“Can’t. She’s working,” I said. But she hadn’t been working two hours ago, or the many other times I had spotted her during the past week. The truth was that I was a coward. Facing Grace Sullivan after nearly two years of no contact was more terrifying than the first time I was on patrol in Afghanistan. At this point, I’d rather face down ten angry insurgents than one 5’ 6” girl I could probably pick up and toss with one hand.

But back then, I had been through ninety days of basic training and was surrounded by my buddies, all of us armed to the teeth while we were deployed. Here my only weapons were my lackluster verbal skills and the knowledge that she had written to me, once a month, for four years.

I justified the two weeks since classes started by telling myself I first had to do some recon. No mission is undertaken without good intelligence.

I had to find exactly the best time to not exactly ambush Grace, but at least find the right way to let her know I had landed back in her life.

I found out she had all early classes and was done by noon every day. I learned she lived in a swanky house two blocks away from campus. Bo had chatted up some chick down at the library desk and learned that Grace did her required weekly hours of service on Thursday nights and Sunday afternoons. The one thing I hadn’t managed to obtain was her cell phone number, so I resorted to stalking her around campus.

“If I told the guys that the idea of meeting Grace has turned you into a quivering pussy, they wouldn’t believe me,” Bo mocked smugly, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms behind his head.

“Half those guys would give their left nut to be me right now,” I shot back.

After a few months of regular care packages, Grace had become our unofficial mascot. When the boxes from Grace arrived, the unit hovered around me like vultures and would randomly grab stuff out of the box. They weren’t jackasses enough to take the letter, though. Everyone knew that was hands-off. But I had made the mistake of showing Bo her prom picture, and then everyone wanted to see “their Grace.” My CO even made me pin the picture up, as if she were some kind of community property.

I suspected more guys jacked off to that picture of Grace than to the chick on the cover of Juggs. I guess I was doing my part to benefit unit cohesion, but fuck me, the next picture she sent I kept for myself.

About two years into my service, all the young, single guys and some of the attached ones had begun to view Grace as something of a myth. She was faithful and generous and, after the inclusion of her prom picture, we knew she was, hot, too. She was curvier than the average coed, but I liked that. In her prom dress, she looked like a ‘50s pinup model, with her dark hair curled and a flower pinned near her forehead. While it could have been the padding of her dress, I suspected that she was stacked.

You couldn’t tell the color of her eyes from the picture. She said they were hazel, a mix of yellow and brown that changed depending on what she wore. I may have fantasized a few times about what color they would be when I went down on her or when she was stroking me off.

I looked back over at Bo, still leaning casually back in his chair. “After she’s done working,” I told him, not sure if I was trying to convince him or myself. I’d wait until she was off work and then walk her home. Sit on the swing that hung on the big wraparound porch of the house she lived in, and try to explain my complete silence for the past two years. Automatically, I wondered what color Grace’s eyes were when she was angry.

I hadn’t ever been good at explaining myself, and I knew this time wasn’t going to be any better. I was, however, good at doing. Only this time, when I went to the circulation desk to actually do something, Grace was gone.

Chapter Two

Dear Grace,

Thanks for the care package. It was awesome and really, really big. I appreciate you not sending me the extra bottles of nail polish that you and Lana received from your Uncle Louis. I’m not a big fan of nail polish myself, but you can make a pretty good incendiary device with it. Don’t paint your nails near a fire, or maybe even a candle.

Today was hot—like yesterday and the day before. I don’t remember what 60 degrees feels like. It’s either brutally hot (day) or freezing cold (night). I can handle the hot. I’m from Texas after all. It’s the huge swings in temperature that are hard to get used to.

We’ve been going on a number of walkabouts that are essentially a bunch of guys going from hut to hut in a small village looking for insurgents or handing out aid. I always think that it’s ridiculous to be handing out paper and pens and candy while we are carrying assault rifles, but everyone here treats it like it’s normal.

Yours,

Pfc. Noah Jackson

P.S. You can just call me Noah.

Grace

Lana and I lived in this amazing apartment just two blocks off campus. One thing about going to a pricey and old private college was that the surrounding apartments weren’t run-down shitholes owned by slumlords. We lived on the top floor of a renovated Victorian.

It had high ceilings and oversized doors. The lights were reproductions of late 19th Century Victorian decorations, made out of iron and frosted orbs of glass, according to the apartment rental sheet. It was altogether too beautiful to be housing college students, but I guess when the annual tuition at Central was more than the price of a luxury car, the landlords expected a higher caliber tenant. Those were silly expectations. We were college students.

When I came home from the library, I forgot all those things and treated the apartment door like it was the entrance of a flophouse, throwing the heavy wood structure open with a bang, not caring that the newly plastered walls might be dented by the antiqued brass doorknob.

“Lana!” I called as I burst through the doorway, placing my padded backpack holding my camera and laptop on the floor. She shot up from the sofa as if electrocuted and a caramel-brown head of hair immediately followed. I groaned inwardly when I saw it was Lana’s boyfriend.

“Hey, what is it?” she asked, smoothing her hair out of her face. I waved my hand in front of my chest to indicate that her shirt was unbuttoned and her camisole askew, and then averted my eyes while the two proceeded to right themselves. Too bad I couldn’t cover my ears to avoid the sounds of zippers and snaps. It’s not like I’m a prude, but I just didn’t like Peter. He didn’t treat Lana right, and I didn’t like knowing they exchanged body fluids. She deserved better.

Thankfully, interrupting their intimate moment managed to stop the cycling of crazy thoughts in my head. I felt almost foolish over the panic I had gotten into at the library. Looking down at my hands, I saw they were still trembling. I pressed my palms together as rational thoughts began filtering through my thick head.

I went to the kitchen to grab a water bottle. I busied myself and tried to block out the kissing noises from the entryway that indicated an extended goodbye.

“Even God rested on the seventh day,” I told Lana after she closed the door.

She grinned unrepentantly at me and then laughed outright when I screwed my face into a fake offended expression.

“Sorry, I figured you’d go out with the library crew tonight,” Lana said. My library crew consisted of my student supervisor Mike and two others. Ordinarily, I’d meet up with them to have a post-work drink and complain about all the dickheads who needed help in the library. I think a whole set of other library students drank on another night. I had no fake ID yet so I was limited to early hours at a diner that also just happened to serve liquor. “Or be hanging around to find out if the brown haired muscled guy is your fabled Noah.” Obviously Lana had noticed my reaction to the guys in the library.

“It’s crazy, right?” I needed her reassurance. “I’m just imagining things.”

She nodded slowly. “I would think so. What makes you think it was him?”

I dragged myself over to the living room and sank into a side chair.

“At first I convinced myself that it was just another pair of guys who looked like Noah and his buddy Bo. But later, Mike told me there were two junior college transfers from California who were fighters. Noah once wrote that he was interested in fighting after getting out.”

“So you added up two guys, one blond, one dark, plus fighters from California, and got your Marine from high school?”

The skepticism in Lana’s voice was exactly what I needed, and I mentally leaned into it, relaxing for the first time since I had spotted those two guys in the library.

“I know, honestly. Only I could come up with such a thing,” I tried to make it sound like a joke, but I knew my tone was wrong. More hopeful than mocking.

“Oh Grace,” Lana sat down on the edge of the chair and put her arm around me. “Don’t you worry that you aren’t open to new things here?”

Was that what I was doing? Were my hopeful imaginings just a way to keep myself from getting close to others? Even if I could wish Noah into existence here at Central, I couldn’t make him love me. And if he had loved me, he would be here. Or I would be with him. I rubbed my forehead. I couldn’t even stand to think about all that now. Time to change the subject. “Have you talked with Amy about the picture?”

Lana played along, sparing me any more potential humiliation. “Yeah, we want you to do one of those miniature pictures.”

“The tilt shift?”

Lana nodded. “That the kind that makes everyone look like little plastic figures or models?”

I took out a pencil and paper and sketched out the front of the Alpha Phi house. “What do you want me to focus on? Are you going to stand outside and hold hands and sing?” I asked.

“Not sure.” Lana was an apathetic sorority sister. “I’m going to be the photographer’s assistant and make sure the Delt’s house doesn’t swallow you whole.”

“I thought you wanted me to be swallowed by a Delt,” I teased.

“I think I said last year that a cure for one man was another. It was in an attempt to get you over the Noah phase.”

“Thanks, Dr. Lana.”

“I’m just a psychologist-in-training. I promise to give you free therapy sessions if I mess you up too bad during college.”

“I’m holding you to that,” I said. “Guess I lucked out when we Sullivans came to live with you guys.”

“I think it was kismet,” Lana replied, smiling at me, probably relieved I hadn’t started crying again.

“Kismet doesn’t sound very science-y.”

“Still in training, Grace. Still in training.”

Noah

Bo’s left cross glanced across my chin and I stumbled back against the ropes.

“Fuck me,” he swore. “What’s wrong with you this morning?”

As if he had to ask. My trainer, Paulie, jumped into the ring and bustled over to me.

“I only get you for two hours in the morning and this is the effort you’re giving. Fuckin’ ingrate,” Paulie muttered, pulling off my gloves and protective facemask.

Getting hit in the face is probably my least favorite part of mixed martial arts. I could take a body blow or three, but the other guys at the gym joked about my glass jaw. Paulie has tried to beat that out of me. On a regular basis, he and a few other guys punch me in the face while I wear a protective mask. The goal is to make me so accustomed to getting a fist to the face that I become like a comic villain, always getting up again even after the good guys thought they’d killed me.

Taking a blow to the head or the ribs is one thing. What separates the winners from the wannabes is the ability to think. If you’re hit with the left cross that usually means the right side of the fighter’s upper body is open. Only the most disciplined of fighters always keep their right side protected, and Bo isn’t a disciplined fighter. He’s fast and he has hammers for fists, but he’s lazy, which is why he’s only my sparring partner and not competing professionally. This morning, though, my reflexes were coated with tar. Gym chum could take me down this morning.

Bo sensed this and apparently Paulie did as well. “Get over there and do chest crawls. Twenty five times,” Paulie instructed. Holding the upper rope up and pushing the lower rope down, he gestured for me to get going. Bo helped by shoving me in the back.

Military crawls? I could do those in my sleep. I tried not to look grateful at being released from sparring. Pulling my body across the gym mats, one forearm and knee at a time, required no thought at all. By the tenth one, my mind was completely blank of everything but the abrasiveness of the rubber weave of the mats cutting into my arms and legs. By number fifteen, I wasn’t feeling anything but a burning sensation in my abdomen. Pain is weakness leaving the body, I repeated in a loop. By twenty-five, I felt like liquefied rubber.

My effort didn’t quite meet Paulie’s standards. When I stood up, he looked at me grim-faced. “Took you two minutes longer today. You’re a worthless schmuck. Go run and get the fuck out of here. When you come back tomorrow, your mind better be in the game. We have a fucking meet in four weeks. Do you want to get on the card or not?”