Here’s something
you should know about Henry and me: we never meant to live together. He and my
brother, Jason, met in high school and attended college together. For as long
as I could remember, Jason had always intended on joining the Air
Force—it was kind of a given as my father and grandfather were both
retired pilots. My guess was that Henry hung out with Jason enough that he too
became convinced the military life was for him. So they had gone through ROTC
together and eventually were sworn in to the Air Force, Jason as an intel officer and Henry as a Security Forces officer. Not
surprisingly, they were both sent to Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, and of
course, lived together in an apartment on the south side of the city.
I was always the
outsider, the third wheel. I was two years younger and was a bit of a pest,
always asking to join them in their adventures. Besides that, I was a girl and had cooties, so I was almost
always left behind, rejected and heartbroken. Very early on, even before his
braces came off, I was convinced that Henry and I would get married. In my
Disney years, I pictured him as my Prince Charming. Then in my rebellious
years, he was my imagined bad boy who would whisk me off in his motorcycle. But
they were nothing but the daydreams of a girl who then grew up to realize that
the boy of her dreams was far from perfect. The sobering reality was that he
was a flawed guy, who oftentimes tiptoed into jerk territory, as all men are
wont to do.
After graduating
from college, I accepted a web design job in Oklahoma and crashed on their
couch for a few months while I saved up enough money for an apartment. Henry
was not keen on the idea and, in fact, tried his hardest to find me another
place to live. I still remembered coming to the table on Sunday mornings and
finding the newspaper opened to the classifieds with some listings already
highlighted, his not-so-subtle way of telling me to stop cramping his bachelor
pad.
Henry inspired me
to find a place faster, but then Jason was deployed to Afghanistan and said I
could stay in his room for the six months that he was gone. To save money, I
jumped on the offer.
Little did I know
that my brother would never come back.
He was gathering intel , walking around a Kabul neighborhood talking to the
nationals, when someone started shooting out of nowhere. Jason never even had a
chance. Even now, his death makes no sense to me, and I still hold onto the
hope that, one day, they’ll find him somewhere in the Afghan mountains, roughed
up but still alive.
It’s a long shot,
but the ability to fool myself is one of my best talents.
So it was with a
smile that I walked out of my room the next morning, pretending that nothing
happened at Tapwerks the night before. I shuffled to the kitchen in my flannel
pajamas and turned on the coffee maker. Henry came out of his room, still
committed to that sullen persona, and reached for the coffee mugs. I started
frying some eggs and he put the bread in the toaster. When the coffee was done,
he poured and fixed mine the way I like it and took them to the table. I slid
the eggs onto two plates, placed a piece of toast on each one, and joined him
at the table.
We ate quietly,
hiding in our own thoughts to avoid talking about last night. I wasn’t sure if
it was even worth talking about, if maybe he had just been playing around to
teach my nosy ass a lesson. But my, what a long, hard lesson it was.
I had to gulp
down coffee when the toast stuck in my throat, chalking my impure thoughts of
Henry down to sex deprivation. I just needed a good lay, that was all.
The last time I’d
had sex was over a year ago, when my relationship with a guy from work fell
apart a few months after Jason’s death. I hadn’t been able to cope with the
grief and Brian had been inept at offering comfort, so the relationship ended.
Still, even though Brian hadn’t been the best lover, he’d been a step up from
The Rabbit.
That was
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