Kaboom, page 14
“Julie.” He didn’t know what else to say. Or at least he couldn’t get the words he wanted to say out of his mouth. Maybe the best thing would be for him to just get out of the car now before he cried again. But the next thing he knew, they were embracing. He didn’t know if he leaned towards her or if she leaned towards him, but their arms were around each other, they were as close as they could be in the bucket seats of her car. His head was on her shoulder, and her head was on his shoulder. It felt so right, so comfortable, so wonderful, and he never wanted it to end. He didn’t cry and she didn’t kiss him, but it was still everything.
“You don’t need to be afraid anymore, Cowboy,” Julie said against his skin.
Afraid? He wasn’t afraid. He was many things, but not afraid. He was depressed, traumatized, hopeless, but he was not afraid.
Or, maybe he was. Afraid of being seen, being gawked at, being judged. Afraid of unexpected noises and unfamiliar places.
He had no right to be here like this, in her arms, feeling the arousal he always did whenever he saw her or touched her or thought about her. She wasn’t his anymore. They had broken up months ago. Or so he thought.
When they finally separated, he was surprised to be able to look at her without falling apart or terrifying her with his haunted eyes. She kissed his cheek, just a brief peck, and said, “Let me know if you change your mind about the track team. Brent could use your help.”
He could only nod, his speechlessness now due to the magic of her touch rather than to his trauma. Although his heart wanted him to stay there with her forever, he knew he had to leave her before she either assumed they were a couple again, or encouraged him to go back to the school.
Nothing like a PTSD episode to set a romantic mood.
He grasped his cane and opened the door, but before he tried to get out of the car, he reminded her, “It’s not Brent. It’s Coach.”
“Coach to you, Brent to me,” she said with a smile and a little giggle. “But I’m not sure if I can do that, I mean call a teacher from high school by their first name, even though we’ve graduated. It’s too weird. Are you sure you don’t want me to come back in the morning to pick you up?”
“Don’t pick me up. I told you I’m not going back.”
“I don’t mind,” she persisted. “You know I’m here for you. Whatever you need.”
“What time did you get home from work last night?” he asked, though he was pretty sure he knew the answer.
She looked a bit surprised at his changing the subject, but went along. “Well, by the time we closed, cleaned up, and prepped for tonight, I left at about one a.m.”
Julie still lived at home with her parents. She hadn’t gotten her own place when she started working because she’d been saving up her money for the life that she and Clay had been implicitly planning together. By the time she drove home to Wheeling, it was probably after two before she could go to bed. He knew that at her restaurant, the bulk of the drudgery chores went to the junior staff members such as her. Then she’d been up to come to his house and to the high school in the morning. For what? To see him? That wasn’t fair to her.
“You weren’t there all alone?” he asked, his throat constricting with fear at the thought of her walking out to her car alone at that late hour, in the dark, parked at the far end of the parking lot to keep the closer spots open for customers.
“No, we have a security guard who comes in when the restaurant closes and makes sure everyone gets to their cars safely when they leave.”
He felt an irrational jealousy towards that unknown security guard who had the privilege of walking Julie to her car in the early morning darkness. Maybe he had held her door open for her. Maybe he had asked her out.
He shouldn’t be jealous. She wasn’t his woman anymore, even if she did come to see him and express her concern at his idiotic lunacy.
It might have been rude, but he got out and limped up to his front door without saying goodbye or looking back, even when he heard the swish of her window opening.
“See you soon!” she called out, and by reflex he turned and looked back to see her waving cheerily, just as if this was a normal day and he was a normal person. He didn’t respond, because he was basically an asshole. Even he didn’t want to spend time with himself. How could anyone else want to do so? It just reinforced his belief that Julie was too good for her own good, and he didn’t deserve her.
His mother heard him come in and smiled at him as if he deserved it.
“How was your track coach?” she asked. “Did Julie find you? Was that her in the driveway? Why didn’t you invite her in? I wanted to thank her for the lovely cake she brought over.”
The truthful answers to those questions were, Traumatizing, Yes, Yes, and, Because it would break my heart, but he couldn’t say any of those to his mother. And he hadn’t eaten any of the cake Julie had brought to them. His parents and Brooke had enjoyed it, but the confection conjured up too many memories of being with her. He just mumbled some excuse and limped up to his room.
It was way too soon for him to take another pain pill. He was supposed to wait four hours in between, and it had barely been two. But he needed one bad, and he took the pill with him to the bathroom. He’d forgotten the half-drunk bottle of water someone had given him back at the high school track, had left it on the ground. He was a litterbug as well as an insane freak.
He lay on his bed with his arm over his eyes trying without success not to think about the morning’s events.
Coach said his reaction to the sound of the starter gun was an issue. It was way more than an issue. Coach still wanted Clay to come back and continue to help with the track team, despite his panic attack. Coach had told Julie to call him by his first name. He hadn’t extended that offer to Clay. But then why should he? Julie gave up on much-needed sleep after a long, tough work shift to come see him, to try to help him. She’d wanted to spend time with him but he had rudely rebuffed her instead, afraid to take that kind of emotional risk. Afraid to take a chance.
He grabbed his phone and sent a text to Coach Swanson saying he wouldn’t be able to help him at track camp anymore. His simple “Sorry’ was a weak ending to the message, when he should be apologizing profusely for his behavior and bad influence on those poor kids.
Face it, Clay, he thought as the effects of the Vicodin kicked in. Your life sucks.
Ten
He got a text from Jacoby that very night, and wondered if Julie had called him to tell him about his coaching debacle. Apparently he had agreed to meet with the guy at Starbucks again and Jacoby wanted to confirm a day and time. Clay didn’t recall any such agreement but the way his mind was messed up now, he may very well have done so without realizing it.
Somehow he found himself again taking an Uber to meet with Staff Sergeant Jacoby, who was already there with two pumpkin spice lattes on the table when Clay arrived. Why could he not say no? He purposely set the meeting for Wednesday when his parents would be at work. He didn’t tell Brooke where he was going, not that it would matter. Now that she was done with her junior year of high school and free for the summer, she stayed up late and slept in late in the morning. He hadn’t seen her when he left the house, but that wasn’t the issue. They hadn’t spoken a word to each other since his rude outburst at her last week. Surprisingly, Jacoby had no problem agreeing to meet him at ten a.m. Didn’t he have a job to go to? Or was his life’s work devoted to putting Clay on a spot he didn’t want to be on?
He knew if he asked Julie, she would pick him up and take him to this meeting. But then she’d probably end up talking to Sergeant Jacoby about Clay as she had with Coach Swanson. Jacoby would probably invite her to call him by his first name too. Clay could probably get away with calling the guy Nathan rather than Jacoby or Sergeant, but his Army habits prevailed.
“Are you going to your physical therapy?” Jacoby asked as they sipped their pumpkin spice lattes.
Clay shrugged, which Jacoby correctly interpreted as a negative. “And why not?”
He shrugged again, trying to look uncaring, but his blush gave him away.
“Let me guess.” Jacoby lifted his hand and started counting off on his fingers. “You don’t think it will do any good. You think it’s a pointless bunch of hokum. You’re too proud to admit you need help. You think your life is over so why bother. You can’t drive yet – either because you haven’t tried or you’re still on pain meds. Which is it?”
Clay refused to answer and just stared at the stupid cup of coffee Jacoby had bought him. Jacoby gave him a moment to answer, an opportunity he refused to take. Another effect of Kaboom. He couldn’t talk about it or how he felt, when before that he’d been an open, talkative guy. The staff sergeant was probably going to tell him that his body would adjust to the prosthesis and that after a while he’d forget it was even there. Easy to say for someone with two legs. Clay was aware of this amputation and prosthesis every waking moment.
Jacoby hit the nail on the head. “It’s all of the above, isn’t it?”
Of course all of those reasons applied. As far as Clay was concerned, those were all the reasons he needed.
“Do you have plans for your future?” That was the million-dollar question, the one that neither his mother, father or Julie had dared to ask. But Staff Sergeant Jacoby, he asked.
Oh Clay had plans all right. Big plans. Important plans. He was going to spend the rest of his life living like a hermit in his parents’ home, sleeping in his childhood bedroom, living on disability and pain pills and feeling sorry for himself.
That was a great plan for life, wasn’t it?
His future and his plans for it had vanished, as surely as if it had been blown away by a bomb. In fact, that was exactly what had happened.
He’d had a crazy plan in his head, before Kaboom, to attend Ranger School. Clay’s battle buddy from basic training, Noah Gadsden, had been deployed to Afghanistan with him and the both of them had aspired to become Rangers. They had been training and practicing the physical requirements, the proper assembly of the M60 rifle, and planning to attend Army Jump School to become airborne qualified. The CIB – Combat Infantry Badge – he would have earned after completing his deployment would be an advantage as well. Noah had been with them in the Humvee on the day of Kaboom but his injuries had been minor, so Clay had been told. Even though they’d been friends for almost four years, he hadn’t been in touch with the guy since that day, so he didn’t know if Noah had gotten into Ranger School without Clay.
He was getting tired of just shrugging in response to questions. Maybe if he answered them with words, the sergeant would quit asking.
“Maybe. I’m thinking about it.”
Jacoby seemed satisfied with the vague answer and didn’t press for details.
“Tell me what things make you happy.”
That was an easy one. “Right now, nothing.”
“OK, then what made you happy before you lost your leg?”
“Julie. But I screwed things up with her. My sister, but she’s not talking to me. Music.”
“You still have music, don’t you? You didn’t suffer permanent hearing loss in the explosion?”
“A little, on the left.”
He sort of still had his music. He could listen to it, but singing – he wasn’t sure if he’d ever be able to do that again.
“Why is your sister not speaking to you?”
“I said some rude things to her. In fact, I was a total jerk.”
“There is an easy fix to that.”
Yeah right. Easy for him to say. Jacoby wasn’t the one who had broken up with his girlfriend, pissed off his sister, and made his parents cry.
“You just go to her, look pitiful, say – what’s your sister’s name?”
“Brooke.”
“OK, you say, Brooke, I was a total jerk and I apologize for saying rude things to you. Please forgive me. If you can squeeze out a tear it will help immensely.”
Looking pitiful and squeezing out a tear wouldn’t be hard at all.
“Now with your lovely Julie, it might be more difficult to make amends. Flowers may have to be involved.”
“How do you know she’s lovely?” he asked, with undeserved jealousy.
“She sent me a photo of you two, so I would recognize you when we met. See?”
He held up his phone and Clay found himself looking at a photo of himself and Julie taken just before he’d left for his deployment, him standing proud in his uniform, Julie smiling just as proudly as she held onto his arm. It was a digital version of the same photo Julie foolishly carried in her pocket to show to other guys who asked her out.
The sergeant would probably be displeased if Clay were to grab away his phone and smash it on the floor so he wouldn’t have to look at that smiling photo. It was just as bad as the pictures in his parent’s living room. But the Army had taught him to respect those who outranked him, and the respect was still embedded in him despite his medical discharge, so he let the guy keep his phone and didn’t even ask him to delete the photo.
He found, despite himself, that he was starting to like this guy. Jacoby exuded an aura of contentment with his life, a sentiment that had eluded Clay since the moment of Kaboom.
“No, I can never make things right with her. I have no right to. She deserves better.” That was why he’d sent Julie away every time he saw her. It was the right thing to do, wasn’t it?
“Did you deserve her before you lost your leg?”
“I thought so.”
“Then you still deserve her now. You’re the same person you were before and I’m sure she will understand that.”
It was so easy for Jacoby to say. Just apologize. Offer flowers. Those were far too simplistic fixes to his messed-up relationships, as if those casual suggestions could fix the unfixable.
“I can’t have Julie back because I love her,” he said.
Jacoby arched an eyebrow. “Care to explain that one?”
“Isn’t love supposed to be caring more about the other person than yourself?” Clay asked. “That’s why we can’t be together. I love her too much to put her through that.”
“I think I know a thing or two about being in love,” Jacoby replied. “Another part is respecting the other person enough to believe in them.”
When Clay offered neither argument nor agreement, Jacoby asked, “Have you talked to a counselor?”
“More than I ever want to again.” The shrinks had been on him like white on rice from the moment he’d woken up after his surgery.
What did the psychiatrists know about what he had been through? They had been in combat themselves, they’d said, but hadn’t lost so much as a fingernail, not to mention a limb. They wanted him to talk about it and to get it all out. Like that would help. Talking about it would just expose his already-obvious weakness, that vulnerable soft underbelly that the Man Code demanded be protected at all costs. He talked just enough to get through the session, then rolled back to his room and crawled inside himself. The counselors were probably writing in their case notes, loser.
Those stupid shrinks, telling him to think about all the good things he should look forward to. What did they know, with their fancy PhDs mounted in a frame on an office wall? They all had two normal, attached legs. How could they possibly understand what he was feeling, experiencing, just because they had gone to school long enough to put the title Doctor in front of their names? They were just feeding him shit and calling it sugar.
Jacoby wasn’t done with his interrogation.
“How are your parents doing?”
Why should he ask about people he didn’t know?
“I guess they’re OK. They tiptoe around things. Offer to help. Act all optimistic.”
They wanted the old Clay back but they weren’t going to get him, because the old Clay didn’t exist anymore.
“I know it may be difficult to talk to family,” Jacoby said, “even though they support you endlessly. But they might not understand what you're going through. For some guys, it’s more comfortable talking with other veterans, because we've been there.”
“What’s the point?” Clay retorted, hating how whiny he sounded.
“It's about self-respect and pride,” Jacoby retorted back. Two things Clay no longer had, thanks to Kaboom. “Getting help is not an admission of failure, you know. It’s an admission of caring. When did sitting around feeling sorry for yourself ever get you anywhere?”
“You sound like a shrink.” Clay’s observation was not meant as a compliment. “What do you do in civilian life?” What could the guy do that gave him the freedom of sitting in a coffee shop at ten a.m. on a weekday? If he was another shrink, Clay doubted he’d be back for another meeting, even if the guy did buy him coffee.
“After the Army, I took advantage of my military educational benefits and finished my degree, and got my master’s. Now I teach history at Fremd High School.”
He was a Fremdie? Even though it had been almost five years since Clay had graduated from high school, his loathing for Wheeling’s rivals still flowed through his veins. He’d left the Fremdies in the dust at their last track meet, back in the day. Because back then, he could.
“What is it you want out of life?” Jacoby asked.
What he wanted out of life was the impossible. He wanted the ability to time travel, to about ten minutes before Kaboom, and to have ESP so that he could tell Sergeant Lopez to hit the brakes.
“It’s not a matter of what I want. Not anymore. You know what I did in high school?”
“Did your homework, stayed out of trouble, respected your teachers?”
“I may have missed an assignment once in a while, but I did most of it. I’ll admit I smarted off to a teacher once or twice but nothing too egregious.”
“You must have come away with something if you kept the word egregious in your vocabulary.”
“I was on the track team. A runner. Pretty ironic, isn’t it? I was pretty good if I do say so myself. Set a record or two at my high school. At Basic Training, I actually looked forward to the daily runs, even with the thirty pounds of gear. I almost always came in first, and I won the running award in my class at Basic for the two-mile run. The other guys were getting shin splints because they weren’t used to running that much, but not me. I loved the obstacle course and the runs.”
