"Lake, don't argue with me. We're watching Lord of the Rings and that's final!"
"Hey, why do you get to order me around all of a sudden? When did that start?" His arms came up to cross over his chest and an eyebrow rose above his green eye. Despite his defiant expression, I could tell he was dying with laughter underneath.
I glared at him, "When you, Petty Officer Lake, started being unreasonable. I refuse to sleep in the same bed as a man who has never seen the cinematic embodiment of the most epic piece of literature ever written!"
"Wow, this was a really bad time to walk into the room, wasn't it."
I froze. I knew that voice. I hadn't heard it in about a year but I knew that voice like it was my own. I rolled off the bed and hopped in place next to it while exclaiming, "Airhead?!"
"Dammit, Sicka I thought we got over that in, like, junior high!"
"You hadn't noticed we didn't in the last five years?" I laughed as she crossed the room in a few steps as her annoying height allowed her and hugged me. "I've missed you, Arianna."
She smiled, "I know, me too. Yeah, I went to look for you in the room number the desk gave me but the people here said that you'd 'transferred' yourself. So, who's this?" Her lips curled into an amused smirk as she turned to face Lake.
"This is Lake. He's one of the Navy SEALS who saved me in Nigeria."
Lake was staring at her, mouth slightly open, trying to catch up. I sighed to myself, that wasn't unusual. Arianna was incredibly beautiful, especially compared to me.
My little sister by two years, Arianna was a tall and graceful 5'10" with blonde hair the color of wheat in July that fell into effortless waves. She was a social butterfly, loved by all, and yet still somehow not swayed by that popularity. She was confident, funny, and fearless. The only attributes we truly shared were our slightly rounded noses and dark grey eyes.
I, on the other hand, was a measly 5'7", undoubtedly clumsy, with brown hair the color of muddy dark chocolate. It was either determinedly straight or a tangled mess, not helped by the fact it fell well past my shoulder blades. I had few friends; all right no true friends besides her and now the guys. People either thought I was too shy or too much of a bookworm. I was hesitant, awkward, and skittish on the whole. I was still marveling how I'd survived Africa when Lake had been unconscious.
I was far too used to the attention Arianna got when people—particularly men—met her through me for the first time. I knew she couldn't help it but it still never failed to shoot a pang of disappointment through my chest every time. There was one incident in particular that threatened to knock the wind out of me just thinking about it. That hadn't been her fault, though. For some reason, I knew that with Lake the pang was going to be much more painful than normal.
I was already prepared for it, waiting for him to launch into conversation with her and for me to be forgotten, when he asked, "Jess, why the hell's your little sister taller than you?"
Arianna laughed heartily, as was her way, "Because she never wears high enough heels." She held out her hand and he shook it.
"Hey," I defended, "I can't exactly at this moment walk, let alone wear heels. Give me a break."
My comment seemed to shock Arianna into the initial purpose of her visit to me: my injuries and near death experiences. She immediately looked me over, attempting to survey my injuries with her physical therapist's eyes. Thankfully, I had on black sweatpants and a baggy Navy t-shirt Red had brought from Lake's place for me. I'd been living out of Lake's clothes the five days I'd been in Norfolk but none of us really minded except Red who had to do laundry.
I had vowed to make it known to his future wife, whomever she might be, that she wasn't getting any help whatsoever when it came to their laundry. He complained about it constantly.
For the first time I could recollect, I was glad that Lake was twice my size. I certainly hadn't been thinking that when dragging him up that hill. However, now everything hurt about me was covered and gave my sister less to worry about.
She still looked at me suspiciously, like I was purposely trying to hide injuries from her. Her voice was wary when she asked, "So, how's recovery going?"
I shrugged as I sat back down, "Good. I'm great with crutches by now. I can beat Doc down the hall and back on them." Lake chuckled at that and I smiled and added, "Whether or not he's actually trying is another story, though."
Once Lake had started complaining loudly enough about being in bed too much, the hospital had started him in physical therapy two hours a day. During that time, I was bored out of my mind. I got the feeling the corpsmen wanted me in some kind of therapy too but since I was civilian that wasn't really an option. I didn't think that technically I was a patient anymore. I was just a visitor they didn't bother to send home and gave pain meds to when needed. So, during one of my periods of boredom, Doc had come over. Between him and Red, they'd begun challenging me to races up and down the corridors. Generally, I won only because I tripped my competitor but that was beside the point. The corpsmen didn't mind so I assumed that was my physical therapy.
"That's good. I brought you a bag of your stuff," she gestured to a duffle bag she had dropped next to the door. "So, any idea when you're coming home?"
My breath caught in my throat at that one. "Home?"
Did I want to go home? It felt so normal that being here—with Lake and the team—was home. My old life, my pre-Nigeria life, felt so foreign to me. Did I want to go back to being unemployed, feeling useless, living under my mother's noxious cloud?
Finally, sensing the tension my silence had caused, I replied, "I don't know. I'm going to stay here until I'm at the very least off crutches. I'm not boarding a plane with them. It'd be nice to get my back healed up, too. Sitting for that long in airplane seats wasn't fun the last time and I was severely drugged. Besides, I have to go to Slo's funeral. And I don't have the money for a plane ticket right now, and…" I had run out of excuses.
I didn't want to come right out and say what I meant: I did not want to leave Lake. I kind of…loved him.
Doc saved me from saying anything else by entering at just that moment. Smiling as he always was, he greeted Lake and I as normal, "Hey kiddies!" Ever since our jinx incident he hadn't let us live it down. Lake glared and I sent him a look with a raised eyebrow. His grin only widened at our reaction, until he saw Arianna.
There was a heavy but not tense silence for a moment as they stared at each other. It kinda reminded me of when Lake and I met, except there were fewer firearms involved; that and they were looking at each other with a decidedly less hostile emotion. Doc's mouth had fallen slightly open and Arianna looked like she'd finally taken on the stereotypically spacey qualities of her hair color. The moment was ruined when Lake turned his snort of amusement into a severe cough.
Smirking myself, I pinched his side under the blanket, before saying, "Doc, this is my sister, Arianna. Airhead, this is Danny. He's the corpsmen in Lake's team."
Apparently recapturing the functioning of her brain, Arianna smiled and held out her hand, "Hi." Doc took it without any hesitation, crossing the space between them in a blur. As Lake and I exchanged a look, I understood why Doc and Red always had so much fun giggling about Lake and I when they thought we weren't looking.
Grinning back at me, Lake wrapped an arm around me and I lay back against his side in our normal position. Doc and Arianna were already half immersed in conversation when a sudden horrible thought struck me.
"Airhead," I began, feeling like my voice was tiptoeing across glass. I didn't want to know the answer if it was bad but I couldn't stand not knowing. My tone of voice caught everyone's attention but I continued before any of them could comment, "Airhead…is she coming? Does she know?"
My sister immediately knew who I meant and she understood my sudden regression into myself. She attempted to smile encouragingly and her halfhearted attempt gave me my answer, "I don't know. When the Navy called me I wasn't home. They left a message. She came over to bitch when I listened to it. I don't know how much of it she caught…I'm sorry, Jessicka. You know, it's getting to be October. It's a bit late for protest season."
I groaned, wanting nothing more than to curl up into Lake's side and cry. I resisted the urge. "Like that's ever stopped her before. You remember the funeral in November?"
She bit her lip, a sure sign she felt horrible about something, "I promise I stopped the message as soon as I got the gist it was about you. She was in the middle of a rant so I don't think she heard. If she was coming she probably would have beat me here, right?"
This was one of the few times that our roles weren't reversed and I was the big sister again. Taking my arm from across my face where I was using it to hide my expression, I nodded with a smile, "You're probably right. Besides, she wouldn't come all the way to Virginia for me. So, how's the hospital going?"
Relieved to change the subject, she grasped onto it and between her and Doc, all their medical jargon, and my occasional nod, the conversation continued. The look on Lake's face said I was going to have to explain exactly who "she" was, however. He looked half concerned and half ready to hurt whatever it was that had me sad. Touched as I always was when I was confronted with how much he cared for me, I sent him a reassuring smile. He knew me well enough to know that my heart wasn't truly in it but he returned a grin to me.
Doc took my sister out for supper that night with an offer to drop her off at her hotel afterward. She was only too happy to agree. Leave it to my sister to get a date with one of the sweetest guys I'd ever met in about forty-five minutes. By the time they had left Lake and I, we hadn't contributed anything to the conversation in hours. I had dozed against Lake's chest like I did every afternoon. Arianna was so wrapped up in Doc that she didn't even notice enough to tease me.
I knew the teasing would come soon enough. She would never leave me alone after I wrote off dating. She let me be after my horrible break-up because of her involvement in it but after a few months, she'd started digging into me about getting out there. The last thing I wanted to do was "get out there" ever again. It had ended so horribly the last time, I hadn't thought I would ever take the chance on another man.
And then Lake happened.
I was scared to death of how in love with him I was. I held the same fears that he did about the rocky start to our acquaintanceship. But the part of my mind that loved Lake to death without a second thought told me that our time together afterward was the important part. While we were in Nigeria, the most romantic we had gotten was when I accidentally said he was hot out loud. I had been too scared for my life to think about anything else or contemplate the tingles I got when he looked at me.
Now, I had all the time in the world to relish the tingles—especially because they never seemed to go away. Every time he hugged me and looked at me and I woke up with his arm around me, I smiled. I laughed every time we talked. I sighed every time he left for therapy.
I'd also had plenty of free time to analyze my feelings, even if I didn't want to.
When I first woke up on the carrier, I knew that I had gone to Lake for safety. I needed him to make me feel safe. Now, I felt not only safe but I felt like myself. I hadn't felt like that since my break up, or, actually ever. Never being good with relationships and feelings, I wasn't sure what that meant. The one thing I knew was that Lake was not some sort of rebound. I loved him far too much for himself for that to be the case.
I wasn't sure how to explain it in my mind except by saying that Lake had made me wake up and find myself again because of meeting him.
Somewhere amongst the hours I spent with him, I came to that realization. Acting on or admitting to it was another matter entirely. I knew that the only reason I had not run yet was because we weren't officially anything. I had the nagging feeling inside me that if Lake ever did ask for something more—something with a name—I would freeze like a cornered rabbit and bolt once I got my bearings.
That was what Africa had been in a sense. My life had scared me and I felt trapped by it and myself, so I ran. I was a runner. I did not have the guts to stand and fight for something, even with myself. I wouldn't allow myself to think about any of this but the feeling of dread deep in my stomach was there whenever Lake wasn't.
Lake, in his ever subtle way, pounced on me soon after my sister and Doc left. "So, who's this woman who won't come to Virginia for you? She sounds like a bitch."
I snorted bitterly, "You have no idea."
Sighing, I laid my head on his shoulder so that I could look up at him while we talked. I'd realized avoiding questions with him never got me anywhere, so I just got it over with now. The only thing I still held out on was what had happened to me. I wasn't going to hurt him like that.
Smiling faintly at that, he prodded, "Wanna give me an idea?"
"No," I snorted just to see the glare he gave me. It always made me smile when I knew he wasn't serious. I sighed again and began playing with my dark hair. "She's my mother."
He coughed up the drink of water he'd just taken. "What? Your mom?"
"Yes, my mom. I ran away to Africa to escape my mother of all people," I said with self-contempt. "Remember how I said I didn't get along with my parents? Well, it's a bit worse than in most cases."
"You don't say," he retorted with an air of the obvious. At my pleading glance, he dropped the teasing. "So, why do you get along like shit? Aside from her wanting you to be a boy?"
"Oh, where to begin? There could be the forced involvement in everything in high school. Her disdain for my college choice and degree. Her incessant babbling about how teachers are pathetic and stupid. Her little love project that violates everything I believe in. How she insists on trying to control my love life to the point that I refuse to have one. Oh yeah, I can't forget her complete hatred for anything and anyone related to the military." I groaned, running a hand over my eyes, trying very hard not to cry, "Remind me to never let her meet you."
"No problem. If you don't mind me asking, why does the military thing bother you? You're not in it, you know." His voice was tentative in the way of his that was incredibly sweet. It was only there because he didn't want to hurt my feelings.
"My grandpa was in the Marines. He's my favorite family member and she's already boycotted his funeral whenever it comes around. I had to lie to get out of the house and go see him growing up."
"Fuck, no wonder you're weird."
Gasping in offense, I turned around and smacked his laughing self upside the head. "Shut up, Kelly!" He just kept laughing and, as always, it turned contagious and I was soon laughing, too.
When we'd finally quieted, he looked me in the eyes and said seriously, "I promise I was just teasing. You're weird but in the best ways."
Smiling, I rolled my eyes dramatically, "Oh Kelly, I get it all from you." As he laughed, I lay down and cuddled onto his chest to sleep, as always.
