Chapter Three

Nick walked slowly, his knee and shoulder aching. He didn’t take the bus; he needed the whole walk just to slow the shaking in his hands.

“Maybe this is all a dream?” he thought. His phone buzzed. It was Owen Morris.

Morris: why is Peterson on my ass about you?

Seeing Peterson’s name was like ice water down his back. He had forgotten his predicament in the incident with the giant. Now Nick chewed his lip while he thought about what to say.

NICK: He says I gotta stick to you like glue—do everything you say this week.

Morris: JFC—why? What did you do?

NICK: No idea. But I’m already detailed to you, anyway, right?

Morris: Yes—it will be fine.

NICK: You home?

Morris: Nah—My turn to get beer

Owen Morris and Lena Jarrett were good housemates. They were both quiet, Lena because she was having a torrid affair with one of the Marines and Morris (Never Owen, always Morris) because he did nothing but play video games with his headphones on all evening. He was tall, obsessively clean, something held over from his days in the Navy, and made excellent chicken out on their patio grill.

Lena and Nick frequently had coffee together in the embassy gardens. Nick was crazy about her. She was beautiful, ambitious, and hard as nails. The only woman in the intel branch, she sometimes told Nick she felt like she was under a constant microscope.

“No offense, Nick,” she said when they first became friends. “The fact that you are such a low-level cog means I can be myself around you.” Nick was not insulted at all. He found their little household, which included the Marine, whose name was Robbie, and the occasional neighbor was the exact amount of social interaction he wanted or needed. No more, no less. Nick reached their little apartment and closed the door behind him with a sigh of relief.

“Okay, now you can fall apart all you want,” he muttered, heading up the narrow stairs. He heard voices as he turned the landing. The acrid smell of cheap pot caught his nose. Lena was home and apparently had Robbie over. Robbie was younger than Lena and wrapped tight around her perfectly manicured finger.

“You’re beautiful.” Nick heard Robbie’s breathless voice.

“Aw, baby, you’re so sweet. I’m so lucky to have you. Do that again…”

Nick felt an unexpected twist in his chest. He put a hand over it and rubbed, like a cramp. Images of Amber came into his mind, sweet and dark-haired. The ring he’d bought her. The promise of a better one. But that memory only brought the others. The last time he saw her—she was coming out of a restaurant, smiling over her shoulder at someone. She looked radiant until she saw him. Then fear and disgust had transformed her face. Loathing. The same as everyone else.

Nick shook himself—pushing the memory away. Intrusive thought. Breathe and focus on something where you are. He squeezed the wooden rail under his hand until his knuckles went white. The wood. The smooth solid wood. He breathed in again. Out. In and out. And again. He slipped up the rest of the stairs to his room. It had been a long time since a memory that strong had caught him unaware.

Today is the day for it, I guess.

Nick wanted to lie down until dinner. He hung up his clothes, groaning at the road dirt on the back of his shirt. It would have to go to the cleaners today. Which meant he had to borrow a shirt again. Damn it. Time to lie down and forget the entire day. The dream came immediately. The screech of brakes, the snap of branches. He was on the side of the highway in the dark, huge trucks roaring by, looking for the van down in the brush. He ran up and down, trying to see but blinded by headlights, slipping in blood and rainbow-sheened oil, hearing the little boy’s screams… Peterson was there, yelling at him to find them! Help them! What are you doing, Erickson? He skidded down the bank, as he had in real life. But instead of the blue van, it was the red-and-black Bugatti. The little boy in the red coat stood to the side, staring. The giant was the one impaled on the steering column, not the father whose gurgling death haunted Nick’s usual dreams.

“Stupid American,” the giant said.

Nick woke with a shout. It was dark and he had tangled himself in the sheet on his bed, nearly falling off the edge. He lay back, trying to breathe, working on his grounding exercises. The dream slipped away, breath by breath, until Nick felt solid enough to get up.

“I’d rather be with CIA any day…” Morris was saying as Nick came and sat down. Morris was cooking and Robbie was picking stems out of their little stash. Nick helped himself to a beer but waved off Robbie’s offer of pot.

“So, join,” Robbie said. They were talking about the drug war of course.

“Morris ain’t stupid,” Lena said. “He’s better off with us. Even if Peterson is a bitch to work for.”

“Thank you,” Morris said, waving his tongs at them. “Besides, those teams are a total sausage party.”

They were steadily devouring a pile of chicken and grilled vegetables with almost volcanic levels of spice—a house agreement that the hotter the better had led to some rough nights before they got it right. But now this was a regular thing with them. Cold beers and fire chicken and the usual gossip of any embassy: drugs and who was fucking who.

“What about you Nick?” Morris asked. “You’re the only single guy in the building who isn’t trying to hook up with someone. Robbie’s gotta have a few spare friends.”

“Private Stevens in motor pool thinks the sun comes out of your ass,” Robbie said. “She has a thing for redheads. Unless you’re into dudes. Then there is that Gunny with the scar…”

“No thanks, man,” Nick laughed. “I had a girl back home, but we broke up. I don’t need any drama.” He left it at that, peeling the label on his beer, hoping no one would ask more. Any thoughts of Amber that arose, he squashed as ruthlessly as he could.

“Anyway, Stevens is crazy,” Morris said. “Cra-zy.”

“Yeah, she is!” Lena laughed. “She was with that one clerk in the Ag office and—”

And so it went, the usual round of gossip. Nick settled back. It wasn’t that he wasn’t interested. He was lonely and touch starved and more than a little jealous of Lena and Robbie. But being with someone meant learning about each other. And Nick couldn’t risk it.

*

Lying in bed, he wished they hadn’t talked about it. The nap meant he couldn’t sleep, the dreams meant he didn’t want to. And talking about the sex lives of their coworkers only served to remind Nick of how lonely he was.

Even if they didn’t know any of his sordid history, Lena and Morris and Robbie felt safe to be around. It felt good to have people to talk to. Despite the imposed silence of the last year, Nick was typically a cheerful and outgoing soul. Being ostracized, despised, abandoned by even the people closest to him had been as damaging in its way as carrying the burden of guilt for the family he had killed. Having friends felt good.

As much as Nick enjoyed them and their companionship, he was still lonely and touch starved. It had been two years since Amber left him. And gradually, as everyone he knew and loved withdrew from him, he had less and less chance for any physical touch. He hadn’t even touched himself after a while. It was too depressing.

So he took it as a good sign when he woke up after a nap one afternoon to hear Robbie and Lena going at it next door and found he was hard and actually stroked himself to completion. It was embarrassing, but Nick was too caught up in the novelty of it to worry too much. His self-loathing had thawed just enough to let him enjoy his own body again. He felt like a teenager, as though he had just discovered this thing his body could do.

Now he punched his pillow and rolled over. Maybe it would help him sleep. Maybe it would let him sleep without dreams. That worked sometimes. It was worth a shot. He pulled up his phone and scrolled through the few porn sites that didn’t repel him. His old fantasies had taken on new peculiarities. He had always liked strong women, liked looking up at Amber as she rode him hard and fast, chasing her own orgasm. But now he imagined people using him deliberately. They didn’t know him; he was anonymous, just a naked body others took for their own pleasure. It was the friction, the skin, being wrung out and used, the pure visceral push and pull he craved. Two women, three, held down between soft skin and warm bodies… It didn’t take a psychologist to understand how badly he wanted to be touched. The urge to please, to be approved of, well… He didn’t want to look at that too closely.

The heat was sweltering, just the way Nick liked it. The rain was coming down in a roar outside. He lay back on his bed, naked and limbs spread. He dropped his phone. Useless. He pulled his blanket over him, something on his skin. He squeezed oil onto one hand and tugged his balls gently, trailing his fingers in expert circles behind his testicles. His other hand slid up and teased his nipples, pulling them tight and hard. He didn’t touch his cock until he couldn’t stand it anymore, and then only stroking the shaft, leaving the leaking head alone.

When he was ready, he wrapped one arm tight around himself, closing his eyes and rubbing his face against his pillow. He pulled his cock in long agonizing strokes, twisting his wrist under the head each time. It took only a few jerks and he came, filling his palm and biting down on a corner of the pillow to keep from being heard. He collapsed backward, starting to doze already. Good. For once. A little real sleep.