Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 84607 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 423(@200wpm)___ 338(@250wpm)___ 282(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84607 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 423(@200wpm)___ 338(@250wpm)___ 282(@300wpm)
“The coffee is free.” I’d seen it earlier when I’d taken my food.
He smirked a little. “So it is.”
Wait, what advice had I forgotten?
“What advice?” I asked.
He chuckled and took a swig from his mug. “I told you to make friends before you joined the Army.”
Oh. And now because I’d chosen to sit alone…?
I shrugged and broke apart a piece of the bread roll. “At one point, I had more friends than I knew what to do with, and I still felt lonely as hell.” I dipped the bread in the soup and then ate it. My sweet spot in terms of friendships had been in Germany, when I’d met two guys who had similar bucket lists as me for European travel. Whenever we’d had the time, we’d gotten on a train with just our backpacks.
“That’s fair,” Beckett murmured.
He looked to be observing me, so I held up my schedule and pointed to the profiling class on the list.
“Are you doing that now?” I asked.
He grinned.
Here I was, thinking he couldn’t get any hotter than six years ago.
“Once you start profiling people, you can’t really stop,” he said.
Yeah, I bet.
I glanced over my shoulder, seeing the other recruits spread out among four tables. Nobody else was here, not even Coach.
“So, what do you think of the recruits so far, Mr. Profiler?” I wondered. “What’s the first thing you notice?”
He hadn’t seen my initial reaction to walking into Hillcroft again after so many years. Mostly, I’d been shitting-bricks nervous at the prospect of seeing Beckett again. Like, had he quit, was he still around, would I someday pass him in the halls…? And then Coach had informed us that “Operator Beckett” was on his way, and my heart had pounded for a solid minute.
“I reckon I try to predict who’s going to be difficult,” Beckett mused. “I know four of them left the service pretty much…yesterday. So, two of them already have beards, which tells me they’re very eager to forget about past grooming regs.”
I chuckled. Damn, I never would’ve thought in those terms. “Maybe they’re lazy.”
He shook his head. “Lazy people don’t exist here.”
I guessed that made sense.
“You’re not lazy either,” he told me. “You ignored my texts for some other reason. I can’t wait to find out what that might be.”
Yikes. He didn’t beat around the bush, did he?
Time to stall. I drained my first glass of water and took a gulp from my second glass too. Then I shifted in my seat and hoped he’d give me an out. I wasn’t exactly nervous or at a loss for what to say; I just wanted to avoid it altogether because I knew I’d come off as a head case who didn’t belong here.
He didn’t give me an out, though. He merely waited and kept watching me.
Fuck it, then.
But if I was going to tell him, I wanted to get it right.
I leaned forward and rested my forearms on the table. “Do you ever feel like you’re watching yourself—like an out-of-body experience—and you don’t know what the hell you’re doing?”
He cocked his head. “I’m not unfamiliar with the sensation.”
Okay, then. “Well, that’s how I would describe my whole experience in the Army,” I admitted. “Going through OSUT at Benning was obviously a struggle—it was a whole other life from what I was used to. There were nights I cried myself to sleep, nights I couldn’t fall asleep at all, mornings I didn’t wanna wake up, dizziness, throwing up, a Drill or two screaming in my face—you name it. But after that…?” I shook my head and thought back on how everything had changed. “Shit just stopped fazing me. And more than that, I felt detached from everything. I remember… I remember one time, we were having lunch, and I was looking around me, seeing all the guys shoveling food into their pie holes like there was no tomorrow. The edges of my vision became dark. Everything had a rhythm—shovel food, shovel food, shovel food, boots thumping, spoons clanking against the trays, the noise… All voices became one. And I kept thinking, fuck my life, they don’t even realize they’re just cogs in the machine, moving in perfect unison.”
Beckett leaned forward, too, and rested his arms on the table.
“But then I looked down at my own tray,” I went on.
“And you were doing the same thing,” he deduced.
I nodded. “I was eating too fast, acting like a robot, feeling nothing, just going with the flow.”
He nodded slowly.
“Something happened to me there,” I confessed. “Like, something inside me just shut down. I started living according to the routines and schedules provided for me, no questions asked, no adjustment periods needed anymore. I simply did it. No more crying myself to sleep—which…I never thought I’d say, but I miss it. I miss having strong reactions to things. Good or bad—I don’t care, as long as the reactions shake me up.”