The Soldier Next Door (2 page)

Evening arrived with Mason at her door holding two six packs of vodka coolers.

“Hey, come on in.” She opened the door, smiling. There was no reason to feel nervous. After all, this was just a casual dinner between new neighbors. Though he did look really hot dressed in faded jeans and a sleeveless designer t-shirt. Cropped dark hair covered his head where until now she’d only seen him in a cap.

“I brought something to drink.” He, on the other hand, seemed extremely anxious. His fresh inviting scent greeted her as he walked in.

“You smell good,” she said in natural response. And he did. “I recognize that scent, is it that chocolate stuff?”

He nodded with a light laugh. She accepted the coolers, then placed them in the fridge. He followed her into the kitchen, taking a seat at the table in a chair against the wall. She noticed him chugging the liquor rather quickly.

“We should eat before drinking. Dinner is ready. I hope you’re hungry.” She set two plates on the table, along with bread and a casserole dish full of ravioli. “How’s your head?”

“A bit sore, but not bad.”

They made scant small talk over dinner. He told her about the improvements he made to the house after he bought it, talked about his truck, but said very little about his time in the service.

“What do you do?” he asked, pushing his empty plate aside, then wiping his mouth with a napkin.

“Graphic design. I work part time at Designs Incorporated and do a lot of freelance work from home.”

“Cool, so you make pictures and shit like that?”

Sydnie let out a little laugh. “Yeah, shit like that. Actually I design websites, book covers, and pretty much anything web related. I can show you my portfolio later if you’re interested.”

“Sure.” He appeared more relaxed after his third cooler.

She cleared the table and returned to her chair. He didn’t seem in a hurry to leave. They sat in awkward silence for a few minutes with him staring at her.

“Sooo…” she began with a nervous breath. “What do you do now that you’re retired?”

“Spend time with my kids when I can, ride my quad, play video games.”

“Oh, I never noticed kids over there. How many do you have?”

“Three, to three different women.”

“Oh.”

“Two live down south with their mom and the other lives not far from here. I see them as much as I can. Do you have any?”

“Two, but they are grown and on their own.” She hesitated but decided to ask anyway. “Are you and Nicole still together even though she moved out?”

“No. She found another guy. I’m not with anyone right now and maybe that’s for the best.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I have too many problems. I don’t think anyone can handle living with me.” A touch of sadness moved through those pretty brown eyes.

She was almost jealous of his naturally long black lashes.
Men always get the nicest eyes. I guess Mother Nature knew women would love makeup.
“Maybe they just don’t understand.”

He stared straight into her eyes. “I’m really fucked up. I see people when I’m alone, like they are sitting next to me, and they talk to me.”

“Delusions?”

“The doctors told me I have Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome and a bunch of other shit. One whole part of my brain is damaged. I take so many fucking pills a day that some days I just want to stop. These doctors, they give me all this shit that fucks with my head. They said I’m in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease and that it’s only gonna get worse.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No—I don’t want your pity. I just want someone to talk to. I can’t tell my friends and family the shit that goes on in my head. If I do, they reach for the damn phone and want to call someone or put me back in the psych ward. I ain’t going back to that fucking place. They had me in a padded room because I refused to take their drugs.” He framed an invisible outline with his hands to describe the bed. “The only thing in there is a little bed with a padded pillow attached. They didn’t let me out until I calmed down and took the meds.”

She became acutely aware that his demeanor changed drastically with every drink. His language became rougher. His character seemed more agitated. Having never been in this situation, Sydnie decided it best to sit and listen.

“I’m not going to call anyone. You can talk to me.”

When he looked at her, his gaze penetrated her soul in a disconcerting way. He was beyond intense. She wished that he’d stop drinking, but he continued knocking back coolers.

“Would you like some coffee?”

“No, I’m fine. This is the only thing that makes them go away.” He looked past her.

“Who?”

“The voices, the memories. I wasn’t supposed to come home. All my friends died over there. They show up on my couch. We talk. They went on to a better place and I’m stuck here in this hell.” He became silent for several minutes, simply staring at the table. Then his eyes met hers again and he stated bluntly, “I have a noose in the basement.”

She couldn’t hide her shock. “You do?”

“It’s my backup. I’m going to decide when it’s time to end this. I’m not going to let this disease take me out.”

“What about your family? Surely you wouldn’t want them to find you that way.” She kept her voice very calm.

“They don’t care…well, maybe my mom. I try to talk to her, but she gets scared, starts to cry, and asks me if she should call someone. I didn’t even tell Nicole the hard stuff and she still cried. I sleep with the light and TV on ‘cause I get these night terrors. One night she turned the lights off and I woke up swinging, ready to fight. I get disoriented in the dark…” His voice trailed off, then he added, “Black shadows come at me, grabbing me, trying to pull me down.”

He became silent again—just staring with that blank look on his face.

She needed a breather. “I’m going to use the bathroom real quick. I’ll be right back.” She heard him open another bottle while she was in the bathroom. In all reality, she did want to call someone yet the way he looked at her drew her into his world. As frightening as this night had become, she felt compelled to see him through it. She splashed cool water on her face, then returned to the kitchen.

“Hey, baby,” he purred with a smile. “You’re a pretty little thing.” His mood had swung around again.

She slid onto the chair. “Um…thank you.”

“How about you and me go over to my place. I’ll just lie on the bed and you can rub yourself all over me.” He gave her a spirited wink.

In an attempt to divert his attention, she commented on his tattoo. “What is your tattoo of?”

“My alter self.” He stood up and turned around. “I have tattoos on my ass, too.” He whipped his jeans down far enough to show her his butt. “I got these so that if I ever got blown up everyone would know it was me.”

Sure enough two images—an eagle and an eagle’s talon had been tattooed onto his nice little behind.

Her cheeks flushed with heat. “Um…maybe we should stay here. I’m not into one night stands.”

Suddenly his eyes widened, brimming with sincerity. “Oh no, neither am I. Just sitting here staring into your big blue eyes…” He drifted again, clearly intoxicated. “You said that you have kids?”

“Two daughters, yes.”

“They don’t live with you?”

“No. They have kids of their own. One just came out of an abusive relationship.”

As if another wind of change had blown into the room, Mason’s personality dipped again. “Tell me where the little cocksucker lives. I’ll take care of him. I hate fucking pricks like him.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary. We have a PFA against him.”

“What’s his name?”

“Mick, but don’t worry, my daughter is doing great now.”

Mason didn’t back down. “Come on, we’ll drive to his place right now.”

“You shouldn’t drive when you’re drinking,” she said as gently as possible.

“You drive then. You can drive my truck. Can you drive a truck?”

“Yes but—”

“I love women who drive badass trucks. Bet you’d look really cute in there.”

“Maybe we better stay in tonight.”

He didn’t acknowledge her comment, but went off on an extremely dramatic tirade, using his hands as part of the talking. “Here’s what I’ll do to Mick,” he growled, then set his bottle down. “I’ll knock on his door.
Hey, are you Mick?
I’ll drag him outside and kick the shit out of him.” Mason went through the motions of pinning an invisible man to the ground, using her table as the prop, then proceeded to smack
Mick
around. He belted out a host of profanities unlike she’d ever heard toward an invisible man while he went on to choke someone who was not there.

Yet she could tell that in his mind, the situation was very real. Nobody could more convincingly describe and act out in detail what this man did. She watched, in stunned horror as Mason smacked Mick around and choked the life from him while spewing obscene language drenched in rage. Suddenly he calmed, seemingly confident his enemy was dead, and he glanced at her in regret. The look on his face was clear—he had taken his rage too far and
Mick
was dead.

Silence filled the room. Sydnie thought fast. “Oops,” she said in a quiet voice.

He shot her a panicked look. “We better get out of here.”

“Yeah, let’s go.”

And with that, he released the demon in his head and grew calm. In her next breath, he startled her by shouting at a plastic bag in the adjacent chair.

“Who is that? I’ll kill the motherfucker!”

She squashed the bag out of sight. “He’s gone.”

Mason glared at the chair for several minutes, then relaxed again. She realized that this would be a very long night.

Chapter Two

Sydnie rolled over and clutched her pillow to block out the light. She was off for the holiday weekend and looked forward to staying in and catching up on her freelance work. Mason had stayed until seven in the morning. He polished off both six packs, retched over the side of her deck, and took her on a virtual journey she’d never forget.

After mentally killing Mick and threatening the plastic bag, he didn’t seem to have more hallucinations, for which she was relieved. He did, however, tell her stories and show her videos from his cell phone that brought tears to her eyes more than once. At times, he broke down and cried while staring into her with those puppy-dog eyes. She could not bring herself to make him go home though he’d scared her more than once.

She thought about the gruesome details of war, recalled the intense sorrow in Mason’s voice when he told her about his sergeant and how his unit found him.

We were walking down a dirt road after a bomb went off. I felt something under my feet, something mushy. I looked at my buddy and said, what the fuck is this? We kept walking, wondering what the hell we were walking through. Then we saw body parts and realized we were walking on pieces of flesh. It felt like stepping on fat.
Tears had filled his eyes as he’d opened up about the hell he’d endured.
We were walking on parts of his body!

He emulated the sounds of war, which only men seemed able to do. She had yet to meet a man who couldn’t imitate the sound of machinery. Mason told her how it sounded at night, that it was never quiet because of the drones flying overhead and distant explosions. He talked about the constant gunfire, described the weapons used, and essentially took her on a verbal tour of war-torn Iraq.

She saw the pictures of his Humvee, shredded by the IED bomb that left him disabled. Though he hadn’t lost any limbs in the explosion, the radiation from the blast caused severe brain damage and nearly crippled his central nervous system. He couldn’t recall the actual moment when his unit hit the bomb, but he remembered the hospital. She had to fight back the tears when he’d told her about his journey from hell to home and back to hell again.

At times, she’d wanted to reach out and just hug the stuffing out of him, comfort him and make him feel loved. But they were strangers.

She understood how it might be difficult for a woman to live with that level of insanity. The trauma that haunted this man’s mind was staggering. Even so, her night with the soldier next door strangely enough, left her wanting more.

I must be crazy.
She rolled over and stared at the ceiling.
I wonder if he’s any better today.
She decided she’d walk over later to check on him. Knowing the extent of his disability and that he now lived alone, the least she could do was be a good neighbor even if she refused to admit her attraction to him.
There is no way I can feel more than compassion for a man with so much baggage
.
Can I?

Yet something about the way he’d stared right into her refused to let her go—as if he was looking for a connection to humanity and found it in her eyes last night.

Sydnie rapped lightly on the front door, feeling somewhat nervous about taking initiative.
What if he doesn’t remember anything?
I’ll feel like an idiot.
She shifted her weight anxiously on the porch.

Mason appeared at the door. A curious expression swept his face. “Hey, what’s up?”

“I just wanted to see how you are doing today. Are you feeling better?” She held out a stack of envelopes. “And you forgot your mail.”

He shrugged and laughed. “My head’s killing me and my back hurts like hell. I’m just chillin’ on the heating pad. You wanna come in?”

“Maybe for just a little while. I really should be working.”

He closed the door behind her, then went to the corner on his couch where a heating pad was stretched out. “The disks in my back were fused together from the explosion. I won’t take painkillers, don’t want to be addicted to them.” He seemed like an entirely different person today. His voice was soft and calm.

She took a discreet look around. “Wow, your home is immaculate.”

“I like things clean, something I learned in the service.”

“It smells good, too.”

“I have a thing for air fresheners.” He grinned. “In Iraq we’d go weeks without a shower, eat rotten food, lived with dysentery…some days I’d lay out in the sun naked just to get the stink off.”