“No shit,” Frankie said under his breath beside me.
In fourteen days, our company would fly to an unknown base in southwestern Afghanistan. Antiterror unit. Eight months minimum, indefinite maximum, most likely a year. Going to the combat zone was kind of the point of the whole “congratulations and good-bye” ceremony. We clapped.
Across the field, happy people found one another. I watched Clark pick up his kid and spin her around like he was in an insurance commercial, setting her down so he could take his wife’s face by the cheeks, pressing his lips to hers. Gomez jumped on her husband, wrapping her legs around his waist. Frankie had disappeared.
Davies came up beside me, holding his hat. Armando, too. The orphans, drifting together.
“Y’all got people at home?” Davies asked. He was a pimply kid, just out of high school, one of the youngest of us, as dumb as a bag of hammers. He could barely identify the letters on the vision test. Good heart, though.
“My main girl. My sister. They couldn’t get off work,” Armando said, crossing his arms across his wide chest.
“I ain’t got no one,” Davies said. “I hate this part.”
Over their heads I found Frankie, watched him wrap his arms around a curvy woman in a yellow sundress. Elena. She’d brought flowers. Atta boy, Frankie. His parents watched, their arms around each other’s waists.
Armando ran a hand through his clipped black hair, bringing up a spray of sweat. “I just want a cold Bud, dude.”
I licked my dry lips, watching Gomez and her husband laugh and press their foreheads together. “I feel that.”
“You taking the bus, Morrow?” Armando asked.
“I guess,” I answered.
Davies put his gangly arms around both of us. “What y’all doin’ tonight? Wanna get turnt?”
“Hell yes,” Armando responded. “Now get off me, Davies, it’s too hot.”
Davies nodded at me. “Morrow, come on. What else are you gonna do?”
I checked my phone. At least Johnno hadn’t called yet today. “I don’t know.”
Armando shook his head, looking at me. “You’re one of the weird, quiet types, huh?”
“No,” I said, proving their point.
Maybe I was weird. So what. I wasn’t here, willfully getting my ass kicked, preparing to roam through the Middle East with a hunk of hot, deadly metal in my hands, because I got bored with my fantasy football league.
“Cucciolo!” Davies called.
Frankie and Elena approached, followed by his parents. His mother was a beautiful woman with Frankie’s big brown eyes, wearing white linen pants, and his father was pure Italian, with curly black hair and thick eyebrows and skin that glowed. Elena kissed Frankie’s cheek. He clapped his hands, approaching. “Anyone else going to Austin tonight? I want to get sloppy.”
“Chyeah,” Davies said. “I’m in.”
“Where should we go?” Armando asked.
Frankie turned to me. “Dealer’s choice.”
“I’m out for this one.”
“Aw, fuck that.”
I gave him a look. “I gotta go to Buda.”
“Tonight?” When I didn’t answer right away, Frankie’s smile faded. He lowered his voice. “Something wrong?”
“Nothing specific,” I said, feeling my chest tighten. “You know, just family stuff. I’ll find a motel on the way.”
“A motel?” Frankie stared at me. “What about your brother?”
I paused, and stepped aside. Frankie followed.
“I have some other stuff to take care of. I don’t want to—yeah.” I should have just said good point and let it drop. “My dad and I don’t get along. And Jake’s got a wife and a kid. I don’t want to burden them.”
Last time I had seen Jake, I had brought him a list of apologies I had written on St. Joseph’s stationery, where I had just spent ten days detoxing. He’d shut the door in my face. I still had the piece of paper folded up in my bag a year later, as if I’d never be able to write it again.
“Come on, you’re about to go overseas. Someone will let you sleep on their couch,” Frankie said. “Crash with me for a while.”
“It’s all good. I’m gonna get a hotel. Thank you, though.”
He shrugged. “My parents have a big house. You’d have your own room.”
My heartbeat sped. In the fight between spending the next two weeks in a bed in a home in Austin versus a room off Highway 49, staring at shitty TV, trying not to relapse, the air-conditioned bed would win. But I liked Frankie. He’d become my friend. I didn’t want to bring my shit into his house.