The Last Hour (Thompson Sisters), Sheehan-Miles, Charles [reading an ebook .txt] 📗

... this goddess ... hip to hip with me ... and I was getting a raging hard on.

I really didn’t want to embarrass myself, or freak her out, or anything else, but I had zero control over this. It’s not like I sat there and said, “Oh, I’m going to get a giant erection and maybe I can get her to —” Never mind. Best not to complete that thought. I tried thinking of baseball scores, but the truth is, that never worked for me. It just made me picture her, with me, all alone on a baseball field checking out third base. Okay, time to muster the big guns. I called up in my memory the day we went through the gas chamber at Fort Benning, when we ended up breathing in tear gas, and puked and cried all the way back to the barracks.

Still no dice. My boner was bigger than ever. Visibly so. I shifted in the seat, hoping to make it at least less um ... prominent, and that of course just produced a little friction between Carrie and me. Bad idea. Her skirt shifted when she got in the cab, riding up her hips, and this girl had fantastic legs. I was having a really hard time not touching them. I was having a hard time not making a complete ass of myself. I felt crazy self-conscious.

She gave me a curious look, one eyebrow arched slightly higher than the other. “You’re awfully quiet.”

I met her eyes. Nice eyes. “I’m trying to seduce you. If Star Wars references won’t work, I’m going to use my next strategy, which is to be tall, dark and mysterious.”

She bit her lower lip and grinned. “Maybe you should try telling me about yourself?”

“Not much to tell. Just a regular middle class guy who ran out of cash.”

“What was it like in Afghanistan?”

I had to fight off a grimace. One thing I was not talking about, with anyone, was the war. “Ask me something else. I don’t talk about that. You should tell me about you instead.”

“Not much to tell,” she said, then gave a definitely snarky answer that echoed mine. “Just a regular middle class girl who didn’t run out of cash.”

“I don’t buy that.”

“Well, let’s see. I’m finishing my PhD at Rice, I teach undergraduate ecology courses—science geek. Always have been.”

Alex chimed in, “Her senior year in high school, she was growing staph cultures under the sink in the bathroom we shared. In petri dishes.” She shuddered.

I laughed. “And you like Star Wars?”

“Like may be a weak word.” Her lips curled up in a grin, but she blushed a little too.

“Even the new ones?”

At that, her nose crinkled in disgust. “Well, not so much.”

“What’s your doctorate in?”

“Behavioral ecology.”

I blinked. “What’s that?”

“Basically ... it has to do with animal behavior in response to ecological pressures. I spent a good chunk of last year doing field research. I’m studying mating habits and the migration pattern of cougars, and how that’s impacting the spread of some microorganisms.”

That was intimidating. But the intimidation factor was overwhelmed by the curve of her jawline, which was fascinating and so close I wanted to reach out and take both sides of her face between my hands. But I grinned and said, “Mating habits of cougars?”

She blushed. “Not that kind of cougar. Mountain lions.”

“I’m intrigued. You know I spent most of the last year in the mountains?”

“That doesn’t make you a lion.”

I winked. “You’d be surprised.”

When I looked back at that night ... the night I met Carrie ... I couldn’t help but wonder if it was fate. I wasn’t a superstitious type, or religious. I mean, my parents were Episcopalian. We had gone to church every Sunday when I was growing up. But like a lot of people, I’d not given a lot of deep thought to religious questions until I found my life in danger in Afghanistan. And after some of the hideous, savage things I saw and did over there? I won’t lie. My faith wasn’t shaken. It was eviscerated. I didn’t know if I wanted to believe in a God who would allow such things to happen. Especially to children. And even if I had believed in God, after that? Well, we weren’t on speaking terms any more.

Anyway, we went to the party, and while it was a disaster for Dylan that night, Carrie and I had just ... clicked. Despite the chaos Alex and Dylan had gotten up to, Carrie and I had ended up finding ourselves alone late that night, and we didn’t sleep.

As I finished telling the story to Sarah… minus my observations of her sister’s beauty, Sarah asked, “Where did you go?”

I grinned. “Brooklyn Bridge.”

“Um ... why?”

I shrugged. “Believe it or not, neither of us had ever really been there. I mean, I grew up on Long Island, so it’s not like I hadn’t seen it. And she spent six years at Columbia. So we caught a cab down there, and found a bench, and hung out talking.”

Sarah looked skeptical. “About?”

“Just getting to know each other, you know?”

I smiled and leaned back in the chair. I’d been impressed with how Carrie had handled herself after Dylan beat up that guy at the party. Impressed by how instinctively she’d moved to protect and take care of her sister. I wanted to get to know her a lot better. So we hung out, just talking, most of the night. Silly stuff: favorite movies and music. I was an only child. She had a whole tribe of sisters. Both of us loved science fiction, and I laughed when it turned out she was a huge Doctor Who fan. We spent at least half an hour arguing over which Doctor was the best: I insisted it was Tom Baker, the fifth Doctor, but she was a big fan of the newest one, and the whole Amy Pond storyline.

“Come on,” I had said, “it’s not even Doctor Who any more. It’s all fluffy ‘love