Swap Out (19 page)

“Don’t tell me you care about me anymore, Luca. Especially since you’re obviously lying.”

“I’m not lying,” I say adamantly. “I’m just a little—”

“You said you would want me regardless.” She pauses when her voice breaks, wiping at her cheeks, and I want to die right now. “You said you
missed
me, and the thing is, Luca, I’ve missed you. But I haven’t been saying no because I don’t want you. It’s just everything is so intense with you and I’m…” She shakes her head, then looks away and hugs her arms around her body, her shoulders curling in towards herself.

“God, Zoe,” I breathe, delicately cradling her cheeks as she silently starts to cry. “I have missed you. And I want you, so much, but my head is fucked up right now—”

“Spare me,” she bites off, batting my hands away. “You probably just wanted to fuck your boss in her office. And congratulations, Luca, because you would’ve, too. Because you were fine until my shirt came off and you started—” She stops and covers her mouth with her hand, her eyes squeezing shut. Her body jolts under a silent sob, then she wipes at her eyes again and tries to regain control as she looks up at me. “I don’t know what you want, Luca. You say you want me, you say you want
this
,” she says and gestures to her stomach, “and I was starting to believe you. I wanted to believe you. I thought…”

She shakes her head, running a hand through her hair.

“God,” she says with a defeated sigh. “How many times am I going to make the same mistake?”

“Zoe,” I try again, but she shrugs out of my hands and I blink and she’s out of the office.

I walk over and sit in the chair that’s always been mine, leaning forward with my head in my hands.

I have no idea how to fix this, how I’ll ever convince her now.

I have no idea how I’ll ever be able to ask for her, and then not dissolve into a mess of dread that this will happen again. Because if I think it, then it will, and I just…

Everything is so totally fucked.

If I still prayed, I would ask for a cliff to appear, right in the office. With a lot of jagged rocks at the bottom. Five minutes ago. Instead I give myself one more second, one long, torturous second to sit here and pull it together before I start to clean up the mess I made. But before I can move my sight snags on the floor. There are a dozen tiny cards with her printed name and business logo, and they’re scattered everywhere. The same kind she wrote her address on when she…

My chest squeezes and jaw locks because I never, ever thought that what just happened,
would
happen. In all the days since
the
night, in all the long glances I steal as she sleeps beside me, I haven’t felt one ounce of any urge to run. Any disintegrating attraction towards her. It’s been the opposite: a need to stay close, a need to make this firmer. It’s why I gave her a key to my apartment so if for some reason she needed me, she could get to me at any hour.

My feelings for Zoe and my feelings for the decision she’s rendering, they don’t live in the same world. I can’t allow them to. And I don’t. So I’m lost at how everything suddenly morphed together and how it all just got so fucking backwards. I don’t know how I can be angry and still want her at the same time. But I do.

I sigh and get up, gathering everything off the floor and putting it back on her desk as neatly as possible. I collect and turn all the business cards the right direction, sliding them into the plastic display holder before I grab my shirt and tug it on, then head out of her office. But before I reach the front door I hear another shut behind me and I look, seeing Zoe coming out of the bathroom.

She stops in place when she spots me: her cheeks scrubbed clean of smudged mascara and her shirt completely buttoned and tucked back into her skirt, and I want to crawl into my own skin and disappear.

It never ceases to stun me: how quickly things change when they change for the worst. One, two, three steps and it’s all over before you can blink.

She tugs at the collar of her shirt and pulls it closer to its mate, her fingertip sneakily unhooking her hair from behind her ear so it falls forward to hide her face when she looks away.

“I’m sorry,” I say thinly, my chickenshit voice sulking its way towards her as it skirts around lavish couches and dodges lamps, ducking under chair legs and hiding between end tables. It still reaches her though, because her weight shifts and hip slightly juts out, but away from me. And that little movement, so tiny and innocuous, it’s the paper cut followed by lemon and salt and no water for miles.

It shouldn’t surprise me that she doesn’t care. Why would she right now? I can barely get her to give a damn about me when I’m at my best. And it’s not that I don’t think highly of myself or know what I deserve in a relationship, because I know I deserve better than the hoops she demands I jump through. But there’s something that makes me sorry for the pain I cause, even as she continuously doles it out. And it’s not the third pulse in the room that I’ll probably never feel, never hear, that makes me like this. I’ve been tied in a lot longer than that.

It’s just…there’s something about her that feels like faith. A hint of a phenomenon that you’re not sure you felt, saw, but it wasn’t just nothing. Its evidence a light touch, too much to be imagined and not enough to prove. There is no rationale, no reasoning. It just is and you either know, or you don’t.

I wish I could explain that to Zoe, but I can’t. And I wish she could feel that way about me, give her some comfort that I’m the one thing she doesn’t have to worry about in a world of changing deadlines and evolving styles, but she doesn’t feel that way and she doesn’t trust me and by her own admission, she never will. Not unless I can find a way to win that from her.

I swallow, then tell her, “You know the truth, Zoe. But the thing is, this isn’t easy for me either and…” My voice trails off and I take a breath, then say stronger, “My failures are not yours.”

Her gaze drops to the floor. She doesn’t say anything. I give her a moment, but when she stays silent I stiff-arm my way out of the building. I pull my car keys out of my pocket, my thumb stroking over the one I’m about to use as I head towards my car.

Nights like this, my beloved Stingray becomes both sanctuary and self-destruction. Because I don’t want to stay, but I also don’t want to go.

And she never stops me from leaving.

*              *              *

I shut and lock my apartment door behind me and all the air in my lungs rushes out, exhaustion wrapping around me from my mind to my boots. My stomach growls, reminding me how I need to eat after a long day at work, but I was being honest when I told Zoe earlier that I don’t feel like cooking, and I can’t anyway. Everything here is either moldy or expired because I’m hardly ever home anymore.

I shuck my boots and toss down my car keys on my kitchen counter as I pass by, then head to my shower. Disgusting and dirty doesn’t begin to cover how I feel right now. I avoid my eyes in the mirror as I undress, a sickly feeling gurgling through my veins as I get in the shower and let the hot water begin to run over me.

I’m not the man I thought I was.

On one of my tours when I was deployed, there was a pilot in our unit whose wife was pregnant. She’d send pictures of her growing belly and they’d video chat over the internet, and since we all lived in such tight quarters there wasn’t much we didn’t talk about or overhear. Like lots of conversations with the young and single guys asking him if it was weird, if they even still had sex and how he could stomach it, considering she didn’t look the same as he signed up for and not to mention the “poking” factor. He just laughed it off; said the poking stuff was a myth and he’d be insane not to want her. To him, she was more beautiful pregnant than the day they married and it was only better the bigger she got. He showed off every new picture of her like the ultimate triumph, grinning proudly as he shoved them in our faces and bragged about his smoking hot wife and then hung them all over his bunk.

“One day, you’ll understand. If you’re lucky…”

I don’t understand what’s wrong with me. I look at Zoe, and I get what he was talking about. My brain is on board, and from a distance, my body is too. But somewhere there’s a disconnect, and I…I think it’s in the left side of my chest. I don’t even know when that got there.

Before, I knew she didn’t care about me and I was okay with it. It didn’t stop me from enjoying her, from letting her take from my body what she needed and taking from her in return. She was crueler then, and I was fine with it all. But the things that used to piss me off and make me quit now don’t even register, and it’s the small cuts that bleed the most.

I wonder if subconsciously, my body is trying to save me from her. Like when the mind blocks out traumatizing memories in the interest of self-preservation. Because if I feel this strongly when I look at her, I can’t imagine how intense it will be to make love to her when she’s pregnant with something—
someone
—that is uniquely us: a living, breathing combination of all the good and all the contradictions that make up who we are apart, and together. But the problem is there’s an unknown end date for that messy recipe of perfection looming in my head, and as bad as I know it will be when that day comes, it’ll only be worse after having her like this. And Scott’s voice echoing in my head, reminding me with the experience of long years of friendship that the pain will be nearly unbearable and I will undoubtedly crater, to not hesitate to call for backup…

Maybe this is for the best.

Except for the fact that I still want her, and I know she needs me. I have to be able to find a way to make peace with this, no matter the cost. My pain is nothing compared to what I feel when I hurt her.

It is my duty as a Pararescueman
to save lives and to aid the injured…placing these duties before personal desires and comforts. These things I do, that others may live.

I sigh after the creed blares in my head without warning, then finish rinsing the soap off my body, the shampoo out of my hair and turn off the water. I wrap a towel around my waist and walk tiredly to my room, desperate for a few hours of sleep. Except there’s no peace to be found there either because in my dreams Eman becomes Zoe, and the nightmare plays on repeat.

Scott says I still talk in my sleep, and I can only hope that Zoe hasn’t noticed. She made a joke about it once, but that was a long time ago and before we started waking up under shared sheets. Please, say she hasn’t heard the name…

I open my closet and my eyes automatically stay away from the box on the top shelf, the one containing my dress blues and my beret, my fatigues with patches all sewn on. There’s one on my right arm that declares my unit and blood type and underneath, the two big green footprints of the jolly green giant, the nickname/symbol PJs adopted during Vietnam. And on my left, there’s an American flag and then a patch Scott gave me. It’s the Cheshire cat with his famous grin, encircled by the words “Pararescue: we’re all mad, you know.” He has another one that’s a seductively-tilted woman’s face and the words “The louder you scream, the faster we come.” Yeah…no way I was sewing that on my camo.

I reach for a pair of boxers on a lower shelf but pause when I hear a noise in my living room that shouldn’t be there. Adrenaline and suspicion flickers and ignites in the part of me that I thought was still living in the box on my shelf, sharpening my focus to nearly painful intensity. My front door is locked and Scott doesn’t have a key, and there’s no way it’s Zoe considering everything that just happened in her office. I’m still waiting for the text that says forget about meeting her friend this weekend because she’s officially through with me and it’s all over.

I listen harder and someone is definitely going through my kitchen cabinets, and I push all thoughts out of my head except for one. My scars prickle as I turn and crouch down in front of my nightstand, then open the cabinet door under the thin drawer. It scans my fingerprint silently, the gun safe opening to reveal my 9mm 92FS Beretta and a full magazine. I grab both and shift to my bed, sliding both my hands under my pillow.

I insert the magazine into the well, the click muffled as my teeth grind with defiance. Chamber a round, then pull my gun away from my bed and flip off the safety before taking a stealthy step towards my bedroom door. Another cabinet closes hastily, then a drawer slides open and I don’t know what the hell a thief is hoping to find in my kitchen, but it probably isn’t what they’re going to get.

My eyes close for a second as I stop next to my open door, assuring no part of me can be discovered, and determined fury rattles off the reminder that I’m a crack shot and nothing feels as good as a recoil when the target deserves to taste my ammo.

I perfect my grip and concentrate on my heartbeat, my eyes opening as my index finger slides to the trigger.

After being shot six times in the back, no one is going to get the drop on me ever fucking again.

I turn and aim, my right elbow locked stiff as my sight threads down the barrel. Dark influence makes my index finger twitch eagerly as my vision trains on a back, bitter demons taunting me to return the favor.

In the same moment that is half a breath since I rounded the corner, she turns and screams and drops something that shatters on the kitchen floor. My eyes widen and I hitch the barrel toward the ceiling, flip the safety back on, then bellow a curse and rush back into my room.

My hands are shaking as I remove the magazine and set it on my nightstand, then point the barrel to the far wall—away from my kitchen—and slide back the action to un-chamber the round. My stomach rolls as I snap the bullet back into the magazine and then hastily lock everything away, shutting the cabinet door and just staring, breathing hard.

I just pointed a loaded gun, safety off, at my pregnant girlfriend.

I lurch forward as bile rushes into my throat and I keep my jaw locked shut, unsteady breaths going in and out through my nose as I stay crouched down in front of the masqueraded gun safe.

That didn’t just happen.

Please, someone, tell me that didn’t just happen.

But it did.

My weight falls and I sag against the side of my bed, my elbow propping itself on one of my bent knees and both my forearms wrapping around my head.

Make it go away.

Just make it go away.

My shoulders jolt and curl inward with a sound I don’t let exist, and when soft hands settle on my back, I jump and startle with a shouted, “Don’t!”

“It’s just me,” Zoe rushes out, her fingertips searching over my body and the edges of my towel. “Where is it? Where’s the gun?”

A single finger extends, shakily pointing to my nightstand. “I didn’t…I swear I didn’t know,” I breathe, and she wraps her arms around my chest, laying her cheek to my spine.

“I know you didn’t, I
know
,” she says, holding me tighter and I flinch when her lips touch my shoulder. “Luca, it’s me and you’re safe.”

I shake my head, my voice crackly when I barely get out, “I just—”

“It’s okay,” she whispers, smoothing her palms over my skin. She pulls my arms down and laces my fingers through hers, hugging our arms around me. “You didn’t hurt me, and no one’s going to hurt you.”

My jaw quivers and I nod, more humiliated than ever. But she doesn’t say anything, just sitting behind me as she shushes and soothes me. My head falls forward, the sour acid of almosts and could haves and endless, horrifying possibilities dissolving my muscles into a sloshy heap, but Zoe doesn’t move, the feeling of her skin against mine a promise that I need like air. And on the air is the soul of her, clean white tea and exotic ginger, familiar and different and here and there and together, all at once.

She is home in a place I’ve never been, a stranger who is my family. A hand hidden behind her back, the other offered toward me and her fist closed around the mystery. But I know with absolute certainty that in both hands, she holds one half of my heart.

I take a deep breath and she rests her lips against my hair, one long kiss with no beginning and no end.

“What are you doing here?” I ask, and she slightly turns her head and then blows out a breath.

She mumbles something I don’t catch, apart from the words “trauma” and “ruin.”

My brow furrows. “What?”

“Emergency whiskey repossession.”

I shake my head, confused and still not thinking straight enough to figure out what she’s getting at.

“You were so upset when you left tonight…I didn’t want you to…”

I chuckle humorlessly. “Too bad I don’t have any, because I could use it right about now.” My eyes squeeze shut, self-loathing just flooding my body from earlier and now this, and I can’t believe what a shitty day this has been. I can’t believe what I’ve put her through in the last two hours.

Oh my God,
I just pointed a fucking gun at her
.

I turn quickly, her eyes widening as I search her face. “Are you okay?” I nearly-yell, and her shoulders soften.

“I’m fine.”

“You can’t be fine! I just…and you’re not even shaking or anything. You should be in shock right now!”

She settles her palms on my cheeks, looking me squarely in the eyes. “Luca, I’m okay. You would never hurt me and I know that. It surprised me, that’s all. You, on the other hand,
are
in shock.”

“I could have
killed
you.”

“But you didn’t,” she says, then takes one of my hands and lays it on her chest over her heart. “Feel me, I’m just fine.
We’re
fine.”

Oh God…

She means…

I just…

But she cuts off my wave of nausea and slams me with another when her voice resurfaces.

“Luca, I know you’re upset but we really need to talk about what happened tonight.
Earlier
,” she says gently, but my eyes pinch closed and I look away, pulling my hand from her.

“Whatever insults you’re itching to dish out, however many times you’re gonna say that you don’t want me anymore, you can tell me tomorrow.”

“Luca—”

“No! I can’t do this anymore tonight, Zoe, and just because I don’t cry doesn’t mean I don’t have fucking feelings.”

She sighs and then her fingernails lightly slip through my hair by my temples, stroking all the way down to the back of my neck. She rests her cheek to the top of my shoulder, but facing away so we’re staring at opposite ends of the room.

“Just go,” I tell her, but she doesn’t make any movement to leave. Of course. Because she never does a damn thing I ask or shows any consideration towards my emotions: it’s always about her. Her wants, her needs, her rules and her priorities and I’m at the bottom of every single one of her lists.

“You have nothing to be ashamed of,” she breathes, and I blink. “It happens to everyone.”

I adjust my towel around my hips. It was already closed but I just…I really wish I was dressed right now.

“It doesn’t happen to me,” I counter resentfully. “And not with you.”

“Well,” she says, pausing, “things are different now. It’s normal to feel this way.”

I scoff. “It’s not normal. Nothing about us is normal.”

“You mean weaseling your way into the bedroom of the stupidly-hot guy you underpay but are addicted to having sex with
isn’t
normal?” she says, her voice a little lighter. “Or are you referring to the part where I allowed my life to be invaded by a couple of wild and crazy Elvis fanatics who eat all my food and break my furniture after said-employee-with-eight-inches-of-benefits knocked me up? Because if any part of that isn’t considered a traditional status quo, then life must suck for everyone else.”

I roll my eyes, then mumble, “Been seeing a Ron Jeremy wannabe on the side, huh?”

She lightly squeezes me. “Feels like eight to me,” she whispers coyly, and the smallest corner of my lips pulls up.

She’s being ridiculous, not that I’m lacking—pushing seven would be more accurate—but the caveman part of me grunts that she’s not dumb and okay, it’s working. A little.

“You know something else that’s normal?” she asks, and I groan as I cross my arms, trapping hers against my chest.

“No.”

“I actually read a lot of men—half of you, in fact—just…they don’t feel comfortable in the bedroom while their partner is pregnant.” She gives me a moment to swallow that down, then says quieter, “And I know we’re saying it’s not a factor with what we’re doing, but you still
know
it, Luca. And if you don’t feel comfortable, then okay. I don’t want you to feel pressured either.”

“It’s not…” I trail off, no idea how to tell her any of this. How Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde my emotions are when it comes to her. I clear my throat, but my voice is still deathly quiet. “I want you, Zoe, you have no idea how much. I just…”

“Got spooked?” she teases, and I swallow then nod. “Thought I couldn’t scare you…” she stage whispers, but I can’t seem to find a smile for her now, even though she couldn’t see it anyway since we’re still facing opposite directions, even as her head continues to rest on my shoulder. But one of her hands finds mine, and she strokes her fingertips over the back of it before sneaking her fingers between my own and squeezing tight. “I’m sorry I got so upset,” she says. “I’m just a little more sensitive than normal right now. And tired,” she says and sighs, “and gross and just—”

“You’re beautiful,” I interrupt. “You’re
always
beautiful.”

I feel her smile against my skin, then her head lifts. “Luca, look at me,” she says softly, and I barely turn my face towards her.

I don’t resist when she takes her hand back, then smoothes her palms over my cheeks, her fingertips caressing my temples as she searches my eyes. I swallow thickly, and then it’s like some sort of alternate universe takes over because she kisses me: her lips reassuring as she presses them against mine.

My arm snakes out and wraps around her waist, and I clutch her to me, my hands begging for forgiveness as they tremble with shame I swore I wouldn’t let surface until I was hidden by my own car and own apartment. I didn’t want her to know how absolutely mortified I am, not when it’s my fault she feels unwanted.

But she must’ve seen something, known something, because she’s here. And when she gently separates her mouth from mine, I drop my forehead to hers as she barely breathes, “It’s okay…”

I don’t respond and she stays quiet for a while, just letting me calm myself to the rhythm of her, to the peaceful lure of her lotion that is always the last thing I breathe before I’m asleep.

“There’s something I want to ask you,” she whispers. “And I should have asked a long time ago, but I didn’t and now…I need to.”

I hold my breath.

“Who’s Eman?”

My stomach tightens in shock, then I sit back and face my closet, clearing my throat. “It doesn’t matter, Zoe.”

“It does matter,” she says, her tone calm but still insistent as she shifts to lean against the bed beside me so we’re shoulder to shoulder. She hooks a finger into each of her high heels and tosses them into my closet, then stretches her legs out in front of us, crossing her ankles. “You say that name every night in your sleep.
Every single night
, Luca. And I heard you and Scott talking about him the first time he came over.”

I wince, then my eyes close as I breathe, “Her.”

“What?”

“Eman is a girl.” I feel Zoe stiffen beside me, and I grit my teeth. “It’s not what you think it is.”

“Then explain it, because you don’t want to know what I’m thinking.”

My head falls back against the bed. “This story doesn’t come with a happy ending, Zoe. And you already know that otherwise you would have asked me sooner.”

“Well, I’m asking now and I deserve to hear the truth,” she says. “I’m a big girl, I can take it.”

I don’t say anything, and Zoe blows out a frustrated breath.

“Who is she?”

And low and steady, I tell her, “She’s a ten-year-old girl who died because of me.”

Out of my peripheral vision I see Zoe’s face turn towards me, her shoulders sagging, but her voice stays hidden between her lips. I wish she would say something though because as soon as I let myself think about the name, I’m back in country, sitting around a dusty table with my brothers and waiting for a call to come in.

“You’re such a loser,” Scott says, chuckling as he leans back in his chair, and I narrow my eyes at him.

“Star Trek was the greatest show ever, and even you—”

“ThunderCats Ho!” the intel computer’s alarm sounds, and Scott and I jump up from our seats.

But before we can even run into the Tactical Operations Center, the commander’s voice suddenly comes over the comms speaker as he dispatches us with the words, “Attention on the Net. Scramble. Scramble. Scramble.”

We run for the door and bolt out onto the airfield, hauling ass to one of the two HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters and throwing on our sunglasses in deference to the scorching summer heat. The pilots already have her blades spinning by the time we’re there, slinging on our Kevlar-lined vests and climbing inside. Hook on helmet, tie into the bird and grab my M4, then take position on the open right door and check Scott is ready, then Brian, and we’re set.

I listen impatiently to the radio chatter coming through my headset as the pilots finalize their pre-flight check, relieved when the commander’s voice cuts through.

“Flight Ops. Jaguar 6-1: fly is go.”

“Go for Jaguar 6-1, flight,” the pilot replies before our trail helicopter, 6-2, repeats the same, and then we’re up; my eyes skirting over the Air Traffic Controller as he salutes us and then the ground distances itself below.

“Fly Ops we have your MIST update,” the commander radios. “One Cat Alpha. Civilian, right leg removed by IED. Tourniquet applied by Army medics on site and will be escorted by the father.”