Ignite (Explosive) (5 page)

“Hello?” a familiar voice answers.

“Yeah, I’m calling to RSVP for the ten-year reunion at NHS this summer. I thought I’d already done so, but I got a card in the mail requesting that I call this number.”

“Umm, there must be some mistake. I’m not taking the names, but my sister is. Oh well, I can get your name and pass it along. To whom am I speaking?” the voice asks.

“Huh. That’s weird. This is the number that was on the card. If you could pass my information along, that’d be great. This is Jace McAllister and I will be attending the reun—“ I start to say as I hear a loud crash on the other end of the phone. “Hello? Anyone there?” I ask, wondering what in the hell is going on.

“S-sorry. I, umm, Sierra must’ve written my phone number down instead of hers. Not accidentally, I’m sure. I’ll let her know that you plan to attend. I’m sure she’ll be looking forward to seeing you. Have a fantastic day,” the voice that I now recognize as Alexa’s stammers.

“Wait! Alexa, can we—“ I try to get out before she cuts me off.

“Jace, this is probably Sierra’s not-so-cute way of trying to play matchmaker. I really can’t deal with this right now. I’ll see you at the reunion.” Click.

Alexa hangs up before I can get clarification about anything she just said. I am thoroughly fucking confused as to why Sierra would play matchmaker for her married sister. I stopped checking up on Alexa’s social networking sites once she got engaged, so the last that I heard was that she was happily married. I knew Alexa had a blog, but I couldn’t read post after post of the stuff she and her husband were experiencing, so I stopped getting the emails with updates sent to me.

Grabbing my laptop off the coffee table, I sign into my Facebook account. Typing in Alexa Sullivan, I get nowhere. Shit. What was her married name? I sit with my fingers hovering over the keyboard for a few moments before it comes to me. I type in Alexa Tate, and there she is. Her profile picture is of her and Sierra’s little girl, Ava. They are both covered in flour, so I’m guessing there was a baking adventure that went awry. I click on the picture to get a closer look. She looks beautiful but tired. She has dark circles under her eyes, and her smile doesn’t stretch quite as wide as it used to. Closing the picture, I see her latest update.

Stars by Grace Potter & The Nocturnals couldn’t better describe my life right now.

What the hell? Opening up Spotify, I type Stars into the search function. I choose the Grace Potter version and sit and listen to it. If I’m hearing this correctly, then it sounds like Alexa’s lost someone close to her. I go back to her page and click on her ‘about me.’ Name: Alexa Tate Town: Cincinnati, Ohio Birthday: May 28, 1985 Relationship Status: Single

I go back to her main Timeline and begin scrolling. There isn’t much except random song lyrics and people leaving comments with encouraging messages. There are a few comments about her recovery with some well wishes. What the hell happened? I scroll down for about five minutes until I find it.

Alexa Tate May 12, 2011:
Thank you all for your words of encouragement. The road to recovery will be a long one, so it means everything to have the support of the people I love. If Tyler were here, I know he’d be rooting me on right alongside you, so I’m going to give it my all for him.

Something happened, but I still have no idea what. I keep looking around and can easily put the pieces together. I close my laptop without looking any further into it. As much as I cared about her, I would have never in a million years wished for her to be a widow at such a young age. As I sit in silence, I wonder how she’s coping. Knowing Alexa, she’s bottled it all up inside and isn’t dealing with her grief. Maybe I can fix this. Maybe for once in my life I can be there for her when she needs me. I’m going to do this. It’s my goal to rekindle my friendship with Alexa at the reunion, and dammit if I won’t succeed.

I pace
around my living room while waiting for Sierra to answer the phone. I am furious with her!

“Hey, girl! What’s up?” Sierra asks as she answers the phone on the second ring.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I fume, unable to contain the anger I’m feeling right now.

“At the moment I’m trying to get my four-year-old to eat something other than mac and cheese. What the fuck are you doing?” she responds with a fake sugary sweet tone.

“I’m wondering how in the hell Jace McAllister got my number and why the hell I just got off the phone with him!” I practically shout into the mouthpiece. I stop pacing and sit on the arm of my couch, just waiting for her less than understandable explanation.

“He called? What’d he say? How long did you guys talk? Is he coming to the reunion?” she asks, firing off her questions in rapid succession.

“Yes, he called, and I think we were both shocked as hell. He is coming to the reunion, but you already knew that. You told me yesterday! And he even said he’d already RSVP’d, so he had no clue as to why he got another reminder. Seriously, Sierra, what do you think you’re doing?”

“Umm, yeah, I may have accidentally put your number on there. Oops. My bad,” she snickers, making my blood boil.

“It’s not funny. I was already reeling from the thought of having to see him, and then you go and do this? I thought I’d have months to prepare, but now I feel like that stupid seventeen-year-old girl again, excited and breathless just by the sound of his voice.”

“Exactly. You can thank me any time now.”

“Thank you? I’m freaking pissed. What were you thinking?”

“Did you not just hear yourself? Excited and breathless? You’d been void of any positive emotion for almost a year. And in one phone call, you felt something else. Sure, be pissed at me, but at the end of the day, you’re going to be happy about it,” she says, making entirely too much sense.

“Whatever. Stop meddling. I mean it. We haven’t spoken in almost ten years. One phone call is nothing. He’s probably forgotten all about little Alexa Sullivan,” I say, secretly hoping I’m wrong and immediately feel guilty for thinking about someone who’s not Ty.

“Oh no he hasn’t. When we went to visit before Ava was born, we met up with him. All he did was ask about you. He wanted to know all about you—what you were doing, where you were working. He even asked about Ty, and he seemed genuinely interested in knowing if you were happy.”

“You never told me that. You didn’t even tell me that you saw him,” I reply, wondering why I’m just now hearing about this.

“I didn’t think you’d be interested. And I’m sure Ty would’ve just loved knowing your high school love was asking about you six years later,” she responds.

She’s right. One drunken night while telling embarrassing childhood stories, Jeremy decided to spill the beans about Jace to Tyler. It wasn’t any big deal at first. After all, I hadn’t seen him since well before Ty and I started dating. But Jeremy would not shut up. He kept going on about his military career and his baseball stats. Jeremy and Jace were pretty tight growing up, but that night he was taking it to a whole new level. He was totally bromancing on Jace, and it made me uncomfortable to say the least. And of course, a little high school reminiscing wouldn’t have been complete without Jeremy ribbing on me about my crush. He even commented on the similarities between Jace and Ty. So I like tall, dark haired, blue eyed men. Sue me.

Needless to say, I was mortified and Jeremy was oblivious. I know he didn’t mean anything by it, and he was just teasing, but when Tyler asked me about it later, it was hard to explain. I gave him the quick rundown. Older boy, younger girl. I’d had a crush and he’d treated me like nothing more than a friend. I explained that it was a long time ago and I hadn’t seen him since he graduated. End of story. As far as he knew, at least. Kristin’s the only person who knew that something happened that night, and I didn’t even tell her the full story. She just knew that Jace left and I was heartbroken. I never regretted that night, but my heart was in two when he left for the airport the next morning. I think Tyler suspected that there was more to the story, but he didn’t push the issue. Jeremy never brought up Jace again, so I figured that Sierra had scolded him.

“He was not my high school love. We never even dated! It was just a stupid crush,” I answer, breaking out of my thoughts.

“Whatever you say, sis. All I know is that you two were as close as two friends can be, and then he left town and you never talked to him again. I’ve always wondered why that was,” she remarks, and I know she’s going to start fishing for answers.

“You’ve never asked.”

“Would you have told me?”

“Umm…no, but bring over a bottle of wine for this week’s episode of The Vampire Diaries and maybe, just maybe, Elijah and you can convince me to spill,” I offer, knowing that there’s no way in hell I’m telling her about it on Thursday. Yes, Sierra and I get together every week to catch the latest on Damon, Stefan, and Elena. Ty and Jeremy used to go to a different room and watch whatever ballgame was on. Since his passing, Jeremy stays home with Ava while we watch our show.

“Yeah, right. You’ve waited ten years, so I have a feeling getting anything out of you will be damn near impossible. Guess I better bring two bottles to get those lips loose,” she laughs.

We chat for a few more minutes before hanging up, and I’m thankful that she didn’t use this opportunity to push me like she was doing yesterday. I think on what Sierra said, knowing that she’s right. When I heard Jace’s voice on the other line, I felt a twinge of excitement and a quickening of my heartbeat. How could one phone interaction make me feel this way after ten years of silence?

Getting up from the couch, I glance at the photos the line the hall and feel a pang of guilt. Seven years’ worth of memories hangs on the walls, and I’m suddenly overwhelmed with the thought that we’ll never be able to add to them.

The next
couple of days fly by in a blur. It’s always crazy and stressful trying to prepare for a deployment. This is my fourth in the nine years I’ve served in the Army, so you’d think I’d be used to this. Now that I’m a sergeant, though, I have to make sure that the soldiers who report to me are fully prepared to leave the States for the next nine months. I spend a lot of time scrambling, meeting with families, and ensuring that all paperwork is completed. It’s a nerve-racking situation, ensuring that living wills and powers of attorney are signed. It’s times like these that I’m glad I’m unattached. Witnessing these guys saying goodbye to their young wives and kids is depressing enough to watch without actually having to deal with it myself.

The truth is that we do one of the most dangerous jobs in the military. Defusing bombs is no joke, and there’s no shortage of them in Afghanistan. It’s quite possible that one or two of these guys won’t come home. For some, this is their first deployment, so the older, more experienced soldiers try to prepare them as much as possible, but its war. You can’t really prepare yourself for the scorching heat, the foul smell, and the unforeseen dangers that can be lurking along every road, inside every building, and within every person you meet.

The Taliban is notorious for their use of improvised explosive devices—IEDs—because they’re relatively easy to create and almost impossible to detect. More than half of the deaths of military members in Afghanistan have come from IED attacks, so any time my team can find and defuse one, I get a sense of fulfillment I’ve never felt with anything else. It’s a combination of ultimate terror and an adrenaline rush every time I put on the inflammable advanced bomb suit that protects us from heat, debris, and blast pressure. Getting up close and personal with a bomb that could explode in your face at any moment is probably the scariest thing I’ve ever done. But someone’s gotta do it, and I don’t want to brag, but I have a pretty damn good track record.

I take a look around the bus that’s hauling us across post to board the plane that’ll be delivering us to Kandahar Air Base late tonight. I’ve deployed with most of these guys before, which is always nice. Working with the same team makes things much easier when it comes to cohesiveness and morale. There are three new additions to the team—Walton, Mundy, and Sanchez. I think I’ll use the long plane ride to try and get to know them better. First deployments are tough, especially when you’re the new guy. In the EOD field, trust is a major factor in completing each mission successfully, so I try and have a personal relationship with each and every one of my guys. Not to sound cliché, but it really can be a matter of life and death.

I pull out my phone to check all my social networking sites one last time while stateside.

Alexa Tate, February 12
th
, 2012:

I could really go for one of my The Princess Bride quote-a-thons right about now.

I can’t even hide the immediate smile that appears, and I have to look up to make sure no one catches me with this cheesy grin only she can bring to my face. The amount of times I’d been forced to watch that movie is at least in the double digits, all thanks to Alexa. One summer it got to the point where she could mute the television and act out every single scene from the movie. I always protested whenever she popped that DVD in, but she’d promise to watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail afterwards, and I always gave in.

I’ll never forget the time she held a plastic knife to her chest and looked at me expectantly. I just stared at her and shook my head. No way was I going to say that line to her. My basketball shorts were already feeling a little tight in the crotch area so there was no way I was going to look and talk about her breasts, no matter how perfect they really were. And they were. Unlike Sierra, Alexa had developed early and fully. The high school pervert in me remembers wanting to place my hands on her chest and let her know how much she was turning me on. Instead, I was a pussy and kept my hands to myself.

“Say it, Jace!” Alexa begged, waiting for me to give in to her, because let’s face it, I always did.

“No way. You’re the weirdo who always wants to act it out. Can’t we just watch?”

She walked over to the couch, plastic tool in hand, and stood right in front of me. She quirked one eyebrow up as if ready to challenge me.

“If you don’t say it, then I’m afraid there’s going to be a boob amputation and it’s not going to be pretty.”

“A boob amputation? Now that would just be a crime against humanity. We can’t have that,” I responded.

Before she could react, I sat up and grabbed her wrist. I plucked the knife out of her hand and held it behind my back. She looked at me with exasperation and intrigue, as if contemplating what she should do next.

“There. Now there will be no cutting of any kind,” I said, waiting for her to make her next move.

Suddenly, she launched herself at me and I fell back against the couch. She straddled my lap as she tried to get my hand from behind my back. I wasn’t budging, and she was getting more annoyed by the second. I could barely contain my laughter, but then she pulled out the secret weapon—tickling. The girl started tickling me! She knew that was my kryptonite, and it wasn’t long before she was able to twist the knife out of my hand. Once she was successful, she moved to get off of me. Not wanting to let her go, I picked her up, flipped her down on the couch, and proceeded to give her a taste of her own medicine.

“Mercy! Please, stop! I’m going to pee my pants if you don’t stop,” she pleaded.

“You want me to stop?”

“Yes!”

As requested, I stopped and gazed down into her eyes. Her breathing was labored as she looked up at me. I wasn’t sure if she was breathless from the tickling or from how close we were. It was the perfect setting. Right then, I knew that things were about to change in our relationship. Out of nowhere, my lips began to gravitate towards hers, and before I realized what was happening, Sierra walked into the room with Jeremy, effectively killing the moment.

“McAllister! Off the bus!”

I’m pulled out of my memories and realize that I’m the only one left on the bus. Taking one last look at my phone, I smile again. I wonder if she’s been thinking about me the way I’ve been thinking of her since that phone call the other day. Call it wishful thinking, but maybe that status is a subtle way of remembering me, remembering us. All I do know is that it’s going to be a long, hot, lonely five months until I get to see her for the first time in ten years.