other men. To be more accurate, Thane exchanged silent lifts of the chin, the same acknowledgment he’d been exchanging with guys since the hallowed halls of high school. That had been eight years ago, but still, that was the level of closeness the average guy reached with the average guy. A lift of the chin. A comment on a sports team, perhaps, during the NFL playoffs or Game Five of the World Series. Maybe, if he saw someone at the mailboxes whom he hadn’t seen in a while, they might acknowledge each other with a lift of the chin and actually speak. “You back from deployment?”
The answer was usually a shrug and a yeah, to which the answer was a nod and a yeah, thought so, hadn’t seen you around in a while, followed by each guy retreating to his apartment, shutting a door to seal himself off from the hundreds of others in the complex, hundreds of people roughly Thane’s age and profession, all living in the same place.
He had no one to talk to.
Thane started up the concrete stairs to his apartment, each boot landing as heavily as if it were made of concrete, too.
He lived on the third floor, a decision he regretted on evenings like this one. Thane hit the second-story landing. One more flight, and he could fall in bed. As he rounded the iron banister, an apartment door opened. A woman his age appeared in the door, her smile directed down the stairs he’d just come up. Another man in uniform was coming up them now, a man who wouldn’t be sleeping alone.
“Hi, baby,” the man said.
“You’re home early,” the woman said, sounding like that was a wonderful gift for her. “How was your day?”
“You won’t believe this, but the commander decided—” The door closed.
Thane slogged his way up to his floor.
Bed. All he wanted was his own bed, yet now he couldn’t help but think it would be nice not to hit the sheets alone. He had an instant mental image of a woman in bed with him. He couldn’t see her face, not with her head nestled into his shoulder, but he could imagine warm skin and a happy, interested voice, asking How was your day? They’d talk, two heads on one pillow.
Pitiful. What kind of fantasy was that for a twenty-six-year-old man to have? He was heading to bed without a woman, but it wasn’t sex he was lonely for. Not much, anyway. He wanted someone to talk to, someone waiting to talk to him, someone who cared what he thought after days full of people who broke laws, people who were hurt, people who were angry.
Better yet, he wanted someone to share a laugh with.
He scrubbed a hand over the razor stubble that he’d be shaving in less than twelve hours to go back to work. Yeah, he needed a laugh. There was nothing to laugh at around here.
His phone buzzed in his pocket—two shorts and a long, which meant he had a message waiting in his favorite app. The message had to be from his digital pen pal. The app had paired him up months ago with someone going by Ballerina Baby. He didn’t know anything about her, not even her real name, and yet, she was someone with whom he did more than nod, someone to whom he said something meaningful once in a while. He could put his thoughts into words, written words in blue on a white screen. He got words back from her, hot pink and unpredictable, making him feel more connected to the woman behind them than he felt to anyone else around here.
Thane took the last few stairs two at a time. He wanted to get home. He had twelve hours ahead to sleep—but not alone. There was someone waiting to talk to him, after all.
He unlocked the door and walked into his apartment, tossing his patrol cap onto the coffee table with one hand as he jerked down the zipper of his uniform jacket with the other. He tossed that over a chair, impatient to pull out his phone from his pocket the moment his hand was free. A real friend, real feelings, conversation, communion—
Today, I was desperate for tater tots.
He stared at the sentence for a long moment. What the hell...?
And then, all of a sudden, life wasn’t so heavy. He didn’t have to take himself so seriously. Thane read the hot-pink silliness, and he started to laugh.
The rest of his clothes came off easily. Off with the tan T-shirt that clung after a day of Texas heat. Thane had to sit to unlace the combat boots, but he typed a quick line to let Ballerina know he was online. You crack me up.
And thank God for that.
He brushed his teeth. He pulled back the sheets and fell into bed, phone in one hand. He bunched his pillow up under his neck, and he realized he was smiling at his phone fondly as he typed, I’d miss you. It was crazy, but it was true.
The little cursor on his phone screen blinked. He waited, eyes drifting idly over the blue and pink words they’d already exchanged. You killed them? he’d written, followed by words like murder. Jail.
He was going to scare her away. She’d think he was a freak the way his mind went immediately to crime and punishment. Did normal guys—civilian guys—zing their conversations right to felony death?
She must think he was a civilian. His screen name was Different Drummer, after all, nothing that implied he was either military or in law enforcement. They weren’t supposed to reveal what Ballerina called their “real, boring surface facts,” things like name, address, job. During one of those marathon chat sessions where they’d spilled their guts out, they’d agreed that anonymity was part of the reason they could write to each other so freely.
He hoped the way he used so many law enforcement references didn’t give away his real profession. It wasn’t like he was dropping clues subconsciously. Really.
He read her words. She made him smile with ketchup, mustard and salt. He wondered if she’d kept a straight face when she wrote that, or had she giggled at her own silliness? Did she have a shy smile or a wide-open laugh?
Then she told him she had to go. He had to act like that was perfectly okay. They’d talk some other time. But before closing the app he remembered the couple downstairs—Hi, baby, how was your day?
Ballerina Baby was the woman who’d greeted him after a long day of work.
Looking forward to it, Baby.
A subconscious slip? He’d never called Ballerina Baby just Baby before.
She didn’t reply. All his exhaustion returned with a vengeance. If Ballerina couldn’t talk, what good would it do to go out to exchange nods and grunts with everyone else?
He tossed his phone onto his nightstand and rolled onto his side, ready for the sleep that would overtake him in moments. But just before it did, he thought what he could never type: You mean more to me than you should, Baby.
“Friday night. Almost quitting time, Boss.”
At his platoon sergeant’s booming voice, Thane tossed his cell phone onto his desk, facedown. He should have known that if he decided to check his personal messages for the first time in twelve hours, someone would walk in.
Thane could have stayed on his phone, of course. This was his office, and he didn’t have to stop what he was doing and stand when a noncommissioned officer, an NCO,
