Page 70 of Christmas in Coconut Creek

I stepped off the bag and bent over, fluffing it with my hands to double check.

Sliding everything out of the way, I hoisted myself up and got a better look into the closet. Behind were two old shoe boxes kept together by layers of silver electrical tape, one unmarked, the other labeled PIKE in black Sharpie.

I chewed my lip.

Down the hallway I could hear Nat’s soft laughter, and Frankie had yet to come out of his bedroom after we arrived and told him to get his pjs on for our Hallmark special occasion.

Was I above a total invasion of privacy?Yes. Was I still curious enough about the man I was finagling with?Also yes. I’d probably just be looking at some souvenirs from overseas, or pins and medals or whatever it was they gave you in the military that didn’t really rank as home decor but you definitely shouldn’t throw in the garbage.

The box was much lighter than I expected when I pulled it down, balancing the edge against my ribs as I flipped the lid open and peeked inside.

“Cute.”

I picked up a photo of a much more youthful, much less scruffy Frankie with a buzzcut. He was stone-faced, staring into the camera in his Army uniform. He had to have been twenty pounds lighter and over a decade younger.

The same piercing brown eyes, but somehow the ones I had been introduced to were a shade darker. Like a cloud hung over them where there used to be sunshine. Beautiful, in a more devastating way.

There were dozens more photos behind it, several stages of his career, in different places with different people. I stopped on one with the same familiar faces from the picture Frankie and Mateo kept on their mantle.

Four friends, sitting in thick mud and rain together in all their gear. Frankie had one eye open as he laid back against a tree trunk, Mateo sat beside him making a ridiculous face and a “hang loose” hand gesture. The two others sat on either side of them looking wet and uncomfortable.

I flipped the photo over and saw written in pen,Swan boys, Colombia.

Mateo mentioned something about the brothers that were coming to visit for the new year. Somehow every single man added to this insane equation was ridiculously attractive and looked great in muted greens.

Maybe I wasn’t as immune to a uniform as I initially thought I was. Or maybe a certain insistent, salacious soldier was getting to me a little too much.

I continued fanning through, wondering where Frankie kept all the film rolls it must have taken to develop that many pictures. In the corners of most were faded numerical dates from the years before a camera and a phone were one and the same. I spent those same years out at recess striking out in fucking kickball while the two men in the other room were risking their lives every day halfway across the world.

My perspective shifted substantially, realizing that what Frankie did to take care of his mother and his sister was literally gambling his life. That even if anything happened to him at war, they would be taken care of by the government that sent him out to die.

And it didn’t end with the Army. He reenlisted, and then joined Delta.

I gnawed on the inside of my cheek and shuffled the photos around in the box, but in doing so a different one caught my eye.

I couldn’t know for sure, of course, but the hollow feeling in my gut as I looked down at the woman in the picture with her arms snug around Frankie’s waist told me it was the infamous ex. She had parts of him I never would, and that made me inappropriately envious. Friends don’t get jealous of their friends having ex-girlfriends. Unless there were feelings involved, and that was something I couldn’t afford to let happen.

“She would look like that,” I whispered to myself. The woman was like aSports Illustratedcover model. Long curly brown hair, thin nose, upper lip just as big as her lower. I mean, who was actually blessed with that?

She could have been Sofia Vergara’s younger, hotter sister. Same fucking boobs.

They fit each other like two pieces of a puzzle, and he looked down at her smiling into the camera like she hung the goddamn moon, too.

I knew it ended badly, but it was hard to imagine what would have separated them after seven years and all that they had gone through to keep a relationship alive deployment after deployment.

How did you give up on a love like that?

I put the photo back in the box and rooted around for more to confirm that the girl in the picture was who I thought she was. At the bottom of the box was something else though—dozens of something else’s—tri-folded on looseleaf paper.

“Phee! Need some help?” Natalia’s voice rang from the living room.

“Be right there!” I shouted back. I knew I should have stopped while I was ahead, but my stubborn, shrouded brain insisted I push my lapse in character further. I snagged a letter off the top of the bunch and opened it.

No sooner than I read the first line,Dear Vanessa,was it snatched out of my hand and dropped back in the box.

“That’s not a board game.” Frankie’s sharp voice met the shell of my ear.

I lost my balance on the bag beneath me in an instant, yelping as my feet and head threatened to switch places.

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