Cannon Read online

  Reality doesn't intrude on us until a country music festival I can't cancel.   In the middle of one of the slow songs during the performance outdoors, I close my eyes and breathe all of it in for a moment, and I remember how fucking lucky I am. When I look over at Hendrix, standing off-stage, he gives me a "thumbs up" and that cocky, shit-eating grin of his.   And I feel a hell of a lot luckier.

  After the performance, about to get in the limo, when it happens.   Fireworks explode -- once, twice, and then a smattering in quick succession.   Hendrix's face goes chalk white and he freezes, standing there beside the limo door.

  "Hendrix. "  I touch his arm, and he yanks it away, and he's shaking as another set of explosions go off.   Fear grips my chest when I see this normally strong man paralyzed by something I don't quite understand.   I take his arm, more firmly this time, guiding him into the back of the limo.   We sit in silence on the way home, and Hendrix is shivering.   I don't know what to do, but he doesn't push me away when I slide my arm around him.   He just lets me sit there beside him, pressed up against him, until the trembling seems to subside.

  In my apartment, I take him straight to my bed, strip off our clothes, and climb under the sheets.   Neither of us say a word.   Hendrix puts his head on my chest, lying quietly against me, and I look up at the ceiling for a long time, not knowing if he's awake or asleep.   I don't know what else to do, other than to be here.   And I hope that's enough.

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  TWO YEARS AGO

  "Cannon, you're writing in that notebook all the fucking time.   Thought you were writing letters, but you never send them. "  Watson kicks the dust on the ground with his boot, spits the juice from his chewing tobacco into the dirt, then takes a sip of an energy drink.

  "Fuck off, Watson. "

  "Touchy," he says.   "I didn't know you were such a pussy.   Maybe you're just writing in your journal, talking about your feelings and shit?  You should go see the head wizard, cry a little on the couch or whatever. "

  "I'm writing a fucking letter, douchebag," I say, rolling my eyes.   "You'd understand that if you had any friends outside of us assholes that are stuck with you. "

  Watson laughs.   He knows I don't mean a word of it.   He's a good guy, as solid as they come.   He pulls out a letter from his wife Mandy, shows me another photo of their new baby, Amy, the kid he hasn't seen.   We get email here, even in the mountains in Afghanistan, but Katy sends him letters every week, packages too, when they make it.   He's from Kentucky, not too far from Nashville, and I like him even though he's redneck as fuck, because he reminds me of home.

  "When we get out of here, we're going straight to the coast, Mandy and Amy and me," he says.   "We're taking a family vacation, away from her crazy mother, just the three of us.   It's been a while since we've gone on a family vacation.   What are you going to do when you get home?"

  Home.   I didn't think of Okinawa, and then Twenty-Nine Palms in the middle of nowhere, California, as home.   When I think about home, I think about Nashville.   I hated it when I was there, but now that I've been away from it, I've started to remember it fondly, the bad parts of it fading into the past.   And the good parts…well, Addison was the only really good part of it.

  I still haven't gotten the balls to send the letters I write.   They just sit in my notebook.   I can't send them, not because I'm afraid for her to know what's in them, but because it seems like the kind of thing you should say in person.

  If I get the chance to walk the fuck out of here and say them in person.

  Here, we're living on borrowed time.   Before we go outside camp and set a firing line, I offer up a silent prayer that we'll come back relatively unscathed.   We've been lucky, so far.

  The casualty count here is higher recently than in other parts of the country.

  Casualty count.   That's what they call it.   It's clinical, sterile, a way of reporting to the higher-ups running the show how many Marines were killed in action.   A man's death shouldn't sound clinical, I think.

  That's the funny thing about death.   It's not clinical at all.   It's putrid and foul and the stench of it lingers long after it happens, seeping into your pores until you begin to think that you carry it around wherever you go.

  I'm afraid I'll die in this hellhole.

  I'm afraid that I'll go home but I'll carry this place with me forever, unable to rid myself of the stench of death.

  PRESENT DAY

  I stir when the sunlight shines through the window in Addy's bedroom, bathing everything in golden morning light.   I'm on my side turned away from her, but she's pressed against me, her body lengthened alongside mine, and her arm is wrapped around my waist.   I can hear her snoring softly behind me, her face nuzzled against the middle of my back.

  All I can think about is how completely and utterly disappointed Addy must be in me for flipping out over a goddamned fireworks display.   A wave of humiliation washes over me, and I lie there, unmoving, thinking about how to best extricate myself from the bed without waking her up.   But then she nuzzles her face against my back, her lips on me, applying gentle kisses in the middle of my back.   And I'm instantly hard.

  I roll over and she smiles, the expression radiant.   "Morning," she says, her voice thick with sleep.

  "Hey. "  When I run my hand through her hair, she closes her eyes, pressing her face against my palm.   "About last night…"

  Addy snuggles up close to me.   "You don't need to say anything about last night, Hendrix. "  She kisses me softly on the lips.

  My tongue finds hers, but she pulls away, shielding her mouth with her hand and complaining of morning breath.   "I don't care about our morning breath," I whisper.   And I don't.   I kiss her greedily.

  I cup her breast and Addy melts against me, her voice breathy when she speaks.   "I want you inside me, Hendrix," she whispers.   She's wet when I reach between her legs and the fact that she wants me, even after last night, makes me irrepressibly happy.

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  I reach for a condom on the bedside table, and I'm on top of her, inside her quickly.   I don't want to be anywhere but inside her.   Addy wraps her legs around me, pulling me tighter, arms around my neck as she brings her lips to mine.   "More, Hendrix, more," she whispers, and I give her more, riding her until she's swollen around me, her pussy demanding.

  I don't speak, no dirty-talk of fucking her or how much I want to come inside her.   She's quiet, the only noise now the sound of her moans, louder in the morning stillness until she cries out my name.   "Oh God, Hendrix!"

  I tilt her jaw up toward me so I can watch her come, the face she makes one of complete ecstasy.   When I finally let go, it's white-hot pleasure as I come inside her.   Afterward, I don't move.   I just stay there in her, watching her chest make little heaving movements as she catches her breath.   She puts her hand against my face, and I close my eyes, turn against her palm, into her soft touch.

  We lay there in the bed for what seems like an eternity.   "I tried to email you a thousand times," she said.   "When you were gone. "

  I nod, stroking her hair.   "Me too," I lie.   I never tried to email.   But how do I tell her I wrote her a thousand letters I never sent?  It seems like too little, too late.

  She's quiet for longer, like she's gathering her thoughts, and when she speaks, her voice is soft.   "What happened last night, it was about your deployment, right?"

  "Yeah," I admit.   "I don't know what to say, Addy.   I froze up.   It doesn't make me the best bodyguard. "

  Addy grins.   "Schtupping the client doesn't make you the greatest bodyguard either, you know. "

  I can't help but laugh.   "Fine," I agree.   "I'm a shit bodyguard. "

  "You're the worst," she says, giggling.

  We're silent for a minute, lying in the bed, and I reach ou