Please don’t let him break my heart again.
“I’d Hate To Be You When People Find Out What This Song Is About”—Mayday Parade
“KATIE? HELLO?”
All I hear is static before the phone line clicks and switches back to a dial tone. I slam the receiver into its holster and run my hands through my hair, trying my best to calm down. Of all the times for this shit to cut out.
I take a deep breath in and reach for the phone again before stopping myself. I wonder for a moment if I even want to call her back. I don’t know if I’m pissed, jealous, or maybe both, but right now all I want to do is spend time with my men—who also happen to be my friends. And when I want to escape these thoughts of Katie and my mother, they’re the best antidote available.
I rise to my feet and head toward the exit, all the while doing my best to pretend she wasn’t planning on seeing Wyatt and fighting to shake thoughts of them together … holding each other, kissing each other, fuck—
No. Hell no. I’m not fucking going there.
The chopper came just as expected at 0600. The quick ride to the Green Zone was a blur as the rhythmic whip of the blades forced my tired eyes shut. Navas spent several hours the night before pulling everything out of me, though I fought tooth and nail against it. And as I now sit at the military air terminal waiting on the C-130 to arrive, my eyes burn while scanning the enormous room full of hundreds of other military personnel funneling in and out. I try and catch sight of one I may know, as unlikely as it is, because in this moment of total isolation even in this crowded room, all I want is familiarity.
What I really want is Katie, but all I can think of right now is that she needs space … that as much as I want to talk to her, as much as I want to see her, she does have unsettled business and I can’t get in the way of that—no matter how much I may need her. She tells me that she’s over Wyatt, that what they had is in the past, but how can it be when it just ended? I want to believe her, but a tiny voice in the back of my head is holding me back, keeping me from believing that I ever had a chance. So I spend
the next thirty minutes running our phone conversation through my head, and when my plane finally arrives, I breathe a sigh of relief.
The C-130 flight to Germany went by in a flash, and as I shuffle onto my second-to-last flight of the day, a nine-hour trip across the Atlantic, I’m actually grateful for the ridiculously early chopper—and even Navas for his hours of concerned interrogation—because my sleep on the C-130 flight was better than any I’ve gotten in a very long time. I think, more than anything, it’s the knowledge that—at least for now—I’m out of harm’s way.
In usual cruel fashion, thoughts of my guys come into focus. Seeing the snug, pleather Lufthansa seats in rows before me, I can’t help but feel guilty that I’m not back there with them. If something happens to one of my men while I’m gone, I don’t know what the fuck I’ll do.
I pour myself into my seat and slip the window shade open.
Light comes in waves through the little oval window, first blinding me, then exposing the busy airport tarmac and gorgeous city of Frankfurt. I’m taken aback by just how different this place is compared to where I’ve just come from—how oblivious these people are to what others are going through at this very moment.
I’m startled as an older woman slides in beside me, and I can’t help but stare. She looks like my mother, only with dirty blond hair instead of dark, which stretches the length of her back. And just like Josephine, her skin is weathered and tan. It’s as if my mom is sitting right next to me.
Since she appears noticeably disturbed by my gawking, I pull my eyes away from her and force them to look out the window. I don’t want to think about my mom, but the woman beside me brings the memories in waves. The worst ones dominate any positive thoughts I could ever have of her. I hate her for the years I lost with her. I hate her for not letting me say goodbye. I hate her for choosing the drugs over me.
The house is unusually dark, and with the shades drawn, it’s hard for me to see much of anything. I slip my backpack off and set it on the couch, making note of the geometry homework that I know is inside and still needs to be finished. A house this dark when I get home from school usually means Mom is out for the night, but her car is in the driveway and I can hear rustling sounds and muffled conversation coming from her room in the back of the house.
I flip the light on and I’m stopped dead in my tracks, eyes wide, as I take in my surroundings. The glass coffee table is shattered to pieces, her favorite sculpture—a stone representation of St. Francis, the patron saint of animals—sits just inside the metal frame of the table with bits of glass sprayed out around it in every direction. The bookshelf is toppled over with books scattered all across the hardwood floor.
If I hadn’t seen this a time or two before, I’d be three blocks away by now and yelling for the neighbors to call the cops … but this is no home invasion. It hasn’t happened in a long time, but my mom has been known to destroy shit when she either couldn’t get any blow or prescription pills, or when she’s had entirely too much. As I creep down the hall, I’m debating which of those scenarios I’d rather deal with.
Just feet from her bedroom door, her rail-thin body bolts from the room, but she stops immediately when she sees me. Her hair is matted and drenched in sweat. Her eyes are wide with dark circles settled beneath them, and the size of her pupils tells me she’s clearly high as a kite.
I can’t move. In this moment, I am terribly afraid and my brain tells me to run as fast as I possibly can, but my legs won’t cooperate. When she first stepped into the hall, she looked confused and full of despair, but now, as she inches toward me, the evil in her eyes sends chills down my back. Her jaw is clenched and she grinds her teeth so hard I can hear it. She lifts a thin finger and jabs it in my direction.
“You!” Her voice is ragged, her breathing heavy, and the veins in her neck are thick and pulsing. At this point, she likely doesn’t even know who I am, though the way she scowls at me right now makes everything seem uncomfortably personal.
“You little fuck…” she growls, taking two more steps toward me, so close I can smell the bourbon on her breath. I back up a few steps, knowing full well when she mixes alcohol with pills or coke, she becomes someone else entirely. Not a human, but an animal, desperate for prey, that wants nothing more than to cause harm. She wants someone else to hurt as much as she does. And unfortunately, that someone is probably going to be me.
“Mom, wha-what’s wrong?” I stammer, reaching for the knob to my bedroom door as I back up. My hand comes in contact with the cool metal and I cling to it, ready to yank myself inside if need be.
“What’s wrong?” She stops moving and stands up straight. The angry, evil look on her face looks almost comical, like she’s remembering a joke she heard a few hours earlier. “What’s wrong?” She laughs as though that same joke was the funniest thing she’d ever heard. “What’s wrong is you … what’s wrong is that I had a perfect marriage until you. What’s wrong is I fucking hate you,” she hisses, and though I’ve heard these words before, this is the first time I actually believe them. “You’re a fucking tumor.”
I fight it with all my might, but a tear makes its way down my cheek. I didn’t want to cry, not in front of her, but since the first once has fallen, it’s as if the floodgates have opened. This is my mother, the woman who is supposed to love me.
The tears fall faster than I can dry them. I dab my shirt against my eyes, hoping that when I pull it away, she will be back in her room. But instead, she’s even closer. My back is flush against the door and she brings her finger to my face, causing me to flinch and draw back. I smack my head against the wall, but that doesn’t stop her. Instead, she slides her pointer from my chin to my eye, collecting some of the tears, and then she pulls her hand back to examine it. She looks down at me and then back at her finger with disgust before wiping it on my shirt as if she could catch something from it.
“Fuck your tears. Do you know how many tears I’ve cried over you stealing my life from me? How many tears I’ve cried because I didn’t listen to your father and get rid of you like he told me to do?” The last part cuts through me like a knife, my heart exposed to the cold, hard world and forever changed because of it.
But I’m not sad anymore, though the tears still pour. No, now I hate her. In fact, right now, I could kill her. I want to erase her from my memory and pretend my mother died a long, long time ago.
Just as I’m about to lose it, she turns and charges back to her room, slamming the door so hard I can hear every picture in her room tumble to the floor. Pushing my door open, I quickly slip inside, shut it behind me and burrow into bed. I bury my face in my hands, and for longer than I’d like to admit, I cry.