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BREAK MY FALL CHAPTER 10
Josh
I can’t go to class. I feel sick to my stomach. It’s twisting and knotted and wrenching.
I’d been there. For a moment, I’d been in that space where I could flirt with a beautiful woman and pretend that there was nothing more to me than a few tattoos and a tendency toward moodiness.
And then it ended. Just like that, it was over and I couldn’t find my way back to the space we’d been in where we’d just been two normal people.
I’m at The Pint. I’m arguably trying to think about my homework, but the idea of trying to dissect the violence from a surgical distance—makes me physically ill.
“You look like hell.”
Eli drops a stack of papers on the bar. “Pot meet kettle.”
If I look like I had one too many last night—which I did—Eli looks like he hasn’t slept in a week. Which he might not have.
“It’s been a rough week.” The weight of those words hits me hard.
“What’s wrong?”
I pick the easiest problem. One that a bartender is probably used to hearing from fellow vets. “I can’t sleep.”
It sounds like such a simple thing. Such an elegant, simple thing, but sleep is the most important thing. More important than love. More important than sex.
He leans on the bar. “When did you sleep last?”
“About three hours last night. A couple the night before.”
“Have you talked to your doc?”
I make a rude noise. “I’m over my allocation of visits, according to the VA.”
“No sleep meds?”
I shrug and lean back. “They don’t work anymore. One of the guys at the VA told me when they stop working, you’re all kinds of fucked up.” I look down at my phone. The screen is black and silent. “I had a sergeant major once who ate Ambien like Tic Tacs.”
“Has anything worked since you came home?”
Shame flashes over my skin. He’s been there for a lot of it. But he’d never guess why I really fought. I could tell him. Let the words slip.
Instead, I back away. Finding the safest answer. “I guess I’m used to getting a couple of hours of sleep now.” There is resignation in the pit of my belly, coupled with relief. Maybe I’ve been hiding things too long. Maybe…
I shake my head, unwilling to resurrect the secrets I’ve been trying to ignore since I came home. And I’m trying, really fucking trying, to avoid the seductive lure of the bottle.
It’s hard not being a neurotic train wreck these days. I mean, it’s not like I’ve got a hell of a lot of reassurances that I’m able to walk in this world and pretend I’m a normal fucking human being.
What can I tell him about Abby? How do I admit that I’ve found a girl I’m over the fucking moon about, but can’t do anything about it?
“I met a girl.”
“And this is complicated because…?”
“It’s complicated.”
Eli lifts one brow and folds his arms over his chest. I swear to God, I can’t see him as an officer. Maybe a first sergeant. But not as my commander. “It’s not complicated. Boy meets girl. Boy fucks girl. If boy is good in the sack, girl decides she wants to see boy again. If not, she doesn’t call. It’s really as simple as that.”
Heat crawls up my neck at his words.
Eli frowns. “You’re not a virgin, are you? Is that what the problem is? You don’t know how to use your dick?”
“That’s not exactly what the problem is.”
He leans back against the bar. “Now I’m confused.”
I can’t say it. I trust him—it’s not that I worry he’ll tell that dickbag Caleb or anyone else for that matter.
It’s that the words are stuck in my throat. That they represent a truth about my life that I’m in denial about. “I can’t, ah…” I can’t say it.
His mouth falls open after a moment. “Holy shit, you can’t…you haven’t…” He hesitates. “How long?”
“More than a year.”
“You try Viagra or anything like it?”
“No, I’ve been suffering in silence when a little blue pill will fix everything. Of course I fucking tried it.” I need a goddamned drink.
“Docs?”
“Have no explanation for it other than it’s anxiety.”
“Then maybe you need to relax a little bit.”
I press my lips together. This conversation isn’t really going how I planned it. Not that I planned it. How the hell did my psychoses end up as the topic of conversation?
“You tell her?”
“Yeah, sure. Hi, my name is Josh and I think you’re really fucking hot, but hey, my dick doesn’t work so you know, we can maybe cuddle and I’ll draw you a picture of a kitten or something.” I narrow my eyes when he laughs. “It’s not fucking funny.”
“It is when you put it that way.”
“Thanks.”
He slides a beer across the bar. At least he’s a fucking mind reader. “You like this girl. Just be honest with her.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Yeah, actually it is. Ninety-nine percent of all relationship problems are caused by lack of communication.” He pauses, his expression sobering. “Look, I know I’m jerking your chain. But maybe figuring out how to talk to this chick about this might not be a bad idea. Take some of the performance anxiety out of the equation.” He drags one hand over his head. “I’m assuming this hasn’t been brought up, either? With docs? About the war or anything?”
“Nah. I gave up after the first time when they gave me the Viagra. Just you guys here. That’s all I need.” I look away from my phone, toward the door of the bar, hoping that Abby would by some miracle walk through the door and chase away the uncertainty that’s making me crazy. “Why did you start this place up here? I mean, it’s a college town. There aren’t that many of us around here.”
He dumps ice into an orange glass pitcher. Because plastic wouldn’t be eclectic enough. Not for this town. “That’s exactly why. There are plenty of places for guys like us to hang our hats down at Bragg or back at Hood. But here? There are more of us here than people realize. And we need each other. We always will.” He looks toward the door. “No one else gets it when you talk about not being able to feel close to the person you love. Or why your temper just snaps for no fucking reason.” He hesitates. “Or understands when your dick doesn’t work, that it’s not actually as simple as a little Viagra mixed with porn to fix what ails you.” He looks back at me. “And I didn’t want to be around all the shitbag wannabes running their mouths down at Bragg about what they did. I wanted to be somewhere where what I did matters.”
He sounds like my old platoon sergeant. “Man, you sure you weren’t an NCO in another life?”
Eli shakes his head. “Nah. That was my dad.” He places two shot glasses on the counter. “Why are you all freaked out about this girl?”
Pale golden liquid splashes on the bar as he fills the glasses.
“She’s…special.”
“Clearly. Otherwise you wouldn’t be sitting here moping because you can’t get it up and you’re letting it ruin your relationship before it even gets started.” He pours a shot for both of us. At this rate, I’ll be asleep in an hour. Which is good. Because when I pass out, I don’t have any dreams that twist into nightmares.
You don’t really appreciate sleep until you don’t have a choice to have it on a regular basis.
“I’m a little bit fucked up,” I admit after I choke down the second shot.
“Aren’t we all?”
I shake my head. “Not like that.” I can’t say the words. I can’t put the psychological bullshit into words.
The docs said it was temporary. That it wouldn’t last.
But it’s been a year.
A fucking year since I felt anything but a shadow of my former self.
I hold out the shot glass and Eli refills it. Because that’s the kind of friend Eli has become. It’s a slow burn this time, sliding through my veins with liquid heat.
“I’m not going to judge. We all have to confront our shit when we’re ready,” he says.
I look up at him again. “What if we’re never ready?”
“Then do what you can. And hope that you can lighten the load enough that the stuff you can’t offload doesn’t get too heavy.”
“Have you?”
“Have I what?” he asks, pouring a fourth shot for each of us. Man but he can fucking drink. I’m going to start slurring soon.
“Unpacked everything.”
He shakes his head slowly. “Not even close.”
I look down into the empty shot glass. There’s a tiny amount of liquid gold at the bottom and it makes me think of Abby’s dark golden eyes.
I wish she was here. Close enough to feel her heart beating beneath my palm, her hair soft against my cheek. I want to wake up with her in my arms and hold her as I fall asleep.
And I can’t. I’ll never be able to love her right.
And she deserves better than that.
Abby
Class has been cancelled for the last two days—oddly enough, due to unknown reasons. The running theory is that Quinn ate some bad cilantro at one of the local chain restaurants. Cue smugness that he should have been eating locally, from several of my classmates.
Either way, it bought me time to figure out what to do with the twisted mess inside me where Josh is concerned.
Because make no mistake—there is a mess.
I close my eyes, regret bolting through me that I ran him off.
“You look like hell.”
I open my eyes to see Graham standing in the doorway of the break room. He’s normally perky and upbeat on the worst of days but right now, he’s got a look around him that I’ve come to know all too well. “And you look like you just hooked up.”
He grins wickedly. “Maybe I’ve met a vegan body builder.”
“And Mr. Wonderful rocked your world?”
“Very much so.” And Graham does something a little unexpected. He blushes—and Graham is about the most confident, non-blushing person I know.
“Oh, this is getting a little serious, isn’t it?” I ask. It’s easy to be happy for Graham. He’s got more reasons than most to be jaded and cynical, but he’s not. And I think that’s one of the things I love about him.
He helps me feel like I belong here and has from the very start, when I was ashamed to have to be working my way through this university, where the poor kids drive Mercedes and the really rich ones have drivers.
I pull myself back from my mental meanderings to find him watching me. “There’s something you’re not telling me,” he says. “Does it involve Mr. Tall, Dark and Psychotic?”
I duck my head, not sure how to answer. “In a roundabout way, yeah.”
He moves across the room like a ghost and is suddenly sitting across from me. “Do tell.”
“He’s just… There’s something about him.” I twist my hair absently, redoing a few curls that have gotten away from me lately. “The other night when he was at the Baywater? He wanted to walk me home.”
“And you said no, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, guy totally shows up at work out of the blue and asks to walk me home and I’m going to jump all over it. That’s how horror movies start.”
“That’s also how pornos start,” he says. “And lord knows this dry spell of yours has gone on long enough.”
“I’ve seen that movie,” I say quietly.
“Not the one with this guy as the star.” He slides into the chair next to me. “Look, I don’t get the creepy stalker vibe from him. You should give it a shot. Even if it’s just for coffee.”
“Is coffee a euphemism for sex?”
“Well, you know, oral is known as flicking the bean.”
I laugh because I can’t help myself. “Really? How do you know these things?”
“I used to steal my mom’s Playgirl magazines.”
“I really didn’t need that visual.”
“You’re welcome.” He drums his fingers on the table in front of him.
I hesitate for a moment, not wanting to risk asking Graham a question I may not really want to know the answer to. “You know he used to be a soldier, right?”
“Yeah. He told me that day at the bar. I guess that explains why he reminds me of Noah,” Graham says softly. Noah is a former soldier and is seriously involved with our friend Beth. And he’s got a metric ton of issues from the war.
And just like that, I am no longer confident about what I have considered getting myself into with Josh. “I know.”
Graham reaches for my hand and squeezes it. “That means that whatever issues he’s got, underneath it all, he’s a good guy.”
I press my lips together. I don’t want to be there to pick up the pieces. I’ve done that before, and it sucks because even when the person you love is standing there, cut and bleeding, a part of you hates them for putting themselves in that situation to begin with.
I know what I’ve felt every single time I am around Josh. I know how I felt when his mouth touched mine.
I know what I’d be giving up if I walk away from this thing that’s starting between me and Josh. It’s something I’ve wanted my entire life.
But the part of me that whispers to run…I can’t. I have to stop letting that part of me rule my life. I won’t live afraid.
Not even now, when I’m pretty well convinced that I am going to end up just like my mother—hurt and broken and lying on the bedroom floor, crying her eyes out, then crawling back to the bastard that ripped her soul out.
I suddenly do not want to be alone. I very much want to take a chance with Josh.
I want to lay my head on Josh’s shoulder. Feel his strong body curled around mine. And I’m afraid of how strongly I feel the pull toward him. Despite the mystery. Despite the darkness. That maybe, just maybe, hope would be enough to pull him through whatever it is that he’s facing.
And that maybe, he wants someone to face it with him.
I’m tired of being alone. After Robert, after my dad. After my mom’s boyfriend made it all too clear that I was the reason their relationship went to hell.
Too many things are circling in my mind today as I finish my shift at work and head home.
Too many resurrected specters from my past destroying my present.
I have a choice.
I can be safe.
Or I can choose to fall.
**ONE CLICK BREAK MY FALL**
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