His Road Home (6 page)

“Whatcha doing then?” Casey’s laugh was loud enough to hear through the door, the product of the deck-side celebration. “Sexting or something?”

Casey had a point. Or maybe an idea.

* * *

Cruz had to send a 750—to 1,000-word comprehensive narrative essay to the University of Washington by September 1 to have a prayer of beginning winter quarter. Flat on his ass four months ago, he hadn’t planned past his next physical therapy session. Now, assuming he didn’t develop heterotopic ossification bone growths, he’d finish outpatient therapy by the holidays. If he wanted to sit in a classroom near Grace instead of on his butt at home in Pateros, the transfer student application in front of him was the first hurdle.

I
spent ten great years around the world blowing things up and patching people together
,
and one bad day getting blown up.
After the personal challenge of relearning basic life skills
,
my goal is to help others conquer obstacles.
He recognized the cliché
.
Please consider me for admission as a transfer student in Medical Anthropology and Global Health.
I
have sixty-five credits of distance learning and more real-world experience in global health than I am allowed to describe.

His odds of finishing the Marine Corps Marathon were better than his chance of being admitted with that submission, but the jaunty “Eh-Sexy-Lady” refrain of a Korean pop song interrupted his pity party with his nightly reminder. Eleven fifty-eight in his time zone. In two minutes he could call Grace.

He’d framed the photo of her with her eyes closed and her hair spread on the pillow. Her mouth curved in what was probably a self-conscious smile, but he pretended it was the look of a satisfied woman about to drift to sleep. Sometimes he propped the picture on his stomach while they texted, like face-to-face conversation, but tonight he placed her image on top of the university application.

Hi
, he typed.

The seconds before she replied worried him with random thoughts that she’d tell him she was busy or on a date or one of the hundred things women did at night rather than text a guy on the other side of the country.

Hi
back
, she answered, making the end of his day the part worth waiting for.

Busy
day?

Tons
of
data
to
crunch
after
our
cruise
,
so
I
was
stuck
at
the
computer.

Me
too
, he thought, but didn’t share his hopes about the UW. He’d be embarrassed if he didn’t get in, or if she thought he was a creepy stalker.
Did
you
run?

Just
got
back.

He imagined her in shorts and a sports bra, showing slick muscles as she ran. His memories of kissing her all focused on her mouth, and the surprise that she’d kissed him back, so he couldn’t recall where he’d put his hands or even the shape of her waist, but he’d bet she was firm.
Exciting
weekend
plans?

Thinking
about
Pateros
,
but there’s a 5K @ Alki Beach some of my running club is doing.

That reminded him of the day’s highlight.
The
Marquis
acquired
six
racing
chairs.
Set
up
Grunts
v.
Jarheads
over
2
miles.

Who
won?

Clue:
didn’t
brag
already.

My
bad!
Sorry!

Grudge
match
next
week.
It was harder than he’d expected to ignore the stack of paperwork. She’d probably done a few applications in her day. Maybe he should ask her advice.
Ever
do
a
triathlon?

Sprint.
I’m
a
slow
swimmer
,
my
bike’s
a
snail
,
but
I
finished.
Sucked.
Why?
U
doing
one?

Her question made him smile. Leaving the medical installation on supervised field trips—sometimes Walter Reed resembled elementary school—he’d discovered there were three types of people: those who ignored you, those who held doors and rushed to help whether you needed it or not, as if you were a Muppet, and those who treated you like a regular man sitting in a chair or walking differently. He lived
Anthropology of Disability
.

Heard
a
motivational
speaker
today.
Double
amp
Ironman
finisher
, he sent.

Army’s
going
to
buy
superhero
suits
for
all
of
you?
Cool!

I
wish.
Maybe
they’ll
fork
out
for
swim
or
bike
legs
to
go
w
/
my
running
set.
See.

He linked to a parts catalog. Instead of car magazines for the Oldsmobile 442 in his garage at Fort Campbell, his body was his new repair hobby.

I
don’t
have
that
many
shoes!

No question, he’d earned the bucks Uncle Sam spent on his legs, but how much someone should have to trade for that privilege was a question that frequently bugged him. His sister was an American too. Drove a school bus from 0630, worked in the cafeteria and drove all afternoon, but it didn’t total forty hours a week enough weeks of the year, so she scrounged to get her kids’ cavities filled.
Medicine in America:
Conflicts and Contradictions
,
Anthropology 477
, jumped off the course list. Upper level work, but he assumed a man who’d managed emergency ordnance disposal could hack it.

By the time they finished texting, the Eastern time zone was late enough he might drift into pleasant dreams about Grace and triathlons. Maybe he’d manage a four-hour block of sleep, and in the morning, he’d celebrate another night in which he hadn’t chased away the nicest girl he’d ever met.

“Do you have a compelling academic or personal need to attend the University of Washington Seattle at this time?”

Yes.
I
have a massive crush on a woman with a Ph.D.
,
so I need a degree
,
a
job and a place to live in Seattle.
Please admit me.
So I can get laid
.

Chapter Five

November wasn’t April, but pulling through the Walter Reed gate filled Grace with déjà vu. This time her stomach fluttered with a different question: Was she going to sleep with Rey? Assuming that like her he wanted to be more than friends, the answer was yes, but she was uncertain how to navigate the change in the terms of their relationship. Ten days of cross-country driving stretched before her, the result of texts from three weeks ago. She’d read the messages a half-dozen times as she debated whether to pack lingerie or her pink flannels printed with Space Needles and cartoon salmon.

I’m
moving
home.

What?

Army
doesn’t
have
a
use
for
me
,
so
home
it
is
for
this
apple
boy.
Mom’s
doing
okay
,
but
she’s
not
well
enough
for
the
drive.
Haven’t
decided
how
to
move
my
car.

Can’t
the
army
ship
it?

My
truck’s
going
w
/
my
household
goods
b
/
c
I
don’t
know
if
I
can
get
in
and
out
of
the
cab.
They
only
ship
one
vehicle.
Know
how
to
handle
a
manual
transmission?

No.

Want
to
learn?

By answering, she’d been netted. Or maybe she’d been caught when they’d exchanged pictures from their bunks, or the night she’d confronted her sister at karaoke, or as far back as the kisses seven months ago. While finalizing the outline of the trip, neither of them had mentioned hotel rooms. Winter on the northern plains didn’t seem appropriate for see-through nightwear, so she’d packed for her own warmth instead of for an awkward seduction.

Yet somehow the higher she ventured into Tranquility Hall looking for Rey’s suite, the closer she knew she came to showing off the salmon PJs.

Rey’s propped door invited visitors. Game consoles littered the coffee table behind the chair where he sat, his gaze fixed on the phone she’d sent him in April.

She took the instant to absorb the breadth of his shoulders and chest, his dark hair and intense focus. Below the hem of his long shorts, two different black Terminator limbs both ended in shiny tubes stuck into a pair of black high tops. The odd note wasn’t his prosthetics, but how normal they looked to her after months of discussing his therapy.

He raised his face, and the smile when he saw her made her last flicker of what-the-hell-am-I-doing retreat. Then he stood. It looked as simple as pushing on a slim red cane to lift himself, but she knew the thousands of crunches and lifts and stretches he’d committed to build muscle and balance. Standing, his khaki cargo shorts hung at the perfect spot to emphasize his flat stomach. The black knit shirt looked soft to the touch, although the way it molded his chest and biceps showed that only the fabric would be yielding.

His grin tipped her that he’d caught her checking him out. “Grace.” He said her name one beat slower than others said it, like a soft stroke on the nape of her neck.

“Rey.” Right then her bra straps tightened until she couldn’t breathe. She planned to spend a week with him in a car, but suddenly the reason she felt nervous wasn’t the reason why she should. “Hi.”

“Hi back.” The low words made her shiver inside her cashmere turtleneck.

She didn’t have time to reply. Two steps, three, a half-dozen to reach her and then he dropped his cane, wrapped her in his arms and kissed her. His body was rock hard and months of thinking about him had primed her to melt on contact with his lips.

“Grace.” His chest vibrated against hers, more an awareness of him speaking than actually hearing words, because her head had filled with a hum of pleasure.

She might have swayed, then she understood the room wasn’t dark and opened her eyes.

He loosened his hold as she rebalanced. “Okay?” His voice rose.

“Oh, yes. I mean, well.” She couldn’t babble by herself, yet reality was the contradiction between the man in front of her who struggled with words and the man who wrote to her. Easiest way to reconcile the two was probably the oldest, so she grabbed his shoulders and lifted to her toes to press her mouth to his. She’d spent too many nights alone with a pillow, when this hard body was what she yearned for. Until now she hadn’t considered his height, but they fit the way a man and woman should. On her toes, plastered against him, her breasts rubbed the hard plane of his chest while his shoulders and arms engulfed her.

For an instant she worried about his balance, but his hands pushed under her coat, and she released her hold one arm at a time to wiggle out of the extra padding, but he didn’t stop kissing her. She felt lighter, but no cooler, when his hand slid under her turtleneck. He rubbed circles on the bare skin above her waist, the exact spot where she carried travel tension. His mastery of touch fired nerves from her skin to her core and reminded her that he was much more than letters on a screen. Rey was a man. He wasn’t gentle, not with his kisses.

Response flamed inside stronger than she’d ever felt, until she wanted to crash into him, take him down, but she didn’t know into what, or how, so she explored with her hands. She thought she knew his mind and his opinions, but his arms, his back, his shoulders, the places she touched, were facets that remained to be learned.

His hair was coarse and thick between her fingers as she tugged his head lower. He pulled her so close that his buckle dug into her belly. She wanted answers to the swirl of questions and needs filling her brain and stealing her breath. His tongue sought to connect the same way her hands searched his body. Where she touched, he was tight and corded and heat rolled off him. Focusing on how his fingers pressed into her skin at her waist made her knees wobble. She needed air. When she stood on her tiptoes to reach his lips, she felt like she tilted. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was a hydrothermal vent, four hundred degrees under her hands.

Behind her the door thunked with the whoosh of steel settling in place and the click of an automatic catch.

Rey lifted his head. “Oops.” He grinned at her. “Forgot door.”

They had forgotten everything for a moment, including her decision to take this slowly and be certain about the change in their relationship.

“Too much H-B-effing-O in there,” someone yelled.

He cupped a hand to his mouth and called, “Thanks, dude.”

Muffled laughter from the hall made her want to cover her face, but her astonishment was stronger. “Rey, you can talk!”

“Better. Not well.” He hadn’t stopped rhythmic strokes across the cashmere. “This. Soft.”

They stood connected by hands and hips and shoulders. The sound of their breathing matched her pounding heart as she felt caught between that kiss and wondering what was next.

He apparently had no such quandary, because he nodded toward a cart holding an olive-colored duffel and a gym bag, parked next to a streamlined black and chrome wheelchair. “My stuff. Goodbyes done.” With that, he shrugged into a gray track jacket that said AR on one side of the zipper and MY on the other. “Ready?”

Undoubtedly he meant ready to go. The question the road trip would answer waited: Was she ready for him?

* * *

Interstate 66 became more scenic the farther suburban D.C. sprawl faded into Grace’s rearview mirror. With her phone connected to the rental car stereo, the folk-rock guitar and vocals of her favorite Seattle singer filled the car. If her arm-hairs weren’t tuned to the tiniest movement of the man in the passenger seat, this would be a relaxing drive.

“White girl music.” He set down her smart phone. “All of it.”

“Oh, please.” She retrieved her latest coffee from the cupholder. “The census bureau considers you white, but not me, you know that?”

“Culture.”

She snorted. “Are you saying I’m culturally white? What’s with that? We’re from the same town. You’re confusing the colors of our rice for skin tone.”

“You jog.” He held up one finger.

She allowed that the finish line at half marathons was not so diverse.

“Pilat-pilat—” He raised a second finger while pretending to pull on a weight bar.

“I did one session of pilates! I didn’t like it as much as... “ His point, she realized, was about to be proven. “Yoga.” She shifted in her seat and checked her mirrors.

Another digit added without a word.

“G.E.D.” He pointed to his chest, then lifted a fourth finger as he pointed at her. “P.H.D.”

That was one she didn’t know how to answer, except to make fun of herself, because it felt like it was about him rather than her. For months, his messages had revealed a man with an intense interest in the world, a command of the written word and a deep curiosity. She didn’t care if his degree was a high school equivalency.

“You are so last year on stereotypes, Rey. Didn’t you know that white people get more GEDs?” She totally fudged that. Would he call her on it? “If I was a white girl I’d have a sorority ring, maybe a tiny flower tattooed on my ankle, and a fun degree like English or early-childhood education.” That was in fact her sister’s tattoo and double major. “But I’m a stereotypical math and biology Asian girl who was on the path to med school until salmon sidetracked me.”

“This.” He indicated the music that had started the discussion. “Folk. White.”

“I should inform you that the correct taxonomy of Brandi Carlile is alt-country lesbian folk rock.”

“What?” He swiveled to stare at her. “You? Les-les-
what?
”

She shrugged, her shoulders brushing her hoop earrings. The way his jaw hung open was so perfect, she’d laugh until she hiccupped if she didn’t have a semi on her bumper. “Gotcha.”

“Oh.” He collapsed into his seat, laughing with her. “Fair.”

“Keep an open mind, and you can choose next. Make fun of my girl Brandi, and you’ll be thumbing for truckers.”

As soon as the first soaring vocals of “Hard Way Home” filled the car, she connected her favorite song with Rey’s life, but then lyrics washed over them and it was too late to skip the track.
When we’re driving home
,
I
never have to worry about being alone
. His complete attention focused on the stereo in the console.
I
never was good at sleeping while the moon was full
,
I
just lie and burn
. Arms wrapped around his chest, he rocked against the shoulder belt. She’d pieced together that he rarely slept through the night.
I’d step in line
,
that’s what I would do if I could turn back time
. The haunting notes that reminded her to avoid mistakes took on a painfully literal meaning of putting a foot wrong, on a landmine.
Taking the hard way home
.

Cars passing on both sides clued her that she’d dropped below the speed limit. She deliberately depressed the gas pedal, but Rey hit replay and half turned to the window with shaking shoulders. She couldn’t keep driving while wanting to reach for him, her throat clogged and burning, wondering what he felt.

There was a rest stop with plenty of spaces, and then the car was off. He hadn’t turned from the window, so she touched his shoulder. “Sorry about that song. I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s good. True. And bew-bew-bew—” He raised a hand to his face, but she couldn’t see what he did.

He must mean
beautiful.
Now he’d left her speechless.

He turned, blinking and squeezing his lips together. “This.” He waved at the prosthetics. “My hard way.” His smile wavered, vanished, and he dipped his head. With one hand, he separated each of her fingers and linked their hands.

“What can I do?” she asked.

He seemed to find calm, because he raised their hands and feathered a kiss on her thumb knuckle. “A jug of wine, a loaf of bread and thou, beside me singing in the wilderness.”

“Shakespeare?” When she thought she had him pegged, he revealed another layer.

“Rubai-Rubai—” He gritted his teeth and started over. “O-mar-Kha-yam.” Her face must have shown her confusion, because he continued. “Arab friend. Liked poems.”

The fogged intimacy inside the parked car made it easier to ask questions. “How can you recite that line but not be able to say other things?”

“Poem. Easy. Songs too.” He braced his free hand on the dashboard and squeezed his eyes shut, as if forming words hurt. “Auto recall vers-us new i-i-idea.”

There was one more topic to tackle before they checked into a motel, in case he’d made assumptions. She wasn’t sure where they stood, because they were more than friends, but at the same time she didn’t want a casual hook-up. “Actually being with you is different. It’s like a first date, but it’s not, because I know about your life.” She knew his background, his mother, his exercise routine, what he liked to read and watch on television, but months of texting hadn’t prepared her for this intensity.

Their linked hands squeezed together, wordlessly encouraging her to continue. “I really care about you—” Those words were insufficient, almost insulting, to describe the complicated mix of interest, desire and wariness she felt about Rey. “But I don’t think I’m ready to—”