Chapter Thirty-Six
My first long distance travel by airplane was thankfully quite uneventful. The noise and turbulence were a shock to my system, but Rafe was a kind traveling companion and did his best to distract me from the assault against my senses. When the Stratoliner landed in Honolulu the local time was past seven thirty at night. My body was fatigued and nerves rattled within me as I stepped down from the plane. If it hadn't been for Rafe's steady arm to hold me I felt as if I would have fallen directly on the ground.
My brother had been the very picture of calm and confidence ever since I had agreed to come with him. He had worn his army uniform for the trip and that alone gave him the guise of bravery. The three years that separated our births had never seemed as vast as they did then. I felt almost meek when standing beside him.
When our luggage was gathered we walked out of the airport and crawled into a cab waiting for customers at the curb. The driver was an older Samoan man who greeted us each with an "Aloha" before putting the car in drive and taking us to our destination. Little was said between us during the car ride and though the silence wasn't uncomfortable it put my sole focus on how nervous I was being in Hawaii and inching closer to my past with every passing mile. How would Danny react when he saw me? How did I want him to react?
Absently my fingertips rose and brushed against the locket that hung from my neck. I had put it on earlier as an afterthought, but now I was glad that I had. For some reason having something solid and tangible in my hands that represented our past gave me the hope that I had done the right thing by coming here.
The taxi brought us to a small motor inn that Rafe said was only a mile or two from the Pearl Harbor Naval base. Stepping out into the cool island night, the scent of the sea was strong and I breathed it in deeply. Above me tall palm trees loomed, their leaves swaying in the soft breeze. In the distance, not close, but not far off either, I could even hear the soft breaking of the waves against a sandy beach. It wasn't hard at all for me to see why so many referred to Hawaii as paradise.
Rafe paid for both of our rooms at the desk and the clerk handed us each a key after the sale had completed, pointing us outside and to the left to find our rooms. I had barely found the room and deposited my suitcase on the bed when Rafe, having already done the same in his room, tapped on my door and opened it. "I'm going to go find Evelyn." He told me.
"Rafe, it's late…" I began.
"I can't wait any longer, Em." He was beaming as he spoke. "Can you blame me?"
Knowing how he felt for this girl, I couldn't and told him so with a shake of my head. "Go on then."
"Come with me. Danny won't be hard to find."
I shook my head. I had come a long way, but I wasn't quite ready to take that final step yet. "I need a good night's rest behind me before I see him." I told my brother honestly.
His face filled with sympathy. "He's going to lose his mind when he sees you."
Humored, I shook my head as I opened my suitcase on the bed. "Yeah well, that could go either way, couldn't it?"
He smirked back at me. "Well aren't you full of sunshine?"
I forced a smile, even if it was at that very moment that I felt the dam of nerves break inside of me. It was real now, so very real.
"Don't wait up." He winked before going out the door and leaving me to my luggage. He was teasing me still, but I was too wound up to sass him back. As he shut the door behind him, I gathered my dresses in a bundle and threw them into the closet. As I turned back to gather the rest of my clothing I caught site of the small calendar on the dresser.
December 6th.
Andrew.
In just a matter of a week Andrew would be married. Right now, in those last few days leading up to the big day, he was probably surrounded by hundreds of little things that needed to be done and probably so eager to be married to that pretty little thing that was his fiancée. My fists clenched at the realization and I was suddenly not only nervous, but angry. Angry at myself. I was the only one there was to blame for it all. Why had I pushed him away when he all but laid the foundation for us? Why did I insist on torturing myself by letting him marry that girl?
Suddenly, I felt the need to drink. To drown myself in alcohol and forget everything. Danny and Andrew. Both of them. I hardly ever had a drink and craved it even less, but right now I required the numbing effects of the beverage. The small motel we were in offered no sort of room service, that much was obvious, but working and living in a large military town I knew there was never a bar too far from a base. So I completely forgot the unpacking and instead primped myself up slightly and left the room, locking it securely behind me and ventured out into the night to find myself a decent watering hole.
The Hideaway Bar seemed like it was a popular enough establishment and being only a half mile from the motel it was the first I encountered and was deemed good enough by default. I weaved my way through the crowd and found myself a stool at the bar. As I waited for the bartender to take my order I took in my surroundings with a quick glance. It was loud. There were people everywhere. Some in uniform, some not, but all seemed to be having a good time.
"Hi!
A man had slid into the seat on my left and as I turned fast to face him, I found it was a handsome one out of uniform. He was tall, blonde and muscular and every part of him seemed to be chiseled from granite. "Hi…" I said back, unsure if that was the reply he was looking for.
His light blue eyes twinkled. "What's your name, Gorgeous?"
"I'm just here to get a drink." I evaded the question, knowing full well what his intentions were now.
He didn't seem at all deterred by my move, in fact he seemed more than prepared for it. "Well what are you having?" he leaned in with a smile dancing across his lips, "It's on me."
I sunk back though I couldn't deny he was amusing me. "I think you've had enough already."
"Nah! I'm just getting started." He turned and hollered towards the still busy bartender.
"Joe! Get this beautiful gal a drink on me. Actually her whole tab is on me. Tell him what you want, Gorgeous."
"Will you stop calling me that?"
"I can't, not until you tell me your name anyway. Go ahead and tell Joe what you want so we can be on with it. I got paid on Friday and this cash is burning a hole in my pocket."
Facing no other choice, I finally turned to Joe and said "Whiskey sour."
Joe, a large man wearing a floral shirt, nodded and then looked to my bar mate. "Same?"
"Why the hell not? I'm even more intrigued by this beauty now that I know she likes whiskey." He scooted his stool closer to me as Joe made the drinks. "I'm Chris."
Defeated, I sighed. "Emily."
"Why the hell were hiding a name like that from me?"
"I don't know you."
Flirtatiously he lifted his brow. "Because I'm a stranger? You know there's an easy way to fix that right?"
"Chris!" a voice called from the crowd and Chris, as I knew him now, turned from me briefly to locate the person who had said it.
"Walt!" he shouted over the noise of the crowd. A dark man, hair cropped close to his head indicating his military status appeared beside us, a pretty blonde woman draped around him. "Emily, meet Walt, Walt, Emily."
Walt couldn't have been much older than Chris, but he had an air about him that suggested superiority. I shook the hand that he offered and uncomfortably engaged in small talk over the noise of the bar. He and his date had no plans to stick around however and he was soon saying good-bye. "Oh," he turned back, "Mary here has a place in town, so the barracks is yours tonight." And then with a brief wink in my direction he was gone.
Chris brushed off his friend's final remark. "Don't listen to him, Emily. His mind has taken up permanent residence in the gutter."
"Barracks?" I asked. "You're both in the military?"
"That's right, Gorgeous."
"Army?"
Slapping a hand over his heart, he feigned insult. "Oh Gorgeous, don't even suggest it. I'm a Marine and thank God for it. Please tell me you know what a Marine is."
Almost laughing, I nodded. "I've come across a few. All seem to share a slight cockiness."
"Yes ma'am, we do." He brushed off the potential slight and lifted his own half empty glass to the room hollering "SEMPER FI!"A chorus answered him back and he winked at me. Before I could reply our drinks were set down on the bar and with a smile Chris picked mine up and handed it to me. "Gorgeous."
He was annoying, but I couldn't deny he was also slightly charming, so I took the drink with a wry grin and gratefully drank it down. He watched on and look impressed when I put the glass back down on the bar, half empty.
"You, Gorgeous, have got a story."
"Everyone has a story."
"Yeah, but I think you've got yourself a doozy. Now I've got a drink in hand and a comfortable seat under me, I want to hear it all. Beginning to end, every last detail in between."
I raised an eyebrow. "The whole thing?"
"That's what I said. You do that, I'll keep the drinks coming."
The deal was appealing and not something I would usually even consider, but at that moment and the place I was in, I didn't care. In fact I no longer cared about much of anything. "Fine." I took another drink. "The beginning…"
My eyes shot open at the break of dawn the next morning and with a great flash of light and pain I remembered the night before. Quickly I sat up in the bed, clutching the covers to my body. My head only slightly throbbed, but it was nothing compared to the rolling ball of regret in my stomach as I looked around the room I was in. It was plain, without any adornment save for a few posters near the small desk in the far corner. On the bed, rough military issued sheets chaffed against my legs and I groaned.
Chris.
That was his name wasn't it? The Marine from the bar. Lord, I could hardly remember his face now. I looked over to the other side of the bed and found no evidence of him. In fact I saw no evidence at all, not even a dent in the pillow to show that he had recently been there, but just as I was flipping down the blankets around myself to see that I was still fully dressed the door opened and flooded the room in light.
Chris' form appeared in the doorway and he quickly shut the door behind him. When he turned and saw me sitting in the bed, up and awake, he smiled. Dressed in khakis and a white tshirt, he looked like even more of a golden god than he had last night at the bar.
"I didn't think you'd be up yet." He greeted.
"What time is it?" I asked, my voice hoarse from sleep and no doubt the large consumption of alcohol the night before.
"About 7:30." He said and handed me one of the two cups of coffee that he held. "I didn't know how you liked it, but there's cream and sugar in it."
The way I was feeling then I would have taken the coffee black, but I didn't say so. Instead I took a deep draught from the paper cup and thanked him. "It's perfect."
"Good." He sat down on the end of the bed and took his own gulp. I watched him for a moment, fully conscious of how good looking he was and how frumpy I felt, my hair a mess and my dress wrinkled from sleep. On the subject of my dress I looked back up at him.
"Last night…"
He half laughed. "Don't worry about it. I probably acted like an ass about it then, but you were right."
"I was?"
"I've been turned down before and lived to tell the tale. Never over a Pro, I can tell you that, but," he took another drink from his cup, "Like I said, I'll live. And better to not regret it today right?"
I honestly had no idea what he was talking about.
"You don't remember?"
"Sorry, no."
He laughed. "Prophylactic, condom…I didn't have any and you told me to shove off. So I did."
"You did?"
"Gorgeous, if I hadn't, you wouldn't be wearing that dress right now."
I looked down at the dress again before meeting his eyes once more. "I'm so sorry."
"Why are you apologizing?" he asked with another sip of coffee.
"I've never done anything like that before…go home with someone I don't know."
"Yeah, I gathered that. You don't own me an apology for it though."
"Not all guys would have been as kind you were about it." Working at a night club for three years I knew that for a fact. Some men could be downright belligerent when it came to girls and sex, especially when alcohol was involved.
To this Chris shrugged his shoulders, almost as if he was embarrassed by the observation. "I like women, I like going to bed with them even more, but if she doesn't want to, I'll be damned if I'm going to force myself on her."
I gave him a grateful smile. "I appreciate that."
He shrugged. "I'm not very good with feelings and such, but I think you probably needed someone to listen more than anything else last night. Between the ex-husband, the guy you love marrying some other broad and your brother coming back from the dead you probably needed the whiskey too. The making out and groping after was completely for me."
He followed his words with a wry grin and despite myself, I burst out laughing.
"And" he continued, "If I didn't know that you came here to track down your ex-husband and try to make a go of things with him, I'd be asking you out again tonight in the hopes of doing it all over again."
He spoke the words with a suddenly solemn voice and it erased all humor from the room. My own smile faded and I looked down into my cup of coffee. "That's not what I'm trying to do."
"Then what are you doing?"
I shook my head towards him. "I have no idea."
"Well," he slapped his hands gently to his knees, "How about you think it over back at your motel. My Sargent will skin me alive if he finds you in here. That is if you remember where it is this morning. Last night you didn't have a clue."
Flushing in embarrassment, I nodded my head and rose. A few moments later, Chris led me out the door of his room and into the bright Hawaiian morning. His room was on the first floor of the large beige building and looked directly out onto the harbor and the lush green hills that surrounded it.
"You have a beautiful view." I observed as he locked the door behind us.
"Yeah. Far cry from flat brown, waterless view I had from nearly everywhere in Arizona." He ushered me to the left and we began to walk towards a parking lot. "That's where I'm from. Phoenix and yes, it's as hot and dry as you've heard." I smiled. "Still, I do get homesick sometimes. I've got that beauty over there to keep from getting it too bad though."
"What?" I asked, turning in the direction he had indicated.
"The USS Arizona." He pointed again and this time I caught sight of the ship not far away. "She's been docked here for about as long as I have now. Nice little reminder of home." We started walking again. The roar of planes above us could suddenly be heard in the distance, indicating the base had indeed woken.
"And how long have you been here?" I asked as I we reached the parking lot.
"Just over a year. Loving every minute of it too." He smiled his cocky smile and stopped at a black Ford, one that I vaguely recognized from the night before and opened the passenger side door for me. At that moment, the planes I had I heard before suddenly became louder. I winced at the almost deafening noise and Chris quickly looked up. I watched him mouth an obscenity against the Army, but he stopped. The color drained fast from his face and he grabbed my arm. "Get down!"
"What?" the noise of more planes completely drowned out my voice and terror spread throughout me, knowing something was wrong.
"GET DOWN!" he screamed this time and shoved me to the ground, covering his body with mine.
Not even a second later a loud explosion bore down over us and covered us both in its wake.