Page 6 of How You See Me
Outside my apartment, the base sounds deserted. Like the whole damn place is holding its breath for me. Usually, even at this late hour, there’s something—a Humvee rolling in from a training op, someone yelling through a barrack window, boots on the gravel. Even the airfield usually groans with distant engines, one or two birds coming in late.
Tonight, there’s nothing. At least nothing my ears and brain can process. Mom’s text hit hours ago,sneaking in without warning like tear gas—simple yet devastating—and turned the world to static.
Mom:Please call me when you can.
That’s all it said. Casual. Simple. But I know better. She’s not texting to remind her only son to check in. She needs to relay what the doctors warned us about all along. The poison they’re pumping through my baby sister’s veins to save her isn’t doing its goddamn job, and we could lose her anyway.
I should sleep. Be a good Marine and face the unavoidable truth at 0600 like I’ve been trained to do.
Yet, here I am, hunched over the counter with the lights off, staring at Mom’s name on my phone, procrastinating until there’s no going back. There’s a scented candle flickering by the sink—the previous Staff Sergeant assigned to these quarters left it here before he shipped out. It smells like plastic pine and does shit to cover the stench of my fear.
The only thing I have left for that job is alcohol. I only bring out the potent stuff when nothing else comes close to silencing the noise in my head. Beer doesn’t punch me in the throat or cauterize my anxiety quite like the burn of whiskey does. But after fifteen years in the Corps, not much does.
Except Josie.
Fuck. Josie.
Her velvety skin. The musical sound of her voice. The shape of her tapered waist in my grasp.
I didn’t mean to touch her that night. Didn’t mean to want it that badly either, but her magical eyes practically forced my hand. Eyes so blue they shouldn’t exist outside cartoons or frozen oceans. I’d never seen that color before. Well, except in her brother, but his don’t make me do stupid things.
Stupid things like letting my guard down with my best friend’s sister and allowing her to wander into my thoughts. Her pretty face had been tucked away where it belonged until my mother called.
Raising the glass in a lazy salute to my stupid self, I slam back the tumbler and try to let it all go—the looming news, the attraction I shouldn’t feel, the dread squatting heavy on my chest.
Then, pour another.
???
A loud bell explodes in my skull—sharp, relentless, merciless.
It takes a few seconds to realize it’s my phone alarm, and my body boots back up in pieces—stiffneck first, a rancid, gasoline taste on my tongue, then my back screaming in protest.
Daybreak leaks through the slats in the blinds, reminding me where I am. My base apartment—if it could even be labeled that. It’s standard issue forofficers. Beige walls that close in if I stare too long. Tiny kitchen with a handful of cabinets, a mini-fridge, one wooden stool, and a dented two-burner stove. A rickety twin bed that creaks every time I so much as breathe pushed into a corner. Nothing to distract me when duty shuts up long enough for life to bleed in. Sometimes I miss the chaos of the barracks.
Anything but this silence.
Something wet tickles my cheek. I swipe at it hard enough to sting and inspect the evidence on my fingers.
What the hell? I don’t cry.
I launch off the stool before my brain signs off on the plan. Swaying, I lose the fight with gravity and hit the floor in a graceless sprawl. My gut twists in sync, lurching with the whiskey now sloshing around and threatening mutiny.
With no other choice, I breathe through it while tapping my chest with both hands. Four taps in. Four taps out.
Breathe, Hayes. Breathe or drown.
The day has already kicked me in the teeth, and I haven’t even made the damn call yet. I wish someone would talk me off the ledge I’m lying on. Someone other than my mother and three other sisters, who have already been bled dry by Ava’s fight.
Then again, I’ve never been one to crack open my heart, so what good would a confidant do me?
I drag myself upright and grab my phone. Mom will be up—probably sterilizing every surface in the house before Ava wakes. She does that now. Obsessively. Since she can’tprotect her from cancer, she battles germs like they’re tiny terrorists.
I hitCall, and she answers on the first ring like she was waiting on it. “Hi, sweetheart.”
“Hey, Mom. Sorry, I missed you last night.”
“Long day? You sound rough.”
