Page 26 of SEAL Mates

Alec

It had been a long and boring day. We were worried that the crime rates would go up seeing as the town had grown by ten folds over the last five years, but if anything it had been the complete opposite.

More settled here to have a quiet life, not to cause trouble and this resulted in me having to get rid of one of the two deputy’s that I’d hired recently. There wasn’t enough work for us to go around, luckily one had resigned which meant that I only had to get rid of one. Yet, it was a tough thing to do. Carl had moved here with his family for the same reason that so many before him had done, to have a taste of the quiet life. Whereas Vale had lived here all his life, he trained just so that he could have the job, who was I to take it away from him.

“You alright man?” Derek asked as he walked into the living room. I was sitting in the dark with a glass of Tamnavulin Double Cask kneading it as if it was my best friend and the one to give me all the answers. It was a nice dram and having tried much more unmemorable whisky that carried an age-statement, this one for sure was my favorite. Not only because of the caramel sauce and a touch of citrus zest, but the reasonable price too.

“No. Yes. I don’t fucking know man. I just know I need to get rid of one of the deputy’s and I have no fucking clue which one and the state are on my ass about it.”

Blake walked in. “You should let me do it. You know I’m good at firing.”

I chuckled, because no matter what, Blake did have a way to make me laugh, even when I wasn’t in the mood.

“Yeah, we all know that. It is just that this isn’t so simple. They’re good guys. Yeah, but we both know that Vale’s the man you need to get rid off.”

My eyes darted to Carl and him avoiding my stare gave me the answer that I needed. Derek and Blake both pulled up a chair with empty glasses as if they were uninvited guests. I wanted to be alone, not most of the time, but right now I had the feeling, the sense of it just being me, myself and I with my thoughts.

“You going to share or do we have to fight you for it?” I didn’t get a chance to reply, because Derek got up and snatched the bottle from me, then poured it neat, and I watched, mesmerized by how they’d taken my drink and shared it among them.

“Don’t look like that.” Blake said as he downed his glass.

“Like, you did back when we were teens. Whenever we had to share something, he put that look on his face, as if he’d lost a dog.”

I shrugged, “It was different back then. You lived with dad in London and I was here. The only time we used to see each other was during the holidays and our parents would always be, share that with your brother. Remember there are two of you now, but for the most part of our lives we were only children until they got divorced.”

“I forget that you guys didn’t grow up together. How old were you when they were divorced?”

We’d told Derek this before, but one thing for sure, he did have a short-term memory and a lot of things about our past had to be repeated, whenever it came to discussion.

“Five. It’s nuts looking back at it now. We were both supposed to live with dad. But, somehow only one of us got to go.”

Blake chuckled, “Mom wanted us both to go. She wasn’t maternal at all and you got the short end of the stick and you both kept it quiet, one thing I would never understand.”

I answered Blake’s question for him, like I’d done so many times. He’d been told, but just didn’t want to believe the answer.

“Mom was a sociopath. She didn’t want kids, but then didn’t want to be perceived as a bad person for admitting it. She made out that she wanted both or at least one of us. She made me feel bad, like only she could about not wanting to live with her, and when I opted to move in, all she did was act as if I was a nuisance and passed me on to whichever relative she could until you and dad moved back to the states.”

Blake nodded his head, and then there was a silence. One brought on by talks of the past, and things that I didn’t want to talk about, let alone remember.

“So, yesterday I had my interview. And I think that I have a solution,” Derek smiled as he stood up and passed me back my bottle of Tamnavulin Double Cask.

“Oh?” I asked out of curiosity.

“Paula Williams!”

We both looked at him eagerly waiting for him to say more about Paula, but he was too busy pouring my glass, refilling his and Blake’s.

“Are you going to take us out of our misery or what?”

He looked at me for a second as if he was bewildered and then said, “The woman. The one we share. Her.”

I nearly choked, before the glass even met my lips.

“The writer?”

He nodded, “Uh-huh. She’s perfect. I mean she’s smart, older, and funny. More sensitive and just what we need, and the best part of it, is that she says that she writes romance. She’s going to use the interviews to write a romance novel. I mean what better way than to offer her a way to write it.”

Blake choked, “What do we know about romance? We have fuck all to offer her.”

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