Rich Soldier (The Dirty Thirty Pledge 2)

I don’t.

Slipping down onto the balcony again, I go into the house, but this time I don’t go for the mini-fridge. This calls for vodka. I don’t drink often, but tonight, I think that this calls for it.

8

Wallace

I already gave Frankie a heads up that I didn’t want to talk about this near Glenn. He’s so single minded, he wouldn’t understand. He’d only see me trying to get back together as a way to avoid the stupid pledge, and I don’t really feel like dealing with that. I’ll talk to him about this when I’m less freaked out, and I’ve either moved on or come back from this fuck up. Not before. It’s not like Frankie and I can hide from him at his own bar. The owners of a bar can’t walk in without some kind of commotion.

No doubt he’ll ask me about it later.

So when I walk into First Shot, Frankie is sitting in a corner booth and has two beers ready. The good ones. I slide into the seat across from him and knock back a portion of it without even saying hello.

“That bad, huh?”

“You have no idea.”

Frankie laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “Well, you take your time, and you tell me what’s going on.”

We’ve gotten closer since Frankie came back to Green Hills, but there’s still a lot of stuff that I haven’t told him. About my father and about Tia and about the nightmares. So I tell him all of it, and by the time I’m finished, we’re both near the end of our second beer.

Frankie runs a hand through his hair. “Jesus, Wallace.”

“I know.” He sighs, and takes a good long look at me. I make a face. “Any advice?”

He takes a long sip of beer before he answers. “First things first, you need to get yourself some help. No one should be going through what you’re going through alone. You know I’ll do what I can but you need to talk to someone who can help you heal. You can’t be flashing back to the war every day for the rest of your life. Especially—shit man—I had no idea that you’d gone through that.”

Nobody does. Nobody has. Frankie’s the first person I’ve told the real story of the reason I was discharged from the military, a raid gone wrong that was an ambush. Everybody died. Except for me, and it was a stroke of luck that I was found before I bled out. I spent a good six months in the hospital before they sent me home with an honorable discharge, and I came back to a hero’s welcome and a fortune that I’ve never been able to bring myself to spend. Because I don’t deserve it.

Holy shit.

That’s the first time those words have popped up in my mind and it’s like a lightbulb going off because it’s true. That’s how I feel. I lived and everyone else died. Dumb luck. Why do I deserve to have all this money when they’re dead?

I’ve been stubborn about getting help. I know I have, but it’s time. These feelings aren’t going away, and besides, a good night’s sleep sounds amazing. “I’ll try,” I say.

“And the second thing is that Tia is right. You’re a selfish fucker.”

I shake my head to clear it. “What?” I’m getting a little tired of being blindsided by people.

“You’re an idiot.”

“Frankie,” I say, “I didn’t come and pour out all my troubles to you for you to kick me when I’m down, you know?”

He laughs and drains the last of his beer. “I know. But it’s the truth. You walking away from her like that? That was stupid. Taking charge can be a good thing, but when you take charge it’s good to let people know, and check if they’re okay with it. Taking matters into your own hands without talking to anybody else, she’s right, that’s arrogant and selfish. It sounds like you were more worried about yourself than her.”

“I wasn’t—”

“Even if you weren’t,” he cuts me off, “looking back, would you do the same thing?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

“You were young. You didn’t have the experience that you have now. Look, I know that you’re convinced that you did the right thing but you didn’t. It may take a while still for you to see it because you’ve been sitting with it for a long time, but you didn’t do the right thing.”

“Yeah, I’m getting that now,” I say. “But that’s not something I can just fix. It already happened. I thought telling her what I did would be good, but that didn’t work out.”

Frankie smiles. “And this is the part where you’re an idiot.”

“What do you mean?”

He rolls his eyes. “Case in point. Do you really think Tia would be so pissed at you now, what like…twelve years later, if she didn’t want to be with you?”