I was in bad shape for a long time. The VA thought I’d put a bullet in my brain before a year was out. I did every kind of therapy they had. I even wove a damn basket once because it was supposed to help. Don’t tell my brother about that basket. Nothing worked after a certain point. They had to let me out. Told me to find a shrink and eat right and get a job.
Seemed like being outdoors was the only way to clear my head, and I’m not shy of heights so I worked a lot of construction. I got fired from the first gig for being too fearless. They were afraid their insurance wouldn’t bond me if I took risks like that. Because I didn’t care if I fell.
The thing was, I didn’t put a bullet in my brain. I didn’t crawl in a bottle and never come out. Those things—they both sounded better than what I had, I won’t lie—but it would have been a dishonor to my squad, my men. I was still a coward, would’ve welcomed a fall that broke my neck at work. Maybe I wouldn’t choose death, but I damn sure flirted with it. I was a daredevil before, and when I got back from the Middle East, I figured I didn’t have much to lose. Mom and Jer would have done fine without me. In a way it’s easier to have a noble, dead soldier in the family than a wounded one that comes home with a shitload of problems. Both of them tried to get me to live with them, but I needed breathing spaced, needed not to see the worry in my mother’s face all the time.
I only moved out here to shut my brother up. I wanted to see him, sure, but I didn’t look forward to living under his eyes. My bare space, my tasteless food, my punishing workouts—he’d see it all. The way I scrape by and call it living. He did try to help. Tried a hundred different ways. But all I did was push him away. I couldn’t stand his pity.
I met you. You didn’t pity me. You didn’t even like me, just maybe the way I looked. You didn’t treat me like I was broken, like maybe I used to be something before the IED, like I was just what’s left over. The parts of me that survived the explosion still haven’t come back together to make anything whole. They hadn’t when I met you, but maybe they’ve started to. I went to that group to have an excuse to see your face. You could’ve been teaching a class on how to paint teacups and I would’ve gone, so don’t think you were what stood between me and therapy. I know where to find a doctor if I want one. I didn’t go because I wanted to explore my secret pain or some shit like that. I wanted to look at you, make you talk to me, seduce you as fast as I could.
Something else happened. I saw how you talked to them, to us. The broken ones. You didn’t act like you felt sorry for us, but like you had some tools to show us. I liked that. I liked how you licked your lips before you said my name, every time. Like you wanted to taste it. When the other people were talking, you’d look at them so serious and the whole time I was picturing what it would be like to slide my hands in your overalls and touch your breasts. You were trying to heal people. I was there to defile you, and I make no excuses.
And I think you know where you belong, you just won’t admit it. So I’m saying it for you, proudly, as a man who fantasized about fucking you over a folding chair in a room full of trauma survivors—just in case you’re thinking that I wanted to stay in that group and get help. You belong with me. Every word you’ve ever said to me from when you told me your name and that you were Maggie’s friend right up until you said it was wrong and you knew it—it’s all burned into my skin. I can feel it. I can feel you.
You said you knew this was wrong. I know just as surely that it isn’t wrong. Because I can feel it. Nothing in my life has grounded me to the moment like this. I’ve spent years trying to escape the present and the past and live in some frantic gray nothing and maybe find some peace. I found that peace inside you. You can joke all you want about sexual healing. I know you will. When I told you—when you laid on top of me and I told you that it felt like an honor that you knew me and what I’d done and what I was and you took me inside you without hesitation, that was profound for me. It was more than chemistry or anything simple. It was a blood oath, my hands making you a promise, writing it on your skin. I only want to be with you. I don’t care if it’s wrong, or if it’s forbidden.
I am not a boy who wants to rebel against rules or conventions. I am a man who cares more for you than for anything the world could say about it.
I could not name a single thing in this world that I fear. The nearest thing there is for me is silence from you. The idea that you don’t think I’m worth answering. So I am not quite as courageous as I claimed. No man’s measure of me matters a damn. No one’s except yours.
Answer me, and in good faith, I’ll take that answer as final. I would hate to leave off, to give you up. You told me tonight that you didn’t want me to stop. I practically ripped that from you, like I’d had to torture you to get at the truth. There’s something you’re holding closer than me, some reason you don’t trust yourself. I would give a lot to know what that is. Or to kick the shit out of whoever told you that you weren’t worth tenderness or a call back.
There is, for me, a choice to make. I can take Jer’s offer of a job and settle in here as general manager of the vineyard operation. Or I can take off, go somewhere new. It’s a good living, and outdoors. I’d take the job in a minute if it weren’t for you. I won’t stay in this town and look for you every minute of the day, only to see you by accident and have you turn from me.
I never thought of myself as a gentleman before the day I took you running—if that’s what we’re calling that sad, slow jog you did. But if I hadn’t been a gentleman, if I hadn’t felt a sense of your dignity and what you deserve, I would’ve backed you up to that tree and had you in the open air. You would have let me. Just like you half wanted me to put you in my truck the day you came to the vineyard to tell me to stay away. But I knew then and I know now, you are worth more than a quick hook up in the seat of my truck or up against a maple tree. I know it was a maple, because when you laid down on the ground, a green, pointed leaf was beside your face. And I couldn’t get enough of looking at your face. Flushed and sweaty and so pissed off at me. Any way you look is perfect, as long as you’re looking at me. So give me credit at least for not being the caveman you seem to think I am. There are a dozen times I wanted to take you in some public place, some time when you were talking and I could’ve stopped you mid-sentence or when you were helping Ben in that group and I wanted to clear the room and have you then and there.
I have more self-control than you would imagine. So when I couldn’t help kissing you and holding you tonight, when my hands mapped your body like I hadn’t touched you in ten years and it was all I’d been dreaming of, know how strong that need must be to overcome my will.
Words failed me tonight. I needed to ask you one thing. In spite of your reasons and your idea of what people would think, in spite of the fact I’m still fucked up from Afghanistan and probably always will be, in spite of the fact that you think wanting me is a weakness, you have to look at things the way they are between us and decide. Do you want me enough to hazard this?
I told you once. Maybe I’m the right one. Maybe that’s what I want.
Ty