The Worst Best Friend: A Small Town Romance

Not this time.

I should be glad she’s returning to the Smithsonian and D.C. soon.

I also hope it’s ahead of schedule, before I fall deeper into this habit of having my morning coffee and conversation with company who can only grunt his complaints.

This is what you wanted, asshole, I tell myself for the thousandth time.

I’m still waiting for it to come true, like maybe if I just repeat it often enough, it will.

Even when I enlisted as a bright-eyed kid myself, she tipped the scales for that decision. I wanted her expanding her horizons before settling down with anyone or anything else—including me. Especially me.

Hell, my parents got married right out of high school. Though they stuck it out through a dozen major stressors, always short on money and too busy with their careers, it wasn’t pleasant.

Not at fucking all.

Shel deserved more than a messy fling and a small-town shotgun marriage riddled with too much drama and too little cash. That’s also partly why I made her promise to leave town.

The last day we had before I left, riding my motorcycle, snacking on shakes and burgers, talking about all sorts of things, made me question if I’d done the right thing.

I had. No question.

Too bad I couldn’t just forget her. Not when the memories of that final day together carried me through some of the darkest days of my life.

My head throbs as I’m heading off to the shed I use as a makeshift workshop.

For a hot second, my vision spins, and I’m back there again.

* * *

Five Years Ago

Facedown in the dirt, trying not to suffocate.

Gore trickling down my neck. Human blood. The remains of Kenny, a good man who laughed so hard he said his stomach ached last night when he showed me the pics from his seven-year-old son’s baseball game.

He died barely thirty seconds ago, catching the brunt of that last mortar blast that turned the dilapidated wall of this old house into stabbing splinters.

His body shielded me from the shrapnel that chewed him apart, all by random chance, a decision by God or the universe I’ll question a million times over in the years to come.

Kenny saved me, but for how fucking long?

His sacrifice should mean something, unwitting or not.

Because those psycho shits are still firing away, their crude shells falling down around us, the crack of their rifles pinning down our right flank with suppression fire.

Another deafening blast vibrates through me.

Another scream—I think it must be Vicki this time.

She screams and screams and screams, and then she doesn’t and it’s quiet.

Eerily, deathly quiet.

Where the fucking fuck is that air support? Are they going to kill our entire unit before the drone gets up their asses?

I pulled the radio from our sergeant’s severed hand, confirming coordinates for the third time. Then I crawl toward Vicki, desperate to find her, to see if there’s the tiniest chance I can still do something, goddammit.

Air power should already be on top of us, blowing the insurgents to vapor, but we’ve suffered so many casualties and it’s already too late to—