“I don’t have that many people to talk to,” he said.
“Just on the off chance you decide to talk to Alyssa or Neely...”
“I don’t think so, Sid,” he said.
“Can we talk about you now?” she asked.
“As soon as we order cake.”
“I thought you wanted pie.”
He flipped open the dessert menu and showed her a picture of a three-layer slice of chocolate cake served with ice cream and whipped cream.
“That looks evil,” she said. “And perfect.”
When the waitress came back to refill their coffee, he asked for the cake—two pieces.
“Are you afraid to let me dip my fork into your cake?” she asked.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “I’m just afraid you’ll dip it too much.” Then he grinned.
“You had your teeth whitened, didn’t you?” she asked.
“No. I brush and floss.”
“Okay, what’s your story?”
“I’m not that interesting.”
“I’ll be the judge,” she said.
It was his turn to pause, trying to decide how honest he wanted to be. The whole story might be overwhelming but he could give it a start. She’d trusted him. He could return the favor.
“As you know, I grew up with Cal. I grew up with California, Sedona and Sierra—our parents considered themselves hippies. But we grew up humbly on a small farm in Iowa and there wasn’t much to spare so each one of us had a plan to break out of that poor existence. My plan was the military and I enlisted the second I was out of high school. I liked the military. I liked the standardized routine. It worked for me and I gave it my full attention. But eventually I burned out, just like I should have known I would. So I discharged, but without a plan. I went to Australia to visit friends and see the country, then came here because I am now an uncle. Because Sierra and Cal are both here. God knows I didn’t want to settle in a small Iowa town and my plan was just to visit and get my head together, but this place? This is a real good-looking place.”
“And your parents?”
“Getting old and still back on the farm. They don’t farm it, however. They lease the land.”
“How many times has your heart been broken?” Sid asked.
“How far back should we go?” he asked. “Pam Bishop ripped my heart out when I was fourteen. I’m not sure I’m over it yet. There were others but then I broke a few hearts, too. I never meant to.”
The cake arrived and Dakota picked up his fork. “Things don’t always work out the way we want them to.”
“No,” she said. And she lifted her fork.
“You’re beautiful,” he said. “I’m sure you’ve left several broken hearts in your past and you probably disappointed more than a few eager young studs.”
“If I did I was unaware of it.” She took a big bite of cake with a dollop of ice cream. “I never dated much.”
“How is that possible?”
“You’re flattering me, that’s all. I was shy, I guess.”
“You’ve definitely overcome that,” he said. He ate some more chocolate cake. “You’re a smart-mouthed wiseass.”
“Well, I work in a bar. We’re supposed to act like we’re having fun. Most of the time I am. Plus, I have overcome a lot of my shyness. It was necessary that I either get over it or spend the rest of my life in a dark closet. With the door closed.”
He shook his head. “It’s hard to imagine you as shy. Nobody gets the best of you.”
“Not even you, Mr. Jones,” she said, licking her fork.
“See?” he said with a laugh. “See? You’re a hard case. So tell me, how often do we go to the soup kitchen?”
“You don’t have to go back to the soup kitchen, Dakota. I’ll have coffee with you again even if you don’t.”
“I want to. I like it. I’ve done similar things, usually as part of the job, rescuing and helping the disenfranchised. That’s something the military is pretty famous for. We might be in pursuit of the enemy but the war-torn civilian communities need our help. Fills the well,” he added, scooping more cake into his mouth. “Now, wasn’t this a good idea?”
“I love cake and ice cream. Did Rob tell you?”
He shook his head. “I have no insider knowledge. I’m just very intuitive.”
“I don’t want a boyfriend, Dakota,” she said.
“I don’t really want a girlfriend, either, but sometimes I just can’t help myself. So—the soup kitchen. How often?”
“For the next month I’m on the schedule three Saturday nights. I’m taking one Saturday night off. I have plans.”
He did not ask what kind of plans. “They keep a schedule?”
“Mary Jacob needs to know how many bodies she has for serving and cleaning up. If she runs short at the last minute she has to call emergency volunteers.”
“Maybe I’ll just go every Saturday night,” he said. “Tell me about some of those people,” he said.
“The volunteers?”
“Yeah, sure. And what do you know about the people who come to eat?”
“Oh, they’re all so different and interesting,” she said, lighting up a little. There were more than a few kids who lived on the street, some elderly people whose social security wouldn’t cover their expenses, a family who had enjoyed prosperity when both parents had been employed, but then their company downsized, leaving them unemployed. There were a few vets who weren’t adjusting to civilian life, some PTSD going on there, and she went on. She talked about how Sister Mary Jacob tried to funnel these people in the best direction to get all the help they needed from counseling to government assistance.
Dakota asked a lot of questions and they finished another cup of coffee while Sid ran the tines of her fork over the plate to mop up every bit of chocolate.
“If you lick the plate, I won’t be embarrassed,” he said.
She laughed at herself and pushed the plate aside.
After he paid the check, he walked her to her car. “I’ll follow you until I make my turnoff,” he said.
“Okay. I’ll go slowly for you so you can keep up,” she said.
He laughed and then she stood still and looked up at him. “So, if you don’t mind me asking, just how did you get over all those broken hearts?”
He was quiet a moment. It was dark in the parking lot. He looked down at her pretty, upturned face and sighed. “Who says I got over them?” he said softly. “Maybe there were one or two that made me cry like a girl every night for a year.”
A very small smile curved her lips. “Well, hell’s bells, Dakota. I believe that was not a bullshit answer.” She gave his cheek a pat. “Thank you for that.”
“Don’t let this get around but some of my family calls me Cody.”
That made her smile broadly. “See you around. Cody.”
* * *
Dakota had not lied to Sid, he just managed to tidy and abbreviate his autobiography. He might as well have said, Ah, I had my ups and downs. He might be coming to terms with the truth for a long time to come. He’d found his teenage years torturous and humiliating and the pain of those years was still festering somewhere deep inside him. He’d been razzed, pranked and tricked. Pam Bishop really had hurt him, but it had not been as benign as he described. He’d asked her to a school dance and she had accepted, but as a joke. And when he went to meet her at the dance, she was with some other guy, a guy who had buddies. They all laughed at him for being stupid enough to think some cool girl might want to be his girlfriend. Dakota had gone alone, not with friends, and he had left alone, walking home. Miles and miles. With hot tears burning his cheeks, he schooled himself on what was and was not cool. There were other tricks and jokes, endless battering he took because everyone knew his father had secret friends, the kind only Jed could see or hear. He found his loc
ker lined with tin foil, the kind Jed sometimes wore on his head to keep the government from reading his mind.
He felt like his throat ached in want of tears for four straight years. He’d remained mostly friendless and ashamed. And he was so angry.
And then he found his escape. In the military he was able to have his new beginning, spending the power of his anger on his physical performance. He became the Army’s shining star and he was opened to a whole new world of friends. He might’ve been the only soldier he knew with a schizophrenic father but there were plenty of men and women escaping painful childhoods of poverty, abuse, homelessness and unhappy and disjointed families. He had taken comfort in their existence, feeling for once he was not the only one, the only square peg in a round hole.
There were women. Finally, there were women. In fact, most of them seemed honored to be noticed by him. He wasn’t sure how he had gone from being the local town fool to the resident McHottie. He kept looking in the mirror and seeing the same long face, large teeth, bushy brows, nose with a bump that he found slightly too big, and yet the girls were suddenly breathless and eager. He even met a few who lasted, who he thought he might one day settle down with, who wrote or Skyped with him every day while he was deployed. There were also a few military women he spent time with here and there. It wasn’t unusual to have a girl back in the States and a girl on deployment. It was just the way of the world, he thought.
Until he fell in love. That brought the whole world into focus for him. Colors became brighter, music held special meaning, words of love were not silly but profound. He’d taken a short gig as a recruiter near a university because it would give him a chance to pick up some credits toward his master’s degree without being interrupted by deployment. He heard a speaker at the university who knocked him out. She was lecturing on human rights, and the second he saw her, heard her, he went into a trance. She was stunningly beautiful and brilliant. After the class broke up he approached her, stupid with lust and cunning, and said, “I’m an Army Ranger and I’ve been to most of the places you were talking about. Would you like to get a drink sometime and talk?”
She smiled and said, “What about food? Italian?”
“That would be perfect,” he said.
Their connection was instant; their chemistry was powerful. He was a goner. They even had a great deal in common, given he had spent a large amount of his time in the Middle East and that was her humanitarian focus. It was perfect and, on a university campus, just another romance. To the students and professors, there was nothing unusual about them. He could almost forget that in the world at large they might be misunderstood.
Hasnaa was a Sunni Muslim; her parents immigrated from Jordan before she was born. She was finishing her PhD in international human rights, had worked as an interpreter for the UN and been in the peace corps. She wanted to dedicate her life to alleviating human suffering and raising the stature of women wherever she could. She sometimes wore a hijab. When he met her, her head was uncovered or he wouldn’t have offered to buy her a drink. On their first date she wore her hair free. She rarely wore a black scarf when she covered up, as she favored colors, particularly pastels. She explained to him the way she grew up. Her mother taught her that the hijab symbolized modesty and respect for their religion. Hasnaa honored the religion of her family even if she didn’t practice strictly. She covered her head when she visited her parents, who lived in Los Angeles, when she worked alongside a male colleague who was Muslim, when she went to the mosque. But Hasnaa had her own interpretation of Islam, much to her parents’ dismay. She had obviously pursued her education, worked and earned money, which she kept, and she refused to have an arranged marriage. It set her at odds with her parents for years. Then she introduced them to Dakota. Her parents, remarkably, did not die on the spot, but they were less than thrilled.
The passion between them was quick and hot and Dakota was consumed by it. At first he had trouble reconciling her Western ways, especially when seeing her wear the hijab, but he soon learned Muslim women were as individual as any others. She was a brilliant feminist, of course. He warned her that her parents would not approve of him; they would naturally prefer she accept a Muslim husband. She laughed wildly at that, asking him where she was supposed to find a Muslim man who would accept her as she was, so independent and demanding.
He told her he was in love with her before two months had passed. They began to discuss the challenges they’d face as a couple and how they were willing to find a way to bridge their diverse cultures. “Will your parents accept me?” she asked him. He had laughed before telling her about his father. “He could as easily take you for Abraham Lincoln as a Muslim woman.”
Her mother could not hide that she liked Dakota, but there was no question her father did not. Nothing mattered. In his thirty years, Dakota had never felt that kind of completeness. After being together just a few months, he would have walked through fire for her.
Then there was an attack. An act of terror.
She’d been in London at a meeting and had gone to dinner with a few colleagues afterward. Their restaurant had been targeted by a lone-wolf terrorist who drove his bomb-laden vehicle over the sidewalk and into the restaurant. Eleven people died and many were injured. His beloved Hasnaa was lost.
And so was Dakota.
Hasnaa’s mother called to tell him the terrible news but he’d already heard from one of her colleagues. She was buried by her family in a sacred place and the prayers were offered in the Islamic tradition, but because Hasnaa had so many friends and colleagues who were not Muslim, her mother opened her home to them so they could gather and comfort each other.
That was the end of everything. There was no ongoing relationship or friendship with her family or her friends. He felt like he lived in a black hole, but he was back in training, then deployed, then sucked back into a world where someone in a chronic angry or dark mood didn’t stand out. He was lured back in time to his first experience in the Army, when the best thing he could do to leave the past behind was to be the best, to achieve. One day, sometimes one hour at a time, he moved on.
He’d never talked about it. There was never an opportunity to say, “I was in love with the most incredible woman and she died a violent death, and I will never be the same.”
* * *
When Sidney got home, the house was quiet except for the rhythmic purr of her brother’s snore. He sat on the end of the sofa, feet up on the ottoman, book in his lap. She smiled to herself. If she’d been paying closer attention, she would bet he hadn’t read an entire chapter in a month. But he was diligent. He kept trying. He probably got home from the bar at about eleven, took off his shoes, propped up his feet and read. He worked such long days, he never lasted long.
She touched Rob’s knee and his eyes popped open. He stared at her for a second, then he grunted and sat up straighter. “Time’s it?” he asked.
“Almost twelve.” She sat down in the chair at the end of the sofa, kicked her shoes off and put her feet up. They each had their own ottoman, like an old married couple. “Are you home early or late?”
“I came home at dinnertime for about a half hour, got the boys fed and went back to work. They went to a ball game with the Rogers boys. I knocked off at eleven to be here when they get home. Mitch is closing the bar. Trace is cleaning up.”
“If you’d told me, I could have arranged to be home for them,” she said.
“No one really has to be home for them. They know how to unlock a door and lock it up again. But I wanted to hear about the game. And...you know...be here. Late for you, isn’t it? You have a big crowd tonight?”
She shook her head. “Pretty regular. But I tricked Dakota Jones into helping out, then I had coffee and cake with him.”
Rob looked startled. “Is that so?”
“Don’t get that look,” she said. “It was just coffee. He’s been pestering me for a while now. It
couldn’t hurt.”
Rob put his feet on the floor. “Sid, you don’t have to be alone forever.”
“Neither do you,” she said.
“I’m not trying to be,” he said. “I’ve had dates...”
“I think you’ve had hookups, but I make no judgment,” she said. “But dates?”
“I’m low-key about it, that’s all. I don’t want the boys to get all up in my business about lady friends. It’s not like I have a lot of spare time.”
“You’ve had dates? Actual dates?” she asked. “Like where you go out to do something, like dinner or something?”
He let his chin drop in a brief nod.
“Like who?” she asked.
He gave a helpless shrug. “That woman from the kitchen supply warehouse—Tricia. I took her out three or four times. But she made it pretty clear she was looking for something with a future. Then there’s a friend in Aurora who is the opposite. She doesn’t want a serious relationship. That’s working out a little better. It’s been ten years,” he said, speaking of his wife’s passing.
Sid’s mouth stood open. “You never once said...”
“What? That I’m ordering kitchen supplies and going out to dinner? Here’s what I say, Sid. I say where I’m headed, approximately when I’ll be back and that I’ll have my cell if anyone needs me. If it’s you or the boys, I pick up if I can. If it’s work, I might call back in ten minutes. After I listen to the message.”
“You never said you were going to see a woman!”
“Was that important?” he asked. “You’ve lived here with us for a little over a year. You’ve come a long way from that dark period. Your divorce has only been final for about a year and that was a challenge—that bastard was going to wring every last dime out of you. You were adamant that you weren’t looking for another relationship and I don’t blame you, after all you went through, though at the end you came out of that joke of a marriage with your purse. Thank God for decent judges. But you didn’t want to meet men and you refused those who showed any interest.