"Your ex isn't still with the LT?"

"No. They broke up after she had the syphilis scare."

"That was a janky thing to do." Bo reached for another burger from the stack Noah’d brought over. "You do know that she was an asshole, right, and not just for cheating?"

"Because she tried to pass on the syphilis without saying anything?" The talk of my cheating ex and her STI was making me lose my appetite. "What’re you eating, Jackson?"

"Pork chop." Noah waggled the pale meat at me.

Drawing back, I shook my head. "Looks delicious. Not. Aren't you allowed to eat real food when training?"

"Not really. Conditioning is different. I have to last five rounds instead of all day."

"Bet it feels like all day after you get a dozen elbows to the chin."

"So what's this all about anyway?" Noah asked. I could put Bo off. He was never serious about anything except his new girlfriend. But Noah wasn't a bullshitting type of guy.

Stretching my legs out and tipping my chair, back, I sighed and gave in. "I'm twenty-five. I have an associate’s degree in business admin that took me four years to get. From what I hear of other Marines, present company excepted, without a degree on the outside I'm pretty much fucked. Infantry Marines are good at following orders and breaking stuff. Other than being a cop or going to private contracting, I'm pretty much SOL. If I get out now, I'm on the wrong side of my twenties and just entering the work force. Then there’s the whole female thing…" I trailed off. That was as much as I could get out without looking like I had a vagina.

"So this comes down to your philosophy that you can't have a serious relationship in the service because your girlfriend slept with the local recruiter while you were deployed," Noah surmised.

I shifted guiltily in my chair. "Not just. It’s about leading men, being responsible for their mental wellbeing and their physical health. It’s about having women like Sam waiting on tenterhooks to hear that their man is home safe and then, when they can’t bear it anymore, getting their fears dispelled by some guy at home. Nearly every guy I know has been cheated on or has cheated or is divorced or is on their second or third marriages, and those are just the guys enlisted underneath me. One thing just leads to another.” Noah opened his mouth but I didn't stop talking. "I get it, Noah. You wanted to slap a ring on Grace's finger when you guys finally got together. Instead you waited two whole years."

"Seemed like a motherfucking eternity," he grunted.

"Yeah, it was a miracle she waited for you. The immaculate conception was only slightly less amazing than that."

Bo coughed to cover a laugh and Noah looked like he wanted to reach across Bo and hit me—but only because I was right.

"So what are your options?" Noah asked.

"Go back to school. Get a full bachelor’s degree in something. Hell if I know what. My brothers say to come work for them. They've got a waiting list about two years long.” My older brothers run an auto body and custom chopper place in Orange County specializing in custom-made rides and 70s muscle cars. They were kind of famous for it and had always told me there was a wrench and a toolbox just waiting for me.

"But?"

"But." I let the chair slam down. "I always thought I'd retire, not separate from the military. How do you know that Grace or AnnMarie aren't gonna cheat on you two if you aren't around?" I gestured toward where the girls were sitting with the other guys who lived at Woodlands, soaking up the warmth around the fire pit, drinking something pink and fruity one of the roommates had concocted for them. "Your roommates could be buttering them up and screwing them blind when you're off at one of your fights or too busy doing stupid shit with your old pal from the Marines."

"You don't. You have to trust them," Noah said.

I barked out a bitter laugh. "I didn't think my girl of four years would either but she wasted almost zero time jumping into the LT's bed while I was gone."

"Your biggest problem is that you're not hanging around the right women," Bo explained. Noah nodded as Bo Randolph, the biggest skirt chaser in my platoon tried to give me advice on hanging with the wrong kind of women. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Obviously Bo either missed my amazement or didn't care because he barreled on. "If you're worried about your girl running off with another guy and all you've got is your friend with benefits who isn't cranking your chain all that much then you should be looking elsewhere. Base bunnies are on you because your salary is so much sweeter now. In your dad's circle, everyone is trying to garner for favors. So you gotta put yourself in a place where you don't have those inside pressures.” Bo dusted off his second hamburger and drained a beer. "Besides, we didn't like Carrie for a long time before she cheated on you."

"Since when," I scoffed unbelievingly but at Noah's steady stare I started believing. "Really?"

Noah nodded but Bo was the one who explained. "She was always trying to make you jealous. Chatting up some new Marine, placing him in jeopardy and getting you riled up."

"She was just insecure, is all." I didn’t know why I was defending Carrie. She did like to make me jealous. In high school, when we’d first started dating, I hadn’t been a jealous guy at all. I didn’t mind when she had other stuff going on because I was busy. I liked that she went her own way. That’s why I thought we’d make it when other Marine couples didn’t. She was independent. But, eventually, I found out that she really wasn’t. When I was busy and she deemed I wasn’t paying enough attention to her, Carrie got her attention fix with someone else. At first, when she started flirting with other guys at the enlisted club, it made me feel good because while she may have gotten them worked up, the only fire she was putting out was the one in my pants. And the sex after those nights in the bar were scorching hot. As time wore on, though, the plays for other people’s attention became tiresome. Like Bo said, she invariably picked on a new guy who I couldn’t bring myself to punch out because I was superior to him in rank. It wouldn’t be fair.

It was almost a relief to go on deployment. I didn’t have to see her making eyes at anyone else and in my imagination, she never ever flirted with another man. Her eyes were only for me. My vision of Carrie and the reality of Carrie were two really different things. Yeah, getting cheated on sucked hard, but there was a welcome lack of anxiety there too. I needed to chew on that for a while.

"Whatever, just saying that her only flaw wasn't cheating on you so maybe you can believe that not all women are cheaters. Maybe it was just Carrie," Bo said.

"Maybe." I’d spent a long time running from anything even remotely resembling a relationship. I’d had sex with a couple girls who had been too busy with their own lives to want something steady, and I’d gotten the physical release I wanted without any emotional entanglements. But it seemed like everyone around me was settling down, even someone like Bo, and I couldn't help but wonder if I was missing out on something—something important.

The next few days passed in a blur as I tried to drink away my attraction to Sam and those unsettling feelings she roused. It was the only way I could keep myself from knocking on every door in the neighborhood to find her. I knew that if I sought her out, I’d be asking for more than forgiveness, and given my past behavior, I needed to work that all out before I saw her again. Could I take her to bed without her taking off her ring first? Maybe. Could I have sex with her in her condo with her dead husband’s stuff all around us? Possibly. Could I stay here for forty some days and not see her again? No.