I wanted to, but I couldn’t hold his gaze. “You’re welcome. Just let me text Matt real quick and see where he’s at.”
Me: Dinner is ready
Matt: Almost done. Go ahead without me. I’ll get there asap.
I took a deep calming breath. This was fine. Matt frequently ran late, but he knew about Jackson. He’d be home for dinner.
“Matt’s running late. Let’s start. He should be here soon.”
He gave a short nod and helped me carry food to the table.
“Please sit,” I gestured to a seat.
The lone burning candle in the center of the table had felt like a festive gesture before, but now it felt like a cheap seduction ploy.
“This looks good,” he spoke.
“Would you like some wine?”
“Just water.”
“We have beer.”
Long pause. Thinking. “Water’s good.”
We sat down and I passed him dish after dish, marveling at the sheer amount of food he put on his plate.
For a few moments, we ate in silence.
“This is good.”
“Thank you.”
The silence hung heavy between us.
I racked my brain to make conversation. “So, what do you do in Virginia?”
“I'm in the navy.”
My friend Julie was going to have a shit fit. She loved military men. “Are you a sailor?”
“Navy SEAL.”
I had an amusing vision of a group of men walking around with baby seals on their t-shirts. Maybe they specialized in marine wildlife? Or seals? Did the navy have an animal conservation group as part of their regime? Maybe they trained seals to work with them? I looked at the huge man across from me, trying to imagine him talking to a baby seal. The image was kind of cute. “What does that entail?”
“We perform combat missions in sea, air, and land.”
I blinked at the words combat mission. Another less fun vision of a seal with a bomb strapped to its slick little body crossed my mind. They did that in World War II. They used to strap bombs to dogs and send them over to the enemy to blow up their tanks, and the dogs blew up with them. Who even came up with something so cruel? I was so upset when I saw that on the history channel that I cried.
“With seals? You do combat with seals?”
A peculiar look crossed his face. “SEAL is an acronym for sea, air, and land.”
“So you don’t work with seals?” I needed confirmation. I couldn’t like this man if he hurt seals.
He stared at me for a long moment and then shook his head. His chin dropped to his chest, and I realized that he was shaking with laughter. He looked back up at me, his whole face changed as he laughed. “I'm so sorry. I shouldn’t laugh.”
“Sorry. I don’t like the military or anything to do with fighting. No offense.”