Chapter 11Stiles
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
STILES
“He wasn’t trying to block you,” I insist for the fourteenth time.
Mac raises his voice. “He pulled out in front of me and then slowed to a crawl. He practically stalled out!”
“The guy’s like seventy, Mac. Cut him some slack.”
McCormick scoffed. “When we’re seventy, if we ride twenty miles an hour, just burn our fucking bikes.”
Jesus. He’s in a mood only chicken wings can undo. “Wanna head to the Tavern after this?”
“Yeah,” he grins, mood forgotten.
We take our usual seats around the circle and the other Bitches begin to file in.
“Jesus Christ, you still haven’t shaved your head?” Jax asks.
“What’s wrong with my hair?“ Mac turns to me, expecting me to give him a straight answer. Is he for fucking real?
One-by-one, the Bitches fill up the empty chairs and pull out their knitting projects. Brandt is still making a village of green butt-plug shaped Christmas trees. West and Jax are working on hats. Rhett sucks at knitting. He sticks to origami mostly. And Pharo, he’s too cool for knitting, apparently, cause I’ve never seen him attempt it.
Riggs kicks off the meeting. “It’s been a tough week for some of us. I expect to hear all about it.” He shoots Mandy a pointed look. “I’ll just say I’m grateful for friends this week who feel like family. And another day alive. That’s my short list for today. Brandt?”
Brandt blows out a long breath. “My mother called,” he starts. A collective groan rises from the group. “Yeah. That about sums it up. According to her infinite wisdom, I’ve officially reached and passed the mark of our relationship being ‘just a phase’.”” He looks at West apologetically.
West snorts. “I hope she’s not holding her breath.”
Brandt chuffs. “She thinks you’re putting pressure on me to stay and I’m only with you on account of our long-standing friendship. She suggested I move out and put some distance between us for clarity.”
“I’d like to clarify something for her,” West smirks. “Her baby boy loves to suck my cock and she can get fucked if she thinks you’re moving out.”
Brandt reaches for his hand. “I’m not going anywhere, Professor. I promised you a life sentence.”
Shit, I love that. A life sentence. A lot like me and Mac. Ride or Die. Together until the bitter end. I’m dying to reach for his hand the same way Brandt did with West. To remind him I promised him a life sentence as well, even after the twist on our relationship. Especially after the twist. We’re twisted together and tangled up in each other in the best ways, and I never want to cut the knot loose. Ever.
West, with his prosthetic leg and tatts, reminds me a lot of Mac, except they’re nothing alike. West took losing his leg and his team hard. Still does. He struggles daily with survivor’s guilt, PTS, and depression, but I’ve never seen a stronger fighter.
West continues. “I was always an ally, but I never understood the struggle with acceptance until I started sleeping with my best friend. The irony is, even though my Grandma is gone, she’d have accepted me without batting an eye. She loved Brandt. The struggle is getting everyone else to understand. I’m not used to the looks we get when we go out. Maybe they’re staring at my leg or Brandt’s scars. Who knows? Who cares? I fucking hate it. Makes me worry they can see inside my head. Maybe that’s irrational, but nothing about my head is rational.”
Seated next to West is Rhett. Sheets of brightly colored paper lie in his lap, and he’s folding them into a menagerie of zoo animals. Riggs told me he donates them to the daycare center here at BALLS. Doesn’t surprise me knowing the enormous and generous heart Rhett has.
“I’ve been busting my ass in the gym,” Rhett brags, “getting stronger and faster. I beat my time from the Warrior’s Walk by a full minute, but Riggs won’t give me a do-over. I saw my buddies from Bragg after Veteran’s Day. I needed that, to see them and feel like I’m still a part of that world.”
I know that feeling. We all do. Walking a fine line between two worlds with a foot in both—enlisted and retired.
Beside him, Nash is carefully casting on stitches, concentrating with the precision of someone who has disarmed bombs—but can’t for the life of him figure out how to bathe his kitten without looking like he survived war.
“I’m working on my eleventh step and I’m struggling,” Nash admits with brutal honesty.
Nash is a survivor. His strength and perseverance blows me away. After surviving captivity for twenty-two days and losing his best friend to a gory death, the memories haunted him and he numbed the physical and emotional pain with pills and alcohol. We almost lost him to his fight, but Brewer showed him the light and taught him how to balance the darkness within. He regularly attends Narcotics Anonymous meetings with the other guys from Serenity House, the halfway house for LGBTQ vets run by Brewer.
Nash goes on. “It comes back to God again and identifying a higher power. For me, that’s not God, it’s G, my best bud. He may be gone, but he’s not forgotten, and I just know he’s watching over me, keeping my ass alive and well.”
“One hundred percent,” Mac agrees. He lost his buddy as well. Haven’t we all?
“Anyway,” Nash continues, “Brewer says it can be whatever works for me, but not to let my anger and resentment cloud my thinking. Am I letting the chip on my shoulder keep me from turning to Him instead of the ghost of my best friend? Does it even make a difference? I don’t fucking know. I’m working on it, though, and searching for answers.”
“Glad to hear it,” Riggs adds. “Mandy?”
Mandy stares down at his lap and mumbles, “You all know I had a Code Black the other day. Veteran’s Day is always hard for me.” He’s quiet again for a minute, fingers tangled in his yarn. “This yarn is mocking me. It's mocking me. I feel like I’m trying to untangle a C4 fuse, except there’s no explosion at the end. Just… more yarn. ”
The burns that cover Mandy’s face and skin show a small glimpse into his past and the pain he’s endured. He stops fighting to untangle his knotted ball of yarn, and he gets lost in his head, in the memories that haunt him.
Mandy continues. “This yarn's a lot like life, right? You think you’ve got it all straight, and then—bam—a knot. But you untangle it, one loop at a time.” He pauses and takes a deep, slow breath before blowing it out. A man whose sole purpose in life was to make things explode, now staring at a ball of yarn like it’s a live grenade. His hands—normally used to diffusing and minimizing damage—are awkwardly fumbling with needles like he’s never held one before... “I don’t know what I’m doing, but I will destroy this yarn if it’s the last thing I do,” he growls.
Rhett covers Mandy’s hand with his own and gives him a small smile. “Just talk it out, Mandy. We’re listening.”
“I’m sorry.” Mandy pinches the bridge of his nose, like he’s searching for patience or courage, or whatever he needs to get through this. “I meant, I’ll fix this yarn. I’m done destroying things. It solves nothing and only destroys the destroyer. I don’t want to celebrate Veteran’s Day or Memorial Day. That’s every day for me. All I needed was a little peace and quiet, but what I got instead was a small, sassy Texan and a bunch of Bitches. And you know what? I couldn’t be more grateful.” Mandy squeezes Rhett’s hand and my heart clinches tight. While my buddy was suffering his demons, I was lip-locked with my best friend. “I’m okay now. You don’t have to worry about me.”
“Bullshit,” I cough. “We always worry. That’s what Bitches do.”
Mac nods in agreement and lays his knitting on his lap. “I’m learning that not all… all… hot dogs… fit in traditional buns. Sometimes you can wrap your dog in a slice of bread, or a tortilla. Pita bread works good, too. I guess you can use lettuce if you’re trying to cut carbs, but I don’t recommend it.”
Christ, here we go. He’s gonna spill the proverbial baked beans. West looks at Mac like he’s lost his mind and blurts, “The fuck are you talking about? Stiles, come get your boy, he’s gone around the bend again.”
Laughing, I explain, “I think what he’s trying to say is that people come in all shapes and sizes, and people change. What you’re used to isn’t always what you get. Is that right, Mac?”
“Right,” Mac confirms. “I’m saying I want to toss my old stale buns and try Pita bread. It’s like a warm pocket with a nice tight fit that hugs your meat.”
West shakes his head. “What the fuck ever, man. Try any kind of bread you want. Whatever makes you happy.”
Brandt’s brow furrows. “Are we still talking about bread?”
For the rest of the hour, the scars of war are replaced by the therapeutic rhythm of needles clicking together.
As the group continues knitting, swapping war stories that have nothing to do with guns and bloodshed and everything to do with emotional scars, I realize that we’re not just warriors—we’re healers, knitting together the loose ends of our lives.