Sara Reinke - Backwoods

“Great,” Dani said, although the look on her face suggested she thought it was anything but.

When Andrew tried to sputter in protest, O’Malley leaned close, speaking into his ear. “Look, this is really important—the grand championship finals between the E-3s and E-4s. Me and Dani, we’ve worked our asses off these past few weeks to get to this round, only to find out my squad’s got maneuvers tonight. I can’t hang or I would. It’s just two more games. You two smoke them.” He nodded to indicate two of the soldiers standing near the pool table. “Then those two.” Another nod. “That’s it.”

“But I—” Andrew began, shooting a pleading look at Santoro.

O’Malley clapped his shoulder again. “Consider this your chance to be military material. A gift from me to you.”

“Great,” Andrew said. Some fucking gift.

“Thanks.” To Dani, O’Malley leaned forward, holding out his fist. When she did the same, he knocked his knuckles into hers. “Kick some PFC ass for me.”

“PVC?” Andrew asked as Santoro led him back to the pool table.

“ PFC,” she corrected. “Stands for Private First Class. They’re E-3s, ranked beneath E-4s like me and O’Malley.”

“Oh.” Feeling uncomfortable and intrusive, Andrew stood somewhat behind her as she offered introductions. He wanted to say something to her, apologize for being such a dickhead earlier when she’d brought back his photograph of Beth, but she wouldn’t give him the chance.

“This is Greg Taylor and Nick Jones.” She pointed to the pair closest to the table, who each leaned against the pool cues they held and awarded Andrew affable nods. “We’re playing them first. Then if we win, we’re up against Tweedledee and Tweedledum over there, Matt LaFollette and Mike Turner.”

She flapped her hand at the other two soldiers. One of them gave him a short, curt wave, while the other nodded once.

“You ever play before?” Santoro asked, chalking up her cue stick.

“Uh.” Andrew shrugged. “Sure.”

When she tossed him the little, well-worn cube, he fumbled, then dropped it on the floor, leaving a bright blue smutch on the linoleum. She rolled her eyes. “Great,” she muttered within his earshot. “This should be fun.”

She leaned over and beat him to the punch, just as he, too, reached for the fallen chalk. “Okay, listen,” she said, her brows narrowing. “Nick just broke. They’re solids. That means we’re trying to hit the balls with the stripes on them…” She mimed holding a ball in her hand, painting a stripe around its diameter. “…into the pockets.” Now she pretended to plunk the invisible ball into an equally invisible hole.

“Thanks for that,” he said dryly.

“Just try not to scratch and stay out of my way,” she said. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

Ten minutes later, Andrew leaned across the table, his arm extended, his fingers fanned out to bridge his cue. “Corner pocket,” he said, leveling his sites on the eight ball near the far end of the table. Pausing conspicuously, he glanced over his shoulder at Dani Santoro, his brow arched. “It’s okay to hit that one now, isn’t it? Even though it doesn’t have…” He relaxed his grip on the back of cue long enough to twirl his index finger in a circle. “…a stripe around it?”

Without looking back at the table, he made the shot, sinking the eight in the pocket he’d predicted, thus winning the game for them—and all without the other team having even had the chance to take a shot.

“You ran the table,” Santoro observed as Greg Taylor and Nick Jones slinked away, muttering together and shooting dark looks in Andrew’s general direction.

“I did?” Andrew feigned innocent obliviousness while the next two players, Matt LaFollette and Mike Turner chalked their sticks and racked the balls.

“Where’d you learn to play like that?”

Dropping her a wink, he said, “North Pole.”

On the next game, he let her take some shots, primarily because he was curious to see if she was any good. She turned out to be surprisingly so, particularly considering she was short enough for her stature to have been a possible handicap when it came to making long shots. He discovered something else along the way that had been hidden beneath the drab and unflattering uniform—Dani Santoro had a great ass. And when she bent over the pool table, stretching out her arms to take aim, the dark cotton of her shorts stretched tight, the bottom hem riding up just enough to make the crotch of Andrew’s jeans feel uncomfortably tight.

“Go ahead, Santoro,” one of their opponents, Turner, said as she lined up a shot. “Put it up the little tramp’s ass.” Leaning against the nearest wall, his arms folded across his chest, he dropped a conspicuous sideways grin at his partner, LaFollette, who then guffawed.

Santoro glanced up from her cue, her brows narrowed. “Real funny,” she said, and whatever the private pun was, it clearly bothered her. Even though she redirected her attention to the table, she missed the shot, the nine ball glancing off the bumper and narrowly skating past the pocket.

“Little tramp’s ass?” Andrew said, curious, his brow raised.

“It’s nothing.” Santoro glowered at Turner again.

“It’s a Langley-ism,” Turner offered helpfully, though this meant nothing to Andrew.

“Like I said. It’s nothing,” Santoro said, still frowning. With this, she turned, handing her cue stick to Andrew. “I’ll be right back. I need to hit the latrine.”

Andrew couldn’t help but notice he wasn’t alone in not-so-surreptitiously checking Santoro out as she left the room.

“Man,” LaFollette said, sucking in a hiss through his teeth. “How’d you like to tap a piece of that?”

“Watch it, man,” Turner said. “Don’t let O’Malley hear you say shit like that.”

The two privates laughed.

“You mean, the two of them…they’re together?” Andrew asked.

LaFollette laughed again. “Yeah. In O’Malley’s wet dreams.”

“He just wants to,” Turner said.

“He’s been trying to get in her pants since the day he got here,” said LaFollette. “Langley said he was the only guy he’d ever seen who was pussy-whipped without getting any pussy.”

The two soldiers laughed again.

“Langley?” Andrew said. “The guy who came up with ‘put it up the little tramp’s ass?’” Apparently Langley was a veritable fount of such colorful phrases.

“Yeah. Grant Langley. He was A squadron’s leader. Hand-picked by Prendick. They all were.”

“Santoro’s always been pissed off about that,” Turner told Andrew, leaning forward and speaking in a low, conspiratorial tone. “Said he didn’t deserve it. She was just jealous, if you ask me.”

“He got sent home a month or so ago along with the rest of his squad. Captain Peterson, too. They all came down with Rocky Mountain spotted fever.” LaFollette shook his head, looking somber. “That’s some nasty ass shit.”

Rocky Mountain spotted fever? Andrew thought in surprise. That’s the big secret about what happened to Lieutenant Carter, the guy who had my room before me? Everyone else had, to that point, seemed so tight-lipped about Carter and his whereabouts, that he found himself nearly disappointed with the banality of the truth. The forests all around them were teeming with deer ticks. Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Lyme disease and other ailments transmitted through their bites should have been considered both a common enough concern and unextraordinary risk.

“Hey, man.” Turner walked around the table toward Andrew, slipping an iPhone off a carrying clip on his waistband. “You ever here of a camel spider?”