face in her hair.
“Do you maybe want to talk about it? I would, if I were in your shoes.”
I sigh. My therapist at the VA told me to try to be more open with the people in my life. Other than Nate, Aiden is the only person that I see regularly. He’s also been my best friend for years, going back before Rachel even.
I try to put my thoughts into words. How do I express the things I don’t want to talk about?
“The memories… they are too much. They make my throat close up, thinking about what life was like back then. Thinking about how amazing things were before that first IED exploded…”
“I know, man.” Aiden glances at me.
I rub the back of my neck as we climb the steps of the mess hall. This early, there is hardly anyone here but the kitchen staff. I glance around and make sure that we are still isolated before completing my thought.
“Thinking about how dark and bleak things got after that… how I was essentially institutionalized and couldn’t even make myself care about bathing and eating for almost half a year after that…”
I can’t finish saying my thoughts out loud. But if I could, it would probably sound something like…
I have to block it out. The good memories and the bad, the wonderful times and the wretched. They are all entwined in my memory and even thinking about her…
How good she was, how right it felt…
If I let some of it in, I let it all in. And I can’t do that to myself. I just can’t.
That Grayson, the one she knew. He died that day five years ago.
“You’ve been through a lot,” Aiden says, cutting through some of the noise that’s building up in my head. I give him a humorless smile.
“Yep. Me and everybody else in the whole entire world. Everyone else hasn’t lost their shit, though.”
Clearing my throat, I move toward the food. There isn’t anything hot out yet, so I just grab an oatmeal bar and fill up my canteen.
When we sit down at one of the picnic tables, Aiden looks up at me.
“You know that most people haven’t had your kind of life experience.”
I know what he means, but I deliberately misunderstand his words.
“And now I’m living a half-life here in Washington, spending my time in the mountains and clinging to whatever scraps of peace I can find. Great use of life experience.”
“You are being awfully self-pitying today.”
I sent him a glare. “Thanks for the support.”
He rolls his eyes. “I am supportive, within reason. But I’m not interested in dragging you through the mud. I’m more interested in what you are going to do now, with Rachel here. I mean, that’s a pretty big crisis.”
I take a minute to think my answer out.
“Rachel will just have to understand and learn to keep her distance. I’m unstable and unsteady and… basically a ticking time bomb, ready to implode.” I pause. “Why in the hell am I being put in this position, again?”
Aiden just shrugs. “Life is unfair, man.”
I can’t disagree with that one.
We eat the rest of the meal in silence. Then I have another hour of quiet meditation before the sun nudges its way into the sky. Only then do I label myself as ready to face the day.
A day where I will have to interact with Rachel again.
Part of me wants her to fail the physical exam, to go back to New York with her tail tucked between her legs. But I know that if that happens, then Nate won’t know what to do with me.
And if he doesn’t think I can be a park ranger anymore…
Well, it doesn’t bear thinking about.
So I trot over to cabin seven, knocking on the door. Rachel has to pass this test. She was an athlete in her college days. If she kept up the physique that is burned into my memory, she shouldn’t have a problem.
What if she didn’t, though? I mean, I think she’s thinner than when I knew her, but… who knows where that thinness comes from?
I knock on her door again, annoyed. Looking down at the bright blue door, I scowl. Of course she’s making me late on her very first day.
Just as I’m about to pound on the door for a third time, it opens. She looks sleepy, but she’s still pulled together. Her hair is up in a bun. She wears a pair of black shorts and a pink rain jacket. Her feet look