Welcome to another episode of me playing with my imaginary friends to keep sane during quarantine.

Chapter 41

"Actually," Lester murmured, his tone uncertain. All three of our heads snapped around to stare at him, expectant. "This isn't the first time he's shown destructive and self-sabotaging behaviours."

If I could arched only one eyebrow, now would have been the perfect opportunity to use ti. "SELF-sabotage?" I spat, emphasising the 'self'. Was Lester listening to what he was saying right now? "I'm not sure I would classify this as SELF-sabotage. Sabotage, sure. Absolutely. But from what I can see he's got a pretty good thing going on since he kicked me to the curb, what with the whole expansion to the West coast thing finally making progress. If anything, he's self-elevating. I can't believe you would-"

"The expansion isn't going as well as you think it is," Tank said slowly, cutting off my rant. "He's off his game."

I shook my head. "He's off his game because he fucked up and realised how badly he fucked up, not because he's punishing himself or whatever. He's just grappling with the weight of his own despair and having trouble concentrating, that's all."

"There's a big difference between not being able to concentrate and being deliberately rude," Bobby pointed out, a frown crinkling his forehead. "Reports from the men he's working with out there aren't exactly painting a pleasant picture."

Pushing my plate away, I crossed my arms over my chest. My emotions were mixed. One the one hand, I was frustrated that the guys – the same men who had, moments ago, been tripping over themselves to share their ill-feelings toward my ex-boyfriend – were now attempting to defend his actions. I'd been trying to be mature about the whole situation and not give in to the hatred I could feel brewing in the pit of my stomach, but there was only so much positive attitude could do. Underneath my composure and rational feelings-talk was a seething rage fire burning a hole in my chest. But on the other hand, deep down inside, I knew that Ranger's behaviour in the last six months wasn't him. There had to be some underlying cause for it. I had to believe he wouldn't go out of his way to hurt me this much on purpose.

Everyone at the table was silent while I examined the emotions I was experiencing, trying to figure how I truly felt about Lester's revelation. My therapist back in England said that understanding what I was feeling was the first step to figuring out why I was feeling it, and how I could turn my negatives into positives. I was trying, but when the fury was a tangible, molten thing in my chest, it was difficult to pick it up and reshape it. I needed more information to be able to process this properly.

"Tell me about Ranger's past destruction," I requested evenly, adjusting my arms so that I was hugging myself rather than just giving myself a layer of protection from outside forces.

Lester cast a glance toward Bobby and Tank, his hands fidgeting with his dirty napkin. As they seconds passed and none of them looked away, I realised that they must have been having a silent discussion vis telepathy about how wise it was to continue this line of conversation, given my clearly emotional state. I can't say I blamed them. I had a tendency to be rather unpleasant when my rhino mode was triggered, and at the moment I was teetering dangerously close to that tipping point. I'd told myself I was being mature and moving past Ranger's actions; releasing them so that I could get on with figuring out my life. But as a fiery inferno engulfed my torso at the mere suggestion of sympathy toward the man, I realised that I'd probably just been bottling it up instead. A Molotov cocktail of resentment. Definitely not a healthy method of dealing with my issues.

Making a mental note to ring the number my therapist had given me for a colleague of his who happened to be in the area, I loosened my grip on my sides. "Guys," I sighed. "Come on."

They shared one more look before Lester inched his chair a little away from me. "I don't actually know that much about it," he explained, adding to the distance he was putting between us by leaning closer to Bobby. "Just some things I noticed growing up, or overheard my mom talking about with his mom."

"Just spit it out, Santos," Tank snapped before I had a chance to hurry him along myself. I didn't need an explanation of how incomplete his knowledge was, I needed the information he could give me. "You brought it up," he added, leaning his forearms on the table. "Now spill."

Now spill… That wasn't a Tank phrase. That was a me phrase. A phrase that I'd used on him earlier this very evening. I just hoped I hadn't inadvertently created a monster.

"Okay," Lester sighed. "Well, for as long as I can remember, Ranger's life has been like this crazy roller coaster ride. He'd be coasting along just fine for a while and then suddenly -WHUMF!" He mimed a severe decline with his hand in the air. "The track would drop off and it was all chaos and yelling and fighting." His hands were flying about manically, like fireworks, or swarming bees, accompanied for several seconds by the chaotic sound effects Lester thought it essential to provide. As his hands calmed, he picked up his story. "Then after a bit it'd calm down again. He'd get things back under control. It looked like he was on a trajectory and then – BOOM –" His hands mimed another sudden track change and the resulting drama. "Out of nowhere he'd be in a spiral of devastation again. It was like that for years and years. He was great when his life was in order, but I could never predict when he was going to go off the rails again. Mama and Tía Maria were talking about it in the kitchen one afternoon when I was supposed to be in my room doing my homework. They said he had this mentality that either everything is going right, or everything is going wrong. There was no in between. So as soon as one thing went wrong, he'd basically through away everything he'd worked for up until that point. Tía said she was hoping the therapy he was starting would help."

No one said anything for a few minutes as we processed Lester's explanation. It was certainly an eye-opening insight into Ranger's past, but it spoke nothing to the man I knew. Like Tank said, Ranger's always been in control. Cool, calm and collected. If something wasn't working out as he planned, he had a back-up plan ready to pull out of his back, left pocket. He didn't throw a fit and destroy everything he'd achieved up until that point. It didn't make sense. And it certainly didn't explain why he would do the things he'd done. Things had been going fine up until the moment he ripped the tablecloth off table and everything went clattering to the floor.

I found that the longer I sat there, the more fidgety I felt, unable to moderate my emotions and thoughts without movement, so I started stacking plates and empty containers from the table, scraping the dregs into the bin and dumping it all into the sink. I'd just squirted some detergent on top and turned on the faucet when Bobby spoke up. I almost missed it because of the noise I was making.

"When was that?" he asked, his thinking face firmly in place. "The conversation between your and Ranger's moms?"

Lester shrugged. "I dunno," he said. "I guess I must have been a sophmore? That would've put Ranger in senior year? Why?"

Tank also appeared to be thinking now. If my facial expression recognition was correct, I would say they were both doing complex math in their head. Probably, they were sorting out the timeline of Ranger's life. "I met Ranger when he was twenty-two," Tank said after a few moments, confirming my suspicions. "As far as I'm aware he hasn't had a melt-down since then. That's fourteen years without incident."

Bobby nodded his agreement on this fact. "He had six or seven years between the conversation Lester overheard and when we met him," he added. "That's a decent amount of time to change your behaviour and learn to better control your impulses. And we were all in the army for a long time. There's not a lot of room for error when your every move is controlled by a higher power."

"And if anything ever did go wrong, those powers would have sent him straight to a shrink," Lester pointed out.

"So, what you're trying to say," I said slowly, leaning against the counter next to the sink, having turned the tap off to better hear them. "Is that Ranger was a self-destructive mess when he was younger. He got better with therapy and the military and everything was fine until a few months ago when he suddenly relapsed?"

"That about sums it up," Tank confirmed.

It was tragic. Truly. I felt terrible that Ranger could have gone through something that difficult. I loved him, after all, and despite all the hurt he'd caused he'd likely always occupy a special part in my heart. A small little section down the bottom next to the tiny bean of affection I still felt for Joe. A person didn't occupy such a large part of your life for so long without leaving some kind of lasting effect. But it didn't change how I felt toward him right now. The fire he'd set with his revelation yesterday was still smouldering. The embers could still catch alight if they came in contact with flammable material. And I have to admit, I was feeling a little flammable at the moment.

"But we don't know what the trigger was," Bobby added. He made brief eye contact with Lester and Tank. "You know what that mean?"

"Yeah," Lester sighed. "I can't say I'm entirely happy about it, though."

"He may have a reason for this clusterfuck he's caused, but that doesn't mean I'm not still angry at him," Tank said.

We all murmured small sounds of agreement. I was relieved that I wasn't the only one conflicted by this new information, but when Bobby opened his mouth once more, I was confused. "Never shall I fail my comrades," he said in barely more than a whisper.

"I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy," Tank replied.

"Rangers lead the way," Lester muttered.

Bobby's statement, I knew from my and Tank's one-on-one earlier, was from the Rangers Creed. It was the one Tank accused Ranger of breaking. Logic would suggest that what Tank and Lester said in reply would be along the same lines, but without the knowledge that they all clearly shared, I had no idea what they were talking about. "And that all means….?" I prompted.

Lester leaned over back of his chair, grabbing the hem of shirt and dragging me back over to the table where he proceeded to dump me into his lap. "Beautiful," he said solemnly. "We were so jack of Ranger's toddler tantrums that we'd been discussing possibly leaving Rangeman."

I gasped, my eyes going wide as saucers as I watched Bobby and Tank incline their heads to show that Lester was telling the truth. "What?! But you all own shares in the business, right? You're partners? I don't understand. Rangeman is your life."

"You're right," Lester confirmed. "But Ranger's been insensitive and reckless, making decisions without consulting us, so we were going to sell our shares back to him and leave."

"But now we can't," Bobby added.

"Because if Ranger is going through something, we can't abandon him, even if he's being a dick about it," Tank concluded. "He's our brother in arms. If we left Rangeman while he's struggling with a personal crisis, WE'D be breaking the Ranger Creed."

"Right," I uttered, those mixed feelings rolling around in my gut again, unsettling the dinner I'd just eaten. It was ridiculous that I felt jealous that they wanted to help Ranger. He was their friend years before he was my boyfriend. I couldn't exactly expect them to just forget about him. Especially if he was going through something.

"Hey!" Bobby said, more insistently, grabbing my hand. "It's in our make-up. We can't leave people behind. We couldn't do it to you even when we were given a direct order. And as much as we'd like to right now because Ranger's been a selfish ass recently, we can't do it to him either."

"We'll still be here for you," Lester added. "We're just not quitting on Ranger's stupid ass just yet, either."

"Speaking of here for you," Tank said, pulling down the stack of papers that had been moved from the table to the top of Rex's cage to get it out of the way while we ate. "How about we look at that training you asked us over to figure out?"

I don't want to alarm anyone, but I planned out the epilogue for this story last night...