Page 30 of Hero Hair

Chapter Ten

Macs

The elevator doors close and I take a huge deep breath.Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.Walking away from her was the hardest thing I’ve done in a while. My dick is steel hard and dripping in anticipation. I don’t think that fucker has been this drooly in his entire life. I couldn’t think straight with her in front of me. I know it’s because I need to fuck. It had nothing to do with her personally. I’m sure of it.

I’m sure of it.

Her neighbor was hot. I could easily get in her pants. What if Teala heard? Why do I care if Teala heard? I rush out of her small lobby and make a right hand turn to exit into the parking garage. I’m still catching my breath when I slam my car door and start the engine. It’s like I just did the obstacle course. I feel crazy. Out of control. My phone is still glowing in the cup holder, the messages pouring out of it like my favorite song. I turn up my music to drown out everything else. My head is too full right now. My cock is too full right now. It should be considered a dangerous weapon.

I told her I wouldn’t sleep with other women. I thought it was a lie when I said it, but now I’m not so sure. It’s as if a part of me, the good part of me, spoke and now I have to obey him because my pride won’t let me lie. I’m good at my core. It’s everything else that’s fucked up. I need sex. It’s akin to denying me oxygen. Surely she wouldn’t fault me if I picked up my phone and hooked up with one woman tonight. She knows what she did to me. What did John call Jessica? Sexual Napalm? Yes, that. Teala is that to me. It is partly because I can’t have her whole body up front, but also partly because something else.

I like her.

I like her personality. She’s funny. I find myself enjoying her company the most when we’re just talking. I liked telling her things about myself. I like kissing her. I like the way she smells. I like the way her body presses against me. I lift the neck of my shirt and take in a breath. It smells like her. It’s sweet. It’s sex. It’s forbidden. \ I slam my steering wheel with the palm of my hand with a groan. “Fuck!”

My voice is loud and angry even though it’s not anger I feel. It’s something I don’t recognize. My phone chimes and I’m so irritated that I look at it. As I suspect, they are messages from my app. Women who could fix me right now if I let them. I scroll through the messages and one pops up while I’m scrolling. It’s a text message from Teala—a photo.

I click it open. It’s the sloth photo in her bathroom, no message attached. I laugh. How stupid and asinine. I take a deep breath. I don’t reply, but I’m not so frustrated anymore and the sloth made my hard-on recede a touch. It’s enough. I put my car into gear and drive home.

I think about Teala all the way home, our kisses on replay in my mind. I’m dissecting every move and every word spoken between us. Does it help decipher what is happening between us? Not one bit. I’m not certain there’s anything there but pent-up lust and the promise of mind-blowing sex. Also, I’m not sure what compels me, but when I pull into my drive, I ignore all the notifications from my matches and head into my phone settings to change my background to that stupid fucking sloth.

I can’t look at it without smiling. She’s right.

****

Repacking a parachute after it safely guides you to land from twelve thousand feet is the bane of my existence. It doesn’t matter how good you are at repacking, it still takes fucking forever. You have to do it right, perfectly, or you’ll die on your next jump. Perhaps that sounds a tad melodramatic, but it is truthful all the same. Tahoe is in the space next to me, rolling and packing with extreme precision. A lot of times we have people do this for us, but not today. Everyone is busy doing other shit.

The drop zone is a large open field with a few ratty structures and an airfield for takeoff and landing. Airplanes buzz overhead and parachutes litter the sky above the drop zone. My team goes up in waves. Today we’re doing HALO jumps, high altitude, low opening. It’s just an average day at the office. I have my phone silenced so it doesn’t interrupt me at inopportune times. After I finish packing my chute, I take out my phone to check the time and see I missed a call from my mom. She left a voicemail. She’s in the generation of answering machines, so she always leaves a godforsaken message even though my voicemail greeting says, “Are you sure you can’t text me?”

My stomach grumbles, reminding me I haven’t had lunch. I walk to the trailer in the corner to find my cooler of food and listen to my mother’s voice as I go.

“Sweetie, are you okay? The news is saying awful things. Have you watched it? I know you’re busy, but you really should turn on the television every once in a while. That’s silly, though. I’m sure you know what’s going on. What’s that?” she asks someone in the room. My father. “Your father wants you to call him tonight. He has a theory.”

Raising my brows, I let out a long, annoyed breath. I love talking to my parents mostly, but my dad has some real theories about the state of our world. Let’s just put them into the conspiracy category for lack of a better word.

I sit down at a tattered table in the corner and nod at a teammate named Mason. He grins at me and tosses an obscene gesture my way. I’d send one back if I wasn’t listening to my mother prattle on about the terror attacks happening.

“Okay, Gem,” she says, because I’m the crown jewel. “I’ll let you get back to work now. Call us later. We miss you. Are you coming home for a visit soon? We’d love to see you. Please be safe,” she says.

My father’s beard scruff rubs against the phone and then his voice says, “I love you, Son. Kick some ass. Come home soon, though, okay?”

It takes a lot to make me feel guilt. They just had a full-on one-sided conversation and guilt is all I feel. I’ll have to go home soon to visit them. Especially before I deploy. I’m not so naïve as to assume it won’t be the last time. My job is one of the most dangerous in the world. Imminent danger is evident in every facet of my life. Take today, for example. I’m jumping out of airplanes over and over. The odds will stack against me one of these days.

I compare it to cats. How many lives do they have? Nine? How many life sucking hobbies and adventures can one person practice before they catch up to their given amount of allotted lives? You can never anticipate how you’ll go down. Personally, I hope I go down in a blaze of fire and glory, doing something to help my country. Most people want to fall asleep peacefully and never wake up. Not me. I want to know I’m alive when I go. I want to feel every nerve ending as they click off for the final time. I want to feel it all.

My morbid thoughts are broken when Mason throws a wadded up napkin. “Where are you at right now?” he asks.

My sub sandwich is half gone. My friends know not to fuck with me when I’m eating. It’s a sacred time of day. I love food.

“Fuck off, Mason. I’m trying to eat a peaceful lunch.”

“Chute packing got your panties in a bunch? You Pre-madonna,” he says.

He’s wearing the smirk that lets me know he’s trying to bait me. It’s no secret that I’m different than my friends. Where they could give two shits about their clothing, hair or their appearance, I’m in the opposite camp.

I once told a group of them that I pay forty dollars for my haircut every three and half weeks. Combine that with my collection of designer T-shirts and it was a recipe for a slew of nicknames. If I have to wear T-shirts, why shouldn’t they feel soft and nice against my skin? Most men don’t care about stuff like that. I get it. It doesn’t change me, though. My money is copious because I don’t have a family. All of my bonuses are saved for the most part or are poured like water, into my house.

“I like nice things,” I say, shrugging and chucking the napkin back at his head. It’s a direct hit. “Just because you’re fine wearing batman boxer shorts doesn’t mean that you should. Standards, fucker. Get some.” I’m joking, but I see the competitive glint in his eye. We’re all type A personalities. It’s a constant battle to best each other. At work and at home. If you can drink five beers and act rationally, I can drink six. Target practice is a pissing match. How hot our chicks are, too. Though that’s mostly an unspoken rule if we’re talking about wives.

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