I’d been remade and broken and I wasn’t interested in going through that again, but I won’t deny that seeing Ian and Tiny together has made me feel . . . restless. Maybe that’s why my thoughts have been lingering on Natalie. She’d been bent by a rough hand but was fighting back. That’s intriguing to me in a way that the popular supermodel who has been gazing longingly in our direction isn’t.
“You should take her up on her offer,” Kaga says, dipping his head toward the model.
“I think you’re the one she’s trying to consume with her eyes.”
“No, I don’t think she’s that discriminating. Any one of us would do.” He nudges me as the beer arrives.
“Not interested.” I take my beer with my prosthetic and give the server a twenty. “Keep the change.”
Her eyes widen in surprise that I can hold the plastic cup, but holding things isn’t an issue. Gross motor tasks are fairly easy for me. It’s the fine motor skills that are problematic.
“I thought you had finished with your journalist friend.” Kaga makes a shooing gesture toward the waitress and she scurries away.
“I did. What about the girl over there don’t you like?” It’d be nice if he started seeing someone. That way Sabrina could move on.
Kaga weighs his response carefully, his tension visible. Finally, in deference to our friendship, he says, “I am not interested either.”
He wants to say that he has interest in only one woman and, to give him credit, I haven’t seen him with anyone in recent memory. Granted, he is not in New York for great swaths of time, so he could be fucking a dozen different women in different cities, but Kaga’s too decent for that. It’s his honor that keeps him from Sabrina as long as I disapprove. But it’s also his honor that has gotten him into his current predicament.
I take a long draft of the flavored water that the Garden serves as beer. A shift reveals Ian’s interest has been drawn away from the game. Both of them look at me expectantly.
“You have to clean house first,” I say in answer to the unstated question as to when I’ll give my blessing.
“Maybe I will,” he responds quietly. Ian nods in satisfaction and turns back to the game.
I hide my surprise by lifting the beer again. It looks like I’m not the only one unsettled by Ian and Tiny’s pairing.
“Sir, would you like to come out at halftime and be honored for your service?” A dark-suited young man with a lanyard around his neck proclaiming his position as Entertainment Staff appears at my side.
Kaga covers his face to hide a smirk, while I try to summon a smile to soften my emphatic response.
“No. I never served. I lost my hand in an unfortunate meatpacking incident,” I lie.
The young man colors and his gaze flicks behind him. “I must have been mistaken then. So sorry to have bothered you.”
As he leaves I scan the crowd behind him, only to see my old therapist, Dr. Crist, in the mix.
I give him a one-fingered salute with my prosthetic, which he acknowledges with a wave and a laugh.
“You know him?” Kaga asks.
“Isaiah Crist served in the army during the first Gulf War, and suffered a hip disarticulation.” At Kaga’s raised eyebrows, I elaborate. “His amputation is at the hip instead of below the knee like mine.” I tap my lower left prosthetic. “After he was medically discharged, he went back and got his head-shrinking degree. He’s expensive as fuck and has a clientele list that would make your head spin, but I met him when he was doing pro bono work down at Bethesda.”
“What was that all about then? I know you do not enjoy being on display.”
“He’s just fucking with me. It’s an army thing.”
Kaga looks unimpressed. “Did the nosy journalist turn you off women?”
“The game must really bore you if we’re delving back into my personal life.”
“Yes,” he says with a grin and an expectant look. I’m not ready to talk about my surprising attraction toward Natalie. I can’t explain it to myself yet, but I’m honest enough to admit it exists.
I like her taste in books, her plucky attitude, and her unwillingness to be cowed by her fear. She’s interesting in a way that the other women I’ve been with since I was discharged haven’t been. That may be a bigger reflection on me than the women of New York, though.
“When I have something to share, I’ll be sure to call you up right away,” I reply.
“I’d share my own personal female woes, but I suspect it would make you uncomfortable.”
“You’d be right.” The last thing I want to hear is what he wants from my sister. But I like Kaga, so I add, “Sorry.”
Kaga shakes his head slightly. “Your devotion to your family is one of the things I admire most about you, so there is no apology necessary. But you realize it is in my best interest to see you helplessly in love like our friend Ian.”
Ian gives a nod of acknowledgment, though he doesn’t turn away from the game. “He’s right. You need to pair up so that Tiny has someone to do shit with when we go out to dinner. She’s tired of your single asses. If you aren’t going to give Kaga and Bri your blessing, then you need to step up.”
“Oh well, then I’ll get right on that for your wife. Hey, single lady, want to hook up for an unspecified period of time? My buddy’s wife is tired of talking to penises when we go out.”
“I’d phrase it slightly differently,” Kaga offers unhelpfully.
“What if I had an agoraphobic girlfriend who couldn’t leave her apartment?”
Ian scoffs. “That’s your excuse now? How’d you meet this agoraphobic person if she doesn’t go out?”
“I’m extraordinary,” I say, in hopes that the ridiculousness of my reply deters further inquiry.
But Kaga looks at me thoughtfully. “This is happening in large numbers to young people in Japan. It is called hikikomori and means a withdrawing or pulling inward. They do not socialize with anyone but their own families and retreat to their bedrooms. It can last for a few months or even years.”
Surprised, I gesture for him to continue.
“I don’t know much more about it,” Kaga admits. “I have only heard small pieces. Supposedly it affects at least one percent of our young male population. It is a concern. As time passes, the withdrawal feeds upon itself. Social abilities atrophy and even the desire to escape is eaten away.”
“She’s not like that,” I find myself saying. Kaga merely nods—his perceptiveness is eerie at times.
“I thought you were joking,” Ian says. He’s abandoned the game, probably because the massacre is too painful.
Sighing, I give in.
“I’m looking into something for someone.” I hold up my hand to forestall further questions from Ian. He shuts his mouth and slides back in his chair. “I met a woman who has severe anxiety, but she’s not withdrawn. She’s actively trying to get better—she’s suffered a setback and I’m investigating some circumstances that might have adversely affected her recovery.”
“She’s a fighter, then,” Kaga muses.
“That’s right.”
“Of course,” he says. “You, as a soldier, must not only admire that, but respond to it as well.”
Ian makes a gun with his fingers and points them at me. Is he saying I’m dead or down? I’m neither, but I might be falling and it doesn’t seem to be painful at all.
CHAPTER NINE
NATALIE
I allow myself to have a brief pity party that my wonderful progress has been halted and then peel myself off the metaphorical floor. Daphne is correct when she says my best writing comes from torment. But as I stand and type out an entire chapter, I find myself inserting a tall, potbellied space ranger. He’s got a wry smile and good hands that capably manage his phaser.