“So you do something else, then,” This time, when he threw me the ball, the velocity increased, and I missed it. The ball went sailing over the brick half-wall and into the common area below. We both rushed over to see where it had landed.

Noah was holding it and looking up.

“Nice catch,” I said weakly. Mike and I both pushed off and went back to our chairs.

“At least we didn’t break anything,” Mike said, rooting around in his bag.

“What are you looking for?”

“Something else to throw.” He brought out a power bar. “How about this?”

“Mike, seriously. A power bar?” I shook my head.

“What?” He looked at it and then shrugged and ripped it open. “Want a bite?”

Why not? He held the bar out, and I took a small bite. “My God,” I said, spitting the pieces into my hand. “That’s like cardboard chopped up and glued together with raisins!”

He took a bite and said, “Mmm, delicious.”

“I’m going to read now, you fool.” I pushed his chair with my foot and he rolled about five feet away, chewing on his cardboard bar.

Finally determined to focus on my book, I heard someone clearing his throat and looked up to see Noah standing there, a grim look on his face.

Noah

Had I completely misjudged the two of them? I thought that Grace had less-than-zero interest in this guy, but here they were playing games and eating food together.

“Hey Noah,” Grace looked a little flushed. Was she turned on by this guy? Embarrassed I had seen her eating his power bar? I couldn’t read her face.

“Hey,” My greeting came out shorter and curter than I wanted. She looked down at my hands fisted on the counter. I forcibly made myself relax and spread my fingers out. See, I tried to convey, I’m harmless.

“Um, something wrong?”

Yeah, I thought. You’re eating food from some other guy’s hand. Some guy you said you were interested in. But Grace had pushed the friend thing pretty hard yesterday. I didn’t want to crash and burn in front of this guy in case there was anything remotely going on between the two of them. Never appear weak in front of the enemy.

“Do you have a minute?” I wanted to talk to her alone. Separate and isolate the target. She looked over at Mike, who waved her away.

“I can handle this,” Mike said.

Grace grabbed her cell phone and walked down the long counter to the exit. I followed her. “Where to?” I asked.

She walked toward the stairs and up to the first landing. There was a door there, but I had never opened it. I always assumed it would be locked, but Grace opened the door without a key and stepped inside. I followed.

“What is this place?” There were ordinary light bulbs instead of the hard fluorescents that lit the main library, and row upon row of metal shelves, some empty and some full. The place smelled old and looked abandoned.

“It’s the stacks. Old books out of circulation are put in here,” Grace said softly.

She walked down a small pathway until I saw a metal desk set into a nook. There were two lamps and two rolling chairs. The chairs looked like the ones in the study carrels. I raised a questioning brow toward her.

“The library crew sometimes studies in here during finals or midterms. It’s super quiet, and no one else ever comes in here.”

Studying is likely the last thing I would do in a place like this. For college kids, this is an ideal place to have semi-public sex. I wondered how many people had done the deed in here and if Grace was one of them. I corralled my thoughts before I got too worked up. Imagining Grace having sex on these chairs or the desk with someone other than me would be unproductive. I liked to envision her as untouched, although that was highly unlikely. She was too pretty, too smart, too interesting to have not dated or at least had a few hookups. Either that or all the guys at Central were blind and dumb. I’d like the latter to be true, but I wasn’t placing any money on it.

Grace sat down and motioned for me to sit across from her.

“We’re having a party this weekend. I want you to come,” I told her without preamble.

“I can’t. Josh has a home game, and he arranged for me to come take some pictures.” Her response came quickly, as if turning me down didn’t require much thought.

My plans for the party instantly changed. The guys could host it without me. It’s not like they included me in the planning stage anyway. Maybe I should’ve waited for an invitation, but you make your own opportunities.

“Can I give you a ride? I wouldn’t mind seeing State play.”

She nibbled on her lip. This time I did wait for a response. I needed assent here. I couldn’t really just show up at her apartment and throw her into the cab of my truck. Or could I? Even for me, that might be a touch too controlling.

I tried to look as non-threatening as possible while inwardly urging her to cave. Having her to myself in a vehicle for several hours, schmoozing her brother, and staying overnight with her someplace was better than bringing her to a loud, out-of-control party. I’d even honestly answer the“ Have you killed anyone?” question that every civilian asks a returned soldier instead of my usual smart-ass response of“ not tonight, but it’s still early.”

“No,” she said finally. “I’ve got a ride.” She didn’t look at me. Her eyes were aimed at my hands, which were clenched together between my legs. Clenched together so I wouldn’t drag her onto my lap and force her to acknowledge that what had built between us for four years just needed some physical manifestation to make it all real and permanent.

“Who?” I asked, as if I had the right to know. If it was Mike, I was going to go out there and make it physically impossible for him to walk for three days, let alone drive a couple hundred miles.

“Don’t know. Friends of someone who knows Josh, I guess. He arranged it.”

I couldn’t believe this. She was going off with some strangers in their car? “How do you know that they aren’t going to try and make a skinsuit out of you?”

“Um, because they are Central students.” She looked at me as if I was insane. Maybe I was. Being near Grace and not having her was turning me inside out. “I’m pretty sure Josh wouldn’t send me off with a couple of ‘Natural Born Killers,’ but I promise that if one of them looks even remotely like Woody Harrelson, I won’t get in the car with them on Saturday.”

She patted my leg like I was five. I wasn’t going to be able to see her until she got back from the game on Sunday, then. Thursday night I was scheduled to meet with some scouts from a fight management team who were going to watch me spar a guy from a neighboring gym on Friday. There was a lot of potential money riding on the outcome of this week, and I couldn’t afford a Grace-like distraction in the gym.

“I should get back,” Grace said and stood up. I followed her out of the stacks. I cast around for some excuse to see her before she left.

“Hey, do you mind if I use your shower in the morning? I want to run on campus before classes.”

Grace turned to me with a skeptical look on her face. “Why not just use the locker room?”

“Grace, do you shower in the locker room at the Phys Ed Center?”

She made a face and conceded my point. “Sure, I guess. That’s what friends are for, right?”

“Right. When are you done?” As soon as we’re done here, I’d go and find the dictionaries and start defacing the word“ friend.” I hated it and worse, I was the first to use it. I felt like I was getting slapped in the face with that stupid, shit-ass letter I wrote two years ago. Did I just come out and admit what a fuck-up I was? The whole point of waiting to come and see Grace was to present a non fucked up version of myself.

“I close.” Her face was down. I couldn’t see what she was feeling. I wished I was better at reading people or really just at reading Grace. Instead, I nutted up and said, “Cool. I’m going upstairs to study, and then I’ll come down at closing and walk you home.” We were almost back to the reference desk by then.

“No need, man,” Mike called. “I’m closing, too, so I can walk Grace home.” Like hell you will.

“I need to walk Grace home,” I said slowly. “To drop off the clothes I’m going to be storing in her closet.” Mike’s mouth opened as if to say something, then it closed. Yeah, what could he say to that? Grace turned to me, beet red, her mouth slightly open as if she was shocked. Did she really care if this guy thought we were sleeping together? I didn’t. I wanted him to spread the word far and wide so that no one else would think it was okay to hit on her.

Grace turned toward Mike. “Oh, Noah just keeps clothes in my closet so he doesn’t have to drag around the extra change of clothing he needs after he’s done showering.” I hid a smile. That was a poor-ass explanation if she was trying to make it seem like we were just friends.

“So,” I said, turning back to Grace and dismissing Mike. “I’ll come down when the library closes. If you have a break, I’ll be in the same place where we studied before.”

Grace just nodded, and I reluctantly left her. I heard Mike say, “I thought you were just friends.”

Her response was, “It’s a long story.” One she hadn’t shared with Mike.

When I came down after the warning bell sounded, Mike was gone, and Grace was alone. On the walk toward her apartment, I asked, “Is that guy hassling you?”

“Mike?” she asked, looking confused. “No, not at all.”

I was unconvinced. “He seems like a punk.”

“A what?!” she laughed.

“Am I going to have to take him out back and teach him some respect?” It was more of a literal question than a hypothetical one.

“Mike’s a good guy. There are a lot of girls who work there, and I think he just feels responsible, like a dad.”

“Or a lecher.” Dad, my ass. Mike probably stroked one off every night he worked with Grace. That’s what I’d do. After nearly an hour of unproductive studying, I had decided that I was going to play it straight with Grace. No more of this friend shit. I was going to mark my place in her life, and she’d come around.

She smiled. “Lecher? That’s very 1800s of you, Mr. Jackson.” My new tactic seemed to be paying off. Grace was flirting with me. I returned her smile with one of my own.

“Punk didn’t seem to break through for you so I’m trying different descriptive terms until I find one that sticks.”

“I like ‘lecher,’” she said, holding her hands behind her back. “It’s got a certain resonance. Do you really have clothes to drop off?”

“Nah,” I said. “I’ll bring those in the morning. I just wanted to make sure Mike got my message.”

“What message was that?” she asked with what sounded like a little giddiness in her voice. She might protest that we were just friends, but I was starting to think she liked my show of possessiveness. I’d try to keep to only small doses until I built up her tolerance for me.

“That if you need company on your way home, it’ll be me,” I said firmly. It wasn’t exactly like I was peeing on her leg, but kind of. While she was going off this weekend without me, I felt like we were turning a corner to someplace better. Hopefully a place that had a bed and lots of nudity.

Chapter Nine

Dear Grace,

I think what you feel on my letters is dust. I’m bummed that it is on my letters to you. They say it’s sand, but it’s finer than that. It’s like the particles that make up the sand, and it is everywhere. When you get home on leave and wash for the first time, you have to stand under the water for at least twenty minutes, all the while watching the black dust collect and pool at your feet, creating coffee-colored water that swirls down the drain.

I don’t think you can ever fully erase the dust from your belongings. It sticks with you no matter how long you let the water wash over you or how many times you wipe it away. Like the tension I have in being weaponless and exposed back home, the dust is one of the many things I’ll carry with me when I’m out.

I’m sorry that it is invading your space now through my letters. It’s like I’m spreading a contaminant. Am I Patient Zero, or are you?

I probably shouldn’t have volunteered for a third tour, but combat pay is hard to turn down. After three years here, though, I feel like I am a loosely contained conglomerate of those particles of dust.

Yours,

Noah

Grace

I got a text that my ride would arrive in fifteen minutes. I rushed around and threw together a change of clothing and toiletries, which I stuffed into a backpack that wasn’t full of my camera equipment. I then pulled on a pair of jeans, flats, and my State T-shirt. Over that, I wore a State replica jersey that had my brother’s name and number ironed on the back. I wrote a quick note for Lana: