Chapter 36

Drinking with the Major

Lee went back out to the quad and sat for several minutes on the bench he and Kara had sat on the morning he had gotten her out of the brig. He knew where he was going next.

Major Connelly's office in the History and Language Arts building was in the same spot it had been when Lee was a cadet. On the second floor, second door from the end. There was a sign taped inside the door's glass informing students of his office hours. There were none this afternoon. Lee turned to go and met Connelly coming down the hall.

"Adama," Connelly said. "This is a surprise. First Kara late last week and now you. I expected Kara. I didn't expect you." He unlocked the office door and gestured to Lee. "Come in. I'm really sorry about Zak. He was a good kid. I taught him Colonial History his first year just like I did you. He didn't ace the final like you did, but he worked hard."

"Thank you, sir."

"So what brings you here?"

"To tell you the truth, I'm not really sure. I've been wandering today. I just went by to see Colonel Burgher."

"Poor Conrad. He's really broken up over Kara leaving. You know he's got three sons and a couple of grandsons. Kara's daughter and granddaughter rolled into one for him. He's going to miss her."

"And you?" Lee asked quietly, "Are you going to miss her, too?"

Connelly looked at him for a long time, and said just as quietly. "Yes, I'm going to miss her, too. That year she was on the Triton was a long one."

"I saw you at the funeral. You and Colonel Burgher. Thank you for coming. That was nice. We appreciated it. I know Kara did, too."

Connelly nodded and put a stack of papers on his desk. "I was going to look at these for an hour or so before I headed home, but I've got a better idea. Let's go have a drink. You can talk. I'll listen. Or I can talk and you'll listen."

"Not McGee's," Lee said.

"No," Connelly said and smiled tightly. "I wasn't going to suggest McGee's."

Lee's car was closest and he drove them to a small bar and restaurant in the city that Connelly suggested. Once inside, Connelly led the way to a booth near the bar and ordered a straight whiskey. Lee ordered the same.

While they waited for their drinks to arrive, Connelly asked. "How's your mother doing?"

Lee shrugged. "As well as can be expected. Zak was her baby. Her favorite. She'd never admit it, but he was. Dad's, too."

"Kara really likes your mother. And your dad? How is he?"

"Don't know. Don't really care."

Connelly didn't seem surprised. "And you, Adama, how are you doing?"

Lee shrugged again.

"I thought you'd be back on the Atlantia by now."

"I was. I got sent home for a few days."

Connelly gave him a questioning look.

Their drinks arrived. Lee turned up the glass and drank half of the whiskey before he put it down. "My CAG thought I needed a few days off. I missed a landing, made a couple more stupid mistakes. Guess he didn't want another Adama screwing the pooch."

"Screwing the pooch. Now that's a term I haven't heard in a long time."

"It means…" Lee started.

"I know what it means. Pilot makes a fatal or near-fatal error. So, I guess that answers my question about how you're doing. I'm sure losing a brother can mess with your mind. A couple of days away will do you good."

"A week should do me better, then," Lee mused. "That's how long the CAG thought I needed."

"You shouldn't be so hard on yourself."

Lee almost laughed. "That's one of the things I'm really good at. I'd like to ask you something if you don't mind."

"You can ask. It doesn't mean I'll answer."

"Did you ever spend any time with Kara and Zak or did she ever talk about Zak's ability as a pilot?"

"Basically no to both questions. I ran into them at McGee's a couple of weeks ago, right before the accident. I stood at the table and talked to them a couple of minutes. Zak said he was on his way to the Columbia, and I warned him not to play cards with my old roommate. That was pretty much it for seeing them together. I did try to talk to Kara about Zak when she told me she was dating him. I questioned her motives. It made her angry. End of discussion."

"Her motives?"

"I reminded her she once had a thing for the older brother. I asked her if she might have some ulterior motive dating the younger. By her reaction I hit close to the truth. We were having lunch. She told me to go frak myself, got up and walked out. I didn't hear from her again until she called me to play in the ball game."

"One time at the Academy she got mad at me and didn't speak to me for almost four months. Not that I didn't deserve it. I insulted her and never apologized. I've made a lot of mistakes with Kara."

Connelly turned up his whiskey, drained it, and motioned for another. He studied Lee for a long minute. "How long have you been in love with her?"

Lee looked down for a few moments, started to deny it, and then looked directly at Connelly. "Probably about as long as you have."

Connelly rubbed the back of his neck. "I love her, yeah, but I'm not in love with her. There is a difference. A few years ago it could have gone that way, but circumstances pushed us in another direction. We went toward friends instead because that's all we could do. You're the one who had the chance with Kara. Why the hell didn't you take it?"

"Because I thought you and Kara…I thought she was sleeping with you and I couldn't handle it." It took a lot for Lee to admit that to the major, but he felt better after he had said it.

"You know about Kara and me then? About the night I met her?"

Lee shifted his gaze to one of the neon beer signs over the bar. "When that thing with Reider happened, I figured it out." He looked back at Connelly. "The only thing Kara was adamant about was keeping you out of it. I thought it was because you and she…" Lee looked away again, "….had something going on."

Now Connelly looked away. "My divorce had been final about three months. I'd been seeing a woman, now my wife, about two months." He looked back at Lee. "You know us history teachers don't live life at Mach 10 like you pilots. So when Conrad told me about a cadet who had smoked all three of his sims boom, boom, boom, and a female cadet at that, I just had to meet Kara Thrace myself."

"I know. I was there the night you met her."

"You were, weren't you? I remember that now. I remember thinking she was just showing off with me to make you jealous. I thought you were her boyfriend."

"We went to the dance together but we never… Not that I didn't think about it. Things just never seemed to work out for us."

"Look, just so you'll know. That one night was the only one I had with her. I wanted to see her again, but she wouldn't do it. My career and all that. By the time we could have…after she graduated, I was married again with a new baby."

Connelly finished his second drink. "A third or no? What the hell." He raised his hand for another. "Did you ever have a night with her, Adama?" He studied his empty glass. "Are we kindred souls, you and me? Is that the bond we share? A night with Kara Thrace?"

"What?"

"You and Kara, did you ever have a night together?"

"I don't want to…" he shook his head. It was none of Connelly's business. But he made the mistake of looking up. Maybe it was years of reading his students, but Connelly nailed his look dead on.

"Holy frak. The answer is yes, and it just happened, didn't it?"

"Major, I'm not going to talk about it."

"That's what's screwing with your head as bad as losing your brother. Sleeping with the woman he loved. That's what sent Kara running back out to the stars. I knew there was something more involved than she was telling me. I just never would have dreamed…Damn, you ignore her for how many years and then frak her right after she lost Zak. What the hell kind of…"

Lee put his glass down hard on the table and stood up. "Screw you, Connelly. If you think I'm going to sit here and listen to you talk to me like that can forget it. You think what you did to her at the Academy was right? You think there was nothing wrong with breaking one of the Academy's strictest rules? You should have been court-martialed for what you did, you son of a bitch."

Connelly looked at the ceiling for a moment before he looked back down at Lee. "You know something, Adama, if I were a different kind of man, you and I would be trading blows for that remark. And then somebody would call the cops or the MPs seeing as how I'm in uniform, and we'd both be in a hell of a lot of trouble. So just sit the frak back down before you do something stupid. Or make me."

Lee suddenly realized the absurdity of the whole situation and sat down. Wasn't he about ready to do the same thing Kara had done with Captain Reider? Strike a superior officer? The same thing he'd chewed her out for? The same lack of discipline and control. He almost laughed.

Connelly said, "You and Kara, it's none of my business. I'm just thinking about her. You're having a hard time with it, too."

"Believe me, you can't say anything that will make me feel any worse than I do right now. But I swear to you I didn't plan it. It just happened."

"There are a lot of things that we don't plan, but they happen. Look, I'm going to give you a piece of advice. You can take it or not. If you turn her on, she'll sleep with you. It doesn't necessarily mean she can or will love you. But if you're her friend, she'll stick with you through anything. You want Kara to always be in your life, Adama, then be her friend. Maybe you two will be more than that to each other someday, but be her friend now. That's my advice. For what it's worth."

Lee finally looked up and said, "You don't know what I would give if she and I could just start over as friends. Kara's lucky to have had you in her life."

"The only reason I lasted with her is because we…because she got past the attraction part and we became real friends. I never got past it, but I was smart enough not to let her know. Hell, don't get me wrong. I love my wife. She's everything a man could ask for, and she's a wonderful mother to our little girl, and a great stepmother to my sons from my first marriage. But Kara, well Kara's just special."

"Yeah, she is. Special."

Connelly had a faraway look now. "She's the one you can't have, the one you had to let go, the one you admire because she's got the guts to put herself inside a little glass and metal shell and throw herself at the stars. And she's the one you sometimes wonder after you'd had a couple of drinks just how much you'd give for one more night with her."

Lee realized he was well on his way to getting drunk. "You're a frakking poet, Major Connelly. Do you know that?" They both laughed.

"Yeah," Connelly finally answered him. Lee could tell Connelly was on his way to getting drunk as well. "And if you don't understand the meaning of my poetry tonight, then I'm sure one day you will."

TBC…