Duty: A Secret Baby Romance (5 page)

S
itting in my room
, I'm frustrated. Looking at my bank account, I've got all of twelve dollars and thirteen cents left. And it's only the ninth of the month.

What am I supposed to do? Cadets get jack shit for pay, and I blew my entire savings on one weekend in New York. Sure, Lindsey was more than willing to pay for some of it. She paid for her own hotel room and part of the food . . . but especially after yesterday afternoon, how can I fool myself any longer?

She's obviously not just a riding buddy anymore. Hell, this has been the happiest I've been my entire time at the Academy. But . . . twelve dollars and thirteen cents?

I sigh, working on shining my inspection shoes. We've got haircut inspection tomorrow, and I've been keeping my hair at the limits of what the TAC likes. I get the impression that Lindsey likes my hair a little bit longer, but my TAC doesn't. I've already seen him giving me looks, and I'm not a senior, where I could've earned some leeway.

My commanding officer likes the old-school soldier, the Ranger types who wear shaved sides and short, flat tops on their hair. While the regs say I can have hair up to two inches on top and a half-inch on the sides, there's no way in hell he'll let me get away with that. He starts making pointed comments when you can't see scalp anymore on the sides.

My polishing rag moves over the leather of my shoes in wide sweeps, the smell of the Kiwi filling the air. On my desk, I've got a candle burning. I'm one of those guys who thinks that melting the shoe polish helps you get a better gloss than just raw polish, and the scent mixes with the polish just enough to keep it from being nauseating.

“Attention all cadets! There are five minutes until area clean-up formation. The uniform is . . . Army Combat Uniform with belt and canteen! Formation will be held on the division steps. Five minutes remaining!”

Oh, shit. I totally lost track of time. I mean, I've already changed into my ACU pants, but the plebe outside in the hallway, I think it's Carroway, by the leather-lunged sound of him, still catches me by surprise. I've only got my brown t-shirt on, and I get up quickly, rushing over to my bed and pulling on my combat boots. I normally hate wearing my issued field jacket, but I don't have time to dig my warm weather undershirt out of my footlocker . . . to hell with it. I guess I'll wear the jacket and my gloves. For work details, they don't really care about little shit like that.

I get my belt clipped on and at least half a canteen of water, getting downstairs just as this semester's First Sergeant, Mel Riordan, calls everyone to attention. My squad leader glances down the line and we do a quick formation.

After getting the reports, Riordan turns it over to our company XO, Pete Lemmon. “Okay, Devils, you know the deal,” he says, relaxed. “The TACs want us to clean up some of the leaves and snow that hasn't melted away. Our company's been assigned the gap here from the barracks up the back of Bradley, toward the mess hall.”

“Great . . .” someone mutters. “Hey, who's got the shovels?”

“Vince is bringing those from Central Guard Room right now,” Pete says. “He should be here in two or three minutes. In the meantime, platoon leaders, break your people down into . . . hey, what the hell's that?”

There's a rumble as people look around, and I try to look as Pete points. Unfortunately, we're on the division’s steps and can't see shit because of the overhang that sticks out from the second floor to cover the walkway. “Hey, Simpson! You’ve got smoke in your room!”

Oh, shit. I turn and run up the stairs, and the smoke is already pouring out of my door. I go inside and see the problem. In my rush, I forgot to blow out the candle I was using for melting my shoe polish, and my World History report that I got back second period fell off my desk and caught on fire. I stamp it out, cursing the whole time, but the damage is minimal, just some charred ash on the floor. Breathing heavily, I grumble, looking down. I hear a cough behind me, and Mel Riordan's standing there, his face grim. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, I just fucked up. No harm, no foul.”

“I wish,” Mel says, sighing. “Captain Campos saw the smoke. Sorry, Aaron, I’ve gotta write you up on this one. You know the rules. No candles or open flames in the barracks.”

I sigh, nodding. “Gimme two minutes to get this at least a little cleaned up before I come down and join everyone else?”

He nods, turning and walking away.

* * *

“
F
ive hours
?” Cho asks, handing the form back to me. “Damn. You didn't even cause any damage. Well, except to your history paper.”

“Yeah, but Campos said that I could have burned down the whole fucking barracks,” I grumble, balling the paper up and throwing it in the trash. The work detail form is done in triplicate, like most things in the Army. The white original, which goes in Captain Campos's file that he keeps on everyone, the yellow copy, which the company admin desk keeps, and then my copy, pink. “Never mind the floor is hard tile and our walls are concrete and granite. We live in a fucking fallout shelter!”

“Well for once, I'm glad that you’re the one getting in trouble for shit going down in our room and not me,” Cho jokes, leaning back. “Chill, don't get in a bind about it. That's one Saturday, and this is an A weekend anyway. Besides, you burned one of your passes already last weekend with that trip to New York. What, you're gonna lose all your triathlon conditioning by missing one ride?”

“No,” I growl, turning to my laptop. Nobody knows about Lindsey. I don't need that sort of attention, and Cho thinks I went down to the city by myself to just hang out. “Just . . . oh, fuck it, you're right. One weekend, and I can do something else afterward.”

“That's the spirit,” Cho says with false good cheer. I wonder how much of that cheer is because he's gotten used to spending weekends under some sort of restriction, or if he's trying to hide a lot of anger and being pissed off at the Academy system because of it. “Anyway, I'm heading over to E-4.”

“Who's over there that you know?” I ask. “Math study session?”

“Yeah, that’s it . . . studying,” Cho says, grinning. “Actually, what I plan on studying is Glenda's legs.”

“Who?” I ask, surprised. I didn't know Cho was seeing a girl.

“Glenda Bell. I started talking to her last time I had hours. It rained, and they had us up in the sixth floor of Washington Hall, just sitting. She's a foreign language major, and I asked for some help with my French.”

“You don't take French,” I note, pointing at the Portuguese textbooks above his desk.

“Like that matters?” Cho replies, laughing. “She thought it was cute, or at least she didn't throw me out of her room. Anyway, see ya.”

Cho disappears, and I laugh, shaking my head. I’ve gotta admit, the man's got style, even if he does get told to get lost most of the time. The man strikes out with women constantly, not that it stops him.

Speaking of women, I'm not looking forward to what I've got to do next. I close my door and pick up my phone. “Hello?”

“Lindsey? It's Aaron.”

“Oh!” Lindsey says, and at least she sounds happy. I still have no damn clue where to go after last night when I'm broke as fuck, but maybe I can talk to her about that later. “How's it going?”

“Not that great, actually,” I admit, sighing. “I kinda fucked up and got myself busted. We're going to have to cancel our Saturday ride. I got hours.”

“Ouch,” Lindsey says, sounding genuinely disappointed. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, I just made a stupid mistake. It’s just one day. But the work detail runs from one to six, and I'm not allowed to leave post until that's cleared out. With sunset like a half hour later, we couldn't even get started,” I add. “Sorry.”

“That's okay, really,” Lindsey says, and in her voice, I hear acceptance and forgiveness that I didn't quite get from my roomie's attempt at humor. “So Saturday's out.”

“Yeah,” I agree. “What about Sunday? You and I, the bikes, and we could head out for a while . . .”

“Sorry, I've got work that day,” Lindsey says regretfully. “But what about Monday?”

Monday? I've got to wait until then? “Monday?”

“I understand,” Lindsey says, lowering her voice to a sexy, kittenish purr. “If it helps, it’s been on my mind too.”

I groan, my cock twitching in my shorts. It's like it finally realized its purpose again other than helping me piss in the toilet. And now that it's been inside Lindsey, it wants back there again, and as quickly as possible.

There’s a moment of silence, and Lindsey laughs softly. “Sorry. Okay, well, maybe you can give me a call tomorrow night. We can call it Friday phone date night.”

“A phone date night?” I repeat.

“Gimme a call about eight. We’ll talk then,” Lindsey says.

* * *

M
arching
down to Flirty Walk along with the rest of the work detail crew, I'm somewhat glad that I did get work detail this weekend. The sky overhead is gloomy, and it's already threatening to rain. It's no weather for bike riding with Lindsey. I hope it holds off, if for no other reason than I hate working in the rain. And besides, I know the firstie who is running the details. I had a few run-ins with him before. He'll run us into the ground in anything short of a nor'easter.

“So where are we starting out, anyway?” someone asks, and the firstie turns around, walking backward.

“We're covering the first half of Flirty, from the north arch to Sheridan's bench,” he says, earning some groans from the guys whom I take it are working off longer slugs than what I got. Hey, better for them to be doing this than the poor damn fools who got caught with DUI or some other sort of alcohol offense. The Supe not only puts a letter of reprimand in their permanent file that stays with them after they graduate, but he makes them march tours Old Corps style, dress uniform and rifle on the shoulder. Give me work details any day of the week.

“Shit, man, we covered that three weeks ago!” someone else says. “Seriously, I could fuck a chick in the middle of that section and not even get dirty doing it!”

“That's because the only girl you fuck is Rosy Palm,” someone replies, earning laughs. Okay, so cadets aren't exactly the most politically correct group of people, especially if it's an all-male group. Most of us are young, come from 'old fashioned' backgrounds, and there are more than a few good ol' boys in the Corps. I wouldn't trust my sister around most of the Corps. If I had a sister.

“Cut the chatter,” the detail leader says, and we quiet down some. “Either way, Sergeant Major wants that section done, so we'll work it for five hours.”

We get down to Flirtation Walk, officially the only point on post where cadets are allowed to engage in public displays of affection, a roughly half-mile dirt trail that gives you a view of the Hudson River, and make a quick ad-hoc formation around the arch at the trailhead. “Okay, groups of three or four, fan out and keep busy!” the leader says. “If Sergeant Major comes down here and sees us fucking off, none of us are getting credit for these hours.”

Great idea, but after an hour, I'm understanding the earlier joker's comment about Flirty being clean. With only cadets and their guests allowed to use the trail, there isn't a lot of stuff around to police up. After about two or three attempts at just walking the trail and picking up trash or tossing sticks out of the way, the leader, feeling the threat of losing his credit, loses it. “Fine, fuck it! Pick up the waste wood and pile it at the arch, along with any other trash!”

“How big of wood are you talking here?” someone asks, and he gives us the finger. “Ah, bigger than that. Gotcha.”

I wander back onto the trail, and soon enough, I find something worth venting my frustration on. A downed tree, obviously not waste wood, but a tree a good four inches around and maybe twenty feet long, lies in the bed of leaves that makes up the sides of the trail. I look around and see Will Washington, one of my classmates, and call him over. “Whaddya say, man?”

“Fuck it. He wants wood, I'll give him wood,” Will says, laughing. “Speaking of which, you should have seen the woodbringer that I saw yesterday.”