Chapter Fifteen #2
A few chinks had suddenly appeared in Matt’s armor, and Shane couldn’t resist seizing this chance to find out more about him. “Well, if you don’t mind some company, I think you left some running clothes at my house. A run doesn’t sound bad.”
And exercise is your main form of stress relief, isn’t it?
Matt looked on the verge of refusing, but he nodded. “Okay.”
The rest of the drive was made in silence.
At the house they changed clothes, did a few quick stretches on the porch, then took off at an easy pace, Shane matching his strides to Matt’s.
Their impromptu route took them down to the pier, and since the tide was out, they veered off to run on the packed sand along the water.
The beach was dark and deserted, the whitecaps of the crashing Pacific visible under the weak light of the moon, the rhythmic pounding of the surf a soothing backdrop.
Shane estimated they’d gone about three miles when Matt finally slowed and stopped to walk in circles with his hands laced behind his head, his body glistening with a light sheen of sweat.
He wandered a little closer to the water and sat, drawing his knees up and resting his forearms across them, fingers dangling.
Shane mirrored his pose and they gazed out over the frothing ocean, a shiver running through him as he thought of his upcoming Hell Week, of having to roll in that dark, cold water all night long. For several nights.
Matt read his mind. “Think about finally getting warm. Maybe you’ve won a race and they let you change into dry clothes, or you’ve had a chance to dry out during chow.
Your teeth have stopped chattering and your hands have stopped shaking.
Then one of them yells, ‘Get wet and sandy!’” He shuddered.
“I’m gonna hear those words in my nightmares until I’m an old, old man. ”
“I think what’s going to get me through all of it is knowing you’ll kick my ass if I really do quit.”
Matt lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I don’t have much time for quitters.” His tone wasn’t arrogant, just matter of fact.
Shane nodded. “I know.”
They lapsed into silence. Shane waited him out, not wanting to push.
Finally Matt sighed. “It’s not some big, dramatic story, Shane. I was a typical small-town kid, getting together with my buddies on a Saturday night to drink what we stole from our parents’ liquor cabinets. Almost a rite of passage, you know?”
Shane thought of nights in friends’ living rooms, all of them giggling over purloined whiskey or vodka, pretending to be cool by declaring they liked it but secretly trying not to gag. “Yeah.”
Matt combed through the sand, letting it sift through his fingers.
“If a guy said he could do four shots without puking, I’d do eight.
If someone said I shouldn’t drive home…” He tensed.
“One night I rolled my dad’s pickup after skidding on some ice.
No one was hurt and it was an old truck, so no harm done, except for the fact I was drunk as a skunk. ”
“How old were you?”
“Seventeen.” Matt’s lips twisted. “My dad let me sit in the holding tank all night, and then the next morning he showed up with my uncle in tow.”
“Your SEAL uncle?”
“Yeah.”
“I bet he laid into you.”
“You have no idea. After he ripped me a new one, he said if I was serious about becoming a SEAL, it was time to think about training. He agreed to work with me so I’d be ready for BUD/S, but the deal was I couldn’t touch another drop of alcohol.
If he ever smelled it on me, or heard about me drinking, he was done. ”
Matt raked his fingers over and over through the sand, tension in every line of his body.
“I lived up to my end of the bargain, but then he hit me with the college thing. At the time I thought it was so I’d have something to fall back on in case I washed out of BUD/S, which pissed me off because I didn’t intend to fail. ”
His voice was tight with remembered anger, so Shane took a chance and put his hand on Matt’s upper back, rubbing his palm slowly over the bunched muscle. “But that’s not why?”
Matt shrugged. “Part of it, sure. But mostly he wanted to see if I’d learned my lesson, how I behaved when someone wasn’t watching my every move.
Looking back, college was my first SEAL training evolution, Shane, and I failed.
Within a year my grades were in the toilet.
I spent every weekend drunk, didn’t think I could have a good time unless I got wasted.
I cut classes, turned in subpar work because there wasn’t anyone holding me accountable.
Basically I was an immature, irresponsible asshole. ”
Weren’t we all, though, Soup? Weren’t we all so stupid, and na?ve, and trusting?
“It was fun and games until I left a party and ended up crashing into a parked car at twenty miles an hour. Broke my nose, split my eyebrow open. Spent the night in the ER for observation, then was booked into the county jail. I was nineteen, so that meant I now had a record.”
His heart aching for him, Shane ran his hand up to the back of Matt’s neck and squeezed, just listening.
“The worst moment of my life was having to call my uncle and tell him what happened, that after all he’d done for me I’d fucked it up anyway.
He was quiet for a long time, his disappointment just radiating through the phone to punch me right in the gut.
He said he’d have to call me back and hung up. ”
“I can imagine that was another long night.”
“Oh, no, he let me stew for three days. Finally he called and laid it out for me. Grades had to go up. I had to finish my court-ordered community service and put in at least ten volunteer hours a week on top of that. I had to give him and my dad online access to my bank account so they could track where every cent of my money was going. If I did all that, and I finished strong and earned my degree, he’d call in a few favors to make sure I got accepted into the BUD/S pipeline, arrest record or no. The rest of it was up to me.”
He looked over at Shane. “Since the night of my wreck I haven’t touched another drop of alcohol and I never will. I refuse to let my Uncle Rick down or make him regret calling in those favors.”
He fell silent, reclining back on his elbows with a grunt.
After a moment, Shane lay down on his side next to him and propped his head in his hand. “Do you think I’m an asshole?”
Matt stared at him, his eyes widening almost comically. “Is this a trick question?”