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He swallowed. “I can’t stay here.”
Before I could ask what he meant by that, my sister’s voice raised, and all of a sudden, I saw the man that I was talking to go from a quiet-toned man to a pissed off bear that stood up straight. If he’d had hackles, they would’ve been raised.
Then I watched him stomp his way over to where my sister was and pull the other girl into the curve of his arms. He glared at my sister as if she’d just committed the ultimate sin.
“Don’t ever speak to her that way again,” he growled.
The girl’s eyes narrowed on my sister, and she sneered.
I wanted to poke her eyes out with a dinner fork.
But not because she was mean to my sister—my sister could handle her own self. Because she was snuggling deeper into Benson’s arms, and something inside of my chest was throbbing with anger and jealousy.
I was jealous as hell that she got to have his hands on her. The one and only brief touch that I’d had to my wrist as he’d touched the hummingbird tattoo was enough for me to crave more.
But, when Benson led the girl away, farther away from me and my sister, I realized that it didn’t matter.
I was fifteen and he was who knows how old. It wouldn’t work anyway.
Unfortunately, I never stopped thinking about him, regardless of what I told myself.
***
Phoebe, Age 16
I looked for him the moment that I got into the door.
I didn’t know what it was, a compulsion, maybe. Whatever the reason for why I’d sought him out, I couldn’t stop myself.
I’d thought about him constantly since I’d seen him last year, and wondered how he was doing.
Hell, I even wondered if it was possible that he was even here since he’d joined the Army.
That, I knew for certain, he had done. I’d asked about him in passing, hopefully not drawing attention to myself in the process.
And I’d gotten relieved ‘yes, he dids’ from Dixie and my grandfather alike.
We were once again back at the hangar—a place where we ended up having quite a bit of our family get-togethers lately.
Unfortunately, this time there was no helicopter to sit in, so I chose the next best thing—a plane.
I didn’t buckle myself in this time. I did flick a few switches up and down a few times just to see what they did. What could I say, I was getting wild in my old age.
“Statistically, one of those will do something and you’re going to find yourself getting into trouble.”
I blinked at that smoky, edgy male voice and looked up.
Right into the face of the man I’d been thinking about non-stop for a year.
How had he gotten there, right next to me, without me being aware?
I smiled. “Hello, Benson.”
Being in the Army agreed with him. He’d put on muscle, and now his freakishly tall body was filled out.
He’d changed a lot since I’d last seen him, and I was more than amazed at how good he looked.
He also held himself differently.
“Hello, Fancy.”
I rolled my eyes at that name.
“Why Fancy?” I asked.
He ignored the question and, once again, he didn’t make eye contact.
“You got another tattoo,” he said.
I looked down at the other wrist and smiled. “I didn’t want to have a male and not a female, so yeah. I got a female.”
He studied it.
Then, one large, tanned finger came out and poked it. Three times.
My heart skipped a beat.
“So how is the whole Army thing?” I asked, trying to make sense of the touch while also not making too big of a deal of it.
I’d spent the last year researching Asperger’s, and I knew that the compulsion to do something was sometimes too strong to ignore for people diagnosed with it.
“Bad,” he admitted. “At least in the beginning. So, so bad. There was a routine, but only they knew what was next. It made no sense to me. None of it. People screamed at you. It was…awful.”
I winced. “But?”
His eyes briefly flicked to mine and immediately flitted away again.
“I got a good drill instructor,” he admitted. “His brother had Asperger’s, and he saw the signs and symptoms almost immediately.”
“And he let you stay?” I asked in surprise.
He nodded once. “Covered for me, too. I couldn’t fuckin’ believe it.”
I shook my head in surprise. “That’s amazing.”
“It was. I scored a perfect score on my ASFAB, too,” he admitted. “I think he knew that I was smart as hell, and he overlooked a few things. I even made a few really good friends. He helped me a lot. I never realized just how much I’d have to learn to rely on another person, which is definitely not in my repertoire at all. It could’ve been fucking awful, yet he caught me before I could be pounded into a million tiny pieces.”
