Touching Scars (4 page)

“Kat, you’ve never tried me out, so how would you know?” Beaver waggled his eyebrows at the girl.

“Watch it kid. That’s my niece you’re talkin’ about there.” Roger glowered.

This girl was Kat? I wasn’t sure exactly what I was expecting to come walking out, but this wasn’t it. Roger was a very businesslike man, always wearing suits, and somewhat proper. I think I anticipated someone in a decent length skirt, and turtleneck. Granted, we were in a bar, but like I said, the economy was bad and people were desperate. This girl was something entirely different. She had long dark hair that went past the middle of her back. It had hints of red, which I was certain would be more vibrant in the sunlight. My eyes roamed the length of her. She was curvy in all the right places. Her tits looked like more than a handful, and her ass was delectable. But what caught my eye were her intricate tattoos. She was wearing short jean shorts that displayed a skull candy tattoo with a floral pattern weaving in and out of the eyes. Her dark gray tank top allowed for viewing of two shoulder tattoos. One was of a koi fish that looked like it was swimming up her arm. The other side was another skull but with a different pattern.

Kat pointed at Beaver, interrupting my visual perusal. “Never gonna happen, big man.” She gave him a glorious unadulterated smile.

“Cut it out, you two, and Kat, don’t make me call your daddy,” Roger teased.

She rolled her eyes. “You’d never. Now come here.” She brought him in for a tight hug.

“Happy birthday, princess.”

“Hey, what am I, chopped liver?” Slim pouted from the sidelines.

Kat pulled away and grabbed Slim by the collar and hugged him. “Chopped liver, yes, but I’ll always give you a hug as long as you keep having chocolates delivered to me.”

“Oh good, at least those assholes at the florist shop didn’t get the wrong address this time. I swear I had a dozen roses delivered to my second wife one time, and they ended up dropping them off in front of that old abandoned church. I had to call and yell at them. There’s a damn difference between First Avenue and First Street.” He sighed and held her face in his oil stained hands while she smiled brightly at him.

“So did she ever get her flowers?”

“As a matter of fact, she did. Found out later that she put them in the garbage disposal.”

Kat laughed, and it was a melodic sound. “Ouch. What’d you do?”

“I guess twelve red roses didn’t make up for sleeping with her sister.” He was looking off into the distance while crinkling his nose.

She slapped him on the shoulder. “Slim, you slept with her sister?”

“They were twins. How was I supposed to know which one I was with?”

Roger and Beaver were laughing as she shook her head.

“Oh! Hey, Kat, I want you to meet Nelson,” Slim said, suddenly remembering I was standing here.

Her eyes shifted to where I was and her happy, carefree attitude suddenly went rigid. She straightened her back and gave me a brief nod.

I held my hand out to her just like I had with Beaver. “It’s
Timber
Nelson. Sorry to crash your birthday, but these assholes dragged me here,” I teased.

As soon as we made eye contact, something about her stirred in my gut. I shuffled through my muddled memories but was coming up blank. She was watching me with weary eyes. Something about her struck a nerve deep inside me. It was those eyes. I swore I’d seen those hazel eyes before.

“Do I know you?” I asked her.

I searched her face for any other form of recognition, but there was nothing. Maybe she just looked like someone else. But her voice became abrasive and she bit out ‘no’. I watched as her eyes darted around the bar, clearly looking for a way out. How odd.

Kat cleared her throat, refusing to give me her eyes again. “Nice to meet you, Timber. Uncle Roger, I don’t mean to be rude but I’m actually really busy with the new inventory, I’ll see y’all later, okay?” She’d never taken my hand, so I let it drop to my side.

“Oh sure, no problem, honey. Didn’t mean to take you away from your work,” Roger said, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek before she briskly walked back to what I assumed was a storage room.

Beaver leaned forward on his stool. “Wonder what got her butt ruffled?”

“Don’t you mean ‘panties’?” Roger corrected.

“Tomatoes, tomahtoes.” Beaver shrugged, as if that was an explanation for his confusion.

Slim spoke up and said, “Let’s grab a drink, boys.”

With that, the three of us walked to the bar and sat down. Two hours passed quickly and I was definitely drunker than a skunk. What does that even mean? Do skunks get drunk? Do drunk people stink? I not so discreetly smelled my armpits. Nope, fresh as a whistle.

I’d been watching the girl, Kat, serving behind the bar for most of the night. I’d observed her as she spoke easily with everybody in the bar. They all seemed to know her and I assumed she was from around here. She had a certain pull to her. A magnetism that made
me
want to know her too. But she wouldn’t give me the time of day. Whenever my Crown ran low, she’d get Melanie to come fill me up. At one point during the night, while the whole bar banded together and sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to her, I watched as she let go of the stiffness I seemed to have caused her. I found out she was turning twenty-one years old. She seemed to remember that I was still here watching her. I’d caught her eyes peering at me. I’d given up trying to figure out where I knew her from, or who she reminded me of. My drunken fog pretty much banned any coherent thoughts. Well, all thoughts except for the fact that this girl was beautiful, and not in the traditional sense. She wasn’t the type of beautiful that would grace a magazine cover. She was the type that you slowly let seep into your system and take a hold of you. She was the type that once she had you, you would never look at anybody else the same. Her beauty was the end. It was all you’d ever want again.

I shot back another glass of Crown and slammed some cash down on the table. Needing to get out of here and breath some fresh Texas humidity, I told my bosses that I’d see them tomorrow, and not to can my ass if I came in late and hung over. As I made my way out, Beaver offered to call me a cab. Since the idea that there was even a cab available in such a small town was laughable, I told him thanks but I only lived around the corner. He shook my hand again in another crushing hand shake, and I walked out of the bar. After I tripped and swayed my way to my apartment, my body decided that the couch looked good enough to sleep on and wouldn’t take itself the few extra feet to my bed. Thankfully, I had bought the couch for this very reason. A man needs a good napping couch. Mine just serves a greater purpose sometimes — for all night napping. As I closed my eyes, I felt the familiar jarring of my muscles dragging me back into the same nightmares of war.

“D
UDE
, I
NEED
YOU
TO
do me a favor. I think I have a rash on the bottom of my nut sack and I can’t really see it. Could you look and tell me if I should go to medical and get some cream or something?” Holt asked while he was scratching himself.

“What the fuck, man. No, I ain’t looking at your junk. Get a fuckin’ mirror.” I laughed, but there was no way I was looking at another man’s dick voluntarily.

“Hey, I’d do it for you, asshole.”

“Yeah, and that’s what makes you gay,” I retorted, knowing that I was only getting him riled up.

“Was it gay when I fucked Corey’s mom before we left?” Holt said.

I was sitting in my rack with most of my squad, hanging around and waiting for our next patrol. There was a chorus of “oh’s” by the guys because of Holt’s stupid comment. He was fun to pick on, and he often rose to the occasion when it came to taking the bait. He was the youngest out of all of us. I’d found a picture of him before he’d graduated from high school that’d fallen out of his bag. Pretty boy had long shaggy hair that would make Justin Bieber jealous, and a million dollar smile that likely made girls come with a glance. But out here, he was just a kid with zero experience. And his looks wouldn’t save his life from an RPG. I looked out for him more than any of the other guys.

Corey had just walked in when Holt had opened his mouth. “What’d you say about my mom?”

“I said she makes some mean ass snicker doodles, man. In fact, could you ask her to send us some more in the care package?” I chuckled as the kid quickly back peddled.

Corey was the resident hard ass. He was a soldier’s soldier. He grew up wanting to join the Army for as long as he could remember. This was his dream. Serving his country is what gave him a purpose. Corey was an average guy with average looks, but he had a heart of gold. He came from an all-American home and his mom routinely sent us shit in the mail. We each got letters from her at least once a week telling us how proud she was of the men her boy served with. As much as we gave Corey crap for his overbearing mom, I knew we all loved it.

“Yeah, I bet it’s the snicker doodles. We’ll see if she puts any cookies in your box next week if I tell her you’re running your mouth, kid.”

Holt flipped Corey the bird. Busted.

It was just after evening chow and we were all coming back from the Mess Hall. We had an hour before we would head out on our nightly patrol of the eastern side of Fallujah. My squad did four patrols over a twelve hour shift. I laid back on my bed, allowing my meal to digest. Turning my head, I looked over at Rooster, who came strolling in with a shit eating grin on his face and a small box in his hands. For the record, his name was actually Nick Smith. What a generic name. Rooster was a seriously hard headed son of a bitch. We’d been in the same squad together for quite a while. He wouldn’t tell us where the name Rooster came from. He had a wife and two kids at home, and he did his job with a no-nonsense attitude. He was the type that when he got an idea into his head, he followed through with it. So serious, that two years ago he was in the middle of gunfire in Afghanistan and took a bullet in his left shoulder. They’d sent him home immediately and he did a solid year of physical therapy. He said he had been in a really dark place for a long time while he was recovering, but when the doctor cleared him and said he was fit for duty, only then was he was able to life again. In a way, I looked up to him. He was only three years older than my twenty-three years, but the things he’s lived through and done made him worth respecting.

“What’s in the box?” Holt asked, while he was still scratching himself.

Rooster looked at him and curled his lip. “It’s from my wife. But you aren’t touching shit until you wash your hands.”

He sat the box down on his bed and all four sets of our eyes were riveted on Rooster as he opened it. Other than Corey’s mom sending us weekly boxes, we don’t see much from the States.

“Shit,” Rooster said as he held up a hot pink lace thong. He set it down and kept digging. Next he pulled out some lotion that smelled like an apple. That will be empty before the next six months was over, I smiled to myself. I watched as he pulled out condoms, massage oil, risqué pictures she had taken, and then a small stack of dirty magazines. I felt myself gulp. It had been a long damn time since I’d been with a woman. At least seven months, when we’d first come out to this hell hole.

He was about to look through the photos, but he thought better of it when he glanced up and looked at us. We must have looked like a pack of wolves ready to attack, or hump anything with tits and a smile. He put them back in the box along with the other contents and put it under his bed. There were a few grumbles around the room.

“Seriously, boys, that’s my wife. I’m not showing you an inch of her body,” Rooster snickered.

I glanced down at my watch. It read nineteen hundred hours, time for our last patrol of the night. I stood up and stretched my achy muscles. “Let’s go, last round.”

Thirty minutes later I was in the MRAP, which was a crazy looking hummer but build better, and sitting in the back seat with my eyes glued outside. I was trained to scan my surroundings. What people are walking around? What are they wearing? What are they doing? Have I seen them before? Do they take special interest in us when we come through? These were the assessments that I made and catalogued them all in my head. It had saved my life and my men’s lives more times than I could count.

As we turned the corner of the last block we patrolled, I noticed a man was yelling at a woman. She was cowering, her eyes cast downward. Women here were not supposed to be the dominant ones in this country. They were subservient to the male population. I scoffed quietly to myself. I preferred a woman with some fight in her. This woman was only doing what she had been trained to do since birth. The man reached out, roughly grabbed her arm, and shook her. She was nodding her head vigorously, but still her head remained down. He shoved her up against a wall, and I could she winced from the pain. It was making my blood boil. I’d like to introduce that guy’s face to the wall.