Breaking the Rules Page 6

  There was a lot of room between his current state of not having any sex at all and the unearthly bliss of being sent into sexual orbit via Eden. And the sooner he moved into that as-yet-unexplored territory between the two, the better.

  So even though Cynthia was giving him all of the classic pre-shut-down, this won’t work because you’re not stationed here signs, he pushed aside his feeling of relief and went for it, firing the biggest gun he had in his possession.

  “I’m a Navy SEAL,” he told her, and yes, her body language immediately changed from I have to go find my friends to What friends, I never had any friends.

  So he embellished, heavy on the lighthearted flirtation. “We only come to Germany to let you and the doctors check the stitches we give ourselves. And to give you pointers to use in the OR.”

  She laughed at that, and her eyes sparkled. She really was quite pretty. But not even half as pretty as Eden, of course.

  Fuck.

  “And how are your stitches?” she asked. “Wait, don’t tell me—you need me to check them for you. Privately, of course, because you’re bashful.”

  “I am.” Izzy made himself flirt back. See, he could do this. “But alas, this time I have none for you to check. I was here because I donated a little too much blood to a teammate out in the field. I needed a major resupply of my own.”

  She sat back in her seat. “Oh, my God,” she said, her flirtatiousness instantly gone, her eyes wide. “You’re the one …? I heard about you.”

  “Uh-oh, that’s never good,” he said, going for the laugh and getting it.

  “But it was in a good way,” she corrected him. “You saved your friend’s life. I was in awe when I heard what you did.”

  “In awe, like, you couldn’t believe someone could be that stupid?” he asked.

  She laughed again at his stupid, and agreed. “Stupid, but heroic. Even more so because you knew what you were doing. SEALs are a lot of things, but their stupidity usually doesn’t come from ignorance. So I’ll go with heroic. I’m glad I got to meet you.”

  “And to think,” Izzy said, “you could have met me a few weeks ago. What a shame you didn’t kick down my door to give me a sponge bath when you had your chance.”

  She laughed again. “Because Army nurses—unlike Navy SEALs—always get to choose their assignments.”

  “Then it was bad luck that kept us apart,” Izzy said, sighing melodramatically.

  “Bad luck and Major MacGregor,” Cynthia agreed as she laughed, adding, “But … good luck that we both came here tonight.”

  “Sharing a drink,” Izzy mused, holding out one hand, then putting out his other, as if weighing the options. “Being given a sponge bath …” He shook his head. “Sorry, not quite the same thing.”

  Cynthia’s eyes sparkled again as she mimicked him with her hands. “In the hospital, on duty,” she said as she held out one, then added for the other, “In a bar, with the whole night free …”

  He was in like Flynn.

  And weird that he should think that. In like Flynn was actually a reference to Errol Flynn, the movie star of the 1930s, who was so dashing and daring it was perceived that no woman would ever turn him down. Dude had been so freaking hot that that expression still lived on, halfway around the world from Hollywood, and well into the twenty-first century.

  And okay. It wasn’t as if all Izzy had to do was hold out his hand, and this woman would take it and lead him home to her place. He was going to have to work for it. But there was work and there was work, and this job wasn’t going to be difficult. Like most women, she just wanted a little effort on his part. She wanted him to make her laugh. She wanted a little substance along with the spark of attraction.

  Which he was already delivering, as well as another drink. As he caught the bartender’s eye and motioned for another beer for himself and a glass of wine for the lady, he supposed that in like Flynn had hung around so long because it rhymed. If the guy’s name had been Errol Floyd, he probably would have been forgotten.

  As Cynthia accepted a refill of her wine with a smile, as she picked up the long-stemmed glass and took a sip, Izzy knew that it was weird that he should be thinking about the origin of an expression like in like Flynn, instead of inventorying the number of condoms he had on his person and imagining this woman’s long, graceful hands and elegant lips on his body instead of that wineglass.

  None. He had exactly zero condoms on him.

  Because, truth was, he’d come to this bar tonight with no intention of actually getting any. And he may have been in like Flynn with Cynthia-the-nurse, but he absolutely couldn’t imagine going back to her apartment and then having to talk to her afterward.

  He could imagine the sex.

  That was easy to do. And if he could’ve just stood up and pulled her into some random back room and, without further ado or conversation, nailed her and then walked away, he might’ve done it.

  Maybe.

  But maybe not. Because he liked her.

  And she wasn’t here for a casual encounter, the way he was. She was looking for a boyfriend.

  “It was really nice meeting you,” Izzy told her as he paid his tab and pushed away his untouched second glass of beer and climbed down off of that bar stool. “But I’ve got to go.”

  She was completely confused, so he tried to explain. “I can’t do this,” he told her. “The timing’s wrong. I’m leaving in a few days and … you don’t want that, and … I don’t either.”

  Cynthia stopped him with a hand on his arm. “The timing’s never right during a war.”

  And great. Now he’d moved, in her eyes, from hero to superhero. He couldn’t have delivered a line more perfectly designed to convince her to break her rules if he’d tried. And sure enough, she was ready to write him a permission slip for a completely no-strings encounter—which should have given him cause to have to work to keep his happy dance completely hidden from her view.

  Instead he felt a wave of panic—and then of both shame and anger. Because he didn’t want to go home with her. In fact, the way she was touching him made him feel claustrophobic, and he shifted so that her hand fell away.

  But goddamnit, he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life pining for someone he couldn’t have.

  So when Cynthia reached out to touch him again, when she said, “Hey, have you had dinner? Because I’ve got some chicken I was going to grill, back at my place …” When she gathered up her purse and jacket and gestured for him to follow her out the door …

  Izzy didn’t say no.

  LAS VEGAS

  MONDAY, MAY 4, 2009

  The house was quiet when Ben came home from school, and he made a point to close the screen door behind him as quietly as possible, since that was one of his stepfather Greg’s pet peeves.

  Close that door like a human being, not like the wild animal that you are, boy …

  Mondays sucked more than usual because Greg wouldn’t drink on Sundays, and although he was a mean drunk, he was still plenty mean when he was sober, and his going without made him crazy, too.

  And his Sunday self-prohibition extended until Monday at 5 p.m., at which point a stiff drink or five were finally allowed, according to the Rules of Greg’s World. Greg compensated for Monday’s hellishness by sleeping away as much of the day as possible.

  Ben usually stayed away most of Monday, because waking Greg up would get him hit or spat on, which was disgusting.

  It was hard to know which was worse—Monday afternoon or Monday night, as crazy slid into a drunken mean that was wide awake into the wee hours of the morning.

  He’d only come home to pick up the clothes he’d found last night, while rummaging through a box of Sandy’s things that had been shoved into the attic. There were a whole pile of shirts from her pre-childbearing years that she’d never wear again, and Ben had tossed them into the washing machine so they wouldn’t smell musty when he gave them to the runaway who hung out at the mall.

  He moved noiselessly
down the hall to his bedroom and grabbed the bag that he’d put them in, then swung into the kitchen to scrounge for a snack or at least a small glass of OJ to keep his blood sugar level and …

  The letter was open and on the counter, addressed to Mrs. Ivette Fortune. It was from the Department of the U.S. Navy, and—holy shit—they were writing to inform her of their failed attempts to contact her via phone and e-mail regarding her son, Petty Officer First Class Daniel Gillman, who had—God, no!—recently been seriously injured.

  But the letter didn’t provide details and—fuck—it was dated April 20. There was a phone number to call for more information, along with a request for his mother to update her contact information, should they need to get in touch with her regarding Dan’s condition.

  Like, if he died.

  It was May fourth, and Dan could well already be dead, the letter containing that information already wending its way to Vegas. The room spun and Ben’s stomach heaved and he lunged for the fridge, yanking the door open. He grabbed the container of orange juice and drank straight from the bottle.

  And got slapped on the back of his head, which sent the orange juice container flying and made him smash his nose into the closed freezer door.

  “What’d I tell you about acting like a human being in my house?” said the man who’d just hit him so hard his teeth had rattled. “You drink from a glass, boy. God knows what kind of diseases a freak like you brings home!”

  Yeah, he’d woken up Greg.

  There was a smear of blood from his nose on the freezer, but that was the least of his problems as he turned and picked the letter up off the counter.

  “You clean up this mess,” his stepfather was saying, but Ben interrupted him—something he rarely did even though he’d long since given up on trying not to rock the boat.

  “Is Danny all right?” Ben demanded. “What did they say when you called?”

  “Is that letter addressed to you?” Greg tried to swat the letter out of Ben’s hand, but Ben pulled back. “I said, clean up—”

  “It’s not addressed to you, either,” Ben countered. “But whatever. I just want to know what they said when you called …” But as the words left his lips, he realized his mistake. He’d assumed that Greg had been as anxious and worried as he was. “You didn’t call.” He sidestepped Greg’s pathetic attempt to get back that letter even as he moved toward the dirty white phone that hung on the kitchen wall. He picked it up and … Of course. There was no dial tone. What a surprise.

  “Phone’s out again,” Greg said, as if that were the phone company’s fault, not his. “Now you give that to me and clean up this—”

  Ben hung up the handset with a crash as he stepped out of Greg’s reach again. “Phone’s out, because you didn’t pay the fucking bill with the money my brother sent you. Did you pay the rent? At least you paid the rent, right?”

  “Don’t you dare use that language in my house!”

  “It’s my house,” Ben shouted. “The only reason the rent gets paid is because Danny sends it every month—for me.”

  “Don’t you raise your voice to me, boy!”

  “He could be dead—right now!” Ben got even louder as he moved to the other side of the kitchen table. “And I know you don’t give a shit about what that means to my mother and me. But here’s a newsflash for you. If Danny’s dead, he can’t send home that money. Have you thought about that?”

  And in a newsflash of his own, he realized that Greg had thought about that. But he’d thought about it in terms of the insurance payout Ben’s mother would receive if Danny died. He didn’t say as much now, but his answer was all over his ugly face. Besides, he’d joked about it in the past, plenty of times. Maybe the kid’ll step on a landmine and we’ll have the money to start up that restaurant you’ve been talking about for years … Heh heh …

  “You probably spent the afternoon praying that he dies,” Ben whispered.

  “It would serve you right if he did die,” Greg spat as he hit Ben with a slap that stung his face and spun him into the wall. “It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if God punished you for your sins by—”

  Ben had had enough. He lowered his head and threw himself forward with a roar, and he hit Greg in the chest with his full weight, which wasn’t much, but was more than he’d ever done before.

  Normally, he’d just cower and take his beatings.

  But now they both went down onto the floor, right into the puddle of orange juice, with Greg kicking and scratching and slapping as Ben tried to keep that letter with its phone number out of the wet, even as he desperately tried to get away.

  “I’ll beat you, boy,” Greg was screaming, showering him with spittle as he grabbed hold of Ben’s hair and pulled. “I will beat you within an inch of your—”

  Ben elbowed him in the stomach, doing some kicking himself to get free.

  His knee must’ve collided with Greg’s balls, because his stepfather screamed in pain and then started retching, finally letting go of Ben, who scrambled to his feet. He jammed the letter into his pocket as Greg curled, rocking, into a ball. If he’d known it would be that easy to win, he would’ve fought back years ago.

  He had time to open the refrigerator and sweep his entire supply of insulin into a plastic shopping bag. He took the OJ carton, too, because he was still feeling pretty majorly out of body. He picked up the bag of clothes for the girl at the mall—there wasn’t time for him to pack anything for himself, which was a shame. And then, as Greg was starting to make more intelligible sounds, Ben went out the front door, letting the screen screech and slap behind him, in one final fuck you.

  LANDSTUHL, GERMANY

  MONDAY, 4 MAY 2009

  This was a bad idea.

  Cynthia the nurse lived in a small apartment without a roommate, which meant the collections of teddy bears and Hummel figures and look—a Hummel figure teddy bear—were all hers.

  What was she, ten? No, apparently not. There was a multitude of birthday cards artfully arranged on an end table that sat between a matching sofa and chair—both perkily, neatly floral-printed. Big Three-Oh one of the cards said in a cartoon bubble coming out of the mouth of a … wait for it … teddy bear. Yeah. The others were more Hallmarkie. Love and affection for my darling daughter on this special day kind of stuff.

  There were a dozen of them. Two from her mother, one from her father and stepmother, the rest from aunts and uncles and cousins and friends. It was pretty impressive—the size of her support team. Impressive and nice. A lot of military personnel, himself included, didn’t get even one card on their birthdays.

  The apartment itself was impeccably clean and neat, and looked like something out of a Pottery Barn catalog. Everything had a place where it belonged, and the artwork on the walls was in perfect harmony with the beflowered furniture.

  Of course, maybe she’d rented the place furnished and none of this was hers.

  But the tidiness was all Cynthia—no doubt about that. There was no clutter anywhere. Not even a small pile of mail or a book out and open, spine up, on the coffee table. No sneakers kicked off while she watched TV and … Come to think of it, there was no TV.

  She’d gotten a phone call right after unlocking the door and letting him in and he’d given her privacy by hanging here in her little living room while she bustled into the kitchen to start cooking dinner.

  Izzy now wandered over to a small collection of DVDs and CDs that sat on a shelf beneath the bears. Her music was limited to classical. She had a lot of Wagner operas, which was alarming since it was just about the only form of music that would make him bleed from the ears while going blind. But the Wagner wasn’t half as alarming as her DVDs. She had only seven—probably to watch on her laptop—and all were foreign art films, with a heavy emphasis on dramas about suicidal Scandinavians, shot in the dark of a northern winter.

  “Why don’t you … um. Do you want to take a shower?” She poked her head out of the kitchen, finally off the phone.

  “Oh
. Thanks,” Izzy said as he moved toward the kitchen, where something was smelling very, very good as it cooked. “But no, I’m good.” He stopped short. “At least I think I’m good.” He did a quick pit check, but then realized … “Unless it’s a thing, like you need me to shower …?”

  “No,” she said far too quickly, which made him know it was a thing—she definitely liked men to shower before she had sex with them.

  But that was okay. Clean was fine. It was good.

  “How about we both take one after dinner?” he said, and her relief was nearly palpable.

  The kitchen was all a maddeningly cheery yellow—and again, everything freaking matched. The only thing missing was a sign saying ZANELLA, LEAVE NOW, BEFORE YOU MAKE A TERRIBLE MISTAKE.

  “That sounds … nice,” she said.

  Nice? Was she kidding? But no, she was just nervous. That made two of them.

  “So,” he said, searching for something to say. “You collect bears.”

  She smiled. “It’s silly, I know, but my cousin’s kids started sending them to me and … They get me one wherever they go.”

  “That’s nice,” he said, and God, now he was doing it, too. But it was true. It was nice. This apartment was nice. Cynthia was nice. Her family was nice. Nice, nice, nice.

  “Have you lived here long?” he tried.

  “Four—no, five years now,” she told him as she handed him a glass of wine that she’d poured for him. She was lovely, with a body that filled the T-shirt and jeans she had on in a very satisfying way. “I was here for two years before I finally got my things out of storage. Thank God. That was hard, living out of suitcases …”

  “For me a suitcase is a luxury,” Izzy said, taking a sip. Damn, it was so sweet he nearly gagged.

  “That’s terrible,” she said. “You must get so tired of it.”

  “No, actually,” he said. “It’s the way I … like to roll.” Seriously? Had he just said like to roll?