1. Griffin
Griffin
“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk in my garden forever.” – Alfred Tennyson
Present
“ W e are about ten minutes out. Restless Timon, do you copy?” I asked, steering my aircraft above the mountain peaks.
“That I do, my dear Bleeding Heart,” Caleb replied.
“Remind me, why did I allow you to create my code name?”
“Because you’re secretly in love with me and want to make all my dreams come true.”
“Oh, baby, there’s no secrets here.” I grin into my mic. “You have my whole bleeding heart. But please, do remind me not to drink with you like that ever again.”
Caleb answers with his own chuckle.
“Hey, vodka bonded us, don’t hate.”
“Yeah, yeah. Now, shut up. Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“Exactly. It’s too quiet. I don’t like it.” In fact, my every instinct was sending out blazing alarms. We planned this mission to perfection as usual, but there was no such thing as perfection in our world.
Someone always paid the price, the only thing we could hope for every time was that it wasn’t too steep and not on our side.
“Hey! Did you have to go and jinx us? Jesus, dude. Not cool. So not cool.”
“You are way too old to believe in such crap.”
“Look who’s talking,” he mocked. “Didn’t you just say you had a feeling ?”
“Because my feelings are a proven natural phenomenon while your jinxes are old wives’ tales.”
“You did not just mock my jinxes! That’s pretty much like jinxing us twice with a fucking cherry on top!
That’s it! You are in the doghouse tonight,” Caleb deadpanned, and I shook my head at him.
He couldn’t see me, obviously, but after this many years serving together, he knew what I was doing perfectly well.
“Divorce?” I played along.
“That eager to pay me alimony?”
“Who says I’d be the one paying you ?”
“Psh, I’m clearly the wife in our relationship. So I get the alimony. And child support.”
“For what kids?”
“Don’t you worry your pretty head about it, just pay up.”
“I’ll admit you do have the whole nagging and sucking my soul out thing down to the T. Maybe you are the wife in here.”
“Are you two done bickering or do you need marriage counseling?” The unamused voice of our captain filtered through the headset. “I swear I’m never sending you two together again.”
“Sure you won’t,” Caleb teased, and I snickered in agreement. Cap always says that, yet in my sixteen years of service I rarely flew with anyone else.
Caleb and I were the best team he had, and we worked like a Swiss clock together.
“Two minutes out,” I warned, and somber fell upon us.
We could play and joke all day long until it was go-time. Then we turned into killing machines.
“One minute out. Restless Timon, keep your wits sharp. Something is off.”
“Untwist your knickers, Bleeding Heart. Watch the pros do it right!”
“Restless Timon! Don’t you fucking dare! Get back in formation!”
“Jesus, someone really needs to relax. We’ve done this run a million times. I’ll be right back.”
“That was not the plan. Get back!”
“Can’t wait to say ‘I told you so.’”
Crack. Boom. Fire.
Shock. Fear. Death. Emptiness.
Jerking awake, I suck in a sharp breath, trying to catch it at the same time as my barely conscious body jumps up into a seated position, sending the sweat droplets sliding down my tense, clenched muscles.
My hands feel like they are about to fall off and that’s when I notice that I have the flower-patterned sheet in a death grab. Slowly, I release a deep yet shaky breath and loosen my hold. The action should’ve been easy, instead it feels like I have to pry each finger open with a crowbar.
Dream. It was just a dream. I’m no longer there. There’s a faint scent of salt, sage, and sandalwood in the air. I’m not there. I’m home. It was just a dream. Except, it wasn’t.
It’s a living nightmare laid out in so many precise details, it feels like I’m reliving it every damn night. Shouldn’t you forget what you dream about? Shouldn’t it be all weird and figments of our imagination?
Then why is mine a shitty reality show I’ve been cast as a male lead in?
Finally, I relax enough to move again and I shift, planting my bare feet on the floor beside my bed, resting my head in my hands, propped on my healed knees.
Just a few months ago they were covered in nasty bruises—my whole body was, however nothing bad enough to warrant me a one-way ticket to the other side. All these months later and I’m still contemplating whether I’m happy or upset about it.
It was my mission. My plan. I had a feeling. I was supposed to be in charge…the thoughts keep swirling inside my head, stabbing my soul over and over again, reopening the wound I’m not sure I’m even trying to heal.
They kept saying it wasn’t my fault and logically, somewhere very far and deep inside I knew it wasn’t me who shot the missile that killed my best friend, but logic and I are not on good terms these days.
My childhood room is still cast in darkness with only the faint light from the moon sliding into it. I sigh. Another night, another nightmare. I haven’t been able to sleep more than a few restless hours ever since that day.
I cast another look into the dark world outside my window before pushing off the bed and pulling on the gray sweatpants I folded neatly next to my bed last night.
Might as well get a workout in since there’s no going back to sleep for me, and if Mom finds me in my room come morning, she will bring out her breakfast tray and one nightmare per twenty-four hours is plenty for me.
It took me three days of being back home to remember my mother can’t cook to save her life and my stomach paid the price for it, and after last night’s dinner I can still feel my intestines waving the white towel while my stomach yells, “God save my soul!”
Why is it that none of these hippies know how to cook? I remember Luke’s mom being just as bad. Well, I guess Callum did get lucky in his home. His parents were both great cooks but the rest of us nope, not so much.
Remembering my two best friends I grew up with sends yet another burning knife up my gut.
I haven’t seen either Luke or Callum in sixteen years, something we thought impossible before life threw three na?ve boys into different corners of the world. We contacted each other in the beginning, enough to know where each of us ended up but soon after the calls and letters stopped.
I’m assuming Luke is still in New York and if I know my other best friend at all, Callum is still killing himself in the Navy. Much like I was doing in the Air Force until they literally forced me to leave. Ha, ain’t that funny.
After pulling on my pants, I do the same with my gray hoodie and socks, bumping my head into the slanted ceiling wall as I do so.
Damn it, when did these walls get too low? I don’t remember it ever being so cramped in here before, but then again, these walls remember an eighteen-year-old slender boy. Not the mess of a man who came back. And stepping inside it the other day was a weird experience to say the least.
It was like my parents somehow froze time in here. The twin bed is still in the middle of the room with a navy, scratchy quilt on top of it—because rainbows forbid we use synthetic materials in here. Mom’s words, not mine.
No one took down the embarrassing posters of bands and girls I hung up when I was fifteen. Even my old desk is still covered with last minute study guides I written—or copied off Callum—for my exams.
But I guess I should be grateful my parents didn’t decide to tear it down and upgrade it to that straw roll they sleep on these days.
Apparently, they’re all the rage in Loverly Cave right now. As is the neon-colored Spanx workout atrocities from the eighties they insist on wearing every morning to the town-wide workout. No one deserved to see their mother’s body in that, and let’s just say I learned it the hard way.
Don’t ask…the less you know, the better you’ll sleep at night. But a fair warning, my hometown is as hippy as they come and there is no shortage of strange over here. Yet surprisingly, it doesn’t make my skin crawl like it used to.
Maybe I’m numb to it now like I am to everything else?
There were days when my friends and I couldn’t wait to move the heck away. It was all we could talk about, and I never considered I’d be back, however as strange as it is, I feel slightly more human here. Probably for the first time in many, many years.
When the world came crashing down—literally—there was only one thought on my mind. Take me home .
Funny, never once have I thought of it as home before then.
Quietly, I make my way down the narrow staircase, my feet moving on autopilot to avoid all the squeaky boards that are still there a decade and a half later.
The walls all over are lined with pictures of our family.
The furniture is well-lived in, and the hardwood floors still bare the marks I’ve made on them as a kid.
Isabella and Andrew Owling wouldn’t be caught dead installing hardwood flooring in their house but seeing as it was already here when they bought the house, they promised to never harm the poor trees again. So the floor stays. Until their last breath.
And knowing my parents, they most likely have it in their will that I never tear it out either.
But I don’t think I would either way. There’s something about the familiarity of it all that soothes all those ragged bumps and bruises inside me.
Each of the scuff marks bear the memories. The good and the bad.
I close the door behind me and take a step. Then another one and one more.
I’ve been home for three days, but I haven’t actually left the house itself—not once. I couldn’t bring myself to do that.