“I moved up here because my girlfriend from home came up here to go to school. When I got out, I followed her like a lost puppy. She forgot to mention in her letters that she moved up here with another guy.” He shrugged dismissively, but I noticed his fists clench, revealing it was still a sensitive subject. “I don’t need a house to myself. I’ve been with my brothers so long, I thought living alone would be peaceful, but it’s boring as all hell.”

My arms crossed instinctively over my chest and my head nodded to Jameson as I maintained Landon’s attention. “You knew he was Jameson.”

Landon’s lips finally cracked into a smile. “Facebook.”

I shook my head and smirked. “We’ve got a piece-of-shit couch, but it won’t fit all of us. We’ll probably want to get something bigger.”

Landon shrugged in return. “I’ve been sitting on cots and sand for three years. I’m pretty easy to please.”

We still had two weeks until the end of the month, but we used an old truck Landon had acquired and moved our things out that weekend.

I’d always been told that I studied people. I did. I watched them to learn their signals. It started as a need for self-preservation with my brothers. By the time I had hit ten, I almost always knew when one of them was about to blow their fuse and lash out. Watching people became a habit, and I learned how to read others so I didn’t only hear their words, I heard their intentions.

Landon was a prodigy at reading people, though. Sometimes it was disturbing what he could read from just watching you, especially when you didn’t know he was. He never spoke much about his time in the service, or what he saw and experienced, but I know for a while he had some pretty shitty nightmares that would wake all of us up.

The first time he had one it scared the hell out of me. I thought someone had broken into our house and was murdering him. I jumped out of bed and nearly fell, tripping over my blankets, as I stumbled and grabbed my aluminum baseball bat that I kept leaned against my bed and went running down the hall.

When I opened his bedroom door, holding the bat propped over my shoulder, ready to swing, I saw Landon thrashing around on his bed alone. Jameson stumbled over a few seconds later, holding a large butcher knife from the kitchen, looking terrified.

“Nightmares,” I whispered.

“Shit!” he replied quietly, letting out a deep breath. Jameson slept like the dead, so I knew Landon’s cries were as loud as I’d imagined.

He didn’t have them every night, usually two or three times a week. I knew not to wake him up, but it ate at me like acid each time I woke up hearing his cries.

One morning when it was just the two of us, we sat at our dining room table—which required less cardboard folds at the house—quietly eating our bowls of cereal.

“Do you have any brothers or sisters besides your military family?” I asked.

“Yeah, I have two little sisters, twins.”

“No shit?”

“Yeah, they’re seventeen. It’s probably a good thing I’m so far away, according to their Facebook pages, they like to date.” Landon’s eyebrows rose as his head shook. “What about you?”

“Two older brothers. My oldest brother’s married and has three kids and is about to have another. He lives in Arizona. My middle brother just got a job and moved back to Arizona too. That’s where I grew up until we moved to California.”

“Is it as nice there as they show in the movies?”

“California?”

Landon nodded.

“Yeah, I mean, parts of it are. My mom lives like thirty minutes south of San Diego. It’s nothing like LA. Where she is, it’s a lot more relaxed and less fake. It’s also a lot cleaner.”

“Are you ever going to go back? Or are you like Jameson, and you’ve blacklisted it?”

“No, I’d like to go back eventually.”

“Eventually?” Landon’s hand slid across his jaw as his head cocked to the side. “Are you hiding from something?”

I then proceeded to tell him about my dad, going back to memories I thought I’d erased, while feeling emotions I hadn’t experienced in several years. He listened to me long after we finished our cereal, way past when my American Lit class started.

When I was done, Landon told me about the shit he endured and saw in Afghanistan and how much it still disturbed him. I’d known that something troubled him and assumed it had had to do with war, but hearing him recount his time over there, I understood why his screams were so loud.

He talked and I listened until Jameson arrived home, and then the three of us sat at the table with shot glasses and a deck of cards and drowned all of the emotions we had dredged up with a fifth of Jack Daniels.

It was over a year later when we mutually decided to get the hell out of Alaska after we endured another long winter. It didn’t stay dark all day in Sitka like it did further north, but the days were still too short. It was Landon that suggested we move to California, and before I could voice my reluctance at leaving, he placed a hand on my shoulder and said, “Sometimes you have to stop looking for something you already have.”

We started submitting transfer requests within a week, and the plans to move were completed within a month. It all went smoothly, like returning to California with Landon and Jameson was what I had come to Alaska for.

I hadn’t realized I’d drifted off to sleep with my thoughts. Lately, I’m so consumed by them that I spend too much of the night trying to figure out what in the hell happened. I’m not in the habit of receiving many late night phone calls these days. Apparently being in a relationship ended those late night invitations. Plus, I’ve been shutting my phone off at night to avoid the temptation to call Ace since I kicked her out of my living room.

I need some time. I need to figure out what in the hell happened. She knows I have trust issues, and right now I don’t know how to make things go back to the way they were. I roll over to grab my phone as it continues ringing, and my mind starts running in every direction as I try to make a decision about whether I should answer it or not. I need to stop ignoring her. Avoiding her is no better than her running.

I look at the screen and sigh in disappointment when I see it’s Jameson calling, realizing how much I had been hoping it was her. I consider ignoring it. He and Landon are out at a local bar, watching a baseball game that I had refused to attend because I am still swimming in self-pity that’s quickly transforming into self loathing.

“Yeah,” I answer, putting the phone to my ear.

“Max, you’ve got to head to Ace’s man.”

I sit up, hearing the stress in Jameson’s voice. “What’s going on?” I flip the covers off and pull on the same jeans I’d worn earlier.

“David Bosse, he just died … he’s dead.”

I hear him repeat my name a few times before I realize I’m no longer standing. “Shit.” I attempt to process this information while trying to recall the last time I saw David. I’ve been avoiding going home since my fight with Ace. It’s been a couple of weeks now, and the guilt over how things ended ties my stomach in knots.

“How? When? Where is she?” The questions race out of my mouth, and my skin prickles with fear. I feel the foreign sting of tears cloud my vision, and my throat constricts. This can’t be real.

I’ve been so wrapped up in my fears that Ace was getting ready to leave, and now this? David is the second father figure in my life to leave without warning.

“I don’t know, man. Kendall just called. I could barely understand her, but she’s going to Ace’s. Her phone was off or something. Max, you should go, she’s going to need you. Whatever’s going on between you guys … tonight … she needs you.”