Page 18 of SEAL Mates

Blake

It was late, I should have gone to the meeting, but I was fed up of hearing the same tired shit over and over again.

You’re an ex-SEAL.

You were kicked out, so you’re damaged but if you weren't kicked out, then you would be seen as retired. Either way, the crap you saw on the field shouldn’t matter, just how they made you feel when they didn’t declare you a hero.

Come here, sit.

I’ll hold your hand and you can just walk me through all the pain and grieve that you’ve encountered since you came out of the Navy. Before that time, your life was fucking smooth sailing and everything was a bag of roses, but only after that time then it all went to shit.

This is what every fucking therapy session that I went to, all three of them had said lot me and I felt even shittier then I did when I entered.

I thought seeing a crack was supposed to make you feel better, not worse. This was what I hated about them the most. When you go into the Navy, they didn’t pain it to be all smelling roses, so why did they paint the same tired, fucked up picture when you were advised to go to therapy.

I decided to do the one thing I was good at doing in times of feeling like crap. Sweeping it under the carpet and working my socks off.

“Fuck man, you got your aid in or what?” Alec asked as he tapped my feet and I saw his lips move, but didn’t hear what he was saying. So, I turned on my hearing aid, to hear him cuss me out.

That was the gift I learned about being partially deaf, I didn’t need to hear all the shit that I’d heard before. I realized that as much as I used to think of it as a disability, it was kinda a blessing. Sometimes it kept me sane, just turning down my aid and enjoying my own silence.

“Nah. I turned it off. I just needed to finish this car. Cause Greg said that he was bringing in the jeep tomorrow and I’m no superman. I can’t do that many cars at once.”

It was an excuse, a poor one. I could have told Greg to wait another day. He did say that he was here for a week and there was no hurry. He just needed a quick service, because he’d been on the road for the last few weeks. I decided being helpful to him was way better than having to spend the day listening to the past and others wanting me to talk about it. We were ex-SEALs for a reason. No more did we have to think about it, let alone talk about it. It was all down and dusted.

“Which is why you should stop being a cheapskate and hire people.”

I shook my head cause as much as my brother was the voice of reason at times, he was doing my head in right now.

“Put a sock in it. I told you already, the reason I’m working alone. I’m the only person I can trust. These guys say they want to work, but I hire them, and then they are out of the door.”

“Bro’ they left cause you sacked them. They didn’t leave out of choice.”

“Put a sock in it, you’re doing my fucking head in!”

He chuckled, “You left London how many years ago and you still talk like them.”

“Errh, did you come here to give me grief or say something useful. Like you’ll help me get a car fixed?”

“Nope. I don’t know anything about cars, this is why I turn to you, when there’s an issue.”

He took in a long drawn breath. Something he learned at yoga or something, he said that he works like a treat. He needed it a lot more than I did. I wasn’t the one who was so uptight and threw a wobbly if my daily routine was interrupted. I kept telling him that he was in the wrong line of work, if he expected everything to be smooth sailing all the time.

“I came here to tell you little brother that you need to stop drowning yourself in work. You cannot keep going on like this, pretending that everything is fine, when it isn’t. If it was then you wouldn’t be here on a Friday night working after starting at 5 this morning.”

I was like a bear with a sore head, especially when it came to hearing the ugly truth of it all. Something Alec liked to do, and maybe he was right, I needed a wake-up call, before I could respond he kept on talking as he put his hands on my shoulders, which he did frequently seeing as he towered over me by over a foot. Well, not quite. He was six three and I was only five eight. We were twins, but whenever he called me his little brother, it wasn’t just because he came out first, but simply because I was shorter.

“I don’t want to be burying a brother or keep seeing you stressed out like this. You know why those other apprentices nor mechanics didn’t work out. You were too hard on them and no one wants to work for a tyrant, so give them some credit. I saw Ryan at the meeting. He really wants to come back here and Zack too, they just can’t take your moods.”

I sighed, knowing he was the voice of reason, but being the stubborn fool that I’d been lately wasn’t open to hearing the truth.

“Ryan was the best mechanic I’ve ever worked with. Zack wasn’t too bad either. But I told them to stay late, or leave, and they both left.”

“What time was it?”

“Ten, on a Friday night,” I muttered. Shit, I could lie and make out that he was the one in the wrong, but I knew it was down to me to make a change, I was just too stubborn to do it. Besides, if I didn’t work too much, I hated to think what was the alternative?

“Are you going to make that call or should I?”

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