Damaged Goods (Don't Call Me Hero Book 2) (18 page)

Like many other kids from working-class roots—myself included—sports or the military were the only way out of our respective neighborhoods. In St. Cloud it had been hockey or swimming. For Pensacola it had been basketball or football. I’d never seen Pense throw a football, but I knew his jump shot sucked, so the Marines had been his ticket out. After high school, he’d bounced around from one unpromising career to the next before enlisting a few years later. We were actually the same age, but because I’d joined the Marines immediately after high school, I had always felt older than him.

I arrived for dinner at L’Etoile Blanche after an uninspired day of dealing with Mendez. He’d actually commented on how quiet I was being; it had been hard to play nice with my FTO when I kept thinking about that book I’d found in Julia’s bag. I’d had an eight-hour shift to replay the morning interaction over and over in my head.

A skinny woman who was probably on summer break from the university stood behind the hostess podium. She looked me up and down and I tried not to wither under what I was sure was a judgmental stare. I’d come straight from the precinct. My hair was still damp from the quick shower I’d taken and my clothes were a little rumpled from being stuffed in a duffle bag.

“Reservation for Desjardin,” I said like I belonged there. “I’m not sure if anyone else is here yet.”

The hostess consulted the screen of her tablet while I scanned the restaurant for friendlier faces. Across the dimly lit restaurant I spotted movement. Pensacola sat at a table with his wife, Claire. He had his arms in the air and was waving me down like he was guiding a helicopter in for landing. The long white tablecloth partially hid his wheelchair, and from the waist up he looked like everybody else in the restaurant.

Claire, with noted difficulty, stood up to greet me as I approached the table. Pensacola’s wife was lovely—lighter skinned than her husband, dark brown eyes, and relaxed hair that fell to the middle of her shoulder blades. She had a small build except for the watermelon she was smuggling under her blouse.

I’d only met Claire after returning from war, but Pense had talked about his new wife so much when we were overseas that I felt like we were already great friends when we finally did meet. While Pense and I had healed up in a stateside hospital, Claire had been by his bedside throughout his entire recovery and rehabilitation. I’d envied him having someone who wasn’t there out of familial obligation, but seeing him laid out on a hospital bed, empty space where there should have been legs, had snuffed out any lurking jealousy.

“Look at you, girl. I hardly recognized you in real people clothes,” Claire remarked with a teasing smile. The last time we’d seen each other had been at the hospital where Pensacola and I had recovered. When I’d gotten out of the hospital gown, I’d gone back to wearing my military uniform, not really knowing what to do once I was injured and couldn’t fight anymore.

I held Claire at arm’s length. “And you look ready to explode, lady,” I couldn’t help observing. “Your water’s not going to break during dinner, is it?”

“You got a death wish or something?” Pense snorted. “Don’t remind my pregnant wife that she’s double-wide.”

“I’m only double-wide because my unborn son has a head the size of a watermelon,” Claire remarked, “just like his father.”

I grinned between my friends. The anxiety that had been building over the past few days about seeing Pensacola now felt unwarranted.

“You’re looking good, Pense.”

His face looked a little rounder and had filled out since the last time I’d seen him, but he still had the same boyish good looks. The same startlingly blue eyes.

He licked the tips of his fingertips and ran them over his eyebrows. “Oh, I know I’m fine, Miller.”

I sat down with a little too much enthusiasm. My chair and my shins collided with Pensacola underneath the table.

“Sorry,” I apologized as I rearranged myself. The legs of my chair had gotten caught on the restaurant’s carpeting. “Didn’t mean to ramrod you.”

Pensacola laughed. “Whatever, Miller. Stop trying to play footsie with me in front of my wife.”

Claire coughed delicately, and I looked down at the table setting.

“Relax, guys,” Pense said good-naturedly. “It’s just a little paraplegic humor.”

My favorite voice interrupted the potentially awkward moment: “Sorry I’m late.” Julia swept up to our table. “Traffic was murder downtown.” She, too, had come directly from work, but unlike me, she actually looked like she fit in at the upscale restaurant.

I was a little stunned she’d shown up, but I collected myself and stood to greet her. She rewarded the action with a light kiss to my cheek. I felt the pad of her thumb brush across the side of my face to wipe away residual lipstick.

“Julia, this is Private Pensacola, also known as Terrance, and his wife, Claire,” I introduced her to the couple.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you both,” Julia smiled warmly. “I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting. I’m afraid you must have a poor first impression of me.”

“Sweetheart, you could get away with murder with a smile like that,” Pensacola winked after giving Julia a long look. I couldn’t blame him. She wore a little black dress with capped sleeves that showed off her toned arms, and her high-heels perfectly displayed the definition of her slender calves.

“Watch it, buddy,” I warned, “or I may just forget I like you.”

Julia and I took our seats at the table while a waiter stopped by to drop off menus and take our drink orders.

Pensacola cleared his throat loudly after opening a menu and presumably seeing the prices. “Jesus, Miller. When’d you get so fancy? I thought Easy Mac was more your style.”

Julia frowned. “I’m sorry. I’m the one who made the dinner arrangements. We don’t have to stay if you’re uncomfortable.”

“Oh, no, no,” Pense quickly self-corrected. “I can handle a little calamari and escargot with the best of them. I just like giving Cass a hard time.”

“Don’t we all,” Julia replied with a smile.

Julia and I had had a rocky couple of days, and after our fight that morning, after how I’d overreacted because of a stupid book, I hadn’t been sure she’d show. But when she squeezed my knee under the cover of the white tablecloth, I knew that everything was going to be okay.

She turned her attention back to the others at the table.  “I’m so glad we could get together for dinner before your clinical trial starts. Cassidy was scant on the details though; what exactly will you be doing, Terrance?”

“I was doing a lot of research on prosthetic legs when I came across this clinical trial,” Pensacola explained. “I’ve been using the chair since they released me from the hospital, but I’m looking to upgrade. Powered prosthetics are available for arms, knees, and ankle-to-foot replacements, but there’s nothing yet for a knee-to-foot prosthetic like I need. The only fake legs widely available right now are pretty bulky, and you’ve got to manually adjust them to do things like go up and down stairs.”

He paused when our waiter returned with drinks—red wine for Julia and bourbon for Pense and me. Claire stuck to water.

Pense continued to explain the clinical trial after we ordered our food. “So I read about this new prosthetic called ReWalk. The damn thing’s controlled by a wristwatch. It’s intended for people paralyzed by spinal cord injuries, not people like me, but I wrote the hospital to see if they’d let me try.”

“So you invited yourself to the clinical trial?” I chuckled.

“I guess so,” he laughed.

“That sounds like a very Pensacola thing to do,” I said wryly.

“At the end of the day it probably doesn’t matter though,” he noted. “Even if it works, my insurance company won’t cover it because they don’t see motorized prosthetics as necessary. But I don’t really care what they say; I just want to look people in the eye again, ya know?”

I nodded sagely. Stubborn, inflexible insurance companies were the reason I was no longer going to therapy. “I know what kind of bastards those people can be,” I sympathized.  

I flicked my eyes in Julia’s direction, silently apologizing for the curse word. She smiled instead of calling me out.

“Where do you have to go for the clinical trial?” Julia asked. “Mayo’s?”

Pense shook his head. “No. Regions Hospital in St. Paul. Ever heard of it?”

Julia hummed. “I know Regions well. I can see it from my apartment, actually.”

Pense struck the table with the palm of his hand, causing the water in our glasses to dance. “Hey, you’ll never guess who I ran into the other day.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Reilly.”

“Wow. Really? What’s he doing these days?”

I hadn’t thought about Geoff Reilly in years. He’d been on the same team as Pensacola and myself, but when we’d been in the Afghani desert getting blown up to bits, he’d been back at the Forward Operating Base with food poisoning.

“Working for his dad, he said. Owns a car dealership out in the Detroit suburbs. Hey, member when Reilly was farting around in munitions and that grenade rolled across the command room?” 

“And he thought he’d accidentally pulled the pin?”

“Dude ran away so fast, his pucker factor went from zero to sixty.” Pense’s laugh was infectious.

“Are they even speaking English anymore?” Claire turned to Julia.

“Maybe we should have let them go to eat by themselves so they could have gotten it out of their system,” Julia suggested.

“And let the adults have a nice meal on their own. I like the way you think.” Claire raised her water glass, and Julia lightly clinked her wine glass against it.

“So how long have you two been married?” Julia asked.

Claire looked to Pensacola. “We got married right before T was deployed. I can’t say I was ready to be anyone’s wife just yet, but it made sense to have that security before he went away.”

“You hadn’t been dating long?” I asked.

“Only since we were eight years old,” Pensacola supplied.

“You’re not serious,” Julia laughed.

“No, he’s not,” Claire said, making a face. “We started dating in high school.”

“Yeah, but I knew I was gonna marry you a lot earlier than that,” Pense remarked.

“How about the two of you?” Claire questioned. “Have you been dating long?”

“Define ‘date,’” I couldn’t help smirking.

Beneath the table, I felt a well-placed toe dig into the front of my shin.

“Cassidy and I used to work together when she was a police officer up north. I was the city prosecutor,” Julia explained, straight-faced.

“Julia desperately tried to resist my charm, but it was futile,” I grinned.

“Elbows off the table, dear,” Julia lightly corrected.

I jerked back from the table and sat up straighter. I heard Pensacola snicker and could only imagine the hard time he was going to give me later about it.

“You can understand how impossible it must have been to turn down such a specimen,” Julia noted with a roll of her eyes.

I purposely returned my elbows to the table’s top and leaned forward. “I’m a diamond in the rough, baby.”

“A little polish never hurt anyone.”

“You guys are cute,” Claire interjected. “You banter like an old married couple, but your energy is still in the honeymoon phase.”

“And it’s been quite the honeymoon,” I said without thinking.

“Nice work, Marine,” Pense smirked.

Julia hid her smile and her blush behind a wine glass. “Have you thought about baby names yet?” she asked, redirecting the conversation.

“When we found out we were having a boy, both of our dads put in a bid to have the baby named after him,” Claire said.

“But we decided we couldn’t subject the little dude to a lifetime of being an Earl or a Booker,” Pense added.

“It sounds like you’re already making good parental decisions,” I remarked.

“It’s probably a little new-agey, but I want to wait until kiddo is actually born—see what name he looks like,” Claire explained.

“I think that’s a lovely idea,” Julia opined.

“How about you? Do you guys want kids?” Claire asked just as the waiter returned with our entrees.

I nearly lost my grip on my silverware. “We’re, uh, we’re,” I stammered. I looked over at Julia, but her damn poker face was unshakeable. “That’s not a conversation we’re ready to have yet.”

The rest of dinner was filled with light conversation, good food, and side-aching laughter. Pensacola had a gift for storytelling, and once he got a second bourbon in him, there was no holding back. A few times I caught myself nearly crying from laughing so hard.

At the end of the meal, Julia swiftly produced a credit card from her purse and handed it to our waiter before any of us had even had time to consulting the paper bill.

Pensacola cleared his voice. “Ya’ll don’t have to do that.”

Julia flashed him a disarming smile. “I know we don’t. But you two are guests in our city. You should let us treat you.”

“Using that logic, you should let me pay,” I reasoned. “They’re my guests.”

Julia’s smile remained affixed to her face. “We can talk about that later, dear.”