Chapter 16

CHAPTER 16

I set my paintbrush down and take a step back to critique my portrait of Lorraine. It's a different concept, a portrait of her painting a portrait, a choice I made because I need to practice more than just a face. Turns out hands are hard too.

Something is off about the perspective, probably because the arm holding up the paintbrush is thin as a twig, but everything else seems right. It shows improvement, which is heartening, but there's no way I can fix that arm easily. I'm done for the day.

Aunt Mari is in the living room watching Downton Abbey , and I flop down on the couch, across from where she's ensconced in her overstuffed leather chair.

" ?Estás bien? " she asks.

"Yeah, just need a break."

"You've been painting since lunch, and you skipped dinner." She doesn't look at me as she says it, but her voice carries a hint of interest. "What are you working on?"

"I can't figure out what I'm going to paint for the gallery. Nothing is working."

"Maybe it's a sign."

Of course she would say that. I barely keep myself from rolling my eyes. Even though she's fixated on her show, she would know if I was disrespecting her.

My phone vibrates in my back pocket, and I pull it out to see Cole is calling me. Why is he calling me on a Friday night?

"Hey, Cole."

Aunt Mari immediately pauses the show and shoots me a look, which I patently ignore.

"Hi," he says in his perfect manly voice, paired with a huge sigh. "Um, are you busy right now?"

"No, just watching a show."

"Can I ask you a really big favor? And you can say no. Absolutely say no if you don't want to."

"Okay…" I get up and wander back to my room to let Aunt Mari resume Downton Abbey in peace.

"Denny and Luko are both either gone or on duty, all the guys here are out partying, and I really need someone to help me study. Would you be down for getting on FaceTime and going over some stuff with me?"

I grin. "Geez, Cole, buy a girl dinner first."

He laughs. "I'll take you out anytime, but tonight, I need to study. Look, you can say no and I'll totally understand. No hard feelings."

My mind runs through a quick checklist of whether this is a normal friend thing. He's asking for a study partner. I'm his last resort, he's made that clear. It's not like he's calling to flirt, he simply needs some help.

"Tia, you're allowed to say no because you'd rather relax and watch a show. That's totally okay."

I can help. Better to help a corpsman than watch a show, and it will definitely take my mind off my art. Win-win.

"No, Cole, it's fine, I promise. What do you need me to do?"

"For real?" I can tell through the phone that he's smiling as he says it.

"For real," I say, with a grin on my face.

"Division, regiment, battalion, company, platoon," I recite into my phone that's propped up against a coffee mug next to my laptop. My knee is tucked up next to my chest as I sit in an office chair at the little desk in my mini art studio.

"No, I know that, we're talking about something different now, we're talking about the combat elements." Cole's sitting at a desk in his barracks room in a navy-blue t-shirt. He runs his hands over his short hair and I get an eyeful of his defined biceps.

"Hmm, what? Oh, the flowchart thing?" I ask.

"Yeah, can you find it again?"

I scroll through the three hundred-plus page PDF Cole emailed me, then quickly type in "GCE" to find it. The search brings up a bunch of sketches of a guy demonstrating hand signals, definitely not what I was looking for. What are these?

"Have you learned Tactical Measures yet?" I ask. "They look like mimes in uniform."

Cole rolls his eyes at the camera. "Ground. Combat. Elements."

We've been studying for over two hours now, and someone is getting more and more grumpy. I'm just getting more and more punchy.

"What do you do to tell the team there's a hasty ambush?"

"Tia…"

I make a fist and punch it out to my side, a goofy smile on my face.

"You know what? Laugh away. That probably saved someone's life in Vietnam or Afghanistan." He says it lightly, but the weight of it sinks in and sobers me.

"Sorry. I'll find the ground combat elements, hang on."

"Did you even know that term before tonight?"

"Nope."

"Guess it's my job to teach you the most important things in life."

"Yeah, hope for true love and understand the structure of the Marine Corps."

Cole laughs out loud, deep and powerful, and it's an absolute delight.

"Is this all part of a greater plan to try to indoctrinate me and get me to join the Navy?" I ask, wondering what I can say to make him laugh again.

"Oh, definitely. We'll make a new rate for you—Art Specialist. Actually, wait, that's a real thing, it's called Combat Artist. You could paint incredible pictures of me lecturing Marines about hydrating and changing their socks."

I shake my head with a smile. "I'm sure we could come up with something much more heroic."

"I'm not a hero. Probably the most heroic thing I've done is vaccinate against smallpox," Cole says, dragging a hand down his face. "Oh, man. We should call it a night. I'm useless this late. It'll be better for me to get some sleep and then wake up and start again in the morning before our game."

"You sure?" I ask.

"I think so." He rests his head in his hand and smiles in the comfortable silence. It's the kind of silence that lets me study his face for too long, growing too curious.

"Hey, can I ask you something?"

He nods as he yawns.

"What makes you want to be good at this? Like, why do you care so much?" Maybe he's not as bold and courageous as I've made him out to be. Everyone's human, no one's that altruistic.

"Oh boy, that's another conversation for another time," Cole says, looking up at the wall above the camera, his eyes serious. "But family, mostly. Yeah, I'd say family and a desire to help people. I always knew I'd be in the medical field, but I didn't think it'd be as a corpsman. We'll talk about it one of these days," he promises. "Hey, would you be up for helping me study like this regularly? I know it's a big ask, but I'll buy you as many California burritos as you want. You're so helpful and I feel like we make a great team."

We do make a great team. My heart starts thumping so loud, I'm worried FaceTime is going to catch the sound of its rapid beating.

"Yeah, I'd be down," I say, striving for a casual tone.

"Thank you." He has the cutest grin in the world.

We stare at each other for a long moment, a smile growing on my face as a link solidifies between the two of us. Something special, just him and me.

"Good luck, Doc," I say in a soft voice.

"Thanks, Queenie."

I love hearing him say that.

After he hangs up, I immediately start googling more poems from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to try to forget about Cole's winsome face and the nagging idea that I need to paint him. Poetry will give me something else to inspire me.

I click on "The Arrow and The Song" and for the first time, my poet muse betrays me and only makes me think about Cole more.

I shot an arrow into the air,

it fell to earth, I know not where;

for, so swiftly it flew, the sight,

could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,

it fell to earth, I knew not where;

For who has sight so keen and strong,

that it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak

I found the arrow, still unbroke;

And the song, from beginning to end,

I found again in the heart of a friend.

"Where's your boyfriend these days?" asks Jules as she holds a pitcher of milk under the steamer.

"What boyfriend?" I say with a laugh.

"The blond guy from your soccer team."

"Oh, Cole? It's not like that. I told you, he's in the Navy, I'm not interested. We're just good friends."

Cole usually pops into Cafe 22 on Sunday afternoons, so Jules has seen her fair share of him. I've spent almost every weeknight with him on FaceTime, quizzing, reviewing, and learning right along with him. In fact, I think I've seen him every single day this week. We've mostly stayed on task, working our way through the Fleet Marine Force study guide, but we've also had some side conversations about food and music and soccer.

A tiny little crush is desperately trying to gather evidence for its case, but every time I start to paint Cole into my picture of the future, I remember my talk with Anisha and how awful Navy life sounds. Crush closed.

Jules looks at me with wide eyes for an uncomfortably long moment.

"What?" I ask, raising my eyebrows.

A customer comes in with a couple tea orders, and I stay busy scooping the loose leaves into little sachets and dropping them into to-go cups. Jules deposits some coffees at the bar and comes over to me. "What does he do? He looks like a Marine."

"He's in the Navy, but he works with the Marines. An infantry unit, if I remember correctly."

"He lives in the barracks, on base?"

"Yeah?"

"And he comes here for coffee?" Jules asks.

"Yeah, what's so weird about that?"

"Well, what's weird is we're an hour away from Camp Pendleton, the nearest Marine Corps ground base. Why would he drive an hour to get coffee? Unless…he really wants to see the cute girl who takes his order?"

In my head I knew he lived on Camp Pendleton. I knew it was not close by, but now it's coming into stark focus. Why is Cole always down here? My hands pause mid-scoop as my stomach flutters. "He could really like the coffee here," I say, going back to fill each cup with scalding hot water.

"No, he doesn't really like the coffee here. He really likes you. You know how I know? Because he never stops smiling the whole time he's here. He's always grinning and happy."

My mind pulls up the image of Cole laughing over FaceTime last night, head thrown back, all sunshine and white teeth.

"See, now you're smiling all cute and goofy thinking about it," Jules says in triumph. "That's why I asked if he was your boyfriend."

I pop lids on all the cups and shake my head. "We both just got out of bad relationships. We're happy to have someone to hang out with who's kind and caring. Even if he was interested and I was interested, I am not up for the whole Navy life thing. We're never going to be anything more than friends."

I'm going to choose not to read into the fact that maybe (and it's pure conjecture at this point), maybe he drives an hour to come to this coffee shop for reasons other than the coffee.

Definitely won't think about how he pulled his jersey off after the soccer game yesterday. I glanced over at him right as he reached behind his neck and yanked his jersey off in one smooth move. He just stood there, all hot and studly in the baking sun, solid torso muscles and tanned skin for the whole world to see. I stared so long Anisha finally elbowed me. It would have been a crime to let his shirtless moment go unappreciated. His shoulders…I bet he could throw a two-hundred-pound Marine over his shoulder and march through the desert without breaking a sweat. He has alpha-male strength in that body, the kind that could make a girl reconsider her priorities in life.

"So, you would say no if he asked?" Jules adds.

I blush and shake my head. "Definitely. I don't think it would be a good idea," I say, sliding the cups into a drink holder and delivering them to the bar.

Jules sighs. "Okay. But I reserve the right to do a gleeful dance when you finally tell me you're dating."

I roll my eyes, but I'm smiling. "Sure, all rights reserved, Jules."

It's just a barbecue. A team barbecue. Some drinks, some burgers, some cornhole on the tiny back patio. Friendly activities. No one is going to interrogate me over whether I have a crush on Cole. And he's not even going to be here, so it's perfect, just time with friends.

I grab the case of seltzers I picked up at the corner liquor store and try to seem breezy as I sail in through the front door.

"Hey, Tia's here!" shouts Denny with a quick side hug. He's wearing a handsome pair of clear-framed glasses.

"I didn't know you wear glasses," I say as I hand him the drinks and follow him into the kitchen.

"They're new," he says. "Navy life is aging me already, stressing my eyes out. I really only need them when I'm looking at stuff close up."

"You look good in them."

He grins. "Yeah? Okay, cool. Thanks, Tia."

Someone short sneaks up behind me and hugs me around the waist. "Hey, you," Anisha's voice says over my shoulder.

"Hey," I say, turning around to hug her back. "How are you?"

"Oh, you know, surviving, not thriving. Work is meh, Mick's stressed, things are breaking around the house."

"Oh no, what now?"

"The dryer stopped drying and the washing machine somehow got off-balance. I've been going to my neighbor's to do laundry until we can get the repair guy out."

"That's so lame. Murphy's Law."

She makes a snarling face of annoyance. "Yeah, Murphy sucks."

We ease towards a massive bowl of chips on the counter alongside a store-bought container of guacamole. Anisha loads up a chip and right before popping it in her mouth says, "Let's talk about something else. Tell me something fun."

Anisha is quickly becoming my closest friend, and I trust her insight, so I lean towards her and whisper, "Do you think Cole maybe kind of…likes me?"

A laugh snorts out of her nose as she covers her mouth to keep the chip and guacamole from spewing everywhere.

"Don't laugh at me," I whisper, even as I chuckle along.

Anisha is still trying to not choke on her chip, but she waves Luko over with a series of sounds and gestures. Something about pointing to me and an invisible person next to me and somehow, Luko gets it immediately. He comes over from the fridge, sliding cans of sparkling water to Anisha and I.

"Oh, does Cole like her? Where is he, by the way?"

Now it's my turn to cough on my first sip. How is this a thing, that Luko already knows what Anisha is gesturing about?

"He's studying for his murder board," I say, once recovered. "It's on the schedule now."

Luko goes wide-eyed. "Did you say murder board?"

"Yeah, like the practice exam for his pin. The whole point is they try to murder you with questions."

"I know what a murder board is, I've had to do them too," Luko says with a grin. "I'm surprised you know what it is." He holds eye contact with me for a knowingly-long moment.

"What? I've been helping him study," I say while loading up a chip, trying to remain resolved under Luko's gaze. It's none of his business what Cole and I do. "You were on duty the other night, and I helped him, and we kind of fell into a routine."

Luko chuckles to himself. "How do you even know what duty is?"

I hold up a finger for him to wait while I finish my mouthful. The things Luko doesn't even know I know. Enough of his passive judgment.

"I know the difference between an LSD, an LPD, and an LHD, I know the Marine Corps hymn, the place where the Marines was founded—Tun Tavern, baby—, battle formations, how to dig a foxhole, and the fact that Opha Mae Johnson was the first female enlisted Marine."

Luko's jaw is hanging open.

"I know things now," I say with pride. Anisha rewards me with a golf clap.

"Well, then," says Luko, crossing his arms over his chest. "You and Cole studying, huh? And you want to know if he has a crush on you?"

"I'm not here to talk about him behind his back," I say quickly. "It was just a bit of girl chat."

Luko sighs and rubs his cheek. "Cole falls hard and fast. If he has a crush on you, he's gone already, there's nothing you can do about it."

It's one thing for me to have a crush on him, it's another for it to be possibly reciprocated. It throws my sweetly-spinning world off its axis to think of what could result from Cole and I both having a gravitational pull on each other.

"What?" Luko asks, watching my face fall.

I blush and stammer, trying to find my words. "I…I think the world of him, we've become great friends, but I can't…"

"Do the Navy thing?" Anisha chimes in.

I nod. "No offense," I say to Luko. "You and Denny and Cole are awesome, I love you guys, but I would not sign up for life as a military girlfriend or whatever."

Luko shrugs. "I understand. It's a tough gig. Look, you don't have to go out of your way to protect him or anything, just keep being you. You're not responsible for his feelings. He's a big boy, you're a grown woman, things will figure themselves out."

"One way or another," Anisha adds under her breath.