Bobby Meets His Match- Chapter 28
I don't own Bobby or Lester, but I do own Cathy. Please leave reviews, as I love to read them. Only a couple chapters left!
At 1:30 on a weekday afternoon the mom and pop diner was almost deserted, so Lester led Cathy to a table in the back with a direct line of sight to the door, and he sat with his back to the wall. Cathy sighed at the similarity with Bobby, always a line of sight to the door, always sitting with his back to the wall. Bobby had told her it was so he could constantly scan the restaurant for danger, see who was coming in the door, so he could react instantly to danger and not be taken by surprise.. Now she was seeing this same behavior in Bobby's best friend. She understood that it might be necessary to do that in a war zone, but did Lester really think there was a chance someone would come bursting into Emma's Kitchen with guns ablazing? Was it just habit, or so much a part of them that they couldn't turn it off?
The middle aged waitress looked like she was going to faint when she saw this huge, incredibly gorgeous man in black sitting at her table, especially when she saw the belt with guns and weapons attached to it. He smiled his killer smile at the waitress, the one that never failed to get him his every desire granted from any woman he turned it on. He winked at her as she gave them coffee and menus. Without even looking at the menu, he told the waitress " Joan" that he wanted a chesseburger and fries. Cathy's stomach roiled even at the sound of that. She wasn't hungry at all, but she knew that Lester would expect her to eat, so she ordered the only thing she hoped she could hold down, sop with lots of crackers.
She sniffed and tried to steady herself, at once both nervous and at ease with this man who was the closest thing to Bobby she could get, who had helped Bobby save her life, and had comforted her when Bobby was shot. Lester was about an inch shorter than Bobby but just as massive, with the same huge arm muscles bulging from under the sleeves of the black t shirt, and the same large hands. He had the same bulging, strong, warm chest and arms that Bobby had- except they weren't Bobby's. Lester's hair was lighter than Bobby's black hair, a dark brown, and he had greenish brown eyes to Bobby's chocolate brown. This man had taken care of her when Bobby couldn't, but she wasn't sure f Lester would be angry at her or not for hurting his best friend.
She gulped and slowly sipped her water, hoping it would calm her stomach, made worse by her crying. There was total silence for a few minutes as neither one knew what to say.
Lester studied the petite woman sitting across from him, who was the love of his best friend's life. He was prepared to be angry with Cathy for messing Bobby up so badly, except that when he saw her, his anger turned to concern. She looked like shit. Her usually gorgeous auburn hair was flat, like she hadn't bothered to style it, her eyes were red and puffy, like she hadn't been able to stop crying, and the black mascara goop had all come off and was pooled under her eyes in circles, which combined with the red puffiness of her nose, made her look like a cold raccoon. She was shaky, and obviously wasn't eating as she should, and when he had held her earlier he had felt her trembling. Whatever the fuck went down between them had affected her as much as it had Bobby, and it stirred his protective instincts. Bobby would want him to look out for her. He scanned the empty diner for the umpteenth time, really wanting to avoid the awkwardness of the conversation. Maybe this had been a bad idea. What the hell was he supposed to say? What the hell did you do to Bobby? He sighed.
Cathy's soft, voice broke the silence. " How's Bobby? I haven't heard from him."
Lester bit off the retort that popped into his head. How the fuck do you think he is? He wanted to say. But being angry at Cathy wasn't going to help fix this giant clusterfuck. "He's pretty fuc-," Lester stopped the f word from coming out of his mouth, as his eyes met the pain in hers. "He's angry and hurting pretty bad." In fact, Bobby was worse than Lester had ever seen him since, well, since he first came back from his last tour, broken and wanting to put it all behind him.
Fuck. Lester hated getting all involved in Bobby's life and talking to Bobby's girlfriend for him, airing Bobby's dirty laundry. Was he in fucking middle school again? Bobby would kill him for this. His fingers touched the fat lip Bobby had given him while taking out his frustrations on Lester in the ring. He would die for Bobby, and if that meant he'd die at Bobby's hands for interfering in his sex life, so be it. Besides, Lester couldn't fuck It up any worse, could he?
The intensity of the conversation was broken by Joan arriving and fussing over Lester's cheeseburger. " thanks, sweetie, " he flirted, showing his adorable dimples, It was almost as breathtaking as when Bobby gave her that look… her eyes started to fill again as she thought of the smoldering smile Bobby had always given her. Lester dove into his cheeseburger like a starving man, but Cathy just spooned her soup, taking a careful sip.
"What the hell happened?" Lester finally asked, knowing, but wanting to hear what mad Cathy so mad she kicked Bobby out of her life.
Cathy smiled slightly through her tears. "He got orchestra tickets to Wicked, and it was so sweet, he even wore a tie, which I know he hated. And I know that guys hate musicals, especially guys like Bobby, so the fact he would go with me to make me happy was so sweet. " Cathy knew she was rambling, but now that she had started, she couldn't seem to stop talking about Bobby, as if talking about him, to his best friend would somehow make everything ok.
" So …" Lester prompted her around a bite of French fry.
Her fingers put down the soup spoon she had been playing with, and ran idly over the crack in the old wooden table, her eyes focused anywhere but on Lester, suddenly afraid to meet his eyes again." Well, he was really protective, I mean, almost paranoid. Saying he had to know where the exits were in case we needed to evacuate. " I mean, I know Bobby always thinks about stuff like that, but he was so intense about it. Even during the show, he seemed distracted. I mean, I know he probably wasn't paying attention to the musical anyway, but it was more than that. He seemed startled at intermission. I asked him what was wrong, but he would just tell me nothing and change the subject."
She looked up briefly and saw he was looking at her almost searchingly, as if he was debating sharing information with her. "You know, since Bobby went to therapy like you wanted him to, he said almost accusingly, " he's been having flashbacks all the time now, not just at night. Maybe that's why he was so distracted."
" He wouldn't tell me. Then we had a great dinner and then we went to my place and …" her face got even redder and she looked away form Lester back at the table. Yeah, Bobby HAD boasted that he' d given her four orgasms. So she should have been a happy camper…"
Lester thought that if Cathy didn't have the red nosed raccoon look going already, the blush on her cheeks would have been cute as hell. He could see why Bobby loved her. She ducked her head and continued. " Well, then when we were lying in bed, I noticed the scar on his side, and I asked him about it. "
Oh, fuck, Lester thought. Here it came. This is where all that shit about the dreams and therapy and shit probably came up. Lester knew about where Bobby had gotten that scar, hell, he'd been with Bobby when he got it. He'd been the one to try to staunch the blood that was gushing out of it…
"what did he tell you about the scar?" Lester asked, already knowing that Bobby had told her as little as he could possibly get away with.
"well," she sniffed, tears welling up in her eyes again, " He wouldn't say anything, really, but I figured out he'd gotten it in the war. And so…" her voice broke and she tried to catch the tears that escaped down her cheeks, " I pressed him and he clammed up. And then, well, we got in a fight about him dealing with the dreams and flashbacks and him not trusting me to love him."
Lester had been in Bobby's unit and been with him on the mission where he got shot. He felt like he had to tell her something. " Did he tell you that he got that scar on a mission when we were trying to cross an ally where half our unit had gotten ambushed the day before? That he got shot when he threw himself in front of a bullet trying to protect the commanding officer.? The bullet had knicked major organs and it took him three months to recover. Cathy looked into Lester's eyes, filled with pain at the memory. " He had a ticket home, back to the states, away from that shithole forever. But as soon as Bobby was medically cleared, he insisted on coming back. He had to take care of his unit."
Lester jerked himself from his memories and saw the giant tears rolling down her cheeks, and handed her one of the extra napkins lying on the table. Fuck, he hated to see her cry. She was so sweet and Bobby loved her so much, it hurt Lester to see them so miserable. He put his large hand over hers that was lying on the table. Hers was cold, despite the soup, so he warmed it in both of his. His dark eyes roaming over her nearly uneaten soup, the shakiness of her hand in his. She was in bad shape.
He squeezed her hand gently, forcing her to meet his eyes. " How can you say Bobby doesn't trust you? I have known Bobby for years, we went in the service together, even some missions together…I have never seen him with a woman like he is with you. I mean, Well, Bobby and I , well we have never had to work very hard to get a woman. Hell, Bobby just had to look at one and smile and they would be falling all over him." He felt her hands stiffen in his and realized that was probably not a good thing to say to reassure the woman Bobby loved that she was the only one.
" Ok, um, I probably shouldn't have said that," Fuck, this was why he hated talking, he always said something stupid. He scrambled to say something that would reverse the stupid thing he had just said. " But he hasn't ever even LOOKED at another woman since the first time he met you. Every time I pointed one out he'd glance at her and say, " she's not as beautiful as Cathy." He watched a slight grin appear on her face at that. " From the moment he met you he was so pus…" Lester stopped himself mid " pussy-whipped" , he was gone on you from the beginning." Lester kept on, wanting to convince Cathy how much Bobby loved her. " Before, he never cared if he ever saw the same woman twice, but with you, he was worried that you would think he only wanted you for sex, and it was so beyond that…" He looked into her eyes, hoping the pain and hope he saw in hers would recognize the actual sincerity in his.
" You are wrong if you think Bobby doesn't trust you. He trusts you with something he has never trusted another woman with..' he squeezed her hand gently. " with his heart, and his soul. "
Cathy watched as Lester's confident veneer dissembled in front of her. " See guys like us, me, Bobby, we are soldiers. Its who and what we are, and it will always be in us. Soldiers never trust. We never make ourselves vulnerable to anyone. We never give the anyone the information, or the power or the weapons they might later use to hurt us. Never. And Bobby never has, he's never given it to the enemy, he's sure as hell never given it to women, until you. Bobby trusted you so much he gave you the one thing you could later use to hurt him… his heart and soul."
Lester wondered where all this shit he was saying was coming from. What was he Fucking Oprah all of a sudden? He had no idea what the fuck he was saying, jut that he had to make her understand that Bobby trusted Cathy like he never had any other woman.
Cathy was sobbing now and Lester had no idea if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but he couldn't stand it. He moved to sit next to her, and put his arms around her, holding her to his chest. " Then, why won't he trust me enough to go to therapy? She gasped out around her sobs.
Fuck. There it was, the real issue. The Fucking therapist. Why did women think you could just talk about your problems and they would all go away, like a cut under a Band-Aid. The world didn't work that way. Sometimes, bringing them out in the open made them worse. Some wounds didn't heal, and never would, and the only way to survive them was to shove them away somewhere so deep that the pain wouldn't affect you.
He held Cathy tighter as she shivered in his arms, letting out a week of pain and soaking his shirt. He didn't know that the fuck to say. That one therapy session had made the nightmares real for Bobby. Didn't she understand that if what Bobby, if what they all, were burying deep rose to the surface it would overwhelm them? Didn't she understand the reason that the reason so many missions were considered classified for years after they were irrelevant was not because of giving away military secrets, but because it was a handy excuse to never have to talk about them again?
He pulled back a bit so he could look at her. She sniffed, her tears seemingly temporarily under control. " Look, I know you mean well, and you love Bobby, and you think him talking to you about it will make everything all better but,…"
" I don't expect him to talk to me about what happened over there, but I want him to talk to someone, a therapist.."
" he did that, honey, and it only made it worse. It made the dreams become reality. He's been having flashbacks and probably had one at the theater. He's afraid that if some of the terrible thing thats he did, " he met her eyes, " that WE did, over there came out in the open, they would turn us into the people we were then. And we were not very nice people then. He doesn't want you to think of him that way. I mean, some of the shit we saw, we DID over there…"
Cathy stopped crying and met his eyes, hers filled with tenderness now. She stroked his arm that was around her. " I told him that is bullshit and why he has to trust me. I don't know what he did over there, and I probably don' t want to. He says he did some terrible things. But that doesn't matter to me. Whatever he did, " she stopped and looked into his eyes, knowing this man had been at Bobby's side during some of the worst of it " Whatever you did, no matter how terrible, you did because its what you had to do to survive and to protect the people you were assigned to protect. I will love him even if he turns into that man again, because he is a good man." She started to cry again.
" I love Bobby and I want to be with him forever, but I want him to love himself as much as he loves me. And I want him to trust me enough to know that I will love him no matter what …"
Her voice broke and her stomach suddenly lurched, and she was afraid she would spew right here at the table. She pulled out of Lester's arms, and he seemed surprised, but let her go. She got up and ran towards the ladies room.
Fifteen minutes later, she was still crouching in front of the ladies room toilet, trying to have the energy not to fall onto the germy ladies room floor. This constant vomiting made her weak and she cursed not getting her flu shot. She grabbed a piece of toilet paper to wipe her face when the ladies room door creaked open. "Honey, that gorgeous man out there is worried about you. He gave me $20 to come in and check on you."
She opened the stall door just in time to see Cathy flush the contents of her stomach down the toilet and rise weekly.
" Oh , honey, it'll be ok. I had that constant nausea with my first one too. It'll pass soon enough." Joan offered helpfully. " You must be so happy with that beautiful man out there."
Cathy didn't hear a word she was saying, her mind was caught with the words, " my first one.." First… oh, shit, Cathy thought. First one… Cathy thought about all the times she and Bobby had been too wild with passion to stop for a condom. Her mind was spinning, she was pregnant…
Suddenly the spinning of her mind was joined by the spinning of the room as the shock caught up with the emotion and the lack of food. She felt her vision start to recede as a woman's voice yelled and then she heard Lester yell, and then the vision faded to black.