American Bad Boy(69)

He cares.

“You don’t need to do that,” I run my hand over my beard and try to ignore the voice inside telling me that this can all blow over, if I just let it. It looks like my old buddy Cooper Sanders is offering me a get out of jail free card. Wouldn’t I be a fool to turn it down?

“The hell I don’t!” He raises his voice and then looks around the studio self consciously. The two of us pop our heads up like a couple of groundhogs looking for shadows in February, but if any of his staff noticed him raise his voice they don’t care enough to look our way.

“Come here,” he leans into me, “look at this,” he continues, rolling up the sleeve of his dress shirt until the lower half of his arm is exposed to me. “You see this?” His blue eyes settle on me.

“I can.” I don’t quite have a full sleeve of tattoos, but Cooper does.

His twisted scars mark a time I wish I could leave in the desert. A time that haunts my days, let alone my dreams. Down the entire length of his arm is a roadmap of the cowardly attack we both survived in Afghanistan.

“The plastic surgeons, they wanted to fix it. Make it disappear.” He talks to me like he’s revealing his deepest secret. “I told them to leave it alone. You know why?” His blue eyes always been hard to look away from. Never harder than now.

“Why?” The word somehow bubbles up from my lips.

“Because, when I went over there, to do the piece on you and the platoon, I thought I was king shit.” He smiles sadly at the memory. “I thought I was at the top of my game. A hero, at least in journalism. That’s why I pushed to keep up with you guys over there. I convinced myself I was just as badass as you guys, just without the uniform, you know?” He frowns and closes his eyes.

“Ok.” I don’t know what else to say? Do I tell him I’m sorry that Afghanistan ruined that for him? That me getting my leg blown off somehow sucked for him? Less words are often better, I’m learning.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Until a grenade was thrown at my feet. Then I froze, didn’t I?” He opens his eyes and looks straight at me like he wants me to confirm what he already knows. I nod but keep my mouth shut. “But, you didn’t.” He says with reverence. “You didn’t even fucking hesitate. At all.” He looks over his shoulders again, but no one cares about us any more than they did five minutes ago. “You saved my life,” his blues suddenly look a little bluer when a mist forms around the bottom of his eyelids. “So, if I can return the favor, you better bet I will.”

He sits up straight and pushes his shoulders back into the chair, looking at me like we’re a couple of kids in a staring contest.

“Thank you,” I finally answer, letting the gravity of what he’s offering me to sink in. A second chance. Or is this three now? Either way, he’s letting me off the hook, that much is clear.

“We’re gonna roll in five minutes!” A disembodied voice yells to the side of us. Neither of us breaks our stare. I must not have been the only one who grew up with an older brother. This unblinking Olympics only hosts the most experienced and fierce of competitors.

“Got it,” Cooper still doesn’t break his stare, even as he runs the show. Gotta respect that shit.

Finally, I look away. Well, over his shoulder. I look into my past standing only a few feet away. Tiffany. Her full tits and her empty head remind me of everything I hated about being the man America thought they knew. She reminds me of everything that I miss about Lauren.

“In five, four, three, two…” The man behind the camera doesn’t count the last number for fear of being heard on television. It is live, after all.

As Cooper introduces the show, I try to push thoughts of Lauren out of my mind and focus. If I’m going to do damage control, I need to stop pouting about her and think about winning over hearts and minds.

Hearts and minds. Because those missions have always worked out well for me.

“Welcome to the show,” Cooper cuts into my thoughts and I sit up straighter in my chair. “The last time I saw you was when you were still a patient at the Walter Reed medical facility. You were learning to walk again with your new prosthetic leg. The only time I had ever met you before that was when you lost that leg, by saving my life.”

“Thank you for having me on,” I nod sharply. I don’t want to let my mind get dragged back to that day right now. Not when I struggle so hard everyday to let it go.

“It looks like you’ve come a long way from the man I watched fight for each baby step back at Walter Reed. Would you say that you’ve fully adjusted to living your life with an amputation now?” He throws me an easy one, like a softball being gently tossed into the glove of a toddler.