Chapter Five #2
Anna hesitated. She wasn’t good at this.
Neil had always made her friends for her.
He’d take her to Company Grade Officers Association functions, introduce her to a few guys who’d introduce her to their wives or girlfriends, then they’d invite her over to their houses for candle and basket and kitchen gadget parties.
They’d ask her to join the officers’ wives club, which she’d politely decline since they held all their meetings during school or working hours, and Anna would be that wife who showed up at picnics and cookouts and sort of knew people, but didn’t really.
She’d gotten good at only sort of knowing people.
That’s why she’d liked Jules so much. Jules seemed good with the sort of knowing people thing too.
But Kaci didn’t strike her as the halfway type.
“First step’s remembering who you are without him,” Kaci said. “It’s a doozy, but it gets better after that.”
That explained why Anna’s knees didn’t want to move. But her brain and her heart and her soul did, so she picked up her feet and crossed into the cool foyer.
Kaci’s baby cheeks split into a grin. “You up for some peach cobbler, or is chocolate more your speed tonight? Got a big ol’ box of Godiva in here too.”
Godiva. Probably from the BX with the BX discount.
Anna needed to stock up before she turned in her dependent ID and lost base shopping privileges. They weren’t in her budget right now, but a chocolate emergency was a chocolate emergency.
Tonight was bigger than a chocolate emergency.
“Tequila shots?” Kaci said.
“God, yes.”
“You and me, we’re gonna be good friends.”
The living room was furnished in warm browns over a beige porcelain tile floor.
Ole Miss memorabilia hung on one side, while Bama souvenirs dominated the other.
In between, on the mantel of a fireplace that was probably used only a half-dozen times a year, was a picture of Kaci and her tall, dark, handsome fiancé.
Tall, dark, and handsome was in a flight suit.
Good for Kaci, but Anna wasn’t ever doing a military guy again.
She looked away from the picture and found herself staring out the back door to twinkling pool lights.
This was what she thought she’d have the rest of her life.
Instead, she had an apartment in a lower tax bracket, and she was standing in the middle of a one-woman party.
Her legs threatened to do their freeze-dried Twinkie impression again.
Kaci trotted in from the semi-open kitchen and handed her a shot glass. “Lime?”
“Ketchup.”
“Ketchup?”
“I’m a lightweight.” Anna’s nose gave a telltale crinkle. Her eyes followed. The lake was building in her sinuses again, her eyelids preparing to be dams. Her voice cracked. “And ketchup makes me think of home.”
“Huh. Well, you named your poison. Sit on down. I’ll bring you the whole bottle.”
“But—” Anna gestured to her clothes. They were half-dry, and her top had developed a few weird wrinkles.
Kaci sprinted to the kitchen, then huffed back with a ketchup bottle. She snagged Anna’s elbow and pulled her into the master bedroom.
The walls were a lovely mocha, the crown molding blinding white beneath a tray ceiling. Clothes and books and fireworks were strewn across the four-poster king-size bed.
Fireworks?
Oh, God. Neil really had stranded her in the South. The deep South, all pretty on the outside, all backwoods on the inside, without the buffer of the base.
He’d up and left her in Redneckville.
“I hate him,” she blurted.
Kaci looked up from a drawer. “Got every right.”
“Not hate-hate,” she said, and she felt another case of the sniffles coming on. “I mean, I loved him. It was what I did. And I was good at it. I really was.”
Kaci came up with a pair of sweatpants. “Here. See if these fit.”
Anna shot her tequila and killed the fire-throat with a squirt of ketchup straight from the bottle. She slammed both the glass and the ketchup down on the nightstand. “All I ever did was love him.”
“How long?”
“Long enough to think we’d have forever.
” She kicked off her shoes, dropped her pants, and pulled on the sweatpants.
They were too long, obviously Kaci’s fiancè’s, but she only had to tighten the string in the waist a little.
“One of my sorority sisters introduced us. She was dating one of his friends, and they were all older so they graduated first. Then they got sent to Oklahoma together, and Neil kept calling and saying he needed me. So we got married and I transferred schools, and I needed more classes because not everything transferred. But the four of us were together, except then Neil’s program moved a year later, then our friends got divorced, and then the only thing I had going for me was being a military wife. ”
“Not easy to resist a man in uniform. Look at me, going after my second one. And my daddy was Air Force too. Gets in your blood.”
“No. Not me. I’m not ever dating a military man again. Hell, I’m not ever dating again.” Because the thought of dating made her stomach dip as it did on a roller coaster, and her heart felt as if it were stabbing itself with one of her ribs.
“I swore off academics after ol’ grandpappy,” Kaci said with a knowing nod. “Wouldn’t have given my Lance another look if he’d been any brighter than a dumb cargo jock.”
Anna reached for the ketchup bottle again.
“Gets easier, but it’s okay to take your time. Went two years myself without dating anybody after I welded ol’ grandpappy’s car doors shut and hid his uniforms on Air Force Academy graduation day.”
Anna choked on the ketchup, but it felt good to laugh at something again.
“Tell you what,” Kaci said with a nod, “that man realized who he needed that day.”
“I don’t think anybody’s ever going to need me again.”
“Aw, sugar, somebody’s gonna need you. Bet you got a lot of somebodies who already do.”
“No, they really don’t.” Anna swiped her nose with the back of her hand.
“Beth’s boys are too old for babysitters.
Gram has all the help she needs rolling pie crusts at the shop.
Dad hires high schoolers to reorganize the bookstore.
I thought they needed me, but they replaced me as soon as I left for college.
So when Neil needed me, I thought he was the only one.
And I needed him to need me, so it was perfect. ”
“Sounds like how I felt the first time I saw ol’ grandpappy’s potato gun. Didn’t know why, but I knew I had to have him.”
“His potato gun?” Anna lunged for the ketchup and took another hit straight out of the bottle.
“It was a beaut,” Kaci said on a sigh. “Shot potatoes three miles if they went an inch. But that man knew as much about being a husband as a crocodile knows about knitting a sweater. Nothing worth keeping there. I didn’t need to be anybody’s trophy wife.
Especially not after he kept all the trophies. I earned him those trophies.”
“Jerk.”
“Well, trust me on this one, if he doesn’t want you, he doesn’t deserve you. Marriage is give and take. If he can’t give you what you need—and he has to give you more than needing you—then good riddance.”
Anna took another gulp of ketchup. “You know what he needed me for? Sex. Just sex. And now my friends are trying to set me up with guys who want me for sex.” Her eyes were leaking, but for the first time since Neil had said the D-word, they weren’t sad tears.
They were freaking furious tears.
She yanked off her shirt and took the Ole Miss T-shirt Kaci handed her, then pointed to the firecrackers. “You know what I think about being used for sex? I think I’d like to strap their potato guns to those firecrackers. That’s what I’d like to do for my country.”
Kaci tilted her head, a thoughtful gleam in her eye. “We could do the next best thing.”
She stopped mid-ketchup shot. She gulped the Hunts down in a painful lump that settled right over her heart. “What’s that?”
“You still got any of his stuff?”
The ketchup bottle wobbled in her hand.
She had a whole boxful in the trunk, neatly labeled Jerkface’s Stuff, that she was planning on delivering to her attorney next week.
And Neil could pay for shipping, since he was covering her attorney’s fees as part of the settlement.
The fireworks on the bed whispered sweet nothings. Do it for your country, baby. We might not live to see tomorrow.
They were technically illegal in Georgia.
But when was the next time she’d get a chance to blow Neil the hell out of her life?
“Damn straight I’ve got something.”
It didn’t take much more than an encouraging grin from Kaci to propel Anna out to her car. Moments later, they were sprawled out in front of the pool, strapping Neil’s belongings to firecrackers, and moments after that, Kaci handed Anna a lighter.
“Which one you gonna do first?”
Anna took another hit from the ketchup bottle. “His favorite boxers.”
They positioned the firecracker in the middle of the yard. Anna lit the fuse, and the two of them stepped back. The rocket shot into the air with a squeal.
Ka-BOOM!
A shower of red and yellow sparks exploded in the night sky. Kaci let out a whoop.
Anna saluted the sky with her ketchup bottle. “I’ll miss that dust rag.”
She positioned the next firework, then lit it and darted back to Kaci’s side. When that one exploded, goo splattered down on them. “What is that smell?” Kaci asked.
“His favorite body wash.”
“It smells worse than a wet hog in a trough of rotten peaches.”
“Smells worse on.” On all of them.
Two weeks ago, she wouldn’t have believed she could send the ashes of her marriage up on firecrackers.
But it felt good.
Necessary.
Freeing.
Anna laughed. She scampered forward and lit another firecracker.
“Which one?” Kaci asked.
“His iPod. I never have to listen to the very best of the Neils again.” She’d spent so many hours listening to Neil Young and Neil Diamond on car trips, she’d taken to offering to drive so her Neil could use his iPod's earbuds.
In retrospect, Diamond’s Red Red Wine and Young’s Birds on repeat were more prophetic than annoying.
A rainbow-colored burst of sparks spread out in a sphere over the sound of the firecracker’s boom. Something whistled then splashed into the pool with a heavy kerplunk!
Bye-bye, Neils.
“Don’t ever doubt terminal velocity,” Kaci said. Anna turned to the pool, but Kaci stopped her. “Lance’ll get it. He’s used to this. What’s next?”
The pièce de résistance. “His retainer.”
“His what?” Kaci said. “Like for his teeth?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Tell me he didn’t kiss you with that thing in.”
Anna snuck forward and bent to light it.
“Anna, sugar?” Kaci said. “You didn’t let him do that, did you?”
“We were married. You do a lot of weird stuff when you’re married.”
“Don’t light it!” Kaci suddenly shrieked.
“What? Why? What’s wrong?” Anna blew on the fuse, but it only sped the fire.
“That there’s date repellant, and you’re blowing it up.” Kaci dropped next to Anna, then blew out a breath. “Hoo boy.” She grabbed Anna’s arm and dragged her back. The fuse stopped. A second later, the firecracker and the retainer shot into the sky.
“Now look what you gone and did. Ain’t no reason for any girls not to be dating him now,” Kaci said.
Sparks showered down. “Well, damn,” Anna said. “I didn’t think about that.”
“Sugar, I got lots to teach you.”
Anna grabbed her ketchup bottle and squeezed in another shot, more for fun than necessity. “Is it enough if I wish his first new girlfriend gives him herpes?”
“That’ll do. Feeling better?”
Anna inhaled sulfur and hints of smoke. She caught sight of a wispy trail from the last firecracker floating through the sky, and she realized her shoulders weren’t bunched, her teeth not clenched, her muscles not spun tight.
She was free.
Not alone, but free.
She smiled at Kaci. “Yeah. A lot better.”
Kaci gave her arm a squeeze. “Good on you.”
On impulse, Anna snagged Kaci in a hug. “Thank you.”
“That’s what your ex-wife friends are for.” Kaci squeezed her back hard. “You stick with me, and everything’s gonna be fine.”