Page 22 of Unmade

Operator Beckett sat down across from me, and he had no food. Only a cup of coffee, which reminded me of something.

“The coffee is free.” I’d seen it earlier when I’d taken my food.

He smirked a little. “So it is.”

Wait, what advice had I forgotten?

“What advice?” I asked.

He chuckled and took a swig from his mug. “I told you to make friends before you joined the Army.”

Oh. And now because I’d chosen to sit alone…?

I shrugged and broke apart a piece of the bread roll. “At one point, I had more friends than I knew what to do with, and I still felt lonely as hell.” I dipped the bread in the soup and then ate it. My sweet spot in terms of friendships had been in Germany, when I’d met two guys who had similar bucket lists as me for European travel. Whenever we’d had the time, we’d gotten on a train with just our backpacks.

“That’s fair,” Beckett murmured.

He looked to be observing me, so I held up my schedule and pointed to the profiling class on the list.

“Are you doing that now?” I asked.

He grinned.

Here I was, thinking he couldn’t get any hotter than six years ago.

“Once you start profiling people, you can’t really stop,” he said.

Yeah, I bet.

I glanced over my shoulder, seeing the other recruits spread out among four tables. Nobody else was here, not even Coach.

“So, what do you think of the recruits so far, Mr. Profiler?” I wondered. “What’s the first thing you notice?”

He hadn’t seen my initial reaction to walking into Hillcroft again after so many years. Mostly, I’d been shitting-bricks nervous at the prospect of seeing Beckett again. Like, had he quit, was he still around, would I someday pass him in the halls…? And then Coach had informed us that “Operator Beckett” was on his way, and my heart had pounded for a solid minute.

“I reckon I try to predict who’s going to be difficult,” Beckett mused. “I know four of them left the service pretty much…yesterday. So, two of them already have beards, which tells me they’re very eager to forget about past grooming regs.”

I chuckled. Damn, I never would’ve thought in those terms. “Maybe they’re lazy.”

He shook his head. “Lazy people don’t exist here.”

I guessed that made sense.

“You’re not lazy either,” he told me. “You ignored my texts for some other reason. I can’t wait to find out what that might be.”

Yikes. He didn’t beat around the bush, did he?

Time to stall. I drained my first glass of water and took a gulp from my second glass too. Then I shifted in my seat and hoped he’d give me an out. I wasn’t exactly nervous or at a loss for what to say; I just wanted to avoid it altogether because I knew I’d come off as a head case who didn’t belong here.

He didn’t give me an out, though. He merely waited and kept watching me.

Fuck it, then.

But if I was going to tell him, I wanted to get it right.

I leaned forward and rested my forearms on the table. “Do you ever feel like you’re watching yourself—like an out-of-body experience—and you don’t know what the hell you’re doing?”

He cocked his head. “I’m notunfamiliar with the sensation.”

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