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  "'Lo? Zane? What--um...is everything okay?" Annalisa Campo, Marco's wife. She sounded sleepy, groggy.

  "Hi, Anna. It's...it's Zane."

  "Yeah, I know. Are you okay?" A pause. "Not to be rude, but why are you calling at eight o'clock in the morning?"

  I swallowed hard. "Shit, I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking. I just...I figured you'd be up by now." I cleared my throat. "I'm calling to check in. See how you're doing. Make sure there's...see if there's anything I can do."

  I dug the heel of my palm into my eye socket, as if to rub the raw emotional pain out of myself through direct force.

  Annalisa was silent for a long time. "It's been several months, Zane. Why now?"

  I hesitated. "I don't know. I don't know. I just...I don't know."

  She blew out a breath. "Let me make some coffee. I'm just gonna put you on mute for minute, okay?"

  "Yeah, fine."

  There was a good minute or two of dead silence, and then I heard Annalisa click back onto the line. "Hey, I'm back." I heard her take a sip of coffee, and then she spoke in a low tone, meaning her son was sleeping somewhere. "So you're checking in, huh? I don't know what you want me to say, Zane. Things are hard."

  "Tell me the truth, I guess, whatever it is."

  "I miss Marco, that's the truth. I don't know how to cope without him. I mean, he wasn't around much, but we got to FaceTime, and I got letters from him pretty regularly, plus he'd get leave once in awhile, so I'd actually get to see him." She sniffled. "He never met Tony. Tony never...he's never known his father. All he's ever known is me and my parents. So...I miss him. I just miss him. He's gone. He's dead, he's never coming back and I'm alone and I don't know how to do this."

  I felt my eyes burn and my throat close up. "Shit. I know. I keep going to call him, or text him, and then I remember."

  She sniffled again. "We get some money from the government, but it's not much. It doesn't cover...everything. My parents aren't young anymore and they're retired, so they can't help much, and...I'm working midnights at a nursing home, which is why I was still asleep. I just got home from work an hour or so ago. I'm struggling, Zane. That's how I'm doing."

  "Fuck. Why didn't you call me? Or Luis or--or any of us? You know we'll do anything for you."

  "And say what? 'Hey guys, I'm a poor war widow, please send money?'" She snorted. "Yeah, right. I've got some pride."

  "Fuck pride, Anna. We owe you. You're Campy's wife. He was our brother and that makes you our sister, and his kid is...goddammit." I cleared my throat. "Text me your address. I'm calling the guys. You're getting help, Anna. You shouldn't have to work midnights to make ends meet, not when you've got all of us."

  "I'm not accepting your charity or your pity, Zane. He died doing what he loved. You didn't get him killed any more than Luis or Oscar or any of the other guys did. There's no guilt for any of you. You don't owe me anything." Her voice softened. "Thanks for calling, Zane. It's good to hear from you."

  "Anna, goddammit, it's not charity or pity. Just give me your address." I barked the last as an order, gruff, harsh.

  She just laughed, a soft, sad huff. "Fine. I know better than to argue with you. You'll just have your baby brother stalk me online or something."

  "I would never," I protested.

  She laughed again. "Would, and have. Remember when you had Xavier hack into Marco's email account? You sent everyone in the unit creepy clown porn from Marco's email address."

  I laughed. "God, that was hysterical. He was pissed."

  "That one you sent? Where the clown has to take off the fake nose to go down on the girl? Marco almost passed out from laughing so hard."

  "You watched that shit?"

  "Of course we did. We watched the clown porn and then we got it on like Donkey Kong. He kept honking my boobs like they were a clown's nose." She laughed, but it turned into sniffles. "He was only pretending to be pissed at you. He thought it was funny."

  "I know. He was shitty at being mad at people. He couldn't hold a grudge if his life depended on it."

  "I broke up with him three times while he was in BUD/S. He'd be pissed for a day or two, but then he'd call me and convince me I hadn't really broken up with him. He refused to let me."

  "You're what got him through BUD/S," I told her.

  She couldn't quite answer clearly. "I--I know."

  "And he got me through it," I said. "So yeah, I do fucking owe you."

  She sighed. "Are you coping, Zane?"

  "I don't know. I'm trying."

  "It's not your fault," Annalisa said, her voice soft.

  "Just text me your address, Anna."

  "Okay."

  "I'll let you go now. Sorry for waking you up."

  "It's okay." A brief hesitation from Annalisa. "It's good to hear from you, Zane."

  "You too, Anna. Bye."

  "See ya."

  I tossed the phone aside, rubbing the bridge of my nose. She was working midnights? Jesus. I'd dropped the ball.

  I grabbed my phone again and sent a group text to Luis, Oscar, and Cody, detailing my plan to take care of Annalisa. We'd each send her four hundred dollars a month, which between the four of us would equal to sixteen hundred a month, not a huge number, but hopefully enough to offset things for her. I got replies immediately from all three of them, agreeing to my plan. They were all still active duty with the SEALs, so they were making good money anyway, which made me suspect they'd probably kick in more without asking, just because that's the type of guys they were. I just felt like shit for having let it go this long before checking in on her.

  I got another text, this one from Annalisa, containing her PayPal account details, and a note saying that if we really wanted to help out, it would be easier to send money digitally than writing out a check and sending it in the mail, which was what I'd planned.

  I forwarded this update to the guys, and then created a PayPal account for myself and linked my Navy Federal account to it, and then immediately sent Annalisa a thousand dollars.

  I'd been in the Navy for ten years, most of that as a SEAL; I'd never spent much on myself over the years, never bought a car or any expensive shit, so I had quite a lot of money banked. The bar was slammed all the time now, which meant all of us were making insane bank each night we worked, which I stashed in my account and rarely touched, only adding to my nest egg. Meaning, I could afford to shoot some cash to Annalisa. I was tempted to send more, but I knew the other guys would be doing the same thing, feeling similar guilt and obligation, and I also knew if we went too far overboard Annalisa would refuse to accept it.

  I was at odd ends again, now. Trying not to think about Marco, trying not to think about Annalisa, trying not to think about Mara...what was left to think about? Not a lot.

  So I went down into the storeroom under the bar, slid a pair of forty-five plates on each side of the bar and started benching until I was shaky.

  When in doubt, work it out. It doesn't solve any problems, but it's a better way of pushing aside your problems than drinking.

  Especially at six in the morning.

  Fuck me; it was going to be a long day.

  Chapter 7

  Mara

  I met Claire at a nearby diner at nine the following morning, feeling refreshed even though I'd not fallen asleep till well after two and was up again by seven thirty. I normally need a lot more than five hours of sleep, but something about the way I'd fallen asleep had made me sleep more deeply than normal. I wasn't about to examine that too closely, though, because I suspected it had everything to do with Zane and the multiple orgasms.

  I arrived at the diner first, so I got a booth and settled in to wait for Claire; punctuality wasn't really in her repertoire of personality traits, you could say. If we were supposed to meet at nine, she might show up at eight and sit drinking coffee and working on her laptop for the next hour, or she might not show up until fifteen or twenty minutes past the meeting time. She just...didn't have a solid grasp on time, and it was something
I'd just gotten used to over the years of knowing her.

  Today, thankfully, she showed up only ten minutes late, a spring in her step and a mischievous smile playing on her lips.

  She sat down and immediately stole my coffee. "Ohmygodcoffee. I got up like ten minutes ago and ran straight here."

  "Up late partying, huh?" I asked, knowing what the bounce in her step and the shit-eating grin meant.

  A passing waitress brought a mug over for Claire and poured her a fresh cup, and Claire started slugging it back steaming hot and black. "I dunno if I would call it partying, exactly," she said, waggling her eyebrows at me suggestively.

  "Partying...on your back?"

  She giggled. "Um, more like partying doggy style, and then standing up partying, and then shower partying, and then reverse cowgirl partying. Aaand there might have been some absurdly high quality muff diving, and then some really quality fellatio. And then something brand new even for me: post-party snuggle time. Which I highly, highly recommend, by the way."

  "Well damn, girl, that's a lot of partying."

  She gave a sassy flip of her hair. "What can I say? I'm a party girl."

  I laughed. "I think I'm reaching semantic satiation with the word 'party', my friend." We paused to order, and then when the waitress left I turned back to Claire. "So, who was the lucky guy? The guy from the bar bathroom?"

  "Oh, no, someone else--this local guy I met."

  "So wait, that was all with the same guy, in one night?"

  She shrugged, pretending to be demure. "He had a LOT of stamina."

  "Well, obviously, if he can go that many times in a single night. Jesus. Can you walk okay?"

  "Well..." she said, wincing, "I am feeling a bit bowlegged, since he was...um...insanely well-endowed. But, all in all, I discovered that my vagina can stretch more than I'd ever thought possible, given proper lubrication and lots of, what I've decided to call, pre-game orgasms."

  I guffawed at that, almost snorting piping hot coffee out my nose. "Pre-game orgasms. Are you going to see him again?"

  She lifted a delicate shoulder. "Eh? Maybe." She wasn't looking at me when she said this, looking rather preoccupied with stirring her coffee...which was odd since she hadn't put cream or sugar in her coffee.

  "Claire..."

  "Amarantha?"

  I knew she was serious when she used my full name. "You're going to see him again, aren't you?"

  "Yesnowshutup," she mumbled under breath. "How about Zane, that smug, sexy motherfucker from the bar? You gonna see him again?"

  "I saw him last night," I said.

  "Well, no shit Sherlock, we both saw him last night."

  "No, I mean I saw him again later. When you took that rando into the bathroom, I left with Zane."

  The waitress arrived with our food then, and we paused the conversation to dig in. After a few bites, Claire stabbed the air in my direction with her fork. "Good girl, I was hoping you would." She took another bite. "So? Spill."

  "Wait, I just thought of something. The guy from the bar bathroom and the local guy, they're different?"

  "Yeah, that guy from the bathroom got all excited super quick and I could tell he wasn't gonna go the distance, so I gave him a handy and then bounced. I met the other local guy at a different bar later on, not long after you texted me."

  "But you're going to see the local guy again?"

  "YES, I'M GOING TO SEE THE LOCAL GUY AGAIN," Claire bellowed. "Now, will you let it go? You're gonna jinx it."

  "Jinx what?" I was honestly confused, seeing Claire get this worked up.

  "Me...this guy...the thing. There's a thing going on with us, and I don't want to jinx it, so can we please not talk about him anymore?"

  "You have a thing with this guy?" I asked. "I'm sorry, I'm just confused."

  She sighed, spearing a breakfast potato with her fork and waving it around, gesticulating. "I don't know, Mare. I really don't. It's a thing. What is the thing? Fuck if I know, and neither does he. But it's a thing, and we're gonna go very slowly and cautiously and try out this...thing."

  "Like a rela--"

  "SHUSH!" She snapped. "Do NOT say that word. No more talking about it. One more word and I'll shove these potatoes down your throat."

  An effective threat, since I hated potatoes. "Fine, but when you can speak coherently about it, I expect details."

  "Agreed." She crossed her wrists and stuck out her pinky fingers; I crossed my wrists and hooked my pinkies into hers, and we shook. Stupid and childish, but a promise-making tradition we'd had since boot camp. "Now. Zane, he of the epic penis. I need all the gory details."

  I sighed. "He took me to a scenic overlook and I gave him the most epic blow job of the century..." dramatic pause, "...and maybe possibly kind of decided to practice date while I'm in Ketchikan for the week."

  Claire clapped her hands over her heart, tilted her head to one side, and made an awwww face. "My little girl is all grown up, now."

  "Oh, shut up." I threw a sugar packet at her. "I wouldn't go that far. But I'm giving it a try."

  "For realsies, I'm happy for you, pumpkin."

  I blinked at her. "Pumpkin?"

  Claire laughed. "I'm experimenting with cute terms of endearment. I want to find one to use semi-ironically with this guy I'm maybe sort of not really but kind of almost seeing."

  "Yeah, don't call me pumpkin. That's weird."

  "Honeybuckets?"

  "Uh, no."

  She tapped her chin. "Diddly-dinkums?"

  I threw another sugar packet at her. "You need to be stopped." I dipped my fingers in the glass of melting ice water and flicked it at her, repeatedly chanting, "The power of Christ compels you."

  She put her hands in front of her face, shrieking. "Okay, okay, I'll stop!" When I stopped, she threw the sugar packets back at me. "And besides, you don't say 'the power of Christ compels you' for an exorcism."

  "How would you know?"

  She frowned at me. "Um, because I grew up Catholic? As in, I went to a private Catholic academy from pre-K through high school, attended mass every week, and was in the church choir?"

  I sat in stunned silence. "Shut the hell up." I pointed at her. "Yet another thing I didn't know about you. What other secrets are you keeping from me?"

  "It wasn't a secret, it just never came up. Once I graduated high school, I stopped going."

  "Wow. So...what else hasn't come up that I should know about my best friend?"

  She paused, obviously thinking about how to reply to my question. "Um...I got my wisdom teeth out? I had an appendectomy my junior year because my appendix exploded and I almost died?" She looked at me in the eyes and then threw out one more, casually. "I had a D-and-C when I was twenty."

  I gasped in shock at the last one "A D-and-C? Like the thing they do after a miscarriage?"

  She nodded. "Yep. I got pregnant and had a miscarriage. On my twentieth birthday, actually."

  "Damn, Claire. You've never talked about this before." I sat in stunned silence for a long time. "Like, how did I not even know you grew up Catholic, much less that you had a fucking D-and-C?"

  She shrugged. "I just don't talk about myself, that's all."

  "Understandable," I said, although I was surprised she had not shared this, given our close friendship. "I just...I feel like I don't even know you, in a way."

  "You're still my best friend, Mara, that'll never change. She sighed. "But yeah, the miscarriage itself was brutal. I hadn't even really had time to process that I was pregnant, and then it was over. It was messy, too. Like in the movies where it looks like a Quentin Tarantino movie happened between the girl's legs? That's not an exaggeration." She stirred her coffee again. "I, um, don't talk about it because of the other effects the whole thing had on my life...and not just because of the emotional trauma of the miscarriage itself."

  "What do you mean? What happened?"

  "My dad disowned me. My mom is super traditional and she refuses to openly disobey Dad, so the only way I can s
ee Mom or my sisters is if they sneak out while Dad is working."

  "Damn, honey."

  She nodded. "Yeah, it sucks. Six years have passed, and I still have to be all sneaky and secretive if I want to see them."

  "He hasn't relented?"

  She shook her head. "Nope, and he never will. He forced the rest of them to have new family photos taken so I wouldn't be in them."

  "Because you had a miscarriage?"

  "Because I got pregnant out of wedlock."

  "That's archaic."

  "That's Dad." She paused, and then stuck a finger in the air. "Also, Dad is a church deacon."

  "I don't know what that means."

  "Sort of like a priest, but they can be married if they were married before becoming ordained." A shrug. "It just means he's, like, a super church man and very strict when it comes to religious dogma. He works for the church in a permanent, paid capacity."

  "Oh. Does that mean he won't ever forgive you?"

  Another sigh. "That's so unlikely as to be impossible." She waved a hand, dismissing it. "Or, if he did, it'd be conditional. I'd have to confess my sins and be absolved and say, like, forty million Hail Mary's and do a bunch of penance and other stupid bullshit. He's a stubborn asshole, and I'm just as stubborn as he is, only I'm going to be more stubborn than he is about this because I'll be damned if I'm going to apologize, and certainly not for him disowning me."

  "God, I'm so sorry, Claire. I had no idea."

  "It is what it is. I'm used to it, now." She shrugged, then poked the back of my hand with her fork. "That was a very nicely done deflection, by the way."

  "It wasn't a deflection, it was an honest question...a rabbit trail in the conversation, but I'm glad you told me about it."

  "Well, thanks, but let's get back to the topic at hand, namely, you and Zane."

  "Me and Zane? There's not much to say. We're going to keep having excessive amounts of super crazy hot sex, and also, we're going to hang out and do stuff that isn't sex. Just to see how we both like it."

  "And you're calling this a practice relationship."

  "Correct. Because he lives here and I live in San Francisco, and neither of us are ready for a real relationship, but we feel pretty compatible, so we're gonna see how it feels to pretend we're in one, in case we decide we want to try it for real later on."

  "So, like me and Brian at work, only with sex?"