It annoyed the hell out of Zach to answer that question. “Is there some reason you keep thinking I’m going to bail on this situation?”
“No, but I think if she’s not convinced the three of us can work. We have to prove it to her. The only way we do that is coordinated effort.” Logan nodded slowly as they traded out the empty sand bags for rakes. “In fact, I think we need a plan of attack.”
“Surgical or blitz?” Zach grinned.
“Blitz. She’s so focused on her recovery, we’re going to need shock and awe to overwhelm her. She needs us. I don’t know why she thinks she has to choose, but we drive her to the only choice that matters and that’s both of us. Son of a bitch! What do you say we take our lady on a date?”
Zach laughed. He really hoped Jazz wasn’t too married to the idea of choosing. “What did you have in mind?”
***
“Maybe you need a pros and cons list.” Stormer’s phone call was the lifeline Jasmine hadn’t realized she needed. “You know, what’s great about them, what’s not great. What do they bring to the bedroom individually?”
“The sex is awesome and not open for discussion.” But she laughed at the Marine’s blasé tone. “And they’re both so different, but they support me. They drive me. They take care of me. They care about what I think…they’ve never treated me as less than a Marine.”
“Fuck, honey, if you don’t want both, give me one. I could use a guy right about now. I’m stuck here filing paper and training the new girl. She cannot get over the idea that we’re not supposed to sell pop rocks and American burgers to these people.”
“When’s Roxy due back?” She missed them. She’d met both Marines before the FET assignment, but six months of working in close quarters together developed into the first real female friendships she’d enjoyed in the Corps. Roxy clucked like a mother hen, and Stormer approached everything with the same droll, dry humor. But they’d clicked.
“One more week. Her little girl had appendicitis, so she got some hardship time to stick around through the recovery.”
A lifer, Roxy was one of the lucky ones. Her husband didn’t mind playing stay-at-home dad to their three kids while running some mini-internet empire. She could have opted out at any time after her third child was born, but the woman was a Marine through and through. She loved her kids, but she also loved the Corps.
“Yeah, well you may be stuck with new girl for a while, so break her in gently.” Jazz transferred the phone to her left ear and worked, squeezing the ball with her right hand. It satisfied the urge to do something while helping the strength in her fingers to return.
“Honey, if I had two guys willing to lick me from my toenails to my boobs and everywhere in between, I’d make me break in the new girl, too.”
God, she loved Stormer. The woman approached every issue in pure black and white. “You’re still not getting details about the sex. But yeah—” She attributed the heat on her cheeks to the sun overhead. Her physical therapy had ended twenty minutes before, and she kicked back in her wheelchair outside the center. She’d sent a text to Logan that she was done, and he promised he was on his way. It seemed weird that he wasn’t right there when she finished as he had been every other time. “They’re probably the only really awesome part of this crap.”
“Bed rest in air conditioning with real coffee and hot guys—gotta say I’m not really feeling your pain.”
Jazz laughed. She pictured Stormer’s eyes crossing as she delivered that line. “Mocking the wounded is not an honorable pastime.”
“True. But neither is telling me you have problems choosing which guy to fuck.”
Point taken.
“Miss you.”
“Yeah, me, too. Oh, look. New girl is back and she forgot her helmet…again.” The long suffering sigh carried a wicked sense of humor. “And there she goes back to her locker. Point goes to her, she got the message without having to be told.”
“Don’t get dead, Mary.” She was reluctant to hang up, but those few minutes brightened the pall on her self-pity.
“Right back atcha.”
The phone clicked as she hung up, and Jazz stared at it. It sucked for her friends to be there, when she couldn’t cover their backs. Knowing they hadn’t been injured in the attack saved her sanity. Learning that most of the girls they’d talked to that day, including little Anoonseh, signed up for the next batch of classes almost made it worth it. They’d been furious on her behalf—furious and grateful. Anoonseh’s mother even sent a private message of thanks, which Stormer relayed to her along with the news that she was going to take classes with her daughter.