Page 41 of Brighter Shades of Light
“My roommate. Also, my best friend. He’s a Marine Option midshipman, too. We met freshman year.”
“What do you plan to do with your degree after graduation?” As good a question as any to start with.
Cody fidgeted in his chair, which was nothing new. He very rarely sat still. “Won’t be able to do much with it for a while, unless I can make use of it once I’m commissioned into the Corps.”
“What do you mean?
“I go to Quantico next summer for more training.”
“And after that?”
“Wherever they send me,” he said. “I’ll have an eight year commitment. Five years as active duty, and the rest on reserve.”
His words weighed heavily on me. He’d be leaving in less than a year. Even more of a reason to keep my feelings in check.
“May I ask what interested you in the military?”
“Pretty sure my passion goes way back to when I was really little.” Cody grinned and got a faraway look in his eyes. “My gramps was in the Corps and told me all kinds of stories growing up. Guess it started then. I used to crawl around the backyard with one of those popcorn bowls on my head and carry a stick around, pretending I was on a mission.”
The image his words conjured was endearing. I could picture it perfectly.
“Did you ever do anything like that?”
“No.” I shook my head. “My childhood was spent…in other ways.” Like taking care of my pain-pill-addicted mother after my father left us. I barely remembered a time when I didn’t have to be an adult. “As an only child whose parents were…not always present…I took care of myself.”
“Wow.” Sympathy surfaced in his eyes.
“Don’t be sad for me, Mr. Mil—Cody. Without my upbringing, I wouldn’t be the man I am today.”
Cody drank more of his latté, and I did the same with my coffee. The wheels were turning in his head. Thinking of his past? Or perhaps he was trying to picture mine.
“That’s a really good way to describe it,” he finally said, looking at me. “The past helped make us who we are. And even if there are things we wish we could change, we wouldn’t be the same people if we actually got the chance to change them.”
Just when I thought I had Cody figured out, he said something so profound that I had no choice but to re-evaluate my view of him.
“My thoughts exactly.”
It made me ask myself, though, what kind of man would I be had I never met Leon? If I had never met him at work…if I had never looked into his eyes and felt a strong pull to be closer to him. Everything that happened after it, all the pain, would’ve vanished.
One choice had been the catalyst that set off a chemical reaction—that reaction being a series of events that had turned my world on its axis. Good, bad, incredible, and then devastating.
“I recognize that look,” Cody said, his voice soft. Just like his expression. “You’ve lost someone, too, haven’t you?”
He was too perceptive for his own good.
“It doesn’t matter.” I pushed my glasses back and looked out the window. The cement began to darken in places as the rain started, initially a light drizzle before it fell faster. “Even if it did matter, it’s not a suitable topic for us to discuss.”
“Because it’s personal?”
“Precisely.”
“And you’re my professor and I’m your student, so we can’t talk about anything too deep?” he asked, drawing my attention back to his face. He might’ve been twenty-one, but he seemed much older right then, as though life had aged him beyond his years. “Because if that’s the case, I gotta admit I’d be disappointed.”
Lost someone, too, he had said.
“Who did you lose?” I asked, despite my earlier statement about it not being proper.
“My dad.” Cody dropped his gaze and moved his cup in a small circle on the tabletop, leaving behind a wet ring. “Lung cancer. It happened quick, too. We found out in November and by spring, he was gone.”
