The bottled water has been drunk and all the bottles put away.

The admiral has gone home to his empty house.

Bud and Harriet have gone home to hold their only living child and remember the daughter they lost.

Gunny has gone, Tiner has gone.

Even Renee and Mic have gone, both trailing behind a stage-whispered “see you later” that was meant for other ears. Just a trace of a hint of a smile over a shoulder was enough to give it away. 

We’ll be doing it tonight, you know, the whispers had said. Oh, yes, we will.

And you will do it, too, and everyone already knows it so it shouldn’t matter what the whispers and sly looks mean. You’ll go home and hang up your uniform, she’ll go home and hang up hers. You’ll both put on that old cliche’d “something more comfortable” and then get in the car or wait by the door, and there’ll be a knock on a door and a kiss and a short conversation and then off to bed and the deed will be done.

You’ll go home then or you won’t, then it’s back to work the next morning to face each other with no questions asked because neither of you has any heart’s blood left to spare.

It shouldn’t matter, but it does.

Maybe if you’d walked Kate to her car the way any normally courteous man would instead of giving her that awkward, ungainly goodbye at the door in full view of Renee and everyone else, maybe then it wouldn’t have mattered. It wouldn’t have mattered because you could have shown Renee and Kate ... you could have shown her ... that a kiss is just a kiss and a touch is just a touch and that old friends can kiss and touch and what passes in the flesh doesn’t mean a thing because it’s heart that speaks to heart.

In the end, it matters a lot, though, and you know it, and Kate Pike’s only kiss from you is a long-ago memory. She deserved more from you.

 So many women could say that, couldn’t they? They could; but they don’t know why.

They think you took from them a few minutes of fun and a handy place to do a quick testosterone dump-off when all along it was their soft arms and soft bodies and soft voices you needed because they’re the only defense you have against the empty places in your soul.

Those places need to stay empty because they are always too easy to fill ... with thoughts of a man gone old and gray in captivity while you cried alone and your mother cried in another room, of thoughts of a tossing deck you couldn’t see, of an impact so hard you still feel it, of flames straight out of hell and screams of a man dying in the flames, dying because of you, dying ...

They don’t know, because you gave them pleasure, you gave them fun, but you never gave your heart away until now.

And now those comfortable clothes are nagging in the back of your mind, those worn jeans that Renee likes to see you in, that shirt that she says matches your eyes. It’s easier to go back to the desk for one last look at a file or a law book or a telephone number than to go home to hang up the uniform. 

Because if you’ve been using her, she’s using you right back. The entire staff gets to hear her issue her commands, and that’s what they are, commands, no matter how they’re phrased, and even the enlisted people hear her order you to perform for her.

He may be a senior officer with gold braid on his cover, with a law degree on his wall and a pair of gold wings on his chest, she says, with a toss of her hair, but he’ll come to my bed if I say he will because he’s my boy toy and don’t you forget it.

Don’t you forget it either, boy.

She’s lots of fun. Really.

And she finds wielding this kind of power to be a lot of fun.

And you had it coming and it hurts and shames you anyway. Who, after all, wants to be a trophy hanging on someone’s wall even if that someone is a lot of fun? 

Better to be here, where the uniform means something, where the wings mean something, where the courtroom skills and the legal research skills mean something, where honor and loyalty and patriotism mean something and people don’t automatically sneer if you’re not cynical about your country. 

Here, people think of you as a man with the stuff it takes to put your life on the line, to land on a carrier in the dark when you can’t see because there’s no other choice, to fire that missile and kill those people because not to fire will kill even more people in the end, to be a man with the stuff to do that and still get up in the morning and not just a boy toy with the stuff it takes to have a fun time in bed.

Yeah. It’s better to be here.

The outer offices and hallways are dark, and only a little light shines from the smaller offices on the perimeter. One of them is your office. That’s your area; while you’re in there, the dark wool jacket can come off and hang by the door, you can loosen your tie and the top button on your shirt and for a minute, you can be as comfortable as any man working late in any law office. 

You can’t forget who you are; you can never forget that, but for a moment, it doesn’t have to chafe quite as much.

There’s light coming from her office, too.

Has she shed the Marine green jacket? Is she working in the next office wearing a fitted khaki blouse that fits her better than any uniform ever ought to be allowed to fit any woman? The colors and the fabrics don’t flatter her looks but she doesn’t care. That’s not why she wears it.

She never thinks of you as a trophy. She knows the measure of a man doesn’t lie between his legs or in the symmetry of his face but in the courage he brings to bear when the job has to be done. 

She knows that because she’s been there. She’s put her own life on the line, she’s sweated and hurt, she’s braved the cold and the heat, the air and the sea, she’s faced the gun and she’s taken a life, she’s taken all the earth and the enemy can dish out and she’s come through it alive with the quiet grace of a brave woman and a United States Marine.

You know you love her, love the joy she finds in life and has come so close to losing, love the beauty of her face and form, love the quick incisiveness of her mind, but most of all you love her because heart speaks to heart, because you don’t have to tell her why you’d let an enemy plane blow you out of the sky if it meant one more battle won for freedom. You don’t have to tell her why you’d don a parachute and jump behind the lines to bring back a fellow aviator, because you know she’d never leave another Marine behind if she had to lay down her own life to bring him back. Heart speaks to heart.

You don’t have to tell her, just as you don’t have to tell her you love her. She knows.

She still wants to hear it. She’s going to marry Mic Brumby, and she still wants to hear it. It’s asking too goddamn much, but still, she’s asking.

Not aloud; never aloud. You turned away from Kate, and you looked at her, talking to Renee and Mic, and you read the question in her eyes, the same question she asked on a ferry boat in Australia: Are we going to wait for eternity?

You still don’t have an answer for her.

So you sit here, and you turn pages, and you try to follow the justices’ reasoning in a contempt of court ruling, and you wonder if an answer will ever come, because to you, your own heart is silent.

~~~~~

He’s next door. 

He’s sitting in his office, tie loosened, jacket off, but that’s all. No rolled-up sleeves, no kicked-off shoes; he’s still within regulation, and if he should step across the hall for coffee, he’ll put the jacket back on and tighten the knot on his tie.

He does things as he’s supposed to do them for as long as he can; when he breaks the rules, it’s for a reason.

He apparently sees no reason to break any rules now.

You can almost feel the heat of his body radiating through the wall that separates your office from his. You know what his body feels like through his clothing. You know the hard, lean planes of muscle on his chest and back, the strong, corded muscles of his arms; you know the way he looks when he’s working out, when those arms bend and flex and lift, when the veins stand out and the sweat pours down, when his body lifts and rises as he does one push-up, two, three, four ... and that’s all you know, because to see him move that way always takes your mind to places it should never be.

The heat of the man ... the hard, long heat of his body that you know, the hard, long heat of that part of him you can only imagine ... but Jordan said ... oh, what Jordan said ... she giggled after she said it, a giggle like a punctuation mark, and that silly giggle was like a sudden lick of flame shooting from the ground through your heels all the way to the top of your head.

You wouldn’t have asked what he was like. You left that to someone else, because knowing that makes it so much worse. You didn’t want to know, so you didn’t ask.

That didn’t save you from knowing.

“He’s big,” Jordan said, blushing and giggling again. “Really big.”

She said more, but you didn’t hear it. You didn’t need to. The rest, you could figure out yourself. 

He can be selfish and arrogant -- what pilot isn’t? -- but you know the softness of his voice and his touch too well not to know how he would use them them in bed. You know the agile athleticism with which he moves far too well not to translate it into the easy movement of lovers together giving and taking pleasure. The only thing missing from your fantasy was the knowledge of how he was built in that one area.

And now you have it and you can never again pretend that you don’t. You can never again glance at him and pretend it’s just the way his uniform fits.

What would it be like to be him, to have all the credentials for admission into the old boys’ club, never to have to fight for recognition and acceptance? To be male and tall, to have combat experience, to fly off carriers, son and grandson of war heroes? Is it as easy as it seems, is he so complete in himself? Is that why it’s so easy for him to live without you?

Is it easy? It didn’t seem so once, one night on a ferry in Australia.

You can almost believe now that you imagined the trembling in his voice as he sidestepped the heavy emotions you were bringing him near. His eyes were wide, so wide, and you had him backed up against the railing; he looked as though at any moment he might raise his hands over his head and begin reciting name, rank, serial number and date of birth.

Captured, with no hope of escape.

And he was, oh, he was hoping for escape, hoping you would stop, would let this go and let it be nothing more than any of a hundred other meals you’d shared together, no more special than a sandwich outside the JAG HQ building, no more meaningful than a cup of coffee during staff meeting.

He wanted you, even if he wouldn’t admit it. He said you should be flattered. He called you by name, and your name slid soft as a sigh from his lips, so softly that you knew he’d said it to himself before, in the dark, maybe, his hand wrapped around himself, but that’s no good to you now. 

A memory, a fantasy, an exception to all the rules, that’s what you were, what you would have become, when all you wanted was to be a flesh and blood woman in his arms. It wasn’t so much, no more than he’d given to other women, and yet it was more, much more, so much more that he let you go to Mic.

And you went, and a hundred thousand lights that spelled eternity flickered and died soundlessly on a moonlit night that would never come again.

You glance at the clock, and your heart sinks. It’s almost time to go. Realizing how reluctant that makes you feel makes you unhappier than ever.

But Mic will be waiting, and Mic loves you, even if he does have an infuriating tendency to want the whole world to know that he has access to your body, to “the whole package.” He has a great deal to learn about women in general and women Marines, this Marine, in particular, even if he does have a persistent, wickedly charming way with women and dazzling taste in diamonds.

But Harm knows. Harm’s seen the look in your eyes and the blood on your hands. He’s seen you lose control altogether, he’s taken your blame and your insults, your anger, your betrayal of his friendship and you’ve never lost his respect. The empty place inside him draws him away from you, draws him from a warm bed and a willing body to the snowbound wilderness of his own soul, but he’s never said, he’s never thought, that you were unfit to be his friend or his comrade in arms.

You’re a Marine to him, and a colleague, not a package.

Maybe if you were a bit more of a package, you’d be going to his bed tonight instead of Mic’s. You’ll never know.

You’ve never been willing to pay that price.

The clock is still ticking.

It’s time for you to go.

 ~~~~~

Your desk lamp is hot as you reach for the chain to click it off, and you stand there in the dark, your fingertips resting on the glass shade, trying to let its heat dispel some of the cold you feel inside.

The light from his office is still shining between the blinds on your office windows, and this room where you spend so much of your life feels suddenly unfamiliar in the hard-edged shadows. You need to leave, but you want to stay, to make it feel right again in these sharp slants of light.

The cold has made the ring on your hand too loose and the fingers have gone pale, but the diamond glints at you from the proper finger now, there’s no denying that, you can look at it and see that it’s where it’s supposed to be.

At least you put a stop to that particular brand of cowardice. Things are in their places. 

It still feels wrong; wrong to wear this ring, wrong to stand here in the near dark, wrong to feel lost and silent in your own office.

There might be a way to make it all right again, if you could find it... if you would risk it.

You twirl the ring around nervously, twist it around again and again and it begins to irritate the hell out of you, the way the band rubs against your skin, the way the twisting makes your finger feel strange and sore ...

You could go to him. There’s light in there, soft light, not this sharp light cast at crazy angles, and there’s warmth that won’t fade away with the ticking of cooling brass. 

Or you could put on your coat and go to the arms that belong to you, the arms you belong to. 

Mic’s arms aren’t cold ... they’re not. They’re warm and strong, sometimes too strong, but although he boasts and brags with them, although he drapes them around you a little too publicly, a little too possessively, he doesn’t hurt you with them. 

You could walk out of here right now, walk to your car, drive to Mic’s place and walk right into his arms and Mic would hold you, all night if you wanted, and you wouldn’t be cold there ... not cold the way you are here, now.

Or you could stand here in the dark ... 

There are so many pitfalls, choices lying behind and ahead, choices that lead back to this city where it always seems to rain now and leaves you so cold and so alone ... 

Twist. Twist. Twist.

Hold it up to the light. It still sparkles. It still hurts.

Would he take it off if you asked him? Would he hold your hand until it felt warm again? 

It frightens you to think this way, because it was supposed to be settled now, everything settled and secure and certain, with nothing left to decide but what china pattern and which invitation and when and where the ceremony.

But that light is still slanting through your windows. He’s had time tonight to leave, to get out of here before you do and he has not gone, he is still here, and those angled beams of light are telling you that you haven’t decided a damn thing yet.

You pick up your coat but you drape it over your arm instead of putting it on. When you step out that door you’ll be out of uniform, all the pieces will be there but in the wrong places ... 

You open your door and it closes behind you with a sound like a last warning, but you move on, you walk to the room where the light is soft and warm, where the only thing strange is how long you’ve stayed away.

You tap on his open door and when he looks up the light shines soft in his eyes.

“Why are you still here?” he says. “I thought you had a date tonight.” The challenge is a mild one, even a friendly one, but it’s a challenge nonetheless.

“I thought you did, too,” you say, smiling in spite of yourself when you see how tired he is, because you know that he can hide it, that he can steel himself to keep going, yet he is letting you, only you, see how very much he wants to lay his head down and rest.

He is tired, more tired than you can remember having seen him lately. Of course he is; he lost a friend tonight, lost her forever for all he knows, because she trusted him, because he would not break the rule and close the door and keep out the listening ear that betrayed them both.

What really happened between him and Kate, you wonder ... was it really only once, only a weekend, was it really he who couldn’t handle what they became?

You wonder, but you don’t ask, because although he’s tired, he smiles back and it’s your smile, the one he gives only to you, the one that lifts every line in his tired eyes, that puts your feet firmly on the earth and lets you belong where you are.

“I had a couple of things to do first,” he says, but he closes the book he’s reading -- without, you notice, marking the page.

“You should go home,” you say. “You look beat.”

He shrugs, but the smile doesn’t disappear; not entirely, anyway. “It’s been a long week,” he says. 

A good answer, and a prudent one, as usual. He’s too good a tactician to commit to a position until he knows where you’re headed; they taught him well at Pensacola and Miramar. Still, it hurts that he’s so wary, even with you.

“I guess it has,” you say. “It was a tough case. I’m sorry it didn’t go better.”

Another shrug. “There’s no winning that kind of case, Mac,” he says, and for the first time, you think you see the barrier coming down. “However it came out, someone’s career was going down in flames.”

“How come it’s never yours?” you say without thinking, and then you look up at him, horrified, realizing what you’ve said, but somehow it’s all right; the smile is gone, but the light in his eyes is even softer.

“I don’t know, Mac,” he says, and his voice is like a night wind over the desert, soft, soothing, quiet ... you wait for days sometimes to hear that voice, because he doesn’t use it often. “Maybe because you were there to protect me again.”

“I had nothing to do with that,” you say, shaking your head and wishing you’d kept your mouth shut. This is dangerous territory, and you both know it.

“You did, and I never thanked you for it,” he says, and his voice is holding you transfixed, so still you can hear your own heart beating. “You’re a good friend.”

“You don’t have to thank me for anything,” you say, hoping your own voice is steady. “You and I have both had relationships we’d just as soon not hear broadcast from the witness stand.”

“I know,” he says. “But thank you anyway.” 

“Well,” you say, and then you smile. “It was kind of entertaining, watching you squirm in front of the admiral.”

“Yeah, and you were loving every minute of it,” he says, rising, and now he’s smiling, too, but it’s not your smile now -- it’s the killer smile, the gold-wings-and-white-uniform smile, and it may not be yours but it still works on you, just like it works on every other heterosexual woman on earth who isn’t comatose. “Don’t try to tell me you weren’t.”

“Just trying to make sure you’d learned your lesson, flyboy,” you say, and you turn to walk away. Better to leave now, while the defenses are intact and you’re both smiling. It’ll keep you together on the drive to Mic’s place.

You turn, but you turn too slowly, just slowly enough to notice that he’s standing still ... very still ... and like Lot’s wife, you create your own doom ... you turn, and you look back.

And you see the truth in his eyes: they’re unclouded, unhidden, the color of a clear tropical sea ... the aviator’s smile is gone and there’s nothing there but honest emotion ... the way he is, sometimes, but really, only with you.

“I learned my lesson, Mac,” he says, and now his voice is as gentle as a caress. “I learned it a long time ago.”

He is, and you cannot doubt it, telling you the truth.

And there is nothing for you to do but to nod, and drop your gaze to the floor, because to look at him one moment longer will cost you every shred of dignity you have left.

You shouldn’t have come here. 

He clears his throat and turns away from you, just a little. “If you’ll wait a minute, I’ll walk you to your car,” he says, stepping around the desk as he reaches for the button on his collar.

You nod, because you want that, but you’re not ready to leave; not yet. You step closer to him, and he stops where he is. He’s so close you can feel his breath on your skin.

“I’m sorry,” you say, and that’s all. You can’t say the rest, so you just lay your hand lightly on his left shoulder, just the tip of one finger brushing over the soft shoulderboard, barely touching the gold braid that says you shouldn’t be sorry when the cosmos punishes a man who did what he knew was wrong. 

“Sorry for what, Mac?” he says, and you think he’ll move away, but he doesn’t. For a moment, you think maybe he’s comfortable with this touch, too, and with you, for the first time in so long you can barely remember, and you don’t move, afraid you’ll break the spell.

“That things went so badly for you and Kate,” you say, and your hand feels good to you there, the crisp white fabric feels good to you and the heat of his body beneath it ... 

Things have been going badly between the two of you lately, too, the old, familiar rhythms of friendship knocked off balance, the deeper feelings that warmed and sustained you for so long now fading away like a dream in the night ... you’ve both become so afraid of each other, but you can’t be afraid of him this way, of the hand with no ring on it touching the sign of the rank he’s worked so hard to earn and because you know him and what he went through to earn it, this touch is like a marriage ... every day of his life from plebe summer until this moment you know him and your hand is comfortable there.

You wait, and in a moment, he sighs and shakes his head.

“You can’t turn back the clock, Mac,” he says, and his voice is soft. “Whatever Kate and I had was over a long time ago. Her staying here wouldn’t have changed that.”

“I know,” you say, but you don’t know it. It’s just that for now, you can let his certainty be enough for you both, if he will just stand here one minute longer while your hand rises and falls and warms to his heartbeat and his breathing.

Let it be enough, you plead with yourself, let it be enough, but the unfastened button at his collar defeats you; your eyes close and you lay your head on his shoulder and rest your face against the pulse beating so strongly at the base of his throat, against the warm skin that covers it, against the flesh and bone that make him what he is. 

For a moment he goes still, and you try to prepare yourself: gentle hands on your arms will move you away, a gentle voice will tell you that it’s time to go home, and you’ll have your answer, but you don’t move yet because hope dies so hard.

And then his hands move, and one of them is in your hair, stroking softly, and the other is on your back, holding you carefully with the sure touch of a man who knows how to touch a woman, how to touch you, how to make his touch tell you what he cannot trust his voice to say, and his lips are warm and soft on your forehead.

And you do have your answer, but it’s only half the answer you wanted; still, you could stay like this forever, you could, but the time is over too quickly. He puts his hands on your arms and puts you away from him; compassionately, yes, but firmly, and very definitely, just as you knew he would. 

“Come on, Mac,” he says, and his voice is firm, too. “We can’t leave here like this. You’re out of uniform, and so am I.”

You nod, because you know you have already bent the rules too far. You both respect your uniform too much to wear it piecemeal in public, no matter how badly you need each other’s warmth.

But it stings, too, because you need just one more moment to be close to him, and it nettles you that he can turn away from you so easily.

“Is it always that simple for you, Harm?” you ask, stepping back from him as you slip your coat over your shoulders, but you don’t button it; not yet.

“Is what that simple?” he asks, looking puzzled, but he’s on alert, you can see that, all right; he knows that tone of your voice.

“To let me go,” you say, and you feel suddenly reckless, as though you’d tossed back a shotglass of throat-burning whiskey; you remember that feeling, hard as you try to forget it. “To let me go, knowing where I’m going and what I’m going to do when I get there.”

He flinches at that; not much, but enough, enough to give you the answer whether he tells the truth or he doesn’t. “It’s none of my business,” he says, and you decide to give him points for that. Technically, it’s true. 

“Maybe it isn’t,” you say, turning your back on him. “But there was a time when I thought it mattered to you.”

“Mac, don’t do this,” he says, but there’s no warning in his voice, only a plea. “Don’t say anything else, because we’ll both be sorry later if you do.”

“That’s always going to be your answer, isn’t it?” you say, bitterly. “Let’s just don’t talk about it, and then it won’t exist, or it’ll go away. That’s what we did in Australia, and that’s why when I leave here, I’ll be going to another man’s bed.”

“Mac, for God’s sake, stop,” he says, his voice barely more than a whisper. 

You’d love to grant that request, but it’s gotten beyond you; whether it’s him alone or all the things Kate has forced you to think about or your own doubts about Mic or the wearying strain of all of them together, you couldn’t say. 

All you know is that tonight, you’ve lost the fight; you’re going to say these things and there’s only one way out of this mess, straight ahead, do or die and you are hurting him, oh, God, you are hurting him but he’s hurting you, too ... he’s hurting you so much ...

“I wanted to be with you that night,” you say, and you can hear how badly your voice is shaking but you can’t stop it. “I spent hours shopping, picking out just the right thing to wear, hours getting ready, because I thought it was finally the right time and that we could be together. And then you didn’t want me ...”

“I never said I didn’t want you ...” he begins, but you can’t go through that again, you just can’t, and your dignity suddenly doesn’t seem such a huge price to pay.

“Don’t, please, don’t,” you say, and all at once the tears are coming, hot and humiliating, your hands are covering your face and you no longer have a choice of what you’ll say or won’t say. “Don’t turn me away again, Harm, don’t send me back to Mic again, please don’t,” and you’re sobbing now, the words are pouring out and nothing is going to stop them, nothing, because this is what happens when heart speaks to heart. 

You don’t know how it happened or how you lost control so completely, you only know that you’re in his arms again, you’re crying and that he’s holding you again but so much closer this time, so much ... 

You lift your eyes to his, you try to apologize but his mouth comes down on yours and he’s kissing you -- you, not some dream of a lost love, but you -- and his kiss is as warm and strong and all-consuming as you always knew it would be, turning your bones to liquid and your body to flame ... 

Your arms link around his neck because you have to hold him closer, because you cannot hold yourself up, because you’re melting into him so fast that only years of intense discipline are keeping you from pulling him down to the floor with you right now ...

But the discipline so thoroughly instilled does not soon go away; you both know who and what you are, and where. Too soon, almost as soon as it begins, it’s over ... your body slides down against his as he slowly loosens his hold on you but you feel him, hot, hard, wanting you, you see the look in his eyes, and you know he has never looked at Renee or Jordan or Kate in quite this way ...

And yet he is letting you go, and you look again, and you know why. You’ve seen the same look in your own mirror too many times. Everyone he’s ever loved, everyone you’ve ever loved, has left you, been taken away or abandoned you.

Loving each other is just too great a risk.

And because he’s holding you so close, with such love, you know that in this one moment, if never again in your life, you can let go of that fear and let your heart speak to his openly, honestly, without pretense.

“I know what you’re afraid of,” you whisper, and you touch his face gently, wanting so badly for him to see the truth in your eyes as clearly as you see it in his. 

“Mac,” he says, but your fingers on his lips stop him.

“I know we can’t undo everything that’s happened to us,” you say. “Only children think that love can make everything all right.”

You think he’ll flinch at the word, but he doesn’t ... he smiles instead, and it’s almost worse than if he’d turned away from you, because it’s your smile again, the one he saves just for you. 

“And we’re not children, are we?” he says, softly, wiping a tear from your cheek with his thumb.

“No,” you say, still holding him, trying so hard to memorize everything about this moment before it goes away forever. “We’re not children.”

But we are children, both of us, you think ... we’re still the lost, abandoned children we were so many years ago, still unable to trust the world, still unable to believe that love can come to stay.

Things could have been different, perhaps .. if he hadn’t become obsessed with filling the empty place in his mother’s life only to find that she didn’t need him to fill it, that she could put the past behind her, fall in love again and remarry ... if you hadn’t tried to use alcohol and foolish love affairs to fill that place that nothing could ever fill, if you’d been able to forgive your mother and your father for not being perfect ...

He’s not perfect, either. He’s the bravest man you know or ever hope to know, but sometimes, he fails, he falls short. He has put his life on the line more times than you can count but still, there are some risks he won’t take.

And one of those risks is the risk of loving you and losing you; that, he is certain he could not survive. 

You’ll forgive him, though; even for that, because you love him. 

But you can’t say it, because to say it would only unleash another flood of tears. You lay your head on his shoulder again, and again, he holds you with a tenderness no other man has ever shown you nor, you are sure, ever will.

“We need to go, Sarah,” he says, but he’s stroking your hair as he says it. “There are people waiting for us.”

“I know,” you whisper, but you don’t let go of him. “Mic was expecting me 27 minutes ago.”

“Renee’s expecting me, too,” he says, and you close your eyes against the finality you hear in his voice and the image his words create in your mind. 

Maybe it’s the pain that makes you reckless, or gives you courage ... later, when you think about it, you won’t be sure which it was. For now, you don’t give yourself time to think.

“Harm,” you say, in a whisper so soft he has to bend his head lower to hear you, “I don’t want you to worry about coming to work on Monday. I promise you, I’ll do whatever it takes to make things go right, as though this had never happened.”

He doesn’t answer, but you can feel the uneasy nod of his head; thoughts of Monday are unsettling enough, but he knows something else is coming. He knows you so well.

“But before we walk out of here and try to pretend this never happened, I need one thing from you,” you say, trying to sound calm, but your heart is pounding. What you’re about to ask him is over the line, far over the line, and you know it; it’s just that you think you’ll die if you don’t ask.

“What?” he says, and that tugs at your heart, too, his asking you straight out, without searching for a safer position from which he can retreat. He won’t deny you this; he may hesitate, he may even panic, but he won’t say no.

You look up at him, into his eyes, and you kiss him gently once more, and that hurts, too, knowing there will never be another time in your life when you will be able to touch him so freely. 

“Touch me,” you whisper, and you lay your hand on his face. “Touch me the way you would if you were my lover.”

For just a moment he does hesitate, but it’s not uncertainty that keeps him still; he wants to do this, he most definitely does, but you can almost see the thoughts racing through his mind, of Monday morning and a hundred Mondays to come, of Mic and Renee and how far this can go before it becomes betrayal, of how far he can go before stopping ceases to be an option, of whether he’ll hurt you more by saying yes or by saying no.

He hesitates, but the moment passes and his courage takes over again. Whatever the consequences are, he’ll deal with them; he’s not going to hurt you again, not tonight. You know that as surely as if he’d said it aloud.

His kiss is gentle at first, little more than soft nuzzling, as if you were trying out the feel of each other’s mouths, but there are people waiting for you and you can’t go slowly; you open your mouth beneath his and his tongue slides warmly against yours as he pulls you closer.

A sound comes from your throat, half pleasure, half sorrow, a moan that turns into a cry as his other hand covers your breast, his palm pressing into the soft weight, his fingers curling gently around the curve of your flesh, his thumb brushing over your nipple just so, just as if he’d touched you there a hundred times before and had learned long ago how you wanted to be touched, and if you were on fire for him before, now you are in nuclear meltdown. 

Thoughts of lying naked with him in bed, touching each other, driving each other to ecstasy, are pounding through your brain and for a moment you almost forget what you promised him, but you cannot forget for long. With a wrenching pain you pull your mouth from his and you feel his hands drop to your waist as he rests his forehead against yours. 

There is no sound in the building except your breathing and his, and you want to say something but there really is nothing to say, nothing at all ... you’ve said it all already.

You kiss him again, twice, and then you turn as fast as you can, you walk as fast as you can, faster, faster, listening to the click of your heels on the floor, running down the stairs so you won’t have to stop at the elevator, straight out of the building to your car, your breathing tight and shallow, and not until you’re at a traffic light half a mile away do you let out your breath.

And then the tears begin again, and you cannot imagine now how you will ever make them stop.

~~~~~

When you get home, all you can think of is a hot bath and curling up on the sofa to sleep, maybe to cry a little more, but that isn’t going to be, it seems ... the door is unlocked when you get there, and when you open it, Mic is there.

“Hello, love,” he says, beaming. “I was beginning to worry about you. Bit late, aren’t you?”

“Mic, what are you doing here?” you say, your heart sinking. “I thought I was supposed to meet you at your place.”

“You were,” he says, still cheerful. “When you didn’t show, I got worried, came over here to wait. You look tired, love.”

He leans toward you for a kiss, and it’s all you can do not to recoil, but it’s not his fault, none of this is his fault ... but to have his kisses feel anything at all like Harm’s tonight is more than you can bear, and suddenly you’re angry, at him, at Harm, at yourself, at the entire universe and everyone in it.

You grab Mic’s collar, pull him toward you and kiss him hard, grinding your body against his, hoping you can pull this off, hoping you can make the line between anger and passion blurry enough so that he won’t know and this night will be over and you’ll all go on with your lives as it seems it’s been ordained you must. 

“Fuck me, Mic,” you say, your lips only a fraction of an inch from his. “Fuck me hard.”

“Oh, you’re a little spitfire tonight, aren’t you?” he growls, but a fire is blazing up in his eyes as he unbuttons your coat and slides his hands beneath it. “What’s got you so hot and bothered, Sarah?”

“Does it matter?” you say, your hand sliding over the front of his jeans, feeling him growing hard, and you push the thoughts of another man’s hardness out of your mind fast, you push your body against the body of the man you’re going to marry. “I want you now, and I want you rough,” you say. 

Rough, yes; not gentle, not passionate, not loving. Rough and tumble, everything that Harm isn’t, everything that cannot remind you of him. That’s what it has to be this night.

Mic’s hands are at your breasts now, and he’s being rough with you, just as you asked; if you hadn’t asked for this, you’d complain, but you won’t. “On the floor,” you say. “Now.”

“I don’t want to get too rough with you,” he says, but the light in his eyes tells another story. “I could hurt you.”

“You won’t,” you say, but part of you thinks it’s no more than you deserve if he does. “Come on, Mic,” you say, as you peel off your uniform and lay it carefully over a chair. “Give me everything you’ve got ...”

And as you lie down on the floor, as you open your body to the man you’ve promised your life to, you wonder if you will ever again in your life do anything that will make you despise yourself more than this ...

~~~~~

It’s dark now, and Mic is sleeping peacefully beside you, blissfully unaware of just how truly unfaithful the woman he loves can really be...

Long ago, when you were a little girl, when you were still small enough to believe in fairy princesses and magic rings, you had a pink nightgown with lace at the neck and the hem, and you used to wrap it around your head and walk around the house with your eyes closed tight, pretending you were a princess, too, pretending you were marrying your prince, that happily ever after was just beyond the next door, a tiny fairy step beyond.

And oh, you believed in it right up until the day you danced your fairy dance past your father and the hem caught on the neck of a bottle, his last bottle, spilling it, and he grabbed the fairy nightgown, ripped it from your head, ripped it into shreds, pulling your hair with it, kicking out at you and bellowing like a bull while you screamed and screamed and screamed, I’m sorry, Daddy, I’m sorry, I’m sorry while bits of pink lace drifted endlessly to the floor ...

And you’ve dressed yourself in pink lace for Mic, you’ve danced your fairy dance with your eyes closed tight, but what you’ve broken now, Sarah, you can never fix ... never.

All your life has been about putting things in the wrong places: a nightgown around your hair, a ring on the wrong hand, a uniform coat over your arm ... you in this bed. You stood there this evening, the fairy princess, graciously forgiving him for being afraid and yet you would not take that last, most dangerous step toward him, you would not take that risk yourself that you called him coward for not taking... 

For once in your life, Sarah, you tell yourself, you have to leave the pink lace behind. You’re not a princess, he’s not a prince, but things are in the wrong places and you can put them right, if you have the courage.

Quietly, as quietly as you can, you slip from between the covers, you put on the Marine green T-shirt and shorts that you wore to walk Jingo this morning, you pick up your wallet and keys and you walk out, praying for a courage to match his, praying that for once in your life, you haven’t waited too late.

~~~~~

North of Union Station 2350 Tango

You may as well face it; you’re not sleeping tonight.

You tried so hard to get back in control of yourself after what happened with Mac, but you needed some time alone for that, and you didn’t get it. You opened the door of your apartment, thinking the first thing you’d do would be to call Renee and cancel your date, but it was too late for that. She was there; not just there, but lying across your bed, wearing spike heels, thigh-high stockings, a black lace bra -- and your dress-white tunic and cover.

“Hey, sailor,” she said, with what was apparently supposed to be a salute. “New in town?”

“Renee, take that off,” you said, curtly, setting down the cover you’d been wearing. 

“Ooh, in a hurry, are we?” she said, getting on her knees and crawling across the bed toward you. “I must have done better than I thought.”

“The only thing I’m in a hurry for is for you to get out of my uniform,” you said. “You’re not entitled to wear it, and even if you were, that’s hardly proper wear, so take it off -- now.”

“Well,” she said, and you couldn’t mistake that tone of voice. She was annoyed. “I spent half the afternoon at Victoria’s Secret picking these things out and that’s the thanks I get?”

“It’s got nothing to do with Victoria’s Secret,” you said. “Look, I’m tired and I don’t want to have this discussion. Can we just call it a night and start over in the morning?”

“Oh, come on, Harm,” she said, climbing off the bed and prancing toward you on those impossibly spiky heels. “It’s the weekend and I’ve been waiting all week to have a little fun. I didn’t mean to annoy you... I just figured since you’re so crazy about women in uniform ...”

“Renee, I do not want to go there with you,” you said, as you unbuttoned your jacket and put it on a hanger. “Look, I know you went to a lot of trouble, and I appreciate it, but I really am tired. I don’t think you’re going to get what you want out of this tonight, so why don’t you just go home and I’ll call you when I get up tomorrow, okay?”

“No,” she said, in that petulant tone that led Mac to dub her the Video Princess. “I will not. You’ve been promising me all week, and frankly, Harm, I am ready for a little fun. You may not feel like you can last long, but baby, it’s not gonna take me long, either, so come on over here, okay?”

Get in step, boy toy. Your services are required.

You don’t know what’s worse: that she demanded it, or that you did it. All you know is that touching her, kissing her, being inside her -- performing on demand with her -- after that sweet, loving interlude with Mac, made you feel pretty much like an unpaid male prostitute, so much so that you bought yourself another huge fight by sending Renee home afterward.

At least the fight won’t happen until tomorrow. She left about five minutes ago in high dudgeon, and now you’re lying here awake, wishing to God things were different, wishing you knew how to make things different, wishing ... 

You’re so lost in thought that you don’t really notice the door opening until you see her silhouette against the windows, and immediately you’re annoyed. If she’s coming back here to finish this fight tonight, this relationship really may be over, here and now ...

“What’s the matter?” you call out. “Did you forget something?”

But there’s no answer, no words spoken, anyway; just a quiet footstep, a quiet sniff, the sound of someone who’s been crying, and your heart sinks. You can’t deal with the Pouting Princess tonight, you just can’t, and you’re about to get out of the bed and go tell her so when you realize that the silhouette you’re seeing isn’t Renee’s ...

It’s Mac’s. 

She’s walking toward you, slowly, hesitantly, and she has been crying, she still is crying, but she’s coming toward you, her steps quickening as she gets nearer to you and all at once she’s in your arms, a warm, soft body wrapped in rough Marine green, and you realize with horror that this bed smells of sex, that you smell of sex, of Renee, of sweat and semen and perfume.

But just as you start to take her by the arms and move her away, hoping to move her back before she can catch the scent, you pick up the same scent on her ... the musky smell of her own sex, of sweat, of... Brumby.

And she knows it, and yet she is here, warm and soft in your arms, her tears warm and wet against your skin, falling back against the bed with you, the bed that smells of another woman, and you know, you know you have never in your life seen courage to match this, her coming from his bed to yours, coming into your arms while you have the smell of another woman still on you, doing that and bearing that pain just to be with you, trusting that you will bear it for her, too ...

You can’t tell her this; you can barely breathe ... every muscle in your body is trembling, and if you had the strength left, if it were physically possible, you would make love to her right now, but it isn’t, and she knows it. 

All you can do is hold her, and whisper, “shh ... shh ... it’s okay... it’s okay ...” 

And if it costs you everything you have, if it costs you your life, you will make it all be okay for her. 

You will.

~~~~~

Mac

 Sound sleep depends greatly on familiarity, on the same bed, the same pillow, the same bedmate: Only in romance novels does lying next to the man you love for the first time bring long, dreamless sleep. 

The mind and body don’t work that way in real life. 

Change something, anything, about how and where you sleep, and sleep becomes chancy, becomes off and on, each brief awakening greeted with the realization that things are different, that this is not your bed, that you are not where you normally are.

Tonight, you lie next to him and you want to sleep, and sometimes you do, because you are exhausted, because you are where you want to be, and because it is night and it is time to sleep.

Sleep comes, too, but only in brief, restless spells broken by anxious dreams, and you are no longer young or inexperienced enough to expect that it will get better tonight.

Tonight, you have added the terrible fear of what you will have to face in the morning, but your mind won’t deal with it: It’s all coming down to Jingo, and you awaken over and over, struck cold with fear when you remember that Jingo will need to be walked and fed in the morning.

You lie there, worrying over that one little detail to a ridiculous degree, completely aware of why you’re doing it but not one bit able to stop. 

Jingo will need to go out. 

Will Mic take care of that? When will he wake up and realize you’re gone? Will he walk out in fury, or will he stop long enough to let Jingo out? How will you know whether he has or not?

It’s making you a little insane, and the worst of it is that you can’t stop it by facing the real problem, which is that nothing has really been settled between you and the man sleeping next to you. 

You’re here, and he took you into his arms, he held you so tenderly while you cried, gave no sign at all that you weren’t wanted or welcomed in his bed, but nothing’s been said or settled. 

Except for the fact that you’re in the same bed, this could be nothing more intimate than any one of a dozen nights you’ve spent in close quarters on a ship, a submarine or in a hotel ... nothing’s settled. 

What if he misread your intentions? You’ve still got to talk about this in the morning, and talking about it is the one thing you’ve never been able to do.

It hurt coming here last night, and the only reason you were able to do it is that not coming here would have hurt even more, not coming would have closed a door that might never have opened again ...

Eternity, you remember, eternity on a bridge on a night lit by stars, when you looked into his eyes and saw love and saw longing and saw fear, and that night you wanted to die but somehow, you think, you kept him from seeing it.

The price of nondisclosure, it seems, was that you needed other arms to hold you, and so you ran to Mic.

And now, having paid the price for all of that, having learned this night, in a few short moments in his arms, in a shower of tears and a sweet, heated embrace just how broad and despicable were your lies to yourself, to him, to Mic, you had to come here before the door closed again forever ... 

You had to come here, even though coming here when you did meant waiting outside in the car, crying and cold, while outside rain dripped on the windows, while inside he was making love to Renee, it meant waiting in the car, ready to wait all night if it had to be that way because there was no going back now ...

And when Renee finally left, when you finally got out of the car and walked, barefoot, up the stairs and unlocked the door with the key he’d given you and had probably forgotten, when you ran to his bed in tears and fell into his arms, it hurt more than you’d ever imagined it could, lying with him in a bed still warm from Renee’s body ...

It was a choice you made, a painful choice, and it was the only choice you could bear to make because you would a thousand times rather lie in his arms when he was already spent from loving her than never to lie in his arms at all ... 

You don’t regret it, not for a moment ... but you don’t know where to go from here, and you don’t know who’s going to walk and feed your dog in the morning.

It worries you. A lot.

But worried or not, you’re here with him, and you know you never want to sleep next to anyone else ever again.

You roll over onto your side and look at him, lying on his side, facing you, one hand tucked under the pillow, the other lying next to his face. He’s been restless tonight, too, but for now, he’s sleeping peacefully. 

And as you watch him, you realize you were wrong. You may not have made love yet, but there’s an unfathomable intimacy to what’s passed between you this night, a nakedness of souls beyond anything you ever dared imagine could be, and if some of your tears were for sorrow, some at least were for joy when he opened his arms to you, because he wasn’t the only one marked by another lover’s touch ...

But nothing’s been settled, and there’s still the morning to face.

You wonder if Harm will want to make love in the morning. 

Making love wasn’t an option tonight, physically or emotionally, but tomorrow is another story, and as badly as you want him, as much as you know he wants you, you know it will be awkward getting to that point. 

The truth is, there’s something vaguely disturbing about making love to two men in the space of twenty-four hours, and yet that seems to be what you propose to do; hygienic considerations aside, it seems ...

Slutty.

That’s the word your father would have used, isn’t it? Slut. You slut. He used to say it to you, and he made you believe it, too.

If you’re not careful, you’ll believe it again. Maybe you should ... after what you’ve done to Mic ... after the way you behaved, and now you’re in another man’s bed on the same night ... 

It’s not the same, you tell your ghost father fiercely, it’s not. I’m not ... what you said. I’m not. 

No decent man will want you, Sarah, the ghost replies, but you have an answer for him this time, because the man lying next to you is a very, very decent man ... a very honorable, brave man, flawed, yes, but determined, honest, a very decent man ...

And you know he wants you. He touched you and held you and kissed you with such care and such skill and oh, yes, such love ... and pressed up against you the whole time so that you felt him, all of him, so hard, so very hard, and your hand was aching to touch him, to make him shiver and groan and thrust against you, wanting more of your touch...

Oh, yes, he wants you ... and you want him just as badly, more than you’ve ever wanted any man in your life. And now, it’s only a matter of when.

But you’re still afraid, and much as you want his touch to inflame you, you need it even more to soothe you ... you need to feel safe, and in the dark reaches of the night, you aren’t sure you ever will.

So get another man and fuck him, slut, the ghost says, ain’t that what you do when you’re alone? and you shiver again, alone in the dark with your ghost father, the ghost who sees right through you and names you as he named you on the day of your birth. He names you slut, and it’s night, and he is ready to lie down beside you, between you and your lover, where he always sleeps, unless you can keep him away.

But you are too old to believe in Prince Charming, and the man lying beside you is too human to be a breaker of spells. You have to lay your own ghost to rest, but it’s easier, they say, with someone you love beside you.

Slowly, very slowly so as not to make a sound, you reach out a timid hand and touch his hair with your fingertips, gently ... not to awaken, not even for a caress, but just to reassure yourself that he’s real, that this isn’t a dream you’re having ... you’re really here in his bed.

Whatever else you may believe about yourself and why you’re here, there’s no denying that. Your future may not be settled, your ghosts may not be laid to rest, but he did take you into his arms and into his bed, and you will wake up together in the morning.

And if he did it once ...

It may be the wrong thing to do. Right now, you are too tired and too afraid and lonely to care. You take the covers in one hand, holding them up so they won’t bunch up between you, and slide over next to him; you take the hand that lies on top of his pillow and you lay it on your shoulder, you fold yourself in his sleeping embrace.

He stirs, sleepily, and his eyes open, slowly focusing on yours. It takes him a minute, but then he remembers, and he pulls you closer, and you let out a sigh ... it is okay, it is, he will let you back into his arms.

“You okay?” he says.

“Couldn’t sleep,” you say, curling your body closer to his. “I keep worrying about Jingo.”

“Jingo?” he says, in a tone of surprise. “Why Jingo?”

“Well,” you say, and then you hesitate. This is a discussion better held in daylight, you think, not at night in bed and certainly not this night in this bed that still smells like Opium, which is what Renee wears ...

You kiss him, a slow, warm kiss, and are almost abjectly grateful to feel how thoroughly the kiss is returned in kind. Maybe, you think, I won’t underestimate him so badly when it’s daylight and it’s not so dark and I’m not so tired and overwrought.

“I’ll tell you in the morning,” you say, and kiss him again. “Okay?”

“Okay,” he says, amiably. “And whatever it is, don’t worry. We’ll deal with it.”

You would love to know how he can feel so certain, but that is just Harm being Harm, you tell yourself with a smile, that is how he infuriates you, amuses you and makes you feel safe ... he is always so damn sure that he can do whatever needs doing, land the jet, win the case, fight your battles ... 

And tonight, you will let it pass unchallenged, because you need so badly to feel safe.

You start to roll over, back to what it seems will be your side of the bed, but he drapes one arm around your waist and pulls you back toward him. Spooning, you think, straight out of high school romances, and you smile, feeling grateful again and sad at the same time. 

You do need him this way tonight, foolish as it is. 

“Harm?” you whisper.

“Mmm?” he mumbles, and you know he is almost asleep again.

“Are you comfortable like this?” you say, and you’re not sure whether you mean your weight on his other arm or the weight of your fears and his ...

You feel him shift behind you, and then his lips on your cheek, pressing softly.

“I’ve never been more comfortable in my life,” he says, quietly. “Go to sleep, Sarah. I know we’ve got things to deal with, but they can wait until morning. Just sleep now.”

You wrap your arms around his and hug him fiercely. “All right,” you whisper.

No, there’s no magic here; just a man who doesn’t mind being awakened in the night without explanation, a man who knows you’re afraid but doesn’t make an issue of it, a man who knows how foolish you can be sometimes and still is glad you’re here.

When you awaken again, it’s morning.

And you’re not alone.

~~~~~

Watching Sarah MacKenzie awaken in your bed is like watching the sun rise, and watching the sun rise is like seeing the universe reborn. 

It looks that way to you now, and it looked that way to you the day you first watched it from the deck of an aircraft carrier.

You didn’t see it your first morning out, or even your first week or your first month out. On your first cruise, you were too full of your own importance as a member of the air wing -- and, if the truth be told, too damn scared of what kind of havoc you might be about to create -- to spend any time doing anything so squishily romantic as watching the sun come up. 

No, not you. Tourists on cruise ships watch the sun rise, not aviators on the flight deck of a nuclear aircraft carrier, and you were an aviator, by damn: You had the gold wings and the bomber jacket to prove it.

That’s what you told yourself, and you believed it, right up until the day you made your first pre-dawn trap. You made a perfect approach and you snagged the number-two wire and landed that bird like you’d been born in the cockpit, and afterward you were bopping along the flight deck, tired as hell but feeling, as your RIO so colorfully put it, like somebody who got a fur coat and now thought he was King Fucking Kong, when you just happened to turn around and you saw it.

One minute it wasn’t there, and the next minute it was, and it came up fast, too, faster than you’d ever have believed it could, roaring up above the endless horizon the way it had for millions of years before you were born and would for millions of years after you were gone.

And all you could do was stand there in awe and watch it.

You’d never admit it, but every day after that, from that morning until the day you lost your ticket, you tried to get up to the flight deck or the LSO deck or the hangar deck, somewhere that you could look out and see that sunrise, so you could feel part of the world again amid the steam and the aircraft fuel and the endless scream and thud of the catapults.

Then one day you flew a mission over Baghdad, laughing for the sheer joy of it all, laughing because it was so good to go so fast, to have such a huge and heavy beast as the F-14 under your command, to be young and strong and powerful as hell.

The next day, the Iraqi government released photographs of the bioweapons factory you’d destroyed, but instead of showing manufacturing equipment and ordnance, the photographs showed the bodies of infants and children and old men, patients at the hospital they claimed you’d targeted and you sat there in shock, holding the newspapers, and you told yourself it wasn’t true, it wasn’t, it couldn’t be.

The brass agreed with you: The intel was good, your aim was good, you did it right. It was a weapons factory, not a hospital; the photos were fakes. Even the evening news reports gave the pictures no credence.

The next day, you went up on the flight deck before sunrise and you stood next to the tower. You stood there watching the sunrise and told yourself the photographs meant nothing. You swore you had the balls to resist what they were trying to do to you and that you’d never give in to that kind of propaganda.

And then you dropped to your knees and you cried anyway because even if those children weren’t in the path of the airstrike, other people were, lots of them, men and women, mothers and fathers. You may not have left the children dead, but you left some of them orphans ... 

You didn’t cry after the next bombing raid, but you stopped laughing as you flew through the air, and you stopped feeling like King Kong as you strode across the deck. Your eyes grew tired and your face grim.

Eventually, you came to understand that whatever had happened, you had done your duty; whatever pain went with that, you would learn to bear because that, too, was part of your duty.

But you never stopped looking at the sunrise; not then, not after Libya, not even after the ramp strike, after you were released from sick bay and they told you that you wouldn’t be flying again.

You watched, and you asked why, and you tried to believe what they told you, that it wasn’t your fault, that you’d have made the trap if your RIO hadn’t punched out, that it was the counterforce of the explosive ejection that sent the F-14 crashing downward onto the ramp.

You tried to believe it, but all you could see was his face, all you could hear was his voice saying he was with you to hell and back ...

You turned and you went below and you didn’t see the sunrise again from a carrier deck for years. 

You have seen a lot in the years since, and you have heard stories that have made you wonder why God didn’t ring down the curtain on the human race long ago. You’ve seen the terror in the eyes of a woman who’s been raped, you’ve seen the anger in the eyes of a father who’d rather have a dead son than a gay one and you’ve seen the body of a battered, murdered child lowered into a pauper’s grave. You’ve come so close to losing your faith in mankind and you’ve wondered, more than once, what the hell you were putting yourself through this for.

And yet you still find the sunrise beautiful, as you still find Sarah MacKenzie beautiful, more beautiful than she was the day you met her, whatever ugliness may have come to her world, whatever it’s done to her or to you.

She is your sunrise now, and you know you can get up and do what you have to do for one more day and you can bear the pain, you can bear the disillusionment, you can bear almost anything if you can wake up in the morning and see her here with you.

And seeing her awaken is like a sunrise ... one minute she’s asleep, and the next she isn’t, and those impossibly large, dark eyes are open, confused for a moment, and then shy, and you reach out a hand to her and help her to her feet and take her into your arms, and the soft sigh you hear as she nestles against you nearly breaks your heart.

“How long have you been up?” she says, her hands and her face warm against your chest as you rock her gently, your chin resting on her head.

“Not long,” you say. “I was just coming to tell you that the shower’s free and the coffee’s almost ready.”

“Mmm,” she says, and she turns to look up at you, a soft smile on her lips and in her eyes. “Do I get breakfast too?”

“You do if you don’t stay in the shower too long,” you say, and you kiss her quickly. “Otherwise, no promises.”

“Let me guess,” she says, wrapping her arms around your neck. “Egg white omelet with steamed vegetables and whole wheat toast.”

“For you, I’ll leave the yolks in,” you say, and her soft laugh makes you fall a little bit more in love, you don’t know how she does that to you but she does, so you kiss her again, and then you let her go. “Go on, Marine, hit the rain room.”

She turns and walks toward the bathroom, but just as she gets there she turns back, one hand on the glass brick partition. 

“You know, I don’t actually have anything to change into,” she says, a bit apologetically. “For that matter, I don’t have a toothbrush. I don’t suppose ...”

“Look in the medicine cabinet, there should be one that’s not opened,” you say. “And I’ll find you something to wear. Trust a Marine not to know how to pack a seabag.”

“I was in a hurry,” she says, giving you a smile that goes straight to your heart and breaks it all over again before proceeding on to your groin, where it has an entirely different effect. 

She steps behind the glass and as soon as you hear the water running, you grab the sheets from the bed and make it up with fresh linens. Not that you don’t both know what went on here last night before she got here, but there’s no reason to underline it by making her watch as you change the sheets.

You turn to put the old linens in the laundry hamper, but you stop, transfixed, at the sight of her body through the glass brick as she showers. The image is blurred and transformed but unmistakably her, and it stirs you as nothing else ever has. 

You think you ought to look away -- this is a little too much like being a Peeping Tom -- but then you think that maybe, before this day is over, she’ll want you to look, and not only to look but to touch, to taste, to hold, to make her yours, and that thought, combined with the sight of her hands moving over her naked, wet skin, is too much for you right now, and you have to look away. 

You stuff the sheets in the hamper and quickly put the others on, moving with a speed and economy of motion that only an Annapolis graduate can really appreciate. Marine Corps boot camp is, after all, only a matter of weeks; the Naval Academy gets four years of your life to teach you to make up a rack, and teach you they do. It’s a lesson that sticks with you.

After a moment’s thought, you take a T-shirt, sweat pants and a flannel shirt and lay them on the bed for her to wear -- there’s no underwear, and you try not to think about that too much, either -- and you go back to the kitchen to finish making breakfast. 

A few minutes later, the water stops running; you hear her brushing her teeth, moving around in the bedroom; then there’s a silence, a slight creaking of the bedsprings, and then nothing.

You wait a minute, thinking she’ll be out soon, but then you hear a sniffle, almost as though she’s crying again, and you go to see what’s wrong.

“Mac?” you call out as you walk toward the bedroom, thinking as you do that you’re going to have to figure out the name thing pretty soon, too. Is she still Mac to you and Sarah only in bed, or does she want to be Sarah off duty and Mac on duty? 

Great, Rabb, you think, giving yourself a hard mental kick; you haven’t been with her eight hours yet and you’re already coming up with office-romance complications. Smart boy. Very smart.

You’re still in the middle of your self-recrimination when you reach the bedroom and realize that Mac -- Sarah? -- is sitting on the edge of the bed with her back to you, wearing the sweatpants and holding the T-shirt in front of her, but that’s all. What greets you is her smooth, naked back, and for a moment you hesitate, but she turns her head and looks at you.

“It’s okay,” she says, with a sniffle that tells you your guess was right; she’s crying again, and you don’t know why, but you know you need to figure it out and fast. 

You walk around the bed and stand in front of her; she’s still got the T-shirt clutched in front of her, but she doesn’t seem ill at ease about that. Too many nights spent in close quarters, you think, or maybe she already thinks of you as lovers, even though you’ve done little more than kiss and embrace.

In spite of your utter confusion about just exactly what’s going on here, you find you like that idea -- a lot.

“What’s the matter?” you say, hands on your hips because you really don’t know where else to put them.

She nods toward the bed; sit down, the gesture says, so you do.

“I was worried about Jingo,” she says, then sniffs again and smiles up at you as if to say she knows how silly that sounds.

“That’s what you said last night,” you say, and you rest your arms on your bent knees, clasping your hands loosely. You’d like to touch her, but you don’t have any sense that she’s given permission for that yet, so this seems like the safest course to take. “Is something wrong with him?”

She shakes her head, looking back down at the floor. “No,” she says. “It’s just ... I left last night ... I mean, I left Jingo there ... with Mic.”

She doesn’t say anything else. She really doesn’t have to. 

“You think Mic is still there?” you say.

“I don’t know,” she says, shaking her head. “If he is, he’s probably already let Jingo out. He usually does when I’m not there. It’s just that last night, you know, when I left ... he was asleep ... “

“I know,” you say, not wanting her to finish. You look up and around, not at anything in particular, just anywhere but at her because this is so damn awkward, trying to advise the woman you slept with last night on how to approach the man she had sex with before she got here.

You’re pretty sure no one’s ever going to write a self-help book that covers this situation.

“I guess I should just go home and make sure Jingo’s all right,” she says, with another sniffle.

“Do you want me to go with you?” you ask her, looking at her again, but she shakes her head.

“I can’t hide behind you, Harm, much as I’d like to,” she says, and now she is looking at you again, and her eyes are clear and steady, the eyes of the calm, brave woman you’ve come to know so well. “Sooner or later, I’ll have to face him. You can’t run away from your problems.”

“No, you can’t, but you also can’t fly without a ground crew,” you say, and the metaphor makes her smile at you indulgently, as you knew it would, but then her face crumples again.

Without thinking, you put your arm around her and she lays her head on your shoulder, already so trusting of you in this new relationship, trusting you even though you don’t really know what’s wrong, you don’t know what to do or what to say, you don’t know what she needs or how to take care of her ...

You start to say something, to offer some suggestion, but she shakes her head; she knows you too well.

“It’s all right, Harm,” she says. “I’ll figure something out. But thanks for listening,” and she turns her head and kisses your cheek, and then your temple, and then the pulse beat next to your ear and your breath is beginning to catch in your throat; she is looking up at you, and somehow those eyes of hers are telling you she really, really wants to be kissed right now, so you lean over and kiss her.

And God, her arms are soft around your neck, gently pulling you down to her, so gently and lovingly that you don’t even notice at first that she’s dropped the T-shirt somewhere and that from the waist up, at least, she’s naked in your arms and that the comfort kiss has turned into something much, much more.

You’re stretched out on the bed with her, and your mind is empty of anything except the feeling of her skin, her beautiful skin, the color of caramel, the color of Persia, the color of the Cherokee, smooth and dark and beautiful ...

She’s lying beneath you now, whispering in your ear what she wants you to do and you do want to, God, you do, you’re so hard and so ready to plunge into her that rational thought has become damn near impossible, so you kiss your way slowly down to her breasts. You take one nipple into your mouth and nibble on it gently, feeling her arch up beneath you, feeling her hands in your hair holding you closer, hearing her sharp intake of breath, her whispered, “Oh, God ...”

You could have her now, this moment, you could have everything you’ve ever wanted from life, but you can’t do it now and you know why even if she doesn’t. It may be the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do, but you kiss her once more and then let her go and roll onto your back, damning yourself for an idiot.

“Harm?” she says, rising up on one elbow, and you can see she’s genuinely alarmed. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” you say, and you reach up to touch her hair, trying to reassure her. “Nothing that we can’t fix, anyway. We just can’t do this yet.”

“Why not?” she says, and she’s a little relieved, but only a little. 

“For one thing,” you say, and then you pause. This is going to take you back out onto the dangerous turf, but only children would avoid this conversation just because it was unpleasant, so you go on. 

“Mac,” you say, “there is a bedside table over there, and it has a drawer in it, but that drawer is empty, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh,” she says, understanding, but then her eyes brighten. “That doesn’t matter, I’m on the p ...” 

And then she stops again, and you can almost see the flush of shame in her eyes as she remembers: Neither of you has been celibate lately, and being with each other is going to put an end to your claim to being monogamous, too.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“You don’t have anything to be sorry about,” you say, and you take her back into your arms. “It’s not a big deal. One trip to the drugstore and it’s taken care of.”

“So is that the only reason, or do you have more serious reservations?” she says, more quietly, snuggling against you.

“Not about being with you, I don’t,” you say, firmly. “I’ve got no doubts about that at all.”

She smiles, almost shyly, and you wonder, not for the first time, how a woman so brave and so lovely can doubt her own worth this way.

“Mac, are you really sure this is what you want?” you ask her, and immediately you wish you’d kept your mouth shut, because she looks hurt; not just hurt, either, but frightened.

“Of course I’m sure,” she says. “I wouldn’t have come here the way I did if I wasn’t sure. How can you even ask me that?”

“Mac, I’m not doubting you,” you say. “And I’m glad you’re here, don’t get me wrong; I’m just having a hard time believing that all these tears and nighttime shivers are because you’re worried about whether Jingo gets fed.”

“You know it’s more than that,” she says, and she rests her head against your shoulder again. “It’s just easier to worry about Jingo than it is to think about facing Mic or ... other things.”

“What other things?” you say. 

“It’s like ... voices,” she says. “Ghosts from the past.” She shakes her head in annoyance. “I don’t mean that literally. Just ... things. I don’t know.”

That’s enough of that, says your inner Martian. The Male Confusion Level has been exceeded; time for Decisive Action.

You kiss her forehead and sit up, bringing her with you. “I know one thing,” you say. “I know your breakfast is getting cold, and so are you. Come on, get dressed, we’ll eat breakfast, I’ll drive you to your place and get Jingo, we’ll take him for a run and then after that, we can figure out what to do next.”

“You don’t need to drive me,” she begins, but you interrupt her.

“Sure I do,” you say, smiling. “That’s what Marine stands for: My Ass Rides In Navy Equipment. I’d be letting down my side if I didn’t provide you with transportation.”

“Very funny, squid,” she says, but she is smiling. “You know, we could always come back here,” she says, as she stands and pulls the T-shirt over her head. “I mean, after we go to the drugstore ...”

Roger that, your libido replies, but your practical mind immediately voices an objection. No go.

“There, uh, might be a problem with that,” you say. 

“Another problem, sailor?” she says, raising an eyebrow. “I’m beginning to think your heart’s not in this. What’s the problem this time?”

“The problem is that Renee has a key to this place,” you say, “and I don’t think I want her walking in on us.”

“Oh, God, no,” she says, and while you can tell she’s serious, she’s also laughing. 

“What’s so funny?” you say. “That would not be a pleasant event for any of us, I promise you.”

“I know it wouldn’t,” she says, and she kisses you. “And nothing’s funny. Not a damn thing. So while you’re in the mood for promises, can I get you to promise me something else?”

“I will if I can,” you say, but you’re on guard again, without wanting to be or meaning to be, but the response has become automatic lately. You know you’re a goddamn fool, but that’s the way it is.

“You can,” she says, and she is suddenly serious again, her eyes darker and deeper than ever, so dark and deep you could fall into them forever, and the heat from her skin is intoxicating, her voice and everything about her enough to make a man drunk for days.

“All right, then, what is it?” you say, and your voice is low and rough in your own ears, but you can’t help that, and it doesn’t matter anyway; she knows what she’s doing to you, and she knows you like it and best of all it’s making her happy, truly happy, it’s making her feel a little bit better about herself to know how much you want her.

And God knows you do want her; the heat between you is intense, like the heat of her dressed in Beduin robes, standing in the desert sunset with her arms around you, and it was heat everywhere and sun everywhere and in that moment you could not doubt how much she loved you.

You cannot doubt it now, standing in this new heat of hers, this heat that radiates from her every touch, her every movement.

“Promise me, Harm,” she says, softly, putting her arms around your neck again, and the heat of her fills you, body and soul, “promise me that before this weekend is over, you’ll be my lover.”

Be my lover ... promise me ... 

And there it is, all at once, appearing with perfect clarity like the sun rising. 

It’s the reason your mind keeps straying away toward irrelevancies like what name you’ll call her or how you make a bed, the reason you sit there with your hands in your lap and wonder what to do while she cries, the reason you let her walk out of your office yesterday, the reason she came to your bed last night instead of the other way around.

My lover ... 

It’s all you’ve wanted for so long, but the truth is, you’re afraid... you can’t tell her, you can never tell her, but you’re terrified of what will happen if you let yourself need her that badly.

Need ... even the word shakes you, because if you’ve learned one thing from your life it’s that to need someone is just begging fate to take them away from you, and no matter what else you’ve survived in your life, you could not survive if that happened to her.

She’s waiting for your answer, and you’re damn near paralyzed with fear, you can’t answer her, until you look into her eyes, deep into her eyes, and what you see there isn’t just heat, it’s warmth, because the sunrise isn’t just fire, it’s light, it’s how you light the way ahead, and you know you can do this if you can just keep your eyes on her ... only on her ...

You clear your throat and you speak.

“I promise, Sarah,” you say, and she smiles and enfolds you in her arms again, her warm, soft arms, the arms you have just decided irrevocably to let yourself need, these arms and none other for the rest of your life.

~~~~~

When you remember this morning, you think, you will remember it in shades of yellow: Orange juice and omelets, sunlight and buttered toast, a yellow tank top, a brightly colored coffee mug, all of it lovely and golden and new, buttercup yellow and citrus orange and fresh as your first morning with the man who will hold your heart forever.

You know there will be other things to remember: moments of happiness, and ecstasy, and sheer joy, tenderness and sadness and tranquillity, and all of them you will store up in your heart to take out and remember, one by one, when you remember this day.

For now, it’s enough just to be with him in the yellow sunlight, sitting with him, smiling and talking as though nothing has really changed, as though you’re just Mac and he’s just Harm and you’re just having breakfast together as you have --

God, how many times?

How many breakfasts, in a wardroom or an officer’s mess, a diner or a restaurant? How many cups of coffee in a car or on an airplane, in a helo or a conference room early in the morning? You’ve even had breakfast here in his apartment before; it’s not new. 

You’re comfortable together like this, and you love being comfortable with him. In fact, although you’d be a little ashamed to admit it, you’re proud of how easy he finds it to be with you, even when so much has happened. You’re sure he could never be so calm and happy and so at ease with Kate or Renee or any other woman after as much turmoil as you’ve brought him in the past 24 hours, and yet here you are ...

So you sit, and you talk a little shop, and you share a little gossip. You talk about the new Marine cammies with the removable sleeves that don’t bind around the arms like the old, roll-up sleeves do, about the Air Force’s new F-22 Raptor and whether it’s worth a damn, about the political troubles in Okinawa and the young sailors and Marines who aren’t helping matters with their behavior and has anyone over there ever heard of military discipline? 

You talk about last Friday’s ruling from the Court of Military Appeals and you wonder if it will have to be applied retroactively to all DDO cases, because if it does, you may drown in the paperwork and you’re already drowning in it.

You talk about people in the office and doesn’t Tiner seem to be finding a lot of reasons to talk to that young petty officer in admin and doesn’t she seem to be bringing a lot of paperwork to the admiral’s desk? 

You talk about Bud and Harriet and how they’re doing, about the Bud Roberts you used to know, the wide-eyed young lieutenant who believed in UFOs and Bermuda Triangles and ESP and you both agree that the new Bud is a good man, a very good man, strong and brave and able to take what life has dealt him but that you wish life had left behind some of the wonder and imagination and sweet childlike nature that once was Bud Roberts ...

You could go on talking forever, you think, and it only occasionally seems strange to remember that such a short while earlier you were lying half-naked in his arms, pleading with him to make love to you...

He was right when he said you had to wait, of course, and you’re mature enough to understand that; you’re familiar with the realities of responsible sex. Yes, he was right, but you can’t help being just a little afraid that there’s something else wrong, something about you, the way you’re acting or something you’ve said that makes him hesitant.

But he did promise ... and whatever else is hard or confusing about this, whatever you’ve done to hurt each other over the years, you know he keeps his promises. He answered you honestly when you told him not to make promises he couldn’t keep.

“I haven’t yet,” he said.

And he hasn’t; at least, not to you, and he promised that you would be lovers before this weekend is over, so you will. It’s that simple.

You will be lovers ... and you think of him as your lover, with all that you know of him in the flesh, in the mind and in the soul ... you think of him as he moves, his touch, the kisses you’ve already drunk of so greedily, all the things you’ve imagined doing with him and all the things you want to offer him, all the things there are to be offered ...

Those thoughts leave you dazed, as if there were no thought or feeling left to you but this heat and this wanting, as if all that you are were his already, you in the flesh, in the mind and in the soul, relentlessly, inevitably his with neither will nor desire to be otherwise.

But how will it happen?

Will it be as easy and natural as this sunlit moment, surrounded by familiar, prosaic things, coffee cups and omelets and morning newspapers? Will it be more imposing, requiring so much more of you, candlelight, a cocktail dress, the quiet clinking of crystal and silver and hushed voices of servers going about their business?

Or will it be none of those -- will it be awkward, fumbling, too embarassing to remember later, the deadly serious business of getting that first time out of the way so that the real relationship can begin later?

That, you know, happens more often than not with new lovers, but you long so for it to be different with him ... 

But there is still one thing left to do ...

You’re so lost in thought that you don’t notice him standing behind you until you feel his hands on your arms, stroking gently, and you look up at him, startled.

“Hey,” he says, and drops a kiss on your forehead. “You looked like you were a million miles away.”

“I was just thinking,” you say, leaning against his chest, and you take his hands in yours and draw his arms around you, holding him closer, needing his warmth. 

“Thinking about how badly I’m going to whip your ass when we run this morning?” he says, and in spite of yourself, you laugh.

“In your dreams,” you say. “In your pathetic little dreams.”

He laughs, too, and gives you a little squeeze. “So what were you thinking about?” he says, a little more quietly.

For a moment, you think you won’t tell him, but not telling him won’t make it go away, pretending won’t make it go away. You learned that lesson the hard way.

And with his arms around you, you know that you can say this, although the sweet peace of this morning will be gone after you do.

“I was just thinking,” you say, slowly, “that I wish I knew what to say to Mic when I see him today.”

And for a long time afterward, the two of you just stand there, holding each other in the silence, trying to give each other strength, trying to ignore the way the yellow sunlight gleams on the diamond ring that lies on the counter next to your wallet and your keys.

~~~~~

Ten minutes later, Harm’s driving you to your apartment, and you still have no real idea what you’ll find when you get there: Mic could still be asleep in your bed for all you know, or he could be awake, sitting by the door in a glowering fury, ready to launch himself at Harm the minute the door opens.

What Mic might do is bad enough, although you know Harm can defend himself ... but what Mic might say could be so much worse. What if he told Harm how you acted last night, what you said, what you asked him to do to you? 

The thought alone is enough to send a flush of shame to your face, and you turn away, looking out the side window, hoping Harm hasn’t noticed, but your luck isn’t holding out that well.

“What’s the matter, Sarah?” he says, quietly, still looking at the road ahead.

“Nothing,” you say, but it’s perfunctory; somehow, you know you’re going to tell him. Not all of it, maybe not even very much, but some, because you’re a seasoned enough litigator to know that it’s better to introduce the damning evidence yourself; that blunts its impact with the members.

You take a deep breath and square your shoulders; you remind yourself that you’re a Marine and a lawyer, and an adult. You can do this.

“Harm,” you say, in as matter-of-fact a voice as you can manage, “if Mic’s there when we get there, it could get ugly.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” he says, dryly. 

“What I mean is,” you say, and you hear your voice beginning to falter, so you start over. “Harm, if Mic decides he wants to ... make me look bad in front of you, I guess ... he might ... say some things about ... you know, last night ... between me and him.”

Wonderful, Sarah, you tell yourself in disgust. Very firm and adult. You blew that sky-high.

“Mac, I’m not sure exactly what you’re getting at here,” he says, and you know from his careful phrasing, the tone of his voice, that he’d give almost anything not to be having this conversation; on the other hand, he knows you wouldn’t have brought it up without a reason.

You take another deep breath -- it didn’t help the first time, but who knows? -- and try again.

“I mean,” you say, and then you let out a sigh of frustration. “There were some things I said to him last night because ... because I wanted to be with you and I wasn’t, things that might sound kind of ... I don’t know, strange ... in the light of day.”

“Okay, I’m beginning to think that I really, really don’t want to hear what comes next,” he says, but he’s trying to smile; he’s not telling you to shut up, he’s just telling you it hurts.

Tell me something I don’t already know, you think, and you try one more time.

“I just ... I wanted to try to put you out of my mind, so I told him... I asked him to be ... you know, rough,” you say, and you stop there, too ashamed to go on. 

“Are you saying he hurt you?” he says, and the barely controlled anger in his voice is alarming; you hadn’t realized he would take it that way.

“No,” you say, quickly. “Nothing like that, I promise. I just ... it was just the way I was acting, like ... a tramp or something. I thought he might ... throw that in my face if he saw us together today. I just wanted you to be prepared, that’s all.”

For a moment he doesn’t reply, and you think you know the reason; he is disgusted by the picture you’ve painted, but he’s trying to hide it, and you can’t look at him, you can’t bear to see the expression in his eyes right now, but then you realize he’s pulled over to the curb, he’s stopping, and then his hand is on your cheek, gently turning your face toward his.

“Let me get this straight,” he says, softly. “You’re afraid I’ll think less of you because you wanted or you needed something in bed and you said so?”

All you can do is nod, dumbly. This is not the reaction you were expecting.

“Sarah,” he says, and there is nothing but compassion in his eyes, “sweetheart, where did you ever get the idea that something like that would bother me?”

Sweetheart? That’s a new one, but definitely one you can live with ... very definitely, especially under these circumstances.

“I ... I just,” you begin, then you have to start over. “I mean, I ... well, you know, sometimes, when a woman behaves that way ... I mean, for some men, it’s a little too much ...”

He lets out a long sigh then, closing his eyes and shaking his head, then he opens his eyes again and looks at you.

“I owe you an apology,” he says, very quietly. “You tried to tell me this morning that something was wrong, and I cut you off. The only excuse I can offer is that it’s all been pretty overwhelming to both of us, me as well as you.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” you say, but he interrupts you.

“Yes, I do,” he says, and now he’s not just touching your face, he’s caressing it, and his touch is so calming, more calming than anything you can remember, “and if we had more time,” he says, “if I weren’t haunted by images of poor Jingo sitting by the door with all four legs crossed, I’d ask you whose voice you’re hearing and what it’s saying, but I’m beginning to think I know anyway.”

You have to smile thinking of Jingo, but you can feel tears coming into your eyes, too. He remembers. He remembers, and he did hear you and he does care.

“Just do one thing for me right now,” he says, still stroking your cheek gently. “Just listen to my voice, and what I’m telling you, which is that you have done absolutely nothing of which you should be ashamed. I personally can’t think of anything I’d like better than to hear you tell me just exactly what you want from me.”

You shake your head. “Men say that,” you say, with a little sniffle. “Chris said it, and I tried, and he seemed happy at first, but then he started treating me so differently, telling me what a hot little bitch I was, that I was his slut, all those things, and I didn’t want him talking to me that way. I just wanted him to hold me, to tell me he loved me, but when I told him that, he said I’d already showed him what I really wanted from him.”

“I’m not Chris,” he says, and he kisses you, and the kiss is gentle, drawing you out of this dark place in your mind and back into his eyes, where there’s all the love in the world, where nothing you’ve said or done has cost you his respect or his love ...

And for the first time since you left his place, you feel like you can breathe again.

“Harm,” you say, and you try to smile, “you’d better think about what you’re saying, because if I ever really tell you what I’m thinking about doing with you, you may be sorry you started this ...”

“Promises, promises,” he says, and then his mouth covers yours again.

~~~~~

You find the note as soon as you walk in your door.

“Sarah,” it says. “I found your car outside Rabb’s building at 3 a.m. No need to tell me what you’ve decided. I just want to know why. Meet me at the coffee shop at the end of the block at 10.30. Mic.

“P.S. I walked Jingo. At least I’m good for something to you.”

~~~~~

“You don’t have to go, you know,” he says.

He’s sitting on your couch and you’re tucked safely under his arm, still holding the note crumpled in one hand, the other hand resting over his heart.

But you’ve stopped crying.

“I know that,” you say. “But he just wants me to say it to his face. I owe him that.”

“Are you sure you’ll be okay?” he says, and you almost smile. You know what he means, and in that sense, yes, you know you’ll be okay. Mic doesn’t hit women, although he’s hit plenty of men in his life.

Including, of course, Harmon Rabb Jr. 

“I’ll be fine,” you say, but you’re not fine right now, and he sees it, and he puts both arms around you and holds you close. You wrap your arms around his waist and hold him with an intensity that surprises you both.

“Mac,” he says, and his voice is low and strong as you press your ear to his chest, his heart beating low and strong behind it. He seems to be everywhere around you, and that calms you. “If you want,” he says, “I’ll wait outside while you talk to him.”

You shake your head. “No,” you say. “I want you to go for your run. It’ll be easier for me that way, really.”

“And after that?” he says.

But there’s really no need for him to ask that question, is there? No matter how afraid you are or how guilty you feel, this has been building for too long now and you cannot, you will not put it off longer. Another hour, yes, two if it absolutely must be, but not longer than that. 

Not one minute longer.

“After that,” you say, and you look up at him, “I want you to go home, shower, change, pack your seabag, make that trip to the drugstore or whatever else you need to do, and then I want you to come back to me.”

“Okay,” he says, and his voice is deeper, huskier. He feels it too, this heat. It’s stronger; you may burn to nothingness if he doesn’t touch you soon, soon ...

If you could just have a little of him, just enough to give you strength for what is to come, to hold you until he returns, but you are too old for that, the litany of teasing, the “this far, and no further, no touching below the waist” chant as though you were still in high school -- and you have put him through too much already, far too much, but the thought won’t go away ... just a little, just a little ... his arms around you, his skin next to yours, his hands, his mouth ... 

“I would give a year’s pay to know what’s on your mind right now,” he says, and his voice isn’t just husky now, it’s trembling, and you know that he can see the heat in you, it almost shimmers the air around you; it steals your breath, stings your skin and only he can soothe it.

And he said you could tell him ... he said you could, if you wanted something, and you believe him, because you trust him, because you know him as a good and honest man.

You look into his eyes, still startled by their color, the color of a sunlit sea, and you move very slowly across his body to reach his mouth, because this kiss needs to be a promise, he needs to know this is not a casual request.

“I was thinking,” you say, stunned to hear the deep huskiness of your own voice, “of how much I want just a little of what’s waiting for me this afternoon.”

His eyes don’t move from yours, but his breathing slows, grows deeper, and his tongue darts out quickly to wet his lips, and he is so still in your arms, this good man, tall and strong and able to take what he wants so badly but holding back, because the choice is and always will be yours.

“You can have anything you want, Sarah,” he says, and his voice is nearly gone now. 

“I know,” you say, and then his mouth is on yours, hot and hungry, and you open your mouth to him, you take him in, and his kiss is a firestorm, leaving you no breath but his.

His tongue feels good in your mouth, strong, tasting of him, and you pull him in deeper, as if you had to draw breath from him or die.

It’s so hard to think but you don’t need to think, you only need more of him. You need to feel the strength of his arms, to know the force of his longing, to learn the sounds he makes and the way he moves when your touch gives him pleasure.

There is so much to learn, so much to savor ... that sharp intake of breath when you push him down on the couch and straddle him ... the way he throws his head back when your mouth is on his throat, tasting the saltiness of his skin ... the sudden tension in his shoulders as your hands learn the shape of each hard muscle in his arms, his chest, his back, his hips, his legs ... and your name on his lips, low and pleading, oh, so low ... 

And once you know how it is with him, you have to have all those things again, over and over again ...

You feel him shiver as your hands and your lips move slowly over his nipples, and you smile and nuzzle against him like a cat, as if you had no idea what you were doing to him, but you do ... you know exactly what you’re doing to him, and you like it very much, very much indeed.

“I want to take this off,” you say, pulling at his shirt, but you can’t stop what you’re doing long enough so he does it, he rips it off almost one-handed, and you smile again, moved beyond words because he’s doing this for you, just for you ...

“Anything else?” he says, and he’s breathing so fast, and he’s hard, God, is he hard; you can see it, you can feel it, pushing against you through the cotton knit running shorts. 

But you just shake your head. “Not yet,” you say, trailing your fingers over his chest, his ribs and his arms, over the hard muscles, the golden skin, the body you’ve seen so many times but not like this... 

You can touch him now, you can be as greedy or as passionate or as curious about him as you like and it will be all right, he wants you to be this way with him, he wants you ... his arms are hard around you, his hands are slipping under the clothing he gave you, seeking out the soft places in your flesh that have wanted him for so long.

“Here,” you say, and you lift the T-shirt, you take his hand and lay it on your breast because you ache, you absolutely ache for him and you know if he touches you it will feel better.

“There?” he says, his lips soft against your ear.

“There,” you say, slowly, the word barely more than a sigh as his hand moves over your nipple, his skin pleasantly rough, maddeningly rough, and you capture his mouth again, kissing him as deeply as you know how, pushing against his hand, wanting to feel more and more of him, so you push yourself as closely as you can against his hardness.

This is right to the heart of the matter, you think ... you and him, male and female, hard and soft, everything in balance as it should be and you wanting, you hot, wet, grinding against him ...

A low hum starts deep in your throat, and he’s moving against you, too, thrusting gently back, and this is almost it, this is almost what you want ...

And this, you realize, is where you have to stop; here, or not at all.

Reluctantly, you take your mouth from his, lay your head on his chest; he’s hot, so hot, his breathing is so rapid and his heart racing ... and all of it for you. 

“I’m an idiot,” you say, and your voice is shaky, but he laughs, softly, even as he takes his hand from your breast and wraps his arms around you.

“Not by me, you’re not,” he says, and he kisses your forehead. 

“Yes, I am,” you say. “I shouldn’t have done that to you.”

“Hey, I liked it,” he says, and he tips your face up to his with two fingers, and this, you think, is the behind-closed-doors version of the aviator smile. It’s definitely worth seeing. “Or couldn’t you tell?” he asks.

You know what he’s referring to. “Yes, I could tell,” you say, smiling, and you push up off him and stand up, straightening your clothes. “It’s quite obvious, as if you didn’t know.”

“Whereas I can only guess ...” he says, rolling over onto his side and propping his head on his elbow, but the smile is still there.

“Couldn’t you tell?” you say, but you’re not really worried. 

“Well, you know how it is ...” he says. “The physiological signs aren’t quite as clear with women.”

You look at him more closely then, at the long, golden-skinned body stretched out on your couch, still gleaming with perspiration, that impressive erection still there, and the idea, the thought -- the heat -- is there again, and you decide quickly.

“Yes, they are,” you say, softly. “You just have to know where to look.”

The smile fades then, and the intensity is back, the eyes you love so much are fixed directly on you, and he is waiting to hear what you want ... but he says nothing.

“You do know where to look ...” you say, “don’t you, Harm?”

“Yes,” he says, and his tongue darts out over his lips again. “Do you want me to?”

“Yes,” you say, and you hold out your hand to him; he takes it, and he comes to you, back into the circle of your arms, where you want him, where you are sure now you will always want him to be.

You wrap your arms around his neck, thinking as you do how lovely it is to be so unafraid, to feel hot and wet and ready for anything and safe, so safe, all at the same time.

And then you stop thinking as his hand slips under the waistband of the sweatpants you’re wearing, slips between your legs, gently parting your labia with his middle finger, gently, so gently, sliding along your hot, swollen flesh, and that, just that gentle touch, sends lust as strong as a tidal wave racing through you, blinding you to everything but him. 

Without meaning to you cry out and hide your face against his shoulder.

He stills his movement. “Is that too much?” he whispers, but you shake your head.

“No,” you say, and your laugh is shaky. “It’s not nearly enough.”

“Do you want more?” he says, and the sweetness of that unhesitating offer nearly makes you cry, because you know he’s not asking anything for himself just now, but again you shake your head.

“Later,” you say, but his hand is still there, still touching you and you can’t help it, you move your hips back and forth slowly -- once, twice, three times, feeling how very, very wet you are, how silkily your wetness makes you glide against his finger and how very, very much you want him to make you come ... 

But later. Later, when it’s you and him alone, and Mic isn’t waiting for you to finish breaking his heart, when there’s nothing stopping you and no reason you can’t be together in every way there is.

You move back, just a little, and you reach down and take his hand, take it away from you, and you take his hand to your lips for a kiss. 

“You need to go now,” you say, and he is watching you so intently, almost desperately, as you touch his still-wet fingers to your mouth.

“I do?” he says, not moving, watching your mouth.

“Uh-huh,” you say, rising on tip-toe. “I have to get dressed. And you have to go to the drugstore.”

“Oh. Right,” he says, just as your lips meet his, and you kiss him slowly, letting him taste your wetness on your lips, and the sound deep in his throat is the sound you will take with you when you meet Mic, the sound that will keep you strong.

You kiss him again, and then again, until you know you must let him go.

“If things get bad with Mic, don’t stay,” he says, and now he is serious again, he is the officer you see every day, but that is, after all, the man you fell in love with. “Just leave, go somewhere else and call me, and I’ll be right there.”

“I will, but I don’t think that’ll happen,” you say, and you smile at him. “It’ll be all right, everything will be fine. I’m not saying it’ll be easy, but it’ll happen, it’ll be over with and then we’ll come back here and we’ll be together.”

He laughs, but softly, and he lays a gentle hand on your face, his thumb stroking your cheek slowly.

“So I guess I owe you a year’s pay,” he says, and the smile on his lips is your smile, the one that is only for you.

“Maybe,” you say, and you kiss him again. “But I think I’ll take it out in trade.”

~~~~~

You were right about Mic.

It was not easy.

But at least now it is nearly finished. You’ve said nearly everything you have to say and it has hurt both of you badly; it needs to end now before you make a scene in a public place.

But he can’t let go, and you can’t tell him to let go because your pain is his recompense and only he will know when he’s had enough.

“Where did I go wrong, Sarah?” he asks, toying with his empty coffee cup. “What could I have done differently?”

You shake your head, looking down at the table. “Nothing,” you say. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Mic. You were never anything but kind and good to me. “

The waitress comes by with the pot, and Mic takes a refill, but you shake your head. No more coffee. No more talk. Let go, Mic. Let me go.

He doesn’t answer you. Perhaps now he, too, realizes there’s nothing more to say and only one thing more to do.

You reach into your pocket. As gently as you can, you take his hand, uncurl the clenched fingers, lay the ring carefully on his palm and close his hand around it again.

“I will always be grateful to you, Mic,” you say, softly, “I was hurting so badly when I was in Australia and you did so much to comfort me. I know that’s not what you wanted, and I wish with all my heart that I had realized earlier what was happening and not let it go as far as it did. I know you can’t forgive me yet, but for God’s sake, please don’t hate me because I did love you ... I still do.”

“Just not the way you love Rabb,” he says, his voice thick with tears he won’t shed, and he’s not looking at you. “That it, Sarah?”

“Yes, Mic, that’s it,” you say. “Not the way I love him.”

You’ve said it at least a dozen times in the past hour, and he still won’t believe it. He still can’t let go.

“There must have been something,” he says. “I must have done something for you to go running to him in the middle of the night.”

“I didn’t go running to him,” you say.

“You didn’t, eh?” he says, and for the first time since this conversation began, he sounds truly bitter. “If you didn’t, you gave a bloody good imitation of it. So what do you call it, then?”

You’re silent for a moment, swallowing hard, breathing slowly, trying your best to finish this peacefully, without tears.

Finally, you speak.

“I didn’t go running to him, Mic,” you say, understanding it yourself for the first time even as you say it. “I stopped running away from him.”
 

Continue to Part II