“Who shit in your Cheerios, Pike?” Echo kicked the leg of my chair. “We boring you?”
“He’s sad it’s just him and his hand tonight,” Cap said.
I flicked my bottle cap off the armrest in his direction. “Fuck off.”
Sam sat up. “You’re getting soft on us.”
“This one's gonna buy his fiancé a puppy tomorrow because she gave him a look, and I’m soft?”
“The difference is that I own my shit.” Mateo pointed at himself. “I know that I’m whipped and I’m happy to be here.”
“What happens when she flies home?” Tyler asked me. “Are you going to get over it?”
“There’s nothing to get over,” I lied. The warm beer marinating between my sweaty palms tasted like spit as I tossed it back to avoid the third degree. “It was sex.”
“You bought her a necklace,” Cap reminded me.
“It was Christmas.” Fuck, the beer tasted like shit.
“Oh, shit.” Sam sighed dramatically.
Cap and Tyler shared a wordless glance that made me oddly defensive. As if gifts during the holidays were some foreign concept, and having nostrings sex with someone was so out of the ordinary for any of them either. Maybe what really fucking bothered me was that they were hitting the nail on the head, and I wore every sorry emotion on my sleeve despite my attempts against it.
Ophelia and I knew we were more involved than we ever intended to be, and things had been tense all day because of it. She kept me at an obvious arm’s length after breakfast, and I respected the unspoken distance she put between us because I knew how I felt, so I knew how she must have too. I, on the other hand, was on the opposite edge, wanting nothing but to savor it all while we still had it, and rip the stitches out when the time came.
The corresponding emotions were an elixir of self-doubt, anticipatory grief, and tragically an unwavering boost in libido even after she’d closed the door and drove away.
“There’s so much shit going through my head right now, I don’t have the patience for pity. So you three say what you want to say and be fucking real about it or get off my ass.”
A low whistle pitched from between Tyler’s lips. “Are you going to Colorado?”
“I don’t fucking know,” I answered honestly. “I’ll go for the second interview, but the only thing I’ve ever known outside of the service is home. Home is here. It’s not that easy to uproot and start over. And my mom’s getting older, too.”
“Nobody’s pressuring you, brother,” Tyler said. “We just know you. We don’t want you down here feeling stuck when there’s a world of opportunities somewhere else.” He smiled that broad, toothy smile that got him just about anything from tips to tail. “And you have no idea the kinky shit I had to do to get you that interview.”
“Ignore my brother,” Sam cut in. “You’re a fucking ace of a pilot. You earned every last one of your medals—we were all there. There’s not a base in the country that wouldn’t want you teaching in the ranks.”
“That’s a whole other thing.” I exhaled, swiping my hat off my head. “I haven’t flown since Costa Rica. I’m rusty as fuck, performance anxiety or whatever.”
“It’s like riding a bike.” Cap shrugged. “You don’t forget how to fly.”
“You also don’t forget what it feels like to crash.”
Silence breezed over us, Wink’s eyes, more copper in the light, downcast into his lap, while Echo stared at me straight. They didn’t expect me to bring the crash up so bluntly, because I hadn’t before. I’d never wanted to talk about it. Mateo would still try every now and then but I brushed him off. What was there to say? The past was the past and there was no use flipping the fucking dirt over and tilling old ground.
“Well, I don’t know much about flying,” Sam said. “But I do know that lying down for dead isn’t much your style, Pike, and neither is choosing the easy way out of things. If that day did anything, it was solidify what everyone already knows—that you’re the best of the best. Not a single fucking casualty.”
“He’s right.” Mateo nodded. “I’ll accept it if you don’t go because of your mom and Addy. I’m still making you move out,” he acknowledged lightheartedly, “but don’t pass on this opportunity because you’re afraid to fail.”
“That just makes you a pussy,” Echo added bluntly.
A terse laugh shot out of me. “I’ll take it all into consideration.”
“Take the girl into consideration too, while you’re at it,” Sam suggested. “Sweetens the deal doesn’t it? Something to come home to.”
The thought of walking through the door every day to a waiting and willing Ophelia made the center of my chest do that aching, uncomfortable thing again like coiling barbed wire around an organ.
“We’re friends,” I forced myself to say. “She’s a good girl, and a good friend. I needed to get myself out there again after Vanessa.”
“Vanessa?” Tyler’s eyebrows shot to his hairline. “You haven’t gotten fucked since Vanessa?”
“Give him a break,” Cap urged.
“You may screw a new chick every weekend but none of us have a date for the wedding in June,” I pointed out.
“Doesn’t Natalia have, like, three sisters?” Tyler asked, flicking his own bottle cap at me. “I’d be a fucking fool not to show up hungry to a buffet.”
“Not happening.” Mateo put a foot down. “My sister-in-laws are off-limits. It’s nonnegotiable.”
Tyler smiled. “We’ll see.”
I tipped back in my chair, taking in the full curve of a waxing moon. The stars were all out, blinking rhythmically. Brisk air burned the shallow wells of my nostrils and the corners of my mouth tipped up. “I missed you guys.”
36
My previous New Year's Eve looked a lot different than this one. I was snowed in by myself as Pine Ridge endured a record accumulation for the last day of December. There wasn’t a car on the road that wasn’t a plow, and if you could even see out your windows past six o’clock, there was nothing but a blanket of powdery white reflecting the moon and turning the outside one muted shade of gray.
I had curled up on the couch in the baggiest pair of sweats I owned, a monochromatic green number that made me look like a peapod, shoved my face full of cheese puffs because there wasn’t a Postmates in the state delivering, and indulged in the trashiest reality dating show I could find.
I laughed, I cried, I ironically screamed at the women on my television for not recognizing a man’s blatantly obvious red flags. By the time I remembered to check the clock it was after midnight and I’d entirely missed the ball drop to ring in the new year. In lieu of champagne I did a shot of tequila and sent myself to bed.
Miami Beach was so far removed from Pine Ridge they might as well be on opposite poles. Spending the night in a swanky downtown hotel and pregaming with bottles of Veuve Clicquot was even more out of my element. Despite the promising night ahead, I was still painfully aware of the dwindling hours I had left in Florida.