Page 7 of Come in with the Rain
Yeah. I definitely need to find a way to sort through all the shit I brought home from Afghanistan so I don’t end up in the fetal position on the floor because Shawn ran a power drill too close to me.
Ford nods toward the ring in the middle of the gym, and I smirk over at him. “You sure about that?”
He lifts one menacing eyebrow When we were overseas, he caught a piece of shrapnel with his left eye. It’s now a milky white, a scar stretching from above his eyebrow all the way down to his pronounced cheekbone. He’d already looked like a badass before, but the scar makes him look like he could gouge your eyes out with a spoon at the slightest provocation. Luckily, no one knows that inside he’s made of marshmallow fluff.
We climb into the ring, and Ford immediately puts his fists up. He already has his training gloves on. He came out here looking for a fight. He throws the first punch, and he’s not pulling it. I duck out of the way and land a jab to his solar plexus before straightening.
He grunts and shuffles back to put space between us. “Tell me what’s going on.” On the last gruff word, he swings at me, but when I go to dodge, he throws a left hook, catching me in the ear. For a second, the world is a ringing bell.
When I’ve managed to shake it off, Ford is still bouncing on his toes, waiting for me to make a move. “We’ve been best friends for almost a decade. I’m not interested in your silent caveman bullshit.”
I go for his jaw. He dodges and shoulders me back until I bounce on the ropes.
“It’s not caveman bullshit,” I spit out. Ford cried when his last girlfriend dumped him, with his head on my shoulder in the middle of a bar, moments before singing a teary karaoke version of “I Will Survive.” That’s his style, not mine, and we both know it. “It’s just not important.”
Ford drops his arms and points at me. “There it is. It’s not that there’s nothing. You just don’t think it’s important enough to share. I know differently.”
I drop my fists, too. “How?”
“You have that same, far off look in your eyes that you got in that tent in Afghanistan when you got your last phone call from Suzie.”
Suzie, my high school sweetheart and fiancé. At least she was when I got deployed. She called me when I was eight months in to tell me she wasn’t cut out to be a military wife after all and that she’d met someone else. Six months later, we were sent home. Only, I didn’t have a home to go back to because both my parents died while I was overseas, and all that was left was Ford’s couch until all the paperwork on my parents’ house was done.
I feel it now again, the way I feel every time someone mentions Suzie or my parents, the way I lost everything and came back to nothing. It was like stepping into a time machine and blasting forward a hundred years, just enough time for everyone you know and love to be gone.
Ford paces back until the length of the ring is between us and wraps his hands around the ropes behind him. “I don’t need that zombie back, friend. He was no fun.”
I put my fists back up, widen my stance, invite him into my space, and he comes because he knows I’m not going to tell him the truth while we’re both leaning on the sides. I need us to be moving, not gazing into each other’s eyes. Ford crouches low, preparing for me to throw the first punch, so I land a kick instead, getting him in the chest and knocking him off balance, but he bounces back, kicking my leg out from under me, so that I’m on my back, staring up at the ceiling. He stands over me, blocking out the light with his massive frame.
I want to bite back the truth. I don’t want to let it out past my teeth. “I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about someone I shouldn’t be thinking about.”
He stares down at me, expressionless, and then reaches down a hand to help me to my feet. He shakes his head. “Adam, only you would be so goddamned messed up in your head overthoughts. Is she married?”
“She might as well be.”
“But she isn’t.”
I put both hands on my hips, bending over a little, feeling all that time on the bag catching up to me. She might not be married, but she’s withMickey Kline. Not to mention… “She saw me have an episode.”
Ford knows what that’s like. He’s been through it as much as I have, those horrific moments when downtown Baltimore becomes a mirror image of that war zone, every car honk or door slam like a machine gun, every overloud voice the pop of a grenade.
Ford sighs. “What did she do?”
Her green eyes looked at me. Her small hands clutched at my shirt. Her feminine mouth stood up for me to my boss. But then she left, and for all I know, she went to Mickey and told him that she didn’t want to be left alone with me, that I was a safety hazard.
“Hard to say.”
I know that’s not an answer he was expecting, but he doesn’t question it. He just nods and comes over to pat me on the shoulder. “Guess you’ll just have to get over yourself then, mate. If she didn’t run screaming, then you’re probably not the horror show you’ve made yourself believe you are.”
CHAPTER10
ADAM
The next day, I don’t see Stella Hart at all. I can only assume she isn’t home, unless she stayed in bed all day and didn’t feel the need to come out for food. As Shawn and I work on the bathroom, the knowledge that she could be gone because of me and my episode prickles at the back of my neck. What if I scared her away?
It isn’t until after work, when I’m in line at the corner market by my house, that I realize I left my wallet at Mickey’s place. I get to the register and reach for it, but an image immediately flashes through my mind: taking it out to give Shawn money to get us some lunch and then getting distracted by a leak under the sink before I put it back. I left it there on the edge of the counter.
If Kline’s place was across town, I would just leave it until tomorrow. But I live close to Mickey and Stella, on the literal other side of the tracks, in Pigtown, less than ten minutes away. I never really noticed before, but you can see Kline’s building from the front windows of my house. Off in the distance with its face pointing out toward the river is the high rise, all gleaming windows in the sun, Mickey’s condo right at the top.
