I had finally come back to my place in the early hours of the morning, even though I hated leaving Harper behind. I had this stupid fear that she was going to wake up in the morning regretting everything that we’d gotten up to the previous night. But I’d forced myself not to worry about that. I could tell that Harper had thought things through before agreeing to date me. She wasn’t rushing into this.
Neither was I.
I was still uncertain about things with Ava. But I knew that Harper wanted to keep some space between her daughter and me for at least a little while anyway, which was fine. I didn’t have to decide how I felt about kids right at the moment.
I didn’t think I could possibly be as cruel to Ava as my father had been to me. I kept thinking back to that sweet little girl sleeping on the picnic blanket. I didn’t even know her, and already my heart swelled with joy just thinking about her.
That morning, I stretched, smiling, and swung my legs out of bed. Stone and I were headed out of the city for a hike. We’d be meeting up with a bunch of other former military people, all part of the support group for those who were coming home.
The truth was, I still didn’t think I needed that support group. On the one hand, it would be nice to have a few more friends. But making friends with a bunch of military guys, even though it meant that we all were guaranteed to have at least one thing in common, seemed sort of counterproductive. Weren’t we supposed to be reintegrating with society? Not much reintegration going on if we were all in our weird little clique.
But beyond that, I just felt like there was no reason why I needed to try so hard to make friends. I had my roommate, and I had Harper, and now I supposed I had George and the other guys at work. My job was going well, I was dating an amazing woman, and really, nothing could be better in my life.
I knew Stone was having a harder time readjusting, though. He’d already quit one job, because he said that he and his manager just weren’t getting along. Now, he was looking for another job, but I could tell he was getting more and more frustrated with the search. He was drinking a little more than he probably should be. I didn’t want to call him on it because that’s not why we were living together, but I did want to help him out if I could.
A hike would be good for me anyway. Get me out of the house for the day. Otherwise, I might just stay in bed all day, jacking off to thoughts of Harper. That idea was certainly tempting. Not that she hadn’t given me a couple good orgasms the night before.
The hike took a couple of hours, and I had to admit, the scenery was beautiful. It was so different from hiking in Kuwait, which was such a stupid thing to think about, but I just couldn’t get over it. There were trees here, and some features to the landscape. The air smelled fresh, not dusty, and although it was warm, it wasn’t oppressively so.
We hiked for a few hours before ending up at a small lake. I was content to hike mostly by myself, listening to other people talk but not really joining in any of the conversations. But when we got to the lake, we took a break, and I decided to strike up a conversation with one of the women in the group, Sadie.
She was a female retiree who had lost a leg. But you’d never have realized it with the way she skipped and hopped along with everyone else, her service dog bounding along beside her.
Now, she gave the dog a few treats where he rested in the sunlight, his tongue lolling out.
“He’s a smart dog, isn’t he?” I commented, smiling down at him.
In response, the dog woofed loudly. I raised an incredulous eyebrow at Sadie, who just laughed. “Don’t look at me, I’m not the one who trained him to do that,” she said. “But yes, he is a smart dog.”
Again, the dog woofed. Sadie smiled fondly at him and gave him another treat. She looked up at me, squinting in the sunlight, and then patted the ground next to her. “Come on, I don’t bite, and Vixen here definitely doesn’t. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“How long have you had him?” I asked curiously, sitting next to her.
“Two years this September,” Sadie said. She leaned in close. “To be honest, I don’t really need a service dog for most things. But the military seemed to think I could use the company, so who was I to say no?”
“Yeah, I think you handled that rock scramble better than any of the rest of us did,” I said, shaking my head in marvel.
Sadie laughed. “Maybe not quite that good, but I try,” she said. “I’ve always been the kind of person to look at an obstacle and try to figure out a way around it.” She shrugged. “Helps that I’m in good shape already. Otherwise losing my leg would really have been a pain, no pun intended.”
I hummed in response, tempted to ask how she’d lost her leg, but that just seemed unnecessarily invasive. I could imagine what might have happened anyway. And I was more interested in Vixen than I was in her leg, to be honest.
“You didn’t train her yourself?” I asked.
“Oh no. I’ve never had the patience for something like that,” Sadie said, shaking her head. “I mean, he did go through some training that was specific to me. Cues that I wanted him to be able to respond to. But for the most part, like I said, he’s more of a companion than anything else.” Her eyes twinkled. “Or if I get myself stuck halfway up a rock scramble like we did before, he’s been trained to bark his head off to attract help.”
“And we’ve used that one more than you’d want to know,” one of the other women said disapprovingly, dropping down on my other side. She jostled me with her elbow. “You here trying to steal my girl?”
I laughed and held up both hands innocently. “No, no, not trying to steal anyone’s girl,” I said. “I’m just interested in Vixen’s training. I’m actually a dog trainer. Used to do some of that for the SEALs. Right now, I’m working with guard dogs. They’re pretty much family pets that are trained to attack the wrong people when prompted. But the guy that I’m working with wants to start a new school that works specifically with the military and police dogs, training them.”
“Sounds interesting,” Sadie said. She shook her head. “Like I said, I don’t have the patience for that kind of thing. But if you’re curious about the kind of training Vixen went through, I can hook you up with the guys who trained her.”
“That’d be awesome,” I said. “I’d love to learn some new tips. Like how to get a dog to
respond that he’s the smartest.”
We chatted for a little while longer until everyone was ready to head back to the cars. Sadie and I swapped numbers so that she could put me in contact with the training school that had worked with Vixen.
It was a surprisingly good day. There were two things that really stuck with me from the day, though. The first was that when Danielle asked if I was trying to steal her girl, my immediate thought was that I wasn’t trying to get with Sadie because I already had a girl. Already, I was thinking of Harper, automatically, as my girlfriend. And I liked that feeling.