly as awkward as the impromptu meeting that morning. The dark ambience of the restaurant lent itself to pleasant, mellow conversation.

At least, until Henry's wayward hand landed on my leg under the table.

I flashed him a warning look but he just gave me that impudent smile that made me want to smack him and kiss him at the same time.

“They can totally tell, you know,” I whispered to him, glancing over at my dad, who, thankfully, had no clue what was going on less than three feet away from him.

Henry just winked and pushed his hand higher up my thigh. I finally had to grab him when his fingers inched under my skirt. He just grinned again and ordered his meal.

It was cheesy but we held hands under the table while we waited for our food to arrive. We tried to participate in the conversations around us, but our parents, having realized Henry and I were in a world of our own, just began to ignore us and talk among themselves.

Henry's fingers drew circles around my palm, then he took two fingers and started pulsing them into the web between my thumb and forefinger. He bent close to my ear and said, “This is what my fingers wish they could be doing inside you right now.”

I squeezed his fingers, giving him a meaningful look.

He breathed into my ear and said, “It's so hard sitting here next to you, pretending to be the good little boyfriend when all I want to do is throw you on this table and fuck you senseless.”

The breath hitched in my throat, my panties instantly moist. “So do it,” I taunted.

He bared his teeth. “Oh, you don't know what you're asking.”

“. . . if only our children could stop flirting and pay attention.”

My mom's words snapped me back to reality. “What was that?” I asked.

My mom had an amused smile on her face when she said, “Our food is here.”

Henry and I looked down at our plates in surprise. “When did that get here?” he asked, flashing me a grin.

His dad groaned and rolled his eyes. “You guys are fucking gross.”

Later, Henry and I attended a party for his friends from high school at the Cannery Row Brewing Company. Kelly and Hass had been a couple since high school, and only now were they getting engaged.

“What have they been doing all this time?” I asked as we walked toward the bar hand in hand.

“I guess they broke up for a while,” Henry said, holding the door open for me. “And then decided they were better together than apart.”

We stood at the entrance, looking through the crowd for a familiar face. “Maybe they were too young and needed to figure out who they were first.”

“Maybe so,” Henry said and waved at someone across the room. I held tight as we waded through the thick Friday night crowd, making our way toward a small group by the back of the bar.

“Logan!” a tall guy with sandy blond hair said, looking very much like the same boy I knew in high school. Hass was softer around the edges, with a little more padding all around, but his warm smile was the same. He clapped Henry on the back and turned to me. “Little Elsie Sherman?” he asked with wide eyes.

I nodded as he gave me a hug. His eyes flicked back toward me, then Henry, then back to me again—which, I would later find out, was the normal reaction from people from our high school—before asking, “You two?”

Henry grinned and threw a possessive arm over my shoulder.

Hass turned around and brought forward Kelly, a girl that I didn't have fond feelings for back in high school. Still, I kept in mind that people changed and sometimes they outgrew meanness and their bitchy tendencies.

“Congratulations,” I said, pretending that she and her friends hadn't made the first half of my sophomore year a living hell, that they hadn't been the cause of many tears on my pillow.

Okay, so maybe I wasn't completely over it, but I was trying at least.

Kelly gave me a warm embrace, then said, “It's good to see you, Elsie. I'm sorry for being such a bitch to you in high school.”

I pulled away and waved away her apology. “Don't worry about it. That was a million years ago.”

“No, really,” she said, grasping my hand. “We were really mean. I'm sorry.”

I nodded, accepting her apology. What else could I do?

She gave Henry and me that look, then said, “I guess Nina was right to be jealous.”

The name made my stomach lurch. Nina Yates, beautiful and terrifying, who had held the title of Henry's Girlfriend for several months back in his senior year.

Henry squeezed my shoulders. “She's not here, is she?” he asked.

Kelly nodded, looking around. “She's around here somewhere.” Hass grabbed her hand and she threw us an apologetic look as she was once again steered toward another introduction.

“Do you want to leave?” Henry asked.

I assessed my outfit and decided that I looked hot enough in my colorblock tube dress and black heels to face off with an arch-nemesis. “No. I'm good.”

I led the way to the bar and was stepping up onto the brass railing at the bottom when Henry grabbed me by the waist and whispered against my ear, “You weren't planning on using what you've got, were you?”

“As a matter of fact, I was.” I caught the eye of the bartender and called out my order without having to resort to cleavage-baring. I joined Henry on the floor a minute later with our drinks in my hands and a grin on my face. “I think an apology is in order,” I said, holding the beer bottle out of his reach.

He wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me against him, a dark look on his face. “I'm not going to apologize for wanting to keep you all to myself,” he said huskily.

I gave him a wicked look. “Then no beer for you.”

He pulled me closer as he reached behind me for the beer. I gasped when I felt his erection growing, and he winked.

“Keep going . . .” I said, enjoying the feel of his hard length against me. “A little farther . . .”

“Henry?”

We both turned to see who else but Nina-freaking-Yates standing beside us with her beautiful auburn hair cascading down the sides of her face, looking more gorgeous than I remember.

“Nina,” Henry said, getting points for not immediately letting me go. He released me gently, squeezing my side as he did so. “Nice to see you.”

Nina fixed her blue eyes on him, completely ignoring me. “Henry.” She reached over and kissed him on the cheek.

He stood stock-still until she was done. “Nina, you remember Elsie Sherman?”

Finally, she deigned to look at me. God, did she have to look like she just stepped out of a fashion magazine? Suddenly my dinky little Target dress seemed so inadequate. “Elsie?” she said, pronouncing the last syllable like
sea
. “I didn't even recognize you. You look so adorable.”

Adorable, my ass. I was looking pretty damn hot.

“So, how are you?” Henry interjected and kept me from saying something snarky.

“I'm good,” Nina said, brushing back a lock of her hair and flashing us the huge rock on her left hand. “I'm married with two kids.”

“You're married?” he asked, trying to hide his surprise. “To whom?”

She looked over her shoulder, to a man across the bar in a dark blue suit. “To John Morris. You remember him? You used to play football with him.”

I stifled my snort. John, my date to the homecoming dance, who had groped me all over the dance floor right before Henry had pulled him off me in a jealous rage.
That
John. “Congratulations,” I said with genuine glee. Really, I was happy for the both of them.

“And how about you two?” she asked, her eyes flicking back and forth. “How long have you been together?”

Henry opened his mouth to answer, but I beat him to the punch. “Since March.”

“Oh, I thought you'd been together longer than that.”

“Well,” Henry said, clearing his throat. “Technically, we've been together for years. It just wasn't official until March.”

I raised my eyebrow at him, surprised by his little white lie. Why he felt the need to exaggerate was beyond me.

“You two are married?” Nina asked. Her eyes zeroed in on my bare ring finger and got her answer. “I don't get it?”

“It doesn't really matter,” I said. “Henry and I get it.”

The night went on and I found myself actually enjoying myself. Nina didn't come to speak to us again, and I realized that maybe she wasn't the big beautiful bitch that I remembered her to be. At the very least, she didn't appear to be on some sort of undertaking to win Henry back. I wondered if, maybe, our perception of people is oftentimes tainted by emotion, that the person you hated was really just a girl trying to get through the hell that was high school.

Later, I was in deep conversation with Hass about the upcoming Joomla! Conference when Henry excused himself and headed to the bar. After several minutes of discussing the keynote speakers, I realized that Henry still hadn't returned. My eyes searched for him through the dark room and found him still standing at the bar, involved in a deep conversation with Nina. They stood close together but nothing else about their postures said they wanted any closer. In fact, Nina's back was straight and she was not looking at Henry as they talked.

I felt fear clutch at my heart but I kept it in check. I trusted Henry. He would never in a million years cheat on me.

I just hoped my optimism didn't come back to bite me in the ass.

Henry drove home in silence, lost in his own thoughts. I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes, exhausted from the day's events. The next thing I knew, the car was coming to a stop in front of my parents' driveway.

Henry got out, opened my door, and walked with me all the way to the front door.

“Are you coming inside?” I asked, grabbing a handful of his jacket. “My parents should be asleep by now.”

He shook his head with a rueful smile. “I think I should stay on the colonel's good side for now.”

I looked up at his face, half hidden in shadows, and asked, “Is something wrong? You've been unusually quiet.”

“I just have a lot to think about.”

“About Nina?”

He frowned as he wrapped his arms around me. “No. Just about life in general. About where our lives are headed.”

“Where
are
we headed?”

He gave me a dubious look. “I think we both know where this is headed.”

“Enlighten me.”

“We're headed toward a happily ever after,” he stated, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

A bright little flower bloomed in the middle of my chest. I stood on my tiptoes and kissed him, grasping the back of his head to deepen the kiss. He instantly responded, pulling me closer against him so that I could feel his arousal. His fingers lifted the hem of my dress and dug into my butt cheeks as his hips ground into mine.

“Don't you mean a
happy ending
?” I whispered against his lips, reaching into the waistband of his jeans and massaging him through his boxer briefs.

He gave a little growl in the back of his throat. “I want that too,” he said and gave a little groan when I stroked the length of him.

I pulled away with a wicked smile. “Well, good night.”

His eyes widened as he tried to catch his breath. “What? But . . .”

I turned away and slid the key into the door when he pressed into me from behind, his arms boxing me in on either side of my head. “So that's it then?” he asked huskily. He rocked his hips into my butt. “You're going to leave me like this?”

I pushed the door open and stepped away from him. “Yes,” I said, feeling deliciously cruel. I licked my lips and gave him a slow, sexy look that slid down his body and ended on his bulging crotch. “You have a lot to think about, remember?”

He reached out with one finger and traced my lips, then pinched my nose. “You're a brat.”

“And a tease,” I reminded him.

He bit his lower lip, giving me a disgruntled look. “You know, we won't have that happy ending if you keep giving me blue balls.”

“That's what
he
said,” I said with a carefree laugh, heedless of what tomorrow would bring, only happy to learn that Henry was thinking of our future together.

ALPHA MIKE FOXTROT

The next day, after Henry's session with Doc Gal, we bought sandwiches and drinks and brought them to a beach in Pacific Grove. Parking was hard to find on a rare cloudless Saturday afternoon, and we ended up walking a long way to get to the beach, but it was worth it. I hadn't been back to this beach since Jason's death; I'd forgotten how beautiful the ocean could be, how the water reached up to meet the sky in the gauzy horizon.

We sat down and ate our lunch on a blanket, our bare toes digging into the sand as we gazed out over the blue ocean.

I leaned back on my elbows and angled my face up to the sun, enjoying its warm touch on my face. “This couldn't be more perfect.” When I opened my eyes, I found Henry staring at me with an unreadable expression. “What are you thinking?” I asked.

He blinked a few times. “Have you ever wondered what life would have been like if you'd never moved here?”

The question took me off guard. “Not really.” I paused, giving it a little more thought. “Although, I'm guessing I'd now be dating someone else, whoever became my brother's best friend.”

“I'm serious.”

I laughed. “So am I. I'm a sucker for older men.”

He gave a small grin and lay down beside me, folding his arms behind his head. “Do you think Jason would still be alive?”

I frowned, finally taking note of the serious nature of the conversation. “I don't know. Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe he would have still deployed and that sniper would have still been on that rooftop.”

“If you could turn back time, would you change it? Would you ask your dad to move somewhere else?”

I focused on the cyan sky, wondering what its Pantone color number was, ignoring the pressure behind my eyes. “To save Jason? Yes.”

“Even if it means never having met me?”

A lump formed in my throat. I couldn't even begin to answer his question, so I just asked, “Where is all of this coming from?”

He took a deep breath. “Just something Nina mentioned last night—”

“Nina,” I said under my breath. But of course.

He turned his head and gave me a look. “Not like that. We were just talking and she just said something that struck a chord with me.”

“Let me guess, she asked if you would still be with her if I had never moved to California.”

“No,” he said. “She just asked, in general, how we would have all turned out if things were different, if some people never entered our lives.”

I flipped over onto my stomach and lay on the wide expanse of his chest. I rested my chin on my folded arms. “We'd all be unrecognizable.”

He unfolded one arm and began to play with my hair, winding a lock around his finger. “I think I'd be in jail right now instead of a captain in the Air Force. I don't think even Doc Gal could have saved me from that future. If it weren't for your dad and your brother, I'd probably have dropped out of school, maybe become a drug dealer.”

Try as I might, I couldn't imagine Henry in that scenario. I shook my head. “No. You're too honorable. I don't think you're giving yourself enough credit.”

“What about you? What do you think you'd be like?”

I chewed on my lip. “Hmm. That's a hard one because we could have ended up anywhere. I could have been a cheerleader, or a goth, or maybe a basketball player.”

“You think living somewhere else would have made you taller?” he teased.

“Maybe. Growth hormones in the water. Stranger things have happened.” I smiled at him, feeling incredibly fortunate that my parents decided to live in Monterey just two houses down from the Logans. Henry, for better or worse, was integral to shaping the person I had become, and I was sure he felt the same way about me. Our pasts were tightly entwined and so too, I was sure, were our futures. “Regardless, I couldn't imagine being anyone else.”

He lifted his head and touched his lips to mine but said nothing. There was so much he wasn't saying.

“What's really bothering you, Henry?”

His eyes bore into mine; I almost flinched from the intensity. “I guess what I really want to find out is if you love me because of who I am or because you've had a crush on me forever.”

“Both,” I said. “I don't understand what you're asking.”

“If we just met each other right now—me being an ex-con with honor and you being a really tall goth cheerleader—would you still be attracted to me? Would you still fall in love with meth-addict Henry?”

“Now you're a meth addict?” I asked. “Hmm, maybe not if you have busted teeth.”

“Answer the question.”

“Maybe. I don't know,” I said. I pushed up off him and got to my feet. I looked up at the dark clouds that had crept in on the beautiful day. “What does it matter? We are who we are and we're together. End of story.”

If only that were truly the case.

The rain started to fall on our drive home. It started out as tiny drops but by the time we entered our neighborhood, it became an all-out downpour. Henry parked the car in front of my parents' driveway, neither one of us eager to get out and get drenched.

“Typical Monterey,” I said, watching the rain pelt the windshield.

“Elsie,” Henry began and I knew that he was finally going to tell me what had been bothering him. “I think we need to break up.”

His words took a moment to wrap themselves around my brain because they were so alien, so unexpected, that it was like he was speaking another language. I sputtered, I was so taken aback. “Out of all the things I was expecting you to say,
that
was not one of them.”

His eyebrows drew together as he looked at me. “I'm sorry it's out of the blue. I just think we need to spend some time apart.”

Tear stung my eyes as his words began to sink in. “You said you love me.”

His nostrils flared and when he reached out to touch my cheek, his fingers were trembling. “I do.”

“Then . . .”

“I just need to figure out who the hell I am, Elsie,” he said. “I can't remember a time that you weren't in my life and that scares me a little. I feel like I have no identity without you.”

“So you're breaking up with me to go
find yourself
?” I asked incredulously.

“Not just me. I want the same for you. I want you to figure out who you are without me.”

Tears were streaming down my face as I spoke. “I don't need to know who I am without you because you're a part of me. Taking you out of the equation is like pulling out one of my femurs and asking me to live a normal life. It's not going to happen.”

“I need you to understand where I'm coming from—”

“But I can't understand,” I shouted. “I don't understand how you can tell me you're in love with me and ask me to wait for six months, and now that you've come home and we can be together, you're suddenly breaking up with me. And your reason—that you want to find your identity—is flimsy and stupid.

“I thought you were going to tell me you had some horrible illness. And you know, the sad thing is that I wish that was the case, because then that would mean you're not leaving me voluntarily.”

He turned away, the muscles in his jaw and neck taut, but said nothing. He just looked out the window.

I waited for him to say something—anything—that would make sense. If he was going to break my heart, I needed a viable reason, something tangible like wanting to be with someone else.

“Oh my God, it's because of Nina, isn't it? Do you want to be with her?”

“No!” he cried, finally looking at me again. “I don't care about Nina.”

“And you obviously don't care about me,” I said in a broken voice.

“Of course I do—”

I didn't want to hear any more, so I pushed open the car door and stepped out into the rain. I was instantly soaked, but I didn't care. I slammed the door shut and stalked off to the house and went inside, locking the door behind me.

“Sweetheart?”

I spun around and found my mother in the hallway, with an anxious look on her face and a cup of tea in her hands.

“Elsie, are you okay?” she asked.

The gentle worry in her voice undid me so I wrapped my sopping arms around her and let loose a rainstorm of my own.

I sat in the bathtub for the longest time, sobbing into a bottle of merlot. I scoured through memories to find any hints of the breakup, but nothing came to mind. Wasn't it only last night that he was telling me we were headed toward a happily ever after? What had changed since then?

I had so many questions but pride kept me from calling him. I would not break down and beg him to reconsider, no matter how much I wanted that very thing to happen.

Henry had blindsided me back in March when he told me he was in love with me, and he had blindsided me again by telling me he wanted to break up.

At the beginning of the year, I was confident that I knew everything about Henry—his favorite color, his favorite quote, down to which dress shoes he preferred—but something had changed and with each passing month, I realized that I barely knew him at all. Apart from superficial details, did I really know Henry as well as I thought?

And just then, when I was certain I had fallen in love with a complete stranger, was the moment that I finally began to understand him.

I was drunk and nearly numb when I finally got out of the tub and made my way to my bedroom. I had not told my parents about the break up, but my mom, with her uncanny intuition, had guessed and had told my father to give me some space. They had gone out to dinner without me, to a restaurant nearby just in case I decided the loneliness was too much to bear.

I stumbled into bed wearing only a bathrobe, not entirely sure if I wanted company or seclusion.

Seclusion won out. I couldn't tell them what happened, largely in part because I just didn't have the mental faculties at the moment to explain away Henry's actions.

I wondered if this was some phase he was going through, some therapy exercise. The thought offered me a little comfort and I was able to close my puffy eyes and go to sleep.

I awoke some time later when I heard a knock at my window. I rolled off my bed, the room still spinning from the alcohol, and opened the window for Henry.

“Hey,” he said with his hands in his pockets. His eyes, I noticed with some satisfaction, were red-ringed. “Can I come in?”

“For what reason?”

“I just . . . I had to see you.” He looked at me with his eyebrows drawn together, his eyes pleading.

I gave a nod and stepped aside, holding on to my old desk to steady me. The moment his feet touched the carpet, he strode to me and wrapped me in his arms, clutching at my hair, pressing my face into his chest. I could feel his rapid heartbeat against my cheek, and I realized, even through my drunken haze, that I could never love anyone more. If this was really over, if Henry really wanted out, I would be a ruined mess for anyone else who came after.

He closed his eyes and pressed his lips against my forehead, but what was supposed to be a comforting gesture instead broke my heart into a million pieces.

Henry was here to say good-bye.

I blotted my tears with his gray shirt, memorizing everything: the largeness and solidity of his body, the cool, fresh scent of his deodorant, the
thud-thud
of his heart in his chest. I wanted to flood my every sense with Henry, to lose myself to sensation so that I wouldn't have to think about the fact that he was saying good-bye. So I slid my hands up his muscled back to his head and pulled him down to meet my lips.

I kissed him hard, my tongue slipping against his with hunger and need. He responded with a groan and pushed me against the wall, pinning my body against his. He shoved a knee between my legs and pressed his thigh into my crotch, rocking his erection into my stomach, causing a delicious friction. He stopped kissing me long enough to pull on the back of his shirt, slipping it over his head in one motion.

His hands came between us and grabbed the lapels of my bathrobe, peeling it away from my naked body. He pulled away for a brief moment, his eyes raking over me with that dark look on his face. “God, I'll miss you,” he rasped.

I saw red at that moment, balking at his audacity. “You asshole,” I said and slapped him across the cheek.

He grunted, his eyes turning feral. “Do it again,” he ordered.

So I did, my palm landing flat on his cheek. He grunted again and ground his teeth. When I raised my hand to strike again, he grabbed my wrist and punished me with his mouth, kissing me with an anger and desperation I'd never felt before. His other hand grabbed me by the jaw and forced my head up, then he proceeded to rain kisses on my neck, along my collarbone, nipping with his teeth at every juncture.

The pleasure and fury roiled around inside me like a tempest. I wanted to hurt him back, to give him a taste of what he'd put me through, so I dug my fingers into his back and raked my nails across his skin.

He made a low guttural sound at the back of his throat, then grabbed me by the waist, ripped me away from the wall, and threw me onto the bed. I gaped up at him, trying to catch my breath, as he unzipped his pants, his muscles straining to do battle.

I sat up, ready to resist, when he placed his palm flat over my heart and pushed me back down into the mattress. He grabbed my wrists and pulled them above my head, holding them in place with one hand while the other pushed my legs apart and guided the head of his penis to my entrance.

His eyes bore into mine. “Do you want me inside you, Elsie?” he asked, pushing in just the slightest and retreating.

My breath came out in rapid gusts and my insides squeezed, trying to suck him inside me by sheer will.

“Tell me, yes or no?” he demanded in that gravelly voice.

“Hell yes,” I breathed and then he surged inside me, filling and stretching me to my limits.