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“Luca, he thinks I stole his girl,” said Tyler. “And on top of that you totally humiliated him. Physically and emotionally. Infrontof this girl he supposedly loves so much.”
I crossed my arms. Now I was getting annoyed.
“Are you saying I shouldn’t have decked him?”
“No!” declared Tyler. “That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m glad you did. I’m probably just jealous that I didn’t get a crack at him. I know for sure that Jay is.”
“But still—”
“I’m not mad at you,” Tyler sighed in obvious frustration. “I’m mad that opportunity is slipping away. I’d all but resigned myself to the fact that Aegean was closing down a few months ago. I’d made peace with it. Maybe not outwardly, but internally I was just about over the whole thing. And now…”
“Now you have a new restaurant,” I said, gesturing grandly.
“Do I?” Tyler laughed cynically. “Or does this rich asshole own it?”
“He owns the building maybe,” I consoled him. “But that’s all. Maybe you’ll stay here, maybe you’ll move Aegean again. Even so, he’ll never own the legacy your foster parents built.”
“That legacy is dying again,” Tyler lamented. “For the second time in as many months.”
My friend shook his head, then ran his fingers through his thick mop of hair. He was looking everywhere but at me.
“Man, he’s pissed,” Tyler said, staring down at his own feet. “I mean, that shit you dug up on him? About flunking SEAL school, and—”
“BUDS school.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
I didn’t feel like explaining. “I guess so, yeah.”
“Whatever,” Tyler acknowledged. “You said he checked out early, though. That he rang some sort of a bell.”
I nodded, looking around the empty restaurant. There were long shadows outside. The sky had given way to darkness quickly.
“How did you know that?”
“I was never a SEAL,” I admitted, “but I have a few Navy friends who were. And during training there’s this bell they always set before you. You never want to ring it though, because once you do you’re out. BUDS is immediately over for you. You’ll never get your trident.”
“You mean that pin he had?” asked Tyler. “The one you said was fake?”
“Yup.”
“And how do you know he rang the bell?”
“I just do,” I said. “Besides, I have SEAL buddies who have never heard his name before. Some of them would’ve been in his graduating class, or near-bouts. They didn’t recognize the name, or the man.”
I continued sweeping the floor with deliberately slow strokes. Tyler was in no big rush to close the place. Neither was I.
“Besides, I’ve seen the type before,” I went on. “Guys who never belonged in the service to begin with. They joined because they wanted to ‘see the world’. Or like this asshole, they had fathers and grandfathers who served. They enlisted just for the sake of pleasing them, or—”
“Bah! Who the hell even knows if his father served,” Tyler spat. “He could be just as big a liar as Elijah. Maybe even more.”
“No,” a voice called out from the other end of the restaurant. “Hedefinitelyserved.”
Tyler and I glanced up at the same time. Jenna was standing just inside the door, still bundled up in her coat. Her expression was somber and full of sadness. And not for herself, either.
“Elijah’s father is many things,” said Jenna. “A self-made billionaire. A Vietnam vet who survived Hamburger Hill. But the one thing he’s not is a liar.”
Tyler let out a long, resigned sigh. “So you heard, huh?”
