Unraveled(64)

"Yeah, you can get a lower recoil with a larger gun than a small gun. The accuracy of a small gun sucks. It's why in the movies when someone shoots ten rounds and misses with a small gun, it's kinda believable,” I told her.

"Plus, it’s hard to hit the ninja hero with his invisible hero force field around him."

I laughed. "That too."

We pulled our headgear back on and Sam tried out a few more of the handguns. Mentally I made a note that she gravitated toward the sub compact Beretta. If I was going to buy her a gun, that’d be a good one. After we’d torn through about sixty rounds and ten guns, Sam looked to be done in. Her hand was shaking from the unfamiliar exercise of holding five pound weights extended from her arm.

“I can’t believe they feel so heavy. It’s only a few pounds,” she complained.

“When you’re in boot, you have to hold a piece of paper in front of your face, both arms extended. After an hour, that’s the heaviest fucking thing you’ve ever held.” Sam giggled and we spent a few minutes of companionable silence picking up the brass casings around the target we’d set up fifteen feet away. Anything farther and Sam wouldn’t have been able to hit even the outer edge of the paper. "Not that I'm complaining, but why'd you bring me out here?"

She didn't look up immediately but fingered one of the bullet holes that she’d made in the black area of the target, a hit but not a kill. "Do you know the seven stages of grief?"

Not the topic of conversation I would've picked, but if she needed to work through some issues, it didn't hurt to listen. "No, but are they real and not just made up?"

"Not everyone experiences them in steps. Sometimes they run together and sometimes they overlap but yeah, you do feel the seven stages at some point. Or at least I did."

"Where are you now?"

"I think I'm a mix of four and seven. Loneliness and wanting to move forward. What about you?"

"Me?" Surprised, I fumbled with some of the casings I had picked up, the brass making clinking sounds as I recaptured them and walked swiftly back to our prep area. Packing things up, I told her, "I'm not suffering any grief."

"Sure you are. Over the loss of your trust, your first love. Your belief in a happy ever after."

I stopped my busy tasks all together and leaned my hip against the table. Folding my arms, I gave her a repressive look, signaling the end of the conversation but Sam was undeterred.

"Didn't you at first refuse to believe that your girlfriend—what’s her name?"

"Carrie." I said curtly.

"Didn’t you try to convince yourself that Carrie wasn't doing anything wrong? That she was showing up around base to be part of the wives’ support group? And at first, when you sat outside your lieutenant's apartment, you believed that it might be a waste of your time?"

"Yeah so?"

"And then you got sick drunk?"

I nodded cautiously. Feeling a little like I was being led down a dangerous path, I chose to just let Sam do the talking.

"So you have shock and denial, followed by pain. You probably had some thoughts that maybe if you didn't go on that second tour you'd still be together. That she wouldn't have cheated?"

Her spot-on analysis of my post-breakup thought process was unnerving. Quickly, I returned to packing up the firearm paraphernalia and took it all over to her SUV. She hadn't stopped talking, though, following me to the Rover and then back to the tables, which I swiftly dismantled.

"Don't look so surprised. After hours of actual therapy, I feel that I could be an expert. Also, I feel a lot of guilt about not moving to Alaska, so maybe I'm still working through stages two through seven," she mused.

Deciding she wasn't going to stop until she'd gotten everything out of her system, I shoved the two tables into the cargo space, shut the door, and leaned against the bumper. Crossed arms and a scowl on my face didn't faze her.

"And now you've got a lot of anger. You don't want to have relationships. You just want to have people you have sex with."

"Wanting to be safe and sensible isn't a product of anger. It's a product of good decision making."

Sam stepped in between my legs and placed her soft hands on my chest and her sweet scent mixed with gunpowder drained away any anger I'd felt toward the subject matter. Maybe Sam was feeling guilty about having sex with someone other than her husband. I’d noticed she’d taken her ring off, but I hadn’t said anything. Sliding my hands up her arms, I wrapped my fingers around her shoulders and tugged her a little until she fell against me.

“I don’t know if you really want to stay in or get out, but I suspect you want to stay in,” she said. Everything about her was surprising me. “You’d make such a great officer, because you truly care about what happens to those you lead. You aren’t in it for the power or the status.”