Blake
“What’s wrong?” I asked my buddy Peter, who was lying on his bunk with one hand behind his head, staring up at the white ceiling. I didn’t have to check to know there was nothing to see there but white paint. Since there was never anything interesting about these dorms.
He was quieter than usual. Not that he was usually outgoing, but today he’d been even more withdrawn than usual. And this even though we had a good day in the kill house running drills. “We’re getting better with the training scenarios.”
He nodded. “Yes, the training instructors put us through the ringer, but at least we didn’t act quite like chicken with their heads cut off today. That’s progress.” He said, though the look in his eyes didn’t change, so his mood had probably nothing to do with our training scenario this afternoon.
“Everything okay at home?” I asked.
He nodded.
Yeah, he was in a shit mood.
“Let’s go, boys.” Lucas—another team member—stuck his head into our room.
The plan for tonight was to go for some R and R at a nearby bar and for a moment, I thought Peter would bow out, but instead he got up, “Let’s get shit-faced.”
My eyebrows shot up. Now that was a mission I full-heartedly supported, but was completely out of character for Peter.
“Yes… let’s.” I said. Whatever he needed, I would have his back. That’s what I was here to do. That’s what all of us were trying to do.
We reached the bar in a couple of minutes. Had our third round of shots within half an hour.
I quit doing the hard stuff and stuck to my beer after that. But not Peter. He downed one round after the other with Lucas, Thomas, and Rey—both teammates—right there by his side.
I waited. Shot the shit with them, snorted at their jokes and laughed at their increasingly inebriated state.
“Today’s the anniversary of my sister’s death.” Peter blurted out.
“To your sister, then,” Thomas said and raised his glass as if it was the most normal thing to do.
Well, all the guys here had seen their fair share of death, all had lost brothers.
Death was part of the life of being a Navy SEAL.
“I’m sorry.” I said to Peter, who nodded.
“It’s okay. It’s been a couple of years.”
I raised my eyebrow. Peter was in his early twenties, like all of us. So his sister must’ve been a teenager when she died. “You wanna talk about it?”
Rey and Thomas left their seats next to us and moved in on a group of chicks that had entered the bar. Usually, I would be right by their side. But not today.
“Nah,” Peter shook his head, and stared into his beer, “talked to my mom earlier, which is always hard, steered up some memories.”
“About your sister?”
“About Lisa.”
“That her name?” Why had we never talked about her before?
“No.”
“So who’s she?”
“Just a girl I knew back then.”
“Your girl?”
He shrugged. “Kind of, but not quite. I treated her like shit, right before I left...”