Chapter 9
Marco
T he silence up here is the only thing that doesn’t ask anything from me, and that’s probably why I keep coming back to it, why I built this place the way I did, far enough from town, far enough from everything that I can pretend, at least for a few hours at a time, that the world has narrowed down to what I can see, what I can touch, what I can control.
It isn’t real control, not in the way people think of it, but it’s enough to get through the day, enough to keep things from slipping in ways I can’t manage.
I step out onto the porch just before sunrise, the cold hitting me hard and fast, sharp enough to pull me fully awake without the need for anything else, and I stand there longer than I need to, letting it settle into my skin, into my lungs, because the physical sensation anchors me in a way that nothing else quite does.
The mountains stretch out in front of me, quiet and still, the early light catching on the snow in uneven patches where the wind hasn’t stripped it away, and for a moment it almost feels like peace, like something close to it, until I remind myself that peace is temporary, that it’s something I maintain, not something I get to keep.
The trail cuts across the lower edge of my land, just visible if I look for it, though most days I don’t.
I agreed to that easement a long time ago, back when I still thought being part of a community meant something I could hold onto, back when I believed I could exist inside a world that included other people without breaking something in the process.
Now it just means there’s always the possibility of someone passing through, of voices carrying farther than they should, of footsteps I didn’t invite coming close enough to remind me that I’m not as removed as I pretend to be.
I breathe in slow, steady counts, the way I’ve been taught, the way I practice whether I want to or not, because the routine matters even when everything else feels like it’s slipping.
The satellite dish along the side of the cabin catches the first light, a quiet contradiction to everything else about this place, a reminder that I’m not cut off, not really, that once a week I sit inside with a headset on and talk to someone who asks me questions I don’t want to answer and pushes me to stay in moments I’ve spent years trying to avoid.
I put in the dish a few years back, when I realized I could not do this alone.
I needed help. I tell myself it helps, I know it does.
I lost Davis, I saved Alvarez. As a Corpsman, there is so much outside your control, and there is so much uncertainty when you step outside the wire and go on patrol with a Marine rifle squad.
Therapy has helped me understand and deal with this trauma I was not ready for.
And how what happened then affects everything else today.
What happened in the bar five years ago after I came back from my deployment, how I deal with Maya, or don’t deal with her, everything.
I also learn that help isn’t the same as relief, and there’s a difference I haven’t figured out how to close.
I no longer feel out of control, not completely, but I don’t feel stable, either.
No matter how much I try, I am not the same person who left Maya in San Diego.
I go back inside before the cold can settle too deep, shutting the door behind me with a kind of finality that feels necessary, as if closing it keeps everything else out, even the things that don’t need an opening to get in.
The cabin is quiet, the fire still holding enough heat from the night before that I don’t need to stoke it right away, and I move through the space without thinking, following the same routine I follow every morning, because routine is the closest thing I have to stability.
Coffee first. Always.
The process is simple, deliberate, something my hands know without instruction, and I focus on it more than I need to, measuring, pouring, waiting, letting the low hum of the generator fill the background just enough to keep the silence from becoming something else.
There are two mugs on the shelf, though I only ever use one, and I don’t look at the second one as I reach for the first, because looking at it would mean acknowledging why it’s there, and I’ve learned to leave certain things alone.
I pour the coffee and stand at the counter with it, watching the light shift across the trees outside the window, telling myself that this is enough, that this is what I chose, that the quiet and the distance and the lack of expectation are exactly what I need.
Most mornings, I can hold onto that, can move through the day without letting anything break the surface, but it doesn’t take much to change that, not really.
A sound outside, something small, a branch snapping under the weight of snow, and it’s enough.
It happens often and before I can stop it, before I can even fully register what’s real and what isn’t, because my body reacts faster than my mind, pulling me somewhere else entirely, somewhere hot and loud and impossible to control, where the air tastes like dust and metal and the ground moves in a way that has nothing to do with nature.
I don’t close my eyes, but I don’t need to, because it’s there anyway, the explosion I didn’t see coming, the way everything went from still to chaos in a second, the voices cutting through it all, calling out, demanding action, demanding something I wasn’t sure I could give fast enough.
I set the mug down harder than I intend, the sound sharp in the quiet of the cabin, and I focus on that instead, on the present, on the way the counter feels under my hand as I brace myself against it, pulling my breathing back into something I can control.
Breathe in for four seconds, hold, out for six.
Again. Again. I don’t move until the edges of it dull, until the memory recedes enough that I can stand there without feeling like I’m about to lose something I can’t get back.
“Not today,” I say under my breath, the words more habit than conviction. I am grateful that these moments happen less and less over time, that I feel like I have more control over my life now than I did, at least as long as I am alone here, living on this isolated land, in my small cabin.
The rest of the morning falls into place the way it always does, one task after another, each one simple enough to keep my mind occupied without letting it wander too far.
I check the perimeter, scan the tree line out of instinct more than necessity, stack wood along the side of the cabin where I can reach it easily, clear a path that will disappear again if the snow keeps coming the way it looks like it might.
The work is steady, predictable, the kind of physical effort that keeps everything else at a manageable distance, and I lean into it, because stopping means thinking, and thinking is where things tend to go wrong.
By the time I come back inside, the sun is higher, the light stronger, and for a while that’s enough, the quiet settling in around me in a way that feels almost stable.
I tell myself again that this is what I wanted, that this is what I chose, that being up here means I don’t have to deal with anything I can’t control.
But that’s not entirely true, and I know it.
Because even up here, even with all the distance I’ve put between myself and everything else, there are things that find their way in any way, things I haven’t been able to shut out no matter how much I try, and one of them has a name I don’t say out loud.
Maya.
The thought comes without warning, sliding into place before I can stop it, and with it comes everything else I’ve spent years trying to keep contained, the memory of her kitchen in San Diego, the heat and the noise and the way she moved through it like she belonged there in a way I never quite did, the late nights after closing when it was just the two of us, the quiet moments that felt like something I didn’t know how to hold onto even when I had it.
I remember the way she used to laugh when I got something wrong, the way she would step in close to show me how to fix it, her voice steady and patient as she explained things that had nothing to do with food and everything to do with who she was, with where she came from, with the kind of life she expected to build.
I remember the way she held back, the way she drew lines I didn’t cross, not because I didn’t want to, but because I respected her too much to push, because what we had felt like something that needed to be built the right way or not at all.
But in the quiet of my cabin, I think about us together if we did not get stopped by the deployment and aftermath. I think of us going further than we ever let ourselves go. Her body was amazing, smooth, curvy, and every move she made as she managed her restaurant was sexy.
In my fantasy, I imagine her taste. It’s after hours at her restaurant, and she looks at me like I am the only man who could ever satisfy her.
I approach her and remove her apron, as I kiss the back of her neck.
She turns her head, looking up and into my eyes.
We kiss, and she moves to allow me to fully embrace her, our bodies fitting tightly together.
A second later, we put two tables in the dining area together in the form of a bed.
I lay her back and remove her soft pants, her underwear.
I place my mouth on her woman hood. This is where I stay for what seems like hours.
She is moaning quietly, and I feel myself getting harder.
She moans over and over again, more loudly now.
She calls my name ‘Marco,’ saying ‘Here, baby, kiss me,’ and I move to her lips, sharing her taste with her, as our tongues dance.
Now suddenly we are both naked, and she tells me she wants me inside her, she wants to feel me inside her. In my fantasy, I enter with a single thrust, all the way, and she gasps.
She starts to move her body, smoothly like she does in the kitchen, and I feel my cock fully absorbed into her.
I can feel her squeezing me, welcoming me, as she moves up off the hard table up into my body. I kiss her with frenzy, and she responds, her tongue moving deep into my mouth. I hear her, I feel her, I taste her. She has somehow taken over my soul, my whole self.
In my fantasy, I start to feel pulses, from her, and maybe from me. She screams my name again and again, as I feel her get wetter as she vibrates around my cock. I can tell that she is coming, and I start to join her. I feel my own release as I fill her, as I fully join her in this moment.
We lay together on the hard table, joking about what her customers would say if they knew they were eating on our improvised bed. I revel in her cuteness, in her sense of humor, dry, but appropriate.
As my fantasy slowly comes to an end, she is standing in front of me, fully clothed, including her apron. “Do you want to taste it,’ she says, holding a tablespoon of dark steaming adobo sauce, a taste that gets better the second day, in her hand. I say “yes, I would.”
For me, for now, she lives for now only in my dreams, but I still hope that one day I will have the courage and the faith to see her again.
How that could happen, I have no idea. For now, I only have memories of someone that I used to know.
But some days, in the silence of my cabin, I can almost see her sitting on the couch. I can almost feel her.