10. Jason
10
JASON
“ T hanks, sweetheart.” I grinned at the blue-haired lady behind the desk as she slid my ID back through the plexiglass slot.
She snickered and fluffed her beehive hairdo. “Honey, if I was forty years younger and still had my original hip,” she began as she snagged a release form from the printer for me to sign. “I could teach you a thing or two.”
“You moving in on my girl, Jase?” Chase walked through the glass front door of the shooting range. He had two firearm cases in his hands. He winked at the nearly eighty-year-old who was checking me in. “How’s it going, Miss Louise? You stayin’ out of trouble?”
The receptionist preened as soon as Chase came in. “Of course I’m not staying out of trouble. Bingo night wouldn’t be any fun if we didn’t break a few rules.”
Chase sided up with me and set the cases on the ground. He rested his elbows on the ledge in front of the glass partition. “Miss Louise, you know those rules are called laws , right? ”
Louise tut-tutted as I slid my liability release form back through the slot. “Back in my day, there was no such thing as drunk and disorderly, ” she grumbled, snatching Chase’s driver license from his hand. “Nice to see you, Detective Brannan.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. It was so weird hearing Chase be called Detective Brannan .
“You boys keep me young,” she hummed. “Where’s your girl?” Louise pried.
He gave her a wry smile. “She moved a few weeks ago. Took a job out in Falls Creek.” There was a little disappointment there, but I didn’t call him out on it. He faked a cocky grin and nodded toward me. “I’m stuck shooting with his ugly mug today.”
“Well,” Louise said as she finished checking us in. “I’ve got you down in lanes six and seven.” She gave Chase a wink, “And if you need a rebound, I’m available on Thursdays.”
“I might take you up on that, Miss Louise,” he said with a good-natured laugh. “Thank you, ma’am.”
Louise hollered after us as she buzzed us through a set of electronic doors. “And if you don’t think you can handle all this, I’ve got a granddaughter I can set you up with! She’s less of a handful than me.”
We made our way down the row of lanes in the shooting range. Coming on a Tuesday morning meant we had the place to ourselves.
The hum of fluorescent lights echoed in the empty space. The air conditioning that was cranked to something in the sixties was a welcome reprieve from the blistering summer heat and suffocating humidity outside.
I had forgotten how much I used to sweat when I lived here. North Carolina was a sauna from May until October.
“Welcome back to Beaufort,” Chase said as he set the cases up onto the small ledge just inside the firing lane. “Where the women are crazy, and the old women are even crazier.” With his hands free, he gave a friendly wave to the range safety officer who was in the corner sipping a cup of coffee.
He handed me a magazine and opened a box of bullets. “You been shooting lately?”
I fed a few rounds into the magazine. “Not unless you count air-to-surface missiles.”
“Showoff,” he snickered.
“So, what was that back there? You got a girl?”
Chase fed the last bullet into his magazine with more force than was necessary. “She moved. Took a job as a flight nurse. The base is out in Falls Creek. Little town north of Durham.”
“You doing the long-distance thing? That’s what—four hours away? Not too bad.”
He shook his head. “Nah. It was just casual. Layla’s a great girl. Fun to hang out with, but we knew it was temporary. No use losing sleep over something that wasn’t going to work out in the long run.”
“Y’all ever hook up or just hang out?”
He didn’t say anything as he pulled his phone out and showed me a picture of her.
I laughed. The woman in the photo was gorgeous. “Yeah. I’ll take a wild guess and say you definitely got in on that action.”
“She and Mel used to work together, so no matter what Mel tells you, it wasn’t serious and I’m not pining.”
Chase slid the magazine into the gun and pulled the slide back, opening the chamber until we were ready to shoot. I did the same before grabbing a set of noise-canceling headphones and clear eye protection.
I headed to my lane to put some lead through a paper target.
“Not bad,” Chase said as he lowered his firearm and dropped the empty magazine into his palm.
I took a breath, held it for a count of four, and fired on the exhale. Three shots in a perfect vertical.
Head. Chest. Abdomen.
The paper targets fluttered as we hit the recall buttons, waiting for the pulley to bring them back down the firing lane. “Not bad at all,” I agreed. “I haven’t touched a handgun since before my last deployment.”
“When was that?”
“Uh…” I thought for a moment. “Kuwait. Eighteen months ago. It was a short one.”
“You see a lot of action?”
“Nah.” I shook my head as I stepped around the partition into his lane. “Some special operators were staging in the area. I was part of a QRF. A, uh, rapid response team in case they got in a bind and needed air support. Nothing too crazy, though. Most of it was flying routine routes. Aircraft carrier deployments are a bitch.”
Chase busied himself by making sure the chamber in his firearm was clear. He peeled off his protective goggles and rubbed the red spots on the bridge of his nose. “I forget you’re Navy sometimes. You know, because of all the flying.”
I laughed. “Yeah. Sometimes I forget it too, and then they stick me on a boat in the middle of the Persian Gulf and tell me to take off and land on it.”
We went through the motions of clearing the guns and locking them back in their cases. Feeling the kick and recoil of a weapon as it fired was cathartic. I didn’t realize how pent-up I was until I started squeezing off round after round.
Now all I needed was to go back to Mel’s place and jerk off while she was at work. I’d be cool as a fucking cucumber after that .
Hopefully, she wouldn’t pull another stunt like the other morning—stripping down right there in the damn living room.
Then again, part of me really hoped she did.
“So,” Chase said, clearing his throat. “You’re living at Mel’s, huh?” He looked up with a shit-eating grin. “Seventeen-year-old you must be feeling pretty damn smug right about now.”
I pulled the pad of my thumb across my lower lip and looked down at my sneaker, grinning.
“C’mon, man.” He laughed. “Don’t bullshit me. You had a thing for her back in the day.”
I never had hangups about telling a woman that I was attracted to her, much less telling someone like Chase what I thought.
But it was Mel. She was something else. Someone who had occupied a special place in my heart for a long time. She wasn’t just anyone. Part of me thought that maybe she was the one.
It was a presumptuous notion, sure. But things between Mel and I had been easy since that moment in the ER when we saw each other for the first time since we were kids.
I cocked my head and side-eyed him before a laugh broke out of my chest. “She grew up good,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. “Girl turned into a woman and damn…” I couldn’t help the stupid smile on my face. “That ass.”
Chase just chuckled and shook his head. “Yeah, I guess she’s pretty. But I mean, it’s Mel. She’s like one of the guys.” He shrugged. “I’ve just known her too long to think of her like that.”
I tossed my head back and let out a rip-roaring laugh. “You only say that because you’ve still got puppy dog eyes for my sister.”
He didn’t have much to say about that. Just yanked the firearm cases off the ledge and turned to exit the firing lane. “Yeah, well, she’s with Kingsley.”
“You’re not denying it.” I never called out my buddies for keeping their feelings bottled up. But from the way his jaw clenched and his ears pulled back told me I struck a nerve.
The sun was blinding as we left the shooting range and walked out to the parking lot.
“I fucked up,” Chase clipped as he opened the toolbox stretched across the bed of his truck. He tossed the gun cases in and locked them up. “Nothing I can do about it now.”
A flare of righteous brotherly anger ripped through my veins. “That better mean you fucked up with her and not you fucked her and then fucked up.”
“You really think I’d do that to Bee?” he asked.
“No,” I admitted. “And that’s why I’m not kicking your ass.”
I had always been a little surprised that Bridget and Chase never dated. They were inseparable as kids. Now in their thirties, they were still friends. Those kinds of friendships rarely survive all the life changes of high school, college, and new adult life.
Sure, Bridget had been a flighty, social butterfly in her younger years—wanting to spread her wings and not be tied down. But she had settled down.
Chase had always been a solid guy. Even I could see that he would have been good for her. Seeing him that dejected made me wonder how much had been Chase fucking up, and how much had been Bridget being fucking oblivious.
“What’s the deal with her and Kyle Kingsley?” I asked. “Is it just me, or are they the weirdest couple?”
Chase shrugged. “I dunno, man. I hate the guy, so I’m probably not the most unbiased person to make a statement on it.”
I rested my forearms on the side of his truck bed. “You wanna grab a bite? Head over to Atlantic Beach and grab some surf and turf?”
He looked at the time on his phone. “Nah, I gotta get going. I’ve gotta get to Morehead City. ”
“Hot date?”
He smirked. “Yeah, with my tattoo artist. The clothes will probably end up coming off.”
“Hey.” I pointed to him as I walked backward to my truck. “You are worth waiting for,” I teased with a shit-eating grin on my face.
He tossed a middle finger my way as he slid behind the wheel.
Mel was probably sound asleep back at the apartment. As much as I wanted to hang out with her or head to the beach for a little time in the water, I still couldn’t submerge my stitches. And waking Mel when she was sleeping off a night shift was like waking a bear mid-hibernation.
Off to the bar I went, in the middle of the damn day, just like my old man.
I pushed the front door to Jokers open and cringed when it rocked on its hinges. The damn thing needed to be replaced fifteen years ago. They would’ve been better off with a shower curtain for a door.
“Hey!” Bridget said from her post behind the bar. She was busy rolling silverware for the dinner rush. “I thought you were going out with Chase today.” She peered over my shoulder like she was waiting for him to appear.
I saddled up on a barstool. “We hit the range for a bit, but he had to get to Morehead. He’s getting some new ink or something.”
“You want something to eat?”
“Surprise me.”
She scribbled something down on a ticket and tossed it through the kitchen window. “Drink?”
“Water’s fine.”
“You don’t want a beer?” she asked.
I shook my head, and she let it go.
I didn’t drink much. I’d have a few beers here and there, but never enough to be anything more than slightly buzzed. Bee and I never talked about it, but part of me wondered if our dad’s alcoholism was the reason Bridget became a bartender.
Before he died—from cirrhosis of the liver after years of heavy drinking—Jokers was the place he’d go as soon as his paycheck hit the bank.
The guilt of joining the military and leaving Bridget to deal with his belligerence ate at me.
Part of me had been relieved when he died, though I never dared to admit that.
As soon as Bee turned eighteen, our parents divorced. Mom moved across the state for a few years, starting over without the weight of a family on her before moving back. Dad kept his job as a long-haul trucker. He’d be gone for weeks at a time, then get back in town and make up for his long stretch of sobriety in one night.
After our family imploded, I kept my cost of living low so I could send Bee money every month. It wasn’t hard to do since I was a single guy and had my needs covered while I was deployed. Eventually, I helped her save up so she could move out of our dad’s place.
She still had to deal with his bullshit when he’d go to the bar and get angry when she cut him off. But at least she didn’t have to live under his roof.
I must have been lost in thought longer than I realized. Before I knew it, Bridget was sliding me a plate with red Bright Leaf hotdogs piled high with mustard, onions, chili, and slaw. My stomach growled in approval.
“It’s so weird having you back,” Bridget said as she resumed rolling silverware.
“Sorry I crashed your poker night,” I mumbled between bites.
She shook her head. “No, no. It was great having you there. I mean, you pretty much knew everyone from before. You fit right in.”
She picked up a fork and inspected it before tossing it in a bus bin full of dirty dishes. Apparently, it didn’t pass her standard for cleanliness. That was fairly surprising since I was pretty sure the hand sanitizer bottle by the register was just filled with bottom shelf tequila.
“So, how’s it going with Mel?” she asked as she grabbed a notepad and started scribbling down which bottles of liquor on the shelf needed to be restocked. “Y’all getting along?”
“Yeah.” I grabbed my glass to wash down the rest of the hotdog that I had inhaled. “It’s good. She’s cool.” I hoped my tone stayed neutral.
“How’s the house hunt going?” Her back was to me as she reached up onto the top shelf to pull down a bottle of Lagavulin. It was mostly full, so she set it back on the shelf. “Find anything?”
“Good.” It was a white lie. The innocent kind. I had looked at listings online, but hadn’t actually made it out to see any in person.
Bridget turned. She had a smirk on her face that told me I had played right into her hand. “You’ve got a shit poker face. You know that?”
“Dunno what you’re talking about,” I said with my mouth full.
Bridget just shook her head. “You haven’t actually been looking for a place, have you?”
“I’m settling in.”
In reality, I felt like I was in a holding pattern. Biding my time and circling the runway until I got permission to land.
I hated holding patterns. Going in circles. Flying aimlessly.
I liked having a purpose. A mission. Goals to complete. Benchmarks to achieve.
The military and I had been a match made in heaven. I knew it wasn’t forever for me. Most pilots left and went the commercial route.
I still had a job offer in Miami, and the other job flying cargo hauls for the lab testing company waiting for me if I said yes.
Bee didn’t need me. I could always come back for her wedding.
So why was I still here?
“You and Mel looked pretty cozy leaving poker night on Monday,” Bridget said.
I picked at a deep scratch on the bar top. “We rode together. Kinda made sense since we were going back to the same place.”
“Jase, I’m not blind,” she said. “You practically have hearts in your eyes every time you look at her. I saw it the night you two walked in here and surprised me. Everyone saw it.”
Everyone except Mel.
I groaned. “Am I really that obvious?”
“Yep,” she said, popping the ‘P.’ “Lucky for you, Mel is as good at picking up hints as a fish is bouncing on a pogo stick.”
I picked at the remnants of my lunch.
Bridget’s voice softened. It was the tone we used to talk to each other when we were having a rough night as kids.
“Rough nights” were when our dad was home, drunk, and picking a fight with anyone who dared show their face. He never put his hands on us, but his mouth was just as violent.
Mel’s parents must have picked up on some of the chaos happening across the fence. Whenever Dad was home from driving semis, they started extending invitations for sleepovers.
“She’s my best friend, Jase.”
“I know.”
“Don’t hurt her.”
I met her eyes. Some people thought we were twins. At least in our younger years, they did. The age difference showed now, but we still had the same blonde hair and green eyes .
“I think you two would be good together,” she said. “It’s probably weird to say, but I want her to be with someone like you. Not those dipshits she keeps going out with.”
Dipshit was an understatement for the chucklefuck she went out with the other night…
“You’d be cool with it if I asked her out?”
“Yeah.” She laughed wryly, twisting a bar towel between her hands. “Why wouldn’t I be? I worry about her.”
“Why?” I couldn’t think of a single reason Bee would be worried about Mel.
Mel seemed to be happy with her life, apart from the obvious—loneliness and wanting companionship.
Bridget didn’t answer.
I thought about the gravity of it all as Bridget hustled to pour drinks for a group of ladies settling on the other side of the bar.
What would happen if I risked it and ask Mel out?
My mind wandered back to Chase. I didn’t know what had gone down between him and my sister, but it probably had to do with the fact that neither of them had made a serious move.
The job offers pushed Chase and Bridget to the back of my mind. If I fucked it up with Mel somehow, it wasn’t like I had to stay.
I had never planned on staying anyway.
When Bee came back to clear my plate, I caught her attention. “Just don’t say anything to Mel about it.”
Bridget smiled. “My lips are sealed.”
Did I want to risk losing a girl I’d held in high esteem for years? Did I want to risk disappointing a man I had looked up to as a father figure?
There was more than one reason why I left Beaufort the first time.
The one at the top of the list: the girl next door.