Page 90 of His Best Friend's Baby

“Well, I sure as hell need to give it to you.” Caleb sat up.

“Okay.” Jesse held out his hand, thinking to stop Caleb from getting up but then thought better of it. Let the guy do what he wants, he’s earned it. “You’re welcome.”

God, how ridiculous did that sound? How inadequate.

“I’m sorry about your men. I understand the pilot was a friend of yours.”

Jesse nodded, his throat too thick for words. For breath.

“My mother lights candles three times a day for those men.”

Jesse almost laughed again, caught on some ragged edge of emotion. Visions of Dave with his attitude and cocky grin, Artie with his terrible sunburns and bad jokes, and Mitch flooded what part of his brain wasn’t numbed by Caleb’s appearance on his doorstep. “Good,” he said. “They need it.”

“I understand you’ve retired, with honors.”

Jesse nodded.

“Silver Star and the Purple Heart and—”

“I retired,” Jesse managed to say, stopping the list of awards he’d earned because he’d been the only one alive to take them.

“I’d like to do a story.”

“On the accident?”

“On the accident.” Caleb nodded. “And you.” His eyes taunted Jesse and dared him.

“No comment,” he growled.

Caleb shook his head. “You rescued me from an Iraqi prison.”

“I did my job.”

“You pulled me from a burning helicopter.”

“No story.”

“Well, I don’t really need your permission.”

Jesse laughed. “Then why bother coming here?”

“Your niece thinks you blame yourself for the accident. And let me tell you, man, that better be the overactive imagination of a sixteen-year-old because I never in my life heard such melodramatic bullshit.”

Ice replaced blood in his body. He stood, frozen to the spot. “I appreciate your thanks, but maybe you should go—”

Caleb dug through his back pocket and finally fished out a notebook. He flipped it open and searched through a few pages.

“The helicopter was six minutes late, right?”

Jesse nodded.

“According to Artie, who was trying to keep me alive while you fought with the pilot, they were late because they fired on the enemy.”

“I know, they fired back when—”

“No, Jesse. They fired first.”

Silence. The beat of his heart, the gasp and wheeze of Wain sleeping in the corner was the soundtrack for the reshuffling of memory and detail that made up that night.

“Artie said that Dave fired on his own. And Mitch circled around to take another pass at the enemy. That’s when they got hit. I think Artie called them trigger-happy sons of a bitches, but I can’t be sure. Artie was mad, I know that. Artie said if the bird went down it was Mitch and Dave’s fault.”

A headache blasted between Jesse’s eyes and he winced against the light and Caleb’s words.

“Mitch took on those risks. I know it doesn’t change the outcome. I know how bad it feels to be to be alive when those—”

“You don’t,” Jesse growled. All of those barriers and walls, the feeble sticks he used to hold himself up, crumbled under Caleb’s words. He was the wreck, the wretched jellyfish of a man in need of rescue. It happened so fast, like a tsunami. One minute he was fine, his ghosts managed, his demons caged, and the next he was a boy, defenseless and lost. “You don’t know what it’s like. To be alive when you shouldn’t.”

“Are you kidding me?” Caleb tilted his head and laughed at the ceiling. “Do you see me here? Do you see my face? I could take off my shirt and show you my chest. Every day I wake up in pain,” Caleb said, “like I’m being hit with a sledgehammer all over again. The doctors say it might get better.” He shrugged. “Or it might not. Those Iraqis did a lot of damage.”

Jesse watched, silent. He’d pulled Caleb out of that rat hole. He knew the damage that had been done to him.

“But every day, before I even open my eyes I think, ‘Thank God for Vicodin and Jesse Filmore.’”

Jesse laughed, incredulous. But something weird happened at the end of that laugh. His gut churned and his eyes burned and it felt almost as if he were crying. He lifted his hand to his forehead, at a sudden loss, like he’d been cut adrift.

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