Jade harrumphed and looked away.
“I’ve seen you in rough spots before, but I’ve also watched you rip groups of Chuck Norris wannabes apart with your bare hands and yank a shotgun muzzle to your forehead and taunt the lunatic holding it to pull the trigger. You’re a fearless warrior barbarian like me. And warriors hurt sometimes, but they also lean on each other when they need to. So if you do, lean on me, please.”
Jade went to finish her drink, seeming dead set against it at first, only to push the mug away, gawk at it, and give in. “Do you know what it’s like to have remnants of your past flat-out refuse to stay there? Days you’ve lived through, people you’ve passed by, events you survived, problems you’ve overcome…or thought you had, that for some reason just keep coming back to fucking haunt you?”
Ken’s brows drew together. “I…don’t know. But I also don’t have the slightest clue what you mean.”
“This is me…leaning on you,” she slurred, “endeavoring to provide you with answers…the only way I know how. So either sit there, shut the fuck up, and listen to what I have to say, or leave me the hell alone and go…snore yourself back to sleep.”
Ken spread his hands apart and leaned back, holding them upright. “Okay, Jade. I’m sorry. I’ll cease blathering. Recommence leaning, please.”
Jade sighed, exhaling through a set of troubled, tightened lips. “Sometimes I think it’s just me…and this happens to no one else but me, like a curse, like something I was born with or granted because of something I did, and God deems for some twisted fucking reason I deserve it. It’s been like this for me my whole life; trying to suppress my past and all the fucked-up shit I have no motivation to rehash, remember, recall or relive. I’ve lived through it all already once before; there’s no logical reason to have to do it again. But some things keep coming back, and for the life of me, I don’t know why. I haven’t lived a bad life, overall; I mean, I’ve done plenty I regret—passionately regret. But I’ve confessed everything since. Repentance is the first step on the path of redemption, and I’ve done everything I know to make things right.” A pause. “I’ve…hurt a lot of people, Ken.”
“Me too,” Ken said, a disclosing nod accompanying the admission. “I’d be lying if I said otherwise. You’re not alone, you know.”
“I know I’m not alone…but you’re a jarhead,” Jade spat, “and prior to that, a card-carrying member of working-class America who entered boot camp an unassuming sack of civilian shit; labeled a shitbag faggot pussy by your DIs, or worse. You couldn’t use the head, blink or find your dick without being told, were forbidden to reference yourself with the ‘I’ pronoun for thirteen weeks of degradation. But you emerged from there reconstructed as a Marine, an initiated, inculcated, fully impregnated…killer of everything.”
“I guess that’s one way of putting it,” muttered Ken.
“It’s the truth, though, is it not?” Jade slurred. “The truth remains that Marines kill; killing is their mission, the nature of the branch rationalized into a single key word. And that makes it your nature, Ken. Your job was and remains killing enemy combatants by whatever means necessary—a gun, a knife, your hands, culinary utensils, or some kid’s sandbox toys. That’s what grunts do.” She hesitated, looking away. “I wasn’t programmed like that. I’m not a grunt, never been to Parris Island or Lejeune. It’s different for me. But I’ve killed, too…I’ve…murdered people. Once living, breathing, animated things with heartbeats. And I did so purposely with no equivocations, all in the name of doing my job. It was what I was supposed to do, you know? I was obligated. It was my duty to push the blade, wrench the neck, or pull the trigger. I acted as a subordinate then…right or wrong wasn’t meant to qualify or quantify…it was never supposed to compute—it was never supposed to matter, but it does now. Looking back, I made the final decisions. The choices were mine…I took those lives. And maybe…that’s why.”
“Maybe that’s why…” Ken prompted her to continue.
“Why I’m fucked. Cursed…anathematized to relive my past,” Jade said contritely. “Maybe that’s my penance…and maybe my penance lives with me so long as I live.” She paused a long while, fiddling with her drink, fighting the notion to refill it. “Remember that big, beautiful, Victorian cathedral at Camp Hill just below Valerie’s house? I went to confession there, for the first time in years—decades, probably. It wasn’t by any means authentic; the church was empty…no priest or anything. But it felt right just being there, you know? I asked for forgiveness for everything I’ve done in the best way I knew how, but after all this, I don’t think it was good enough. And maybe God needs more from me…and this is His way of telling me.”
“Jade,” Ken began softly, “you’re saying a lot, but I’m becoming really concerned with what you’re not saying.”
“Did I ever tell you about me and Lauren?”
Ken shook his head, his expression contorting a little at the sudden deviation in topic.
“I think she likes me.” A flush crept across Jade’s cheeks. “She didn’t at first, no doubt about it. But we’ve gotten closer since then, and I think we’re friends now. But she could also be my nemesis.”
Ken’s head tilted, a yawn beginning to form, but he willed it away. “Now this I got to hear.”
“And hear you shall,” Jade chanted, minding the volume of her voice. “She pulled me aside for an inquisition of sorts the
