Off Base(8)

Kenna eyed her friend’s plaid clogs, complete with metal spikes on the heel and admitted Darla was right. She’d be doomed. “Where do you even find shoes like that?”

“Don’t make me explain the Internet again.”

Kenna removed her helmet and ran a rag over her sweaty head. “One time. One time I have trouble downloading a file and I’m suddenly classified as a computer-illiterate granny.”

“Nah, they teach grannies the Internet now.”

They traded an exaggerated smirk. “Okay, fine. I’m done for the day. Disaster averted.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” Darla propped her slight hip against Kenna’s workstation. “What has you thinking so hard? Saturday night we ate pizza and watched The Hobbit—”

“Against my will.”

“—and today you’ve gone from Sporty Spice to Scary Spice.”

“Jesus. I can’t take the Spice Girls rating system today.” Kenna melted off her stool and clomped toward the mini fridge for a bottle of water. How long had she been working? “I’m just bogged down with work orders. It has me stressed.”

“What did you do yesterday?”

The water bottle paused in its ascent toward her mouth. Ah, the hell with it. She was too tired from her sleepless night to lie convincingly. Not to mention, her astute friend would get it out of her eventually, so this was merely a timesaver. “Hooked up with a virgin who’d just landed back at base. Started to make him a sandwich, but, uh—”

“Yeah, right.”

“What? I make the dopest sandwiches.”

Darla calmly set down her hardcover book on Kenna’s vacated stool. “Kenna, I’ve known you for four years and you’ve never hooked up on base. Not so much as a kiss on the cheek from a soldier.” She let her words hang in the air for a beat. “You are religious about leaving base when you want male company. The whole thing with your mother—”

“Hey.” Kenna laughed a little too loud. “This is getting a little deep for a Monday. Maybe I just decided to switch up the old routine. Nothing to be alarmed about.”

“I’m not alarmed. I’m just surprised.” Darla’s red-painted mouth lifted on one side. “Who was the lucky anomaly, you sly dog?”

“Uh, you sound like a dirty old man.” Kenna attempted to hide her reddening face by pulling the protective leather apron over her head. “Seriously, it doesn’t matter. He’s going back to Georgia and I’ll never see him again. It was just a thing.”

“A thing.”

“Yeah.” Kenna waved her hand. “A thing.”

“A virgin thing is so not your thing.”

Oh, yes it was. It was so her thing; she couldn’t think about it without contemplating another run for her sock drawer. Big muscled thighs, his voice cracking, not an ounce of male bullshit. Just pure awe and gratefulness…his all-out roar when he came. The way he’d cradled her to his chest afterward like a precious artifact. Damn. No thinking about that, remember?

“Speaking of male company, we need another road trip soon.” Kenna skirted past her friend and started to clean off her cluttered workbench. Darla was right. She’d broken her rule. Memories didn’t fade at Black Rock and her mother’s loose reputation continued to linger. Kenna got a kick out of dressing provocatively while never, ever, letting a single soldier lay a hand on her. Maybe it signaled her twisted sense of humor, but it was Kenna’s little way of punishing them for judging her mother for behavior deemed acceptable for men. Yeah, she’d burned her rulebook last night. Killed it dead. Now, even making the suggestion they go to a neighboring town, far from the base gossip mill, felt somehow disloyal. And completely unappealing. Bad. Very bad. “How about tonight?”

Darla’s face adopted its stern teacher countenance. “On a school night?”

“Come on—”

Kenna’s cell phone vibrated in the back pocket of her jeans. She fished it out between her thumb and forefinger, read the display name and smiled. “Father. Hi.”

“Kenna.” His gruff, no-nonsense voice boomed down the line. “Staying out of trouble?”

Her heart sank a little. “Yes, sir.”

That wasn’t a lie, but she’d deserved the question. In the not-so-distant past, the lieutenant general’s phone call would have gone unanswered because she would have been busy getting up to no good. Acting out, her school counselors had said. At the ripe old age of twenty-two, she could look back and agree. Following her parents’ divorce, her mother had moved off base, which had led to Kenna being passed around every three days like a piping hot potato. She’d embraced her new role as a seeming nuisance by burdening her parents at every turn. Running away, getting picked up for public intoxication, shoplifting. It all ended five years ago when her father had a heart attack.

Something miraculous had happened. The invincible lieutenant general had begun to need her. During his recovery, Kenna had moved in permanently, become his right hand. Cooked for him, cleaned, taken him to physical therapy and administered his medication. The two of them had grown closer in their own subtle way. Although, she now wondered if her imagination had invented that bond. As soon as her father was back on his feet, she’d been sent to live with her mother. Unfortunately, by then, her mother had moved on and married her boyfriend and gotten pregnant.