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The longer they remained at the tropical resort, the more he started to feel like Bradley and less like Lieutenant Bradshaw. He had heard his Uncle Hollywood once say how after being away from the Navy for a bit, one would eventually feel a shift inside that led away from the initial confusion and lost feelings to something unexpected. Before coming down here, before running into Jake again, he wasn’t believer. Now, he understood perfectly. He was finally shedding off his stale Navy career and embracing an idea of a future post-Navy. It was as terrifying as it was exciting.
“You know, it’s weird,” he declared out of nowhere. He and Jake were heading down one of the windy paths leading to the main building to enjoy breakfast before they headed out to explore again.
“What’s that?” Jake asked, attentive as always.
“I thought I joined because I wanted to get to know my father better. To be closer to him, I guess. Every single one of my uncles would tell these wild, insane stories about him. And they were always so different from Mav’s and Mom’s, so I soaked them up like a little sponge. I was so curious about him because the way everyone talked about him, he seemed larger than life, the coolest guy you’d ever know. Everyone loved him, Jake.” He sighed heavily. “I can’t think of a single person who ever spoke shit about him. Not one.”
“People always talk about the good after a person dies. Just look at Princess Di.”
“Yeah.” It made sense. He only ever heard the good memories of his father. Never actually saw the complete picture of who his father was. It’d be no wonder how he’d end up worshiping his father after all that. “I think I wanted to have my own piece of him. Have that special memory everyone else had with him, I guess, and so, I decided I’d go to the Academy hell or high water.”
“Makes sense.” Seresin squeezed his hand gently as his thumb rubbed over his.
“However, I didn’t join to be a WSO, though, did I? I wanted to be a pilot. Everything I did was focused on flying the plane. Being the driver. My father didn’t fly, though.”
“No, Maverick did.”
“Yeah.” He closed his eyes against the onslaught of memories of that turbulent time. “Somehow between wanting to know who my father was, I ended up trying to become him in a lot of ways. Probably to ease Dad’s suffering, his guilt over the whole thing. What happened has eaten at him for thirty-some years, Jake. It won’t ever go away fully. It’ll always be a part of him now.”
“Been doing a lot of thinking lately, have you, Bradshaw?”
“I think that’s part of why he didn’t want me to join. Because he didn’t want me to grow up to become like him eventually. Everything he did was to protect me. I just was too hurt to see it. To hear the concern and love he had for me. Like I was with you. I was so sure you’d leave me. Decide I was too much trouble. Save yourself from me.”
Jake bumped against his side lightly. “When in reality, I was actually planning our whole elaborate wedding with all our friends and family instead,” he remarked with a quiet laugh. “I was so sure from the very first moment I met you, Bradshaw, that I was supposed to be your husband. So, when you ran out on me, I questioned everything after it. Wondered what I did wrong. And when I couldn’t answer that, I just got pissed then.”
“But how could you be so sure back then? We didn’t have the history we have now. The whole sad ass backstory even.”
“I knew in my heart. Because for the first time in my life, I didn’t want to love you and leave you. I wanted a future with you. Ring, kids, white picket fence, all of it. I didn’t want to wait and bother with all the dating and getting to know you stuff. We lead dangerous lives. So, leaping into marriage so soon after our hook-up made sense in my mind.”
“If only we would have been better at communicating.”
“Eh, we got here eventually. Better late than never.”
“Agreed. But there was so much wasted time, though.”
“Yeah, well, look at Cap and Penny. They were on-again, off-again for thirty-some years. I think compared to that, we’re golden, don’t you think?”
“I suppose.” Bradley then chuckled. “Jesus.” He shook his head in shocked disbelief. He didn’t know why it didn’t occur to him earlier.
“Well, come on then. Share with the rest of the class. What’s got you so shocked over there?”
“Penny.”
“All right. What about Mama Mitchell?”
“She met him when she was months shy of being eighteen.”
“And then? Still not following you here, darlin.”
“That means she has at least several months over Pops, if not a full year or so.”
“That’s what you—oh, Bradley,” Jake said fondly before he shook his head. “I mean, certainly explains the whole her being in charge dynamic she’s got going on with them then, doesn’t it?”
“He always said she chased him first.”
“Really?”
Bradley nodded. “Yeah. I met her a couple of times when I was way younger. Of course, Dad never mentioned she was an ex-flame of his or anything. He’d just say that she was an old friend of his. I always thought it was so funny how Pops would make himself scarce whenever she came around the house because it was almost as if he was afraid of her. I asked him about it once actually.”
“And what did he say?”
“That he was merely being polite and giving them space.”
“You think something was going on between the three of them back then?”
“Doubtful. Dad may break every rule known, but there are some he won’t ever get near. And cheating is a hard no for him.” Bradley then recalled a memory from long ago and laughed.
“What?”
“Just thinking about how he gave me the riot act one time because I asked two girls out at the same time. I was, like, sixteen or so at the time. We had a long discussion on respect that night, acceptable behaviors and the like. I didn’t understand what the big deal was, of course, and thought he was being totally unreasonable because I just wanted to go to the dance with my friends.”
“He thought you were being a player, though?”
“Yep. Pops came in right around the time we had reached the lesson on self-respect. He was so confused because I was all red-faced from Dad lecturing me and not letting me explain, whereas Dad was . . . he was being so super serious about it all.”
“How’d that night end up?”
“Didn’t end up going,” he admitted. “Spent the night in the hospital at Dad’s side instead.”
“Rough. What happened?”
“He was out riding his bike, and some idiot gunned it in reverse without looking. He was thrown 5-10 feet, and, of course, he wasn’t wearing his helmet. So, I got to spend the night listening to my uncles lecture him about riding without his helmet for what had to be the hundredth time by then.”
“And to think, all it took was a sassy mini-Cap to get him to wear one almost twenty years later,” joked Jake with a wide grin.
“Exactly. Somehow Mel did the one thing not even her mom nor Pops could get him to do.”
“Well, she is his kid, Roo. I bet if you’d have asked him first, he’d have done it for you, too.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure,” Bradley replied, quickly waving Jake off. “No, it’s . . . it’s not me being down on myself here or anything. Honest, it’s not.”
“Then what?”
“She doesn’t lash out to hurt him for one. Like, she gets pissed with him, sure, but she doesn’t go for the jugular with him like I do. She’s sharp to get him to back off, to stop, but never to cause him to shut down entirely. She loves him too much for that.”
“And you don’t?”
“No, I do. I just do my best to push people away to protect myself, whereas little sis, she pulls people closer, unafraid of being hurt by people letting her down. She lost a father just like me, but instead of turning her loss into—I don’t know—a way to become like him like I did to keep my father alive, with me, she chose to move on and accept Dad who stepped up for her. I didn’t notice his efforts or appreciate them until after the mission.”
“Yeah, but her father was a grade A prick, Bradshaw, whereas yours died in a horrible accident.”
“I know. But she lost a father, too. It just was in a different way, but she grew up without a father around full-time. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Well, take it from me here, all right? Having full-time parents in your life isn’t always the best thing for a child either. On paper, you’d swear mine were perfect, the shining example of the picture-perfect nuclear family that gets shoved down everyone’s throats all the time and weighed as the set bar. Take it from me, though. Having Dad around, hearing him go on his nightly drunken rants about how the world was going to hell because gays were in his precious military on the good nights and how I cost him his perfect son on the really shitty nights—not a good environment to raise a kid.”
Bradley rubbed Jake’s back somberly. He didn’t know what to say. What could he? He didn’t have any experience with any of that, thanks to Maverick and Ice. If anything, he himself had become the abusive asshole.
“Don’t,” Jake sighed, headbutting him lightly.
“What?”
“Don’t start going down that rabbit hole and comparing yourself to Dad. You weren’t. You were shitty, sure, but you weren’t like that, darlin. Plus, we already covered this. We both acted like assholes to each other. We’re working through our shit, though. But I doubt my dad ever will work through his grief. It’s too much of who he is now.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too.”
They kissed for a brief second before they caught a familiar pair of laughing jovial aviators jogging off down another path to where Bradley and Jake knew another building full of rooms was. The couple was hanging off one another, seemingly extra friendly, much friendlier than usual.
“Is that—?”
“Phoenix and Coyote?” Jake finished for him. “Yeah, Rooster, it is.”
They watched their friends skip inside a building, confirming that the two were, in fact, staying on the island, at the same resort as Bradley and Jake.
“Did you know Machado was here?”
“No. Did you know Trace was?”
“Hell no.”
Bob had been the one who told Bradley about this place, which he had also told Jake thankfully.
“Do you think the rest of the old gang is here?”
“I doubt it.”
Fanboy and Payback were headed to some comic convention Fanboy wanted to go to. Halo was still deployed per her last communique in the group chat with her new pilot since Omaha left the Navy to head back to Nebraska shortly after the mission (which per the group chat, Omaha still was at an hour ago). Bob was spending time with his father in Texas. And Fritz, Harvard, and Yale, those three had pretty much dropped off the face of the earth after texting how they were backpacking around the world upon their separation from the Navy. The trio had said they wanted to live for themselves again.
“You don’t think . . . I mean, Javy wouldn’t—”
“—why are you solely calling him out here? Trace didn’t look like she had a gun to her head from the way we saw it, now did she?”
“But she loves Halo. They were thinking about getting married someday. Why would she do this? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Yeah, well, it’s their business, Bradshaw.”
“She’s my best friend, Seresin,” he argued.
“And Javy’s mine, and I promise you that he ain’t no cheater. There’s probably a reason explanation for this whole thing, but short of going in there and finding them—”
Bradley turned on his heels and immediately started for the doors to the building Coyote and Phoenix had walked in a few moments ago.
“What on earth are you doing?”
“We’re going to talk to them.”
“Bradley . . .”
“No, Jake. I’m not going to sit by and watch her ruin her relationship with Halo over this.”
“We don’t even know that they’re cheating.”
“He had his arm wrapped around her back.”
“Did you happen to notice how badly she was stumbling? She was drunk. He was just making sure she didn’t faceplant into the sidewalk.”
“I didn’t see that.”
“Well, you’re obviously blind then because he was.”
“Says you.” Bradley kept marching to the building, however.
“Please don’t do this.”
“I have to.”
“Why? Who made you the person in charge of everything, Rooster?”
“She’s going to regret this.”
“Maybe, but that’s their business, not ours, sweet chicken of mine.”
“Wouldn’t you want to know?”
“Know what? We don’t know anything right now. We only saw a sliver of something that could very well be nothing but two close friends having a night out.”
“And they just happened to be at the same romantic resort we are?”
Jake sighed heavily. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
“Not a chance,” Bradley declared before he threw open the front door to the building and headed across the atrium.
“Oh, hey guys!” grinned Coyote widely as he kept his arm firmly around Phoenix’s waist to keep her upright. “Enjoying yourselves, are we?”
“Told you so,” Phoenix laughed drunkenly in Coyote’s ear. “Pay up, Machado.”
“Yeah, yeah, you win,” Coyote muttered.
Jake grabbed Bradley’s wrist just as he stepped towards Coyote and Phoenix.
“Oh, hey, Rooster, Hangman!” brightly smiled Halo as she stepped into the atrium. “Isn’t this place just magical?” She quickly stepped up to wrap her own arm around Phoenix’s waist. “Come on, Nixy. Let’s get you back to bed. Thanks for finding her for me, Javy. I owe you.”
Bradley felt like an idiot, glancing between the trio. “What’s wrong with her?”
Halo glanced back at him. “You really sure you want to know there, Bradshaw? I’m not sure if your virgin ass, vanilla ears could handle it.”
“Try me.”
“She got stoned.”
“What?!” Ms. Body was her temple took drugs? Unimaginable.
“Oh, relax. It’s not as unsafe as you think it is. They keep a close eye on the temperature of them before they put them on her back.”
He blinked. “Huh?”
“She’s saying Trace got a hot stone massage, darlin,” Jake murmured for his ears only.
“And it ended up causing her to be like that?”
“Well, we might have been enjoying a bit too much alcohol before then,” Halo admitted. “She’ll be fine. Just needs rest. She keeps running off on me, however.”
“Hence, why I brought her back. Saw her in the mess and put two-and-two together through her rambling hot mess dialogue,” explained Coyote before his eyes narrowed on them. “Why? What did you two think was going on here?”
“Oh, uh . . . nothing really. I just . . . thought it was strange is all,” Bradley stammered out.
Coyote’s eyes darted to Jake.
“Anyway, glad to see you all, but we’ve really got to get going,” announced Seresin, tugging Bradley back to the doors. “Have a nice vacation.”
“Remember to practice safe sex, lovebirds,” called out Halo with a wicked grin.
Bradley was too stunned to reply, following Jake’s unspoken direction. The second they were outside, though, he sighed heavily.
“And that’s why we take a moment and not assume the worst, Rooster.”
“Oh, shut it.” But, yeah, he really did make an ass out of himself there, didn’t he? Damn it.