Rogenna Brewer - Mitzi's Marine

“Aviation electronics,” the boy answered.

“Get out there with the rest of ’em, brainiac. If you’d said nuclear field I might have given you a pass.”

Not. Every geek and gearhead had to get through boot camp before operating those nuclear-powered ships and subs.

“You coming?” Bruce asked Mitzi as he stripped down to his olive-green T-shirt, hanging his shirt on the back of his chair. Now she wouldn’t even look at him.

“I’ll pass.” She picked up the invitation Keith had left on her desk. “Career Day? Are you going?”

“I’m not invited.”

“I take it the conversation with your brother didn’t end well.”

“I think he’s sneaking around with the brunette behind Heather’s back.” He just didn’t know why. If, as his brother had said, Keith and Heather hadn’t dated since eighth grade, why all the secrecy?

“Kelly,” Mitzi said, remembering the girl’s name when he didn’t. “The one who hides behind her books? She’s one of my Officer Candidate School referrals. The Navy’s going to pay her way through college and med school.”

“The candy striper who wants to be a Navy doctor,” he said, cementing Kelly in his brain as something other than the brunette with the rockin’ seventeen-year-old body.

“She’s a nice girl.”

“It’s the nice ones a guy has to watch out for.”

Mitzi crossed her arms and stepped across the DMZ, their own little no-man’s-land that separated the Navy from the Marines. “I was a nice girl. Are you accusing me of something, Calhoun? Like ruining your nonexistent basketball career?”

Harsh even for a reality check. “Not a chance, Chief.”

“Don’t confuse what you think you wanted at Keith’s age with what you really wanted. I was there when you turned down those basketball scholarships to join the Marine Corps, remember?”

“Fair enough.” In high school he’d been a big fish in a small pond with little chance of reaching his Final Four dreams. He knew it. Even back then. Especially when only the smallest junior colleges had even bothered to look him over. Basketball was never the be-all and end-all for him. For him the Corps was his calling. He didn’t see that in Keith. “I’d just hate for him to give up his dreams so young.”

“You have to let him make his own mistakes.”

“You seen him play?” he asked. He had on rare occasions, in years past when his brother first made the varsity team as a freshman. Mostly he’d heard secondhand accounts from his family.

“A couple times,” she admitted without further comment. Which he assumed meant those couple of times had been since she’d started dating the boy’s basketball coach. “Bruce.” She hesitated. He watched a range of emotions cross her face. “Lock up when you leave, please. I have a…date tonight.”

Ouch.

Your fiancée is dating my coach.

Ex-fiancée.

Bruce felt a surge of jealousy unlike anything he’d experienced since high school. And he’d been jealous plenty since then. One problem.

He no longer had the right to be jealous.

AFTER WORK BRUCE SPENT about an hour and a half at the gym. The PT he’d inflicted on the Navy DEPers was nothing compared to his own physical fitness routine. He worked hard to stay fit. Prosthetics were expensive.

A residual limb could change over the course of a lifetime. It was important for him to maintain his weight to within five pounds. And to stay active to keep his thigh muscles—his stump—from atrophying.

Outside the gym Bruce zipped up his sweat jacket and cut through the parking lot.

He didn’t own a car—he’d sold it predeployment.

Afterward he hadn’t seen the point of owning one until he was back on his feet. Then once he was back on his feet his sole purpose had been to redeploy, so again, what was the point? In San Diego he’d had plenty of buddies when he wanted to hitch a ride, and here he had family and the use of two government vehicles—a nondescript sedan and a pimped-out Hummer.

So even though there was a chill to the night air, he preferred to walk. Because it was good exercise. And because he could. Walking was something he’d never take for granted again.

On his way home he grabbed a sandwich from the Spicy Pickle across from the recruiting station. He’d locked up as instructed. The storefront was dark—not that he’d expected Mitzi to be there at this hour, just that he wondered where she was spending her nights these days.

Had she moved back home with her father? Found a place of her own? There were several new apartment complexes in the vicinity. Was she living in one of them?

Or was she spending her nights with Estrada?

At this very moment Army/Navy could be snuggled up on the couch, fighting over the remote and discussing plans to move in together. Maybe they were already living together.

At the end of the block Bruce cut through the alley. It was darker and suited his mood. Henry was there digging through a trash can behind an Italian restaurant.

“Thought she told you to quit Dumpster diving.”

“A man’s gotta eat.”

“Ever heard of a soup kitchen?”

The old-timer made a sour face. “They make me pray for my supper. Out here I don’t have to pretend to be grateful to nobody. ’Sides—” he dug out a half-eaten piece of crusty garlic bread and took a bite “—food’s better.” He offered Bruce a piece.

Bruce shook his head. Although he’d scavenged for meals out of trash cans in BUD/S training, he’d never had to put that training to the test. And hoped he never would.

“Here,” he said without thinking. He opened his Spicy Pickle bag and dug out his sandwich, offering half of his gobbler panini to Henry along with a napkin.

The old-timer looked at him suspiciously. “You’re not going to make me pray?”

“No,” Bruce said. “Haven’t been doing a lot of that myself lately.”

Henry snorted, but took the offering. Bruce sat on an upturned dented metal trash can and bit into the turkey-and-feta sandwich. “How’d it go at the VA?” he asked.

“Could ask you the same thing,” Henry countered.

It was Bruce’s turn to snort.

“Sounds about right,” Henry said. “What the hell kind of cheese is this?” He spat out his first bite. Then he opened his sandwich and picked off the cheese before taking a second. “Can I get that pickle from you?”

Ol’ Henry sure wasn’t shy about asking for what he wanted. Or, for that matter, making it clear when he didn’t want something. Bruce gave up the pickle and the chips, then finished off his half of the panini.

Feta wasn’t his favorite cheese, either. A little salty for his taste. After brushing off his crumbs, Bruce crumpled the empty sack and tossed it, for a three-point shot, into the Dumpster across the alley.

“Night,” he said. Somehow good night didn’t seem appropriate to the situation. He didn’t ask if Henry had a place to stay. He was afraid he knew the answer, and asking the question would somehow make him responsible. If the old man didn’t have enough sense to get in out of the cold, that was his problem. “You’re going to be all right tonight? Got enough blankets?”

Damn it. He really hadn’t meant to ask.

“Got everything I need,” Henry said, letting him off the hook.

“Good,” Bruce said, then got the hell out of there before Henry could think of something he really needed. Like a roof over his head.

You and me, we ain’t so different.

Henry was right, of course. Bruce didn’t own a car. Or a home. Or have someone to share his life with. He’d pushed her away for this chance to get back to his unit.

His best friend, his half brother and his leg had been taken from him. All his buddies were in and around San Diego, or deployed overseas.