Page 110 of Sloane

“You’re looking good, Davidson.”

I snorted. “Yeah, I’ve got my cover model shoot scheduled for next week.”

The colonel didn’t share in my amusement. “Well, you look a helluva lot better than the last time I saw you. They’d just wheeled you into the hospital in Germany.”

“Well, that’s not exactly a very high bar to beat, now is it?”

Finally, the man cracked a smile. “No, I suppose not,” he said as he set the banker’s box he’d been carrying down on the desk by the wall. “I hear you’ve been cleared to return to Camp Pendleton. Congratulations, you must be making great progress.”

I looked at the box curiously. “I don’t know if I’d call it great progress, but I’ve been putting my time in.”

“I brought your personal effects from your camp.” The commander hoisted from his shoulder an olive-green canvas duffel bag that looked familiar and set it next to the box. “Captain Sanchez packed them for you.”

My stomach fell to my feet.

My things from camp.

The only thing of value had been stacked in neat, pink piles at the bottom of my footlocker.

What I wouldn’t give to just smell them. But I only had the one she’d sent after I made it to San Antonio; the one I’d not been able to bring myself to open.

It was in a plain white envelope, not her signature pink, so I doubted she’d spritzed it with her perfume. Not that I’d be able to smell it anyway.

I wondered if the picture she’d sent before we’d met was in the box. I knew the ones we’d taken together in November would be on my phone. I’d been glad I hadn’t had it because I knew I’d just sit and stare at all my ruined hopes and plans for the future in her pretty face.

How I’d behaved in Germany was inexcusable. It’d been a chickenshit way to handle things, and I knew it.

My penance had been the regret I felt daily but, still, at the end of the day, I knew it had been the right thing to do.

I hoped she’d found someone worthy of her, and I was nothing but a distant memory.

I made the obligatory small talk with the colonel, all the while trying to avoid looking at the box and bag sitting on my desk.

Yet, after my commander left, they were all I could stare at. I just couldn’t bring myself to open either the box or the bag. Avoidance, at least when it came to her, seemed to be my mantra.

My PTA, Judy walked in and noticed what had my attention. “Do you want help unpacking?”

I shook my head. “No. There’s no sense doing that when I’ll just have to pack it up again in a few days.”

“Don’t you want to make sure everything is there?”

My chuckle held no humor. “I’m actually afraid everything will be there.”

“What do you mean?”

Finally, I looked at her. “Just… ghosts of a life lost”—I gestured to the scars on the left side of my body—“before things changed.”

“It doesn’t have to be lost, you know. Injured service members can and do go on to have healthy relationships.”

I shrugged. “Maybe someday. But not with her.”

That seemed to pique the woman’s interest. “Her? I don’t recall you ever mentioning a her before.”

“There’s nothing to tell. I thought maybe there might be a future with her, and now there’s not.”

“Wow, no offense my friend, but she sounds kind of shallow.”

“She’s not shallow. It was my decision.”

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