Page 35 of Crashing Waves

My tongue ached with the vitriol I desperately wanted to throw his way. The man deserved it more thananyone. Every bit of belligerence in my broken mind was meant to pelt him until he was the one who bled. But while his blood might’ve been pounding through my veins, my heart was still too good to say any of the things I needed to say.

So, I opened the door, grabbed my suitcases from the back seat, and walked away from my father’s car, wishing South Carolina were on the other side of the universe.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Holy shit, I cannotwaitto fuck Christy when I get home.”

I looked up from stuffing a shirt into my backpack to glance at Greg Dumass—affectionately, albeit obviously, nicknamed Dumbass by the guys in our troop—as he held his head in his hands and groaned.

For ten weeks, we’d had to listen to him talk about his girlfriend, Christy. They’d been together for four years, since their first year in high school, and I was pretty sure he had all intentions of marrying her as soon as he was able to.

He had quickly become my friend when I arrived at the basic training facility ten weeks ago. He was my first friend, followed by Justin “Rids” Ridley and Matt Tomlinson. We had formed a solid group of buddies, cheering each other on during the grueling weeks of combat training and the infuriating, motivating needling from our supervisors. We held each other up and pushed each other along when we felt like failing. If it hadn’t beenfor the support we’d found in our little group, I wasn’t entirely sure we would’ve gotten through those long hours of what had, in the moment, felt like torture, and now we were getting ready to say goodbye.

I was looking forward to seeing Ricky, and I was really looking forward to seeing my sisters. But I was going to miss these guys.

However, I wasn’t going to miss everyone.

“Christy,” a mocking voice said from two bunks over. “Your girlfriend must really like limp, micro-dicked pansy boys to be with a little bitch like you, huh, Dumbass?”

Sid Sprague sat up to toss a wad of paper—a used tissue maybe—at Greg, his cackling laugh rising above the chatter from the rest of the guys.

“At least Ihavea dick,” Greg fired back, grabbing the first thing he could reach—a pillow—and chucking it at Sid’s face. “Still don’t know how you got in here with that hairy fuckin’ pussy of yours.”

Matt giggled from the bunk over Greg’s. “Oh, so that’s what’s been stinking up the fuckin’ place. Gotta wash that thing once in a while, Sprague. You smell like my uncle’s fish market.”

Sid snorted. “I guess you’d know what rotten puss smells like, huh? I mean, sharing a bed with your mom and all.”

“Hey, shut the fuck up,” Matt yelled back, instantly on the attack.

Sid’s face split in a shit-eating grin. “Ooh, touchy subject, huh? Did Mommy take little Matty’s virginity? She’s been lonely, hasn’t—"

Matt jumped off his bunk and reached for the collar of Sid’s white undershirt. He pulled him down, and the two of them fought on the cold beige tiled floor, punching and kicking and grunting through a slew of incoherent obscenities.

Sid knew Matt was sensitive about his mother. She’d raised him and his three sisters on her own ever since his dad had passed away in a car accident six years ago. But Sid knew a lot of things. He had found what made each of us weak over the last ten weeks, and he used it against us, laughing all the way.

Well, all of us except me.

Sid couldn’t find my weak spot, and maybe that was because I didn’t have one—my father had made sure of that. But that didn’t mean he hadn’t tried.

No, I wasn’t going to miss Sid Sprague. Not one bit.

“All right, guys, come on,” Justin groaned, sighing as he walked across the aisle from his bed. “Break this shit up.”

He leaned against my bunk’s metal frame and nonchalantly looked at his nails.

“You excited to go home, Tailor?” he asked over the sound of Matt’s and Sid’s grunts on the floor one bunk over.

“Sure,” I said with a shrug, grabbing the last shirt from off my bed and stuffing it into the backpack.

My nonchalance was forced. The guys didn’t know about my home life. They didn’t know about my parents or the hell I’d been living in since before I could remember. At first, I’d chalked it up to it being none of their business, but after ten weeks of them sharing everyinsignificant detail of their lives with me, it had turned into a shamed secret, just as it’d been with my friends at home. Something to hide.

Justin breathed a low chuckle, still looking for invisible dirt under his nails. “Yeah,” he huffed, almost sardonically, “me too.”

I glanced up from securing the backpack closed.

Come to think of it, I didn’t think I knew all that much about Justin’s family. He had a girlfriend, a few friends. I thought he might’ve mentioned a grandmother—or was it a grandfather? But as far as parents or siblings were concerned, I couldn’t recall him ever mentioning them. Now, I was questioning, and I wondered if he understood my situation without knowing what it even was. A tiny flicker of something warm and desperate began to burn in my gut. Hope maybe. The need for camaraderie, for someone to understand.

“You’re from Massachusetts, right?” he asked, meeting my eye.

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