Eric
This is what torture must be like. Almost an hour goes by, and Ava doesn’t return. I’m like a caged animal as I move around the hotel room, trying to resist the urge to throw a large paperweight through the plate-glass window.
I can’t take it. I can’t stay in this room for another minute. If she comes back and I’m not here, she’ll call me.
I take the elevator to the lobby and find the bar. “Maker’s Mark,” I tell the bartender. “Neat.”
“Coming right up, sir.”
He puts the drink in front of me, and I pounce on it, downing half of it in the first swallow.
“Would you like to charge that to your room or start a tab?”
I withdraw my wallet and hand over a credit card. “Start a tab, please.”
I’m so tense, my muscles feel like they were carved from concrete. Not even the dreadful aftermath of my breakup with Brittany can compare to this hell. What’ll I do if she tells me she’s going back to him?
I take out my phone, make sure I don’t have any new texts and then call Rob.
“Hey,” he says, answering on the first ring. “How’s it going out there?”
“She’s with him now.”
“Ah God, Eric,” he says with a loud sigh.
“I’m dying, Rob. I can’t handle this. The guy is a fucking national hero. I can’t compete with him.”
“You have been her hero.”
The phone beeps. It’s her. “I gotta go. She’s calling me.”
“Hang in there.”
“Thanks.” I switch over to take Ava’s call. “Babe.”
“Where are you?”
“In the bar. I’ll be up in a minute.”
“I want to go home, Eric.”
I signal the bartender for my check. “Then that’s what we’ll do. I’ll be right there.” I scribble my signature, grab the card and run for the elevator. I walk into the room a few minutes later and stop short at the sight of her eyes red and swollen from crying. “Baby.”
She comes to me, and I wrap my arms around her.
I have so many questions, but I don’t say anything. I need to take my cues from her.
“Can we go home? Please?”
“Yeah. Let’s go.” I grab her bag and mine and keep an arm around her as I walk her to the lobby, where I ask the bellman to get us a cab. I wonder if I should let Muncie know we’re leaving but decide he’s not my problem.
“Are you checking out?” the bellman asks.
“Yeah, we’re done here.” I give him our room number, and he makes a note before signaling to a cab.
“Airport, please,” I tell the cabbie.
In the car, I put my arm around her, and she snuggles up to me. There’s traffic this time of day, and I’m not even sure we can get on a flight, but since we’re going to the biggest city in the country, I’m optimistic. Every airline flies into New York.
If I stay focused on the details, I won’t go mad trying not to ask her a hundred questions she won’t want to answer. Instead, I do what I do best. I hold her and I love her and I take care of her. I’ve never been better at anything in my life than I am at loving Ava.
We end up on a red-eye flight to freaking JFK. I hate flying in there and having to battle traffic into the city, but LaGuardia wasn’t offered, and my fiancée wants to go home. We’ll arrive at five thirty in the morning Eastern Time. Hopefully, we can sleep on the plane.
“Any chance of an upgrade?” I ask the ticket agent.
She pokes around on the computer and finds us two seats in first class.
I hand over my credit card.
Ava stands by my side, and I catch the ticket agent making surreptitious glances at her, probably wondering about her ravaged face. I reach for Ava, bring her into my embrace and level a stare at the ticket agent that I hope encourages her to hurry the fuck up.
“Is there a lounge or somewhere we can go to wait?” I ask.
She gives me a day pass to the airline’s club, and we wait there until our flight is called.
Ava never says a word until we’re buckled into seats at the front of the plane. “Thank you.”
“Whatever you need.” I raise the arm between our seats and make her comfortable on my chest.
“I don’t have the words yet.”
“That’s okay. You just hold on to me, and everything will be okay.” But as I say what she needs to hear, I worry that nothing will ever be okay again.
John
After Ava leaves, I unbutton my uniform coat and remove it, tossing it on the chair that kept me upright while I waited for her.
I pull at my tie and release the top button of my shirt.
It was all for nothing. That’s all I can think now that she’s been here and gone, leaving her scent behind to torment me.
Everything I did to recover my health so I could get back to her doesn’t matter now. Will anything ever matter again now that I’ve lost her?
I text Muncie. Get me a bottle of vodka and bring it to the room. I have no idea where he is, but he’d better be somewhere in this hotel or I’ll have him court-martialed.
The phone chimes with his reply. Coming right up, sir.
Fifteen minutes later, I hear the door click before it opens to admit him. He’s carrying the requested bottle, and I see his expression change when he realizes Ava is gone. He puts the bottle on the table.
“Now go away.”
“Sir…”
“Muncie, I said to go the fuck away. That’s an order.”
He goes the fuck away.
When the door clicks shut behind him, I crack open the bottle and drink directly from it.
I haven’t had a drink in six years, except for the rotgut Tito brewed up in the field that’d nearly killed us all.
The vodka goes down easy—and goes straight to my head.
I feel the buzz almost instantly, but the relief…
that takes longer. Half the bottle, in fact.
I feel like I just stepped out of a plane without a parachute, and the ground is rushing up to meet me. The landing is going to hurt like hell.
What do I do now that I don’t have thoughts of her to keep me going?
Where do I find hope now that she’s given me her answer—and not the one I prayed for all this time?
Even after I heard she was engaged, I still held out hope that once she saw me, it would be like the six years we were apart never happened.
Wishful thinking. They happened, and she moved on without me. What choice did she have when I wasn’t able to give her even the slightest reason to keep her faith tied up in me?
The second half of the bottle goes down easier than the first.
I have no memory of ending up facedown on the sofa, but that’s where I am when Muncie shakes me awake the next morning.
Memories of yesterday come flooding back, reminding me that I’ve lost Ava forever. I don’t want to go on without her. “Leave me alone, Muncie.”
“I can’t do that, sir.”
“I’m ordering you to leave me alone.”
“I understand that, sir, but I’m not going to leave you. People are worried about you.”
“What people are worried about me?” I have no people.
“The doctors and nurses at the hospital, for one. Your command, for another.”
“They don’t care about me. They just want me to do that interview.”
“Sir, the entire country cares about you. The Pentagon has received more inquiries about you than anyone else in years. People care very much about you.”
I don’t care about those people. The only one I care about doesn’t want me anymore, and now I have to find a way to live with that—to live without her.
I can’t do it.
Closing my eyes, I yearn for the oblivion the vodka gave me. “Please go, Muncie.”
“No, sir,” he says gently. “I’m not leaving you.”
I’m well aware that I’m setting an awful example, and that my conduct is highly unbecoming of an officer of my rank and stature. I don’t give a flying fuck about anything now that Ava is gone forever.
My head is pounding and my mouth tastes like roadkill, but the ache in my chest might do what a bullet to the leg failed to do.
It might very well kill me.
Ava
We land in New York to snow flurries and howling wind that makes for a bumpy descent into JFK. Eric holds my hand the way he has all night as we flew across the country toward home. I appreciate that he hasn’t asked me any questions. I can’t talk about it. Not yet.
I’m haunted by my hour with John. I close my eyes, and I see his face, his distinctive blue eyes, the ravages of his illness. I hear his voice, pleading with me to give him the chance to put us back together.
Please don’t go. Don’t leave me.
I thought I knew what heartbreak felt like, but turning my back on him while he begged me to stay ruined me. I’m hollowed out, gutted. I don’t know how to go on from here, how to function. I can barely breathe through the pain.
I thought I’d gain closure by seeing him, but that’s not what I got.
I’ll always regret the pain I caused you, Ava.
I was unwilling to take even the slightest chance with your safety.
If there’s any chance… Any chance at all that you might still love me as much as I love you, that you might find it in your heart to forgive me and to give me another chance…
There’s nothing I want more than the opportunity to make things right with you.
All the time I was gone, I dreamed of the life we might have when I came home.
All I need to be happy is you, Ava.
Please don’t go. Don’t leave me.
“Ava?”
Eric’s voice brings me back to the present to realize we’ve arrived at our gate, and it’s time to get off the plane. I fumble with my seat belt until it releases.
Holding our overnight bags, he waits for me to gather my things and gestures for me to go ahead of him.
The flight attendant tells us to have a great day.
I have nothing to say to that.
“Thank you,” Eric says. “You, too.”
His hand on my lower back keeps me moving forward in the crowd at JFK to the curb, where we wait in a long line for a cab.
Icy wind whips at my face, bringing tears to my eyes, but I’m so numb, I barely feel the cold.
Rush-hour traffic makes a long ride longer.
We arrive at Eric’s place at seven thirty and trudge up the stairs like two refugees returning home after a trek through the desert without water. I want a shower and a bed. I take the time to text Trevor to let him know I’ll be out again today.
He knows what’s going on and texts right back. Take all the time you need.
My phone is full of texts from my sister, my mother, Jules, Amy, Miles and Skylar, all of them checking on me. They want to know how things went with John, but I can’t deal with their questions. Not now.
Eric follows me into the bedroom and deposits my bag inside the closet. “What do you need?”
“A shower and then I’m going to sleep for a while. If you need to go to work, that’s fine.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“I… I’m sorry I can’t talk about it…”
“You don’t have to.” He caresses my face and then kisses my cheek. “Do whatever you need to. I’ll be right here.”
“It meant everything to me that you took this trip with me.”
“I’m with you, kid,” he says, forcing a smile. “All the way.”
“Thanks.” I go into the bathroom and turn the water on to heat up while I remove the clothes I wore to see John. I’ll never be able to look at the tunic I used to love again without hearing him pleading with me not to go.
As I step into the shower, I give into emotions that boil over into anguished sobs.