Domino by Ivy Black
Chapter Eighteen
Domino
After a dinner that delivered everything I promised, good food, good wine, and a lot of laughter, we’re walking down Harrison Avenue arm in arm together. It really has been a long time since I’ve been on a date, and I have to say, as weird as it all feels, it also feels really nice. I’ve had a better time with Ashley than I anticipated.
“I have a confession,” I tell her.
“Uh-oh. Already? I thought confessions were usually a second or third date thing.”
“Oh, so you’re already planning future dates?”
“That’s not what I said. I just said I thought that’s when confessions were usually made. Not on a first date.”
I laugh and shake my head. “Are you always so precise with language?”
“As a future counselor, it’s kind of my job. Have to see through people’s hidden meanings and all that, you know?”
“Fair enough.”
“So, confess. I hear it’s good for the soul.”
I give her a sly smirk. “When you slipped me your number, I thought you were giving me a fake.”
“Now, why would I do that?”
“To get me to back off.”
She chuffs. “Right. As if that would have done anything. I’m sure if I’d given you a fake, you would have been twice as obnoxious in trying to get me to go out with you. I gave you my number as a matter of self-defense.”
“You know me so well already.”
“I have a confession, too.”
“Lay it on me.”
“I’m glad we went out tonight. I’m shocked as hell that I agreed to it, but I’m glad I said yes.”
“I am, too,” I tell her. “Shocked you said yes, and also glad that you did.”
We sit down on a bench in front of one of the multitude of fountains in town. For whatever reason, fountains seem to be Blue Rock’s thing, and there are about a thousand of them. But with the soft and colorful lighting and nice sculptures, it’s actually kind of pretty.
As we sit in a companionable silence for a moment, I hear the throaty rumble of a group of bikes coming our way and groan inwardly. A moment later, half of the guys are cruising by us and I’m doing my best to avoid being noticed by them. Fat lot of good that does me, though, as I hear them all hooting and hollering at me. I’m not much for blushing, but my face is burning hot and I’m sure turning an impossible shade of red as the guys hurl sexual innuendos at me.
The sound of the parade mercifully starts to ebb, but their laughter and hooting lingers for another few moments before it, too, fades away. I turn to Ashley to see her blushing, but also with a small smile on her face.
“Well, that was charming,” she says.
“Yeah, sorry. The guys aren’t real keen on not being assholes 24/7. It’s kind of their thing.”
“Well, you’re one of them, so what does that say about you?”
“Oh, I never said I wasn’t an asshole 24/7. In their place, I would have done the same exact thing to whoever was sitting here with you.”
Her laughter is high pitched and musical, and I could listen to it all night. But then Ashley looks at me and I can see that her expression is suddenly serious, and she squeezes my arm gently.
“What happened to you over there?” she asks. “What happened that made you so scared of children?”
I sigh and run a hand over my face, doing my best to banish the maelstrom of emotions swirling around inside of me. I know why she’s asking. She wants to know how her son will impact things between us. She’s making a decision right now whether to move forward or cut her losses before things start getting more complicated between us. Which, as much as I hate to think about it, makes it a fair question.
Swallowing hard, I close my eyes and gather my thoughts, trying to tell her as dispassionately as I can.
“I was a sniper in the Corps,” I begin. “We got intel that a Taliban leader was planning an attack on one of our FOBs near Kandahar.”
“FOB?” she asks.
I sometimes forget that civilians usually aren’t conversant as military slang as we are, so I give her a rueful smile.
“Sorry. FOB is a forward operating base.”
“Ahh. Okay.”
“Anyway, once we got the intel, I was tasked with neutralizing the mastermind of the plan. Take him out, the attack goes away, right?” I go on. “So, for three days, I’d positioned myself above the compound where I had a good sight line and could observe the target.”
“Three days?”
I nod. “It’s pretty common. You have to get a feel for their routine and know when the best time to strike is,” I explain. “Anyway, the day to act arrives and I radio in to let my handlers know I’m going to pull the trigger. But then, I notice a couple of kids getting out of a car. A boy and a girl, maybe nine or ten. I radio it into HQ and tell them to abort the mission. They refuse to let me. Some snot-nosed lieutenant fresh out of war college, and only puttin’ his boots on the ground for the first time thinks he knows the place and the people better than I do. Idiot.”
My voice trails off and I take a minute to collect myself. Ashley squeezes my arm again and I can see the worry in her face. She looks like she regrets asking me to tell her what happened. And though I’m tempted to cut the story short, it’s important she knows what happened, and why I’m hesitant about kids. It really isn’t that I don’t like them, it’s just that I can’t look at a kid and not see the two Afghani kids… and know what I did.
“Anyway, I tell them we need to abort, that there are non-combatants present. I’m ordered to take the shot, anyway. So, I do. I hit the target, but then shit goes sideways and I’m in a nasty firefight. I’m scoping up targets and shooting as fast as I can because if I don’t, they’re going to be on me. I see two duck down behind a row of bushes, so I squeeze off two shots, and…”
I hear the hitch in my voice as it trails off, and when I look over at Ashley, her face is drawn and pale, and she looks horrified. Her expression tells me I don’t need to finish the story since she’s already figured out the ending. Can’t say I really blame her, though. What I did was monstrous, and it’s not something I can forgive myself for. Or at least, I haven’t found a way to do it yet.
“Jesus, Max,” she says, her voice barely more than a whisper. “And you’ve been carrying that around with you all this time?”
“Shouldn’t I be? That’s weight I should have to carry for the rest of my life. They were kids, and I snatched the life right out of them,” I tell her.
“How could you know? Like you said, you were in a firefight. I’m sure things were moving fast and were very confusing. They don’t call it the fog of war for nothing. Besides, you were ordered to kick that hornet’s nest.”
“It was an order I should have ignored.”
“I doubt you could have even if you’d wanted to, Max. They don’t train you to think for yourself. The military depends on people following orders.”
“So, I’m a mindless drone then. Great.”
The moment the words cross my lips, I regret them. The memories bring up a lot of shit inside of me, but I shouldn’t be taking it out on Ashley. I turn to her and give her an apologetic expression.
“Sorry. I don’t mean to bite your head off. It wasn’t your fault,” I tell her.
“And it’s not your fault either. You did what you had to do to say alive. It was your commander who put you in that position to begin with. If anybody’s at fault, it’s him.”
“My brain agrees with you. But my heart doesn’t. It was me who took the shots. It was me who put them down.”
Maybe it’s because she knows she can’t talk me out of the way I feel and doesn’t want to keep pressing me, or maybe it’s because she genuinely doesn’t think I should blame myself, but Ashley pulls me into a warm, tight embrace. I lay my head down on her shoulder and let her hold me. And for the first time since it happened, I feel a slight lifting of that weight upon my shoulders. It’s not much, but it’s something.
We remain like that for several long moments, and I cherish every single one of them. That she can look at me after hearing what I told her and not think of me as a monster but as somebody worthy of forgiveness makes my heart swell with emotion. How can she forgive me when she has a son of her own? The fact that I’ve killed children should have sent her screaming into the night. But she’s not screaming, and she’s not running. She’s encouraging me to forgive myself.
Although I’m reluctant to leave her embrace, I finally sit up and look at her, amazed that she can be so kind and so forgiving in the face of a story so heinous as the one I told her. But she takes my hand and favors me with a small, warm smile.
“We need to find a way for you to get past this,” she says.
“I’m not sure it’s possible.”
“Of course, it is. But we need you to find a way to forgive yourself. This is not your fault, Max. This is a weight you should not have to carry.”
I open my mouth to respond, but she puts her finger to my lips to silence me. With a small smile on my lips, I do as she says, and close my mouth.
“We’re going to work on this. We’re going to find a way for you to shake off this burden.”
“So, I guess that means you’re in for a second date, huh?” I say.
She laughs softly. “Always with the jokes and sarcasm.”
“All the better to deflect you with, my dear.”
“As I well know,” she says. “And do you want to know the first step in getting you to that point is?”
“Tell me.”
“Ice cream.”
She laughs and nods. “The magical power of ice cream has long been known to be a cure all.”
I laugh along with her. “Well, then, let’s go get this magic elixir.”
