Page 50

I groaned. "Fuck me. Cyclops, babe. Cyclops."

She rolled her eyes. "Right, right. Him. It feels like that."

"So what'd he do?" I asked, mentally fist-pumping at the fact that I'd gotten away with calling her 'babe'.

"Kept yelling at me, at first. But he slowly started to realize that something was wrong. It was like out of a cartoon. He just sort of slowly trailed off mid-sentence as he finally saw the bars on my collar. And that's when the big dumb bastard realized how badly he'd fucked up. See, like I said a second ago, abuse of authority happens more often than anyone would ever admit, but if you’re caught blatantly abusing your authority like that, bad things happen. He was in trouble just for being caught screaming at the girl like that. That kind of an extreme dressing down is generally reserved for senior command in cases of extreme fuckups, like major damage to Navy property or whatever. Some random petty officer doesn't get to just verbally eviscerate sailors like that for much of any reason. So he was fucked from the jump, the second I walked in. But then he yelled at a much senior officer, so he was double fucked, and he knew it. And I never said a word; I just stared at him and stared at him, let him stew in the silence. He tried to explain, but didn’t get more than a sentence or two out before trailing off again. And then…" She was all-out grinning, then. “He cried."

"No!”

"Yes. While apologizing. To me, to her, to the room, the walls…while sniveling like a bitch." She sighed happily. "The best part? The girl he was yelling at never lost her cool, like a boss. I mean, she was visibly shaken, but she never gave him an inch. I mean, she must've done something, but at the worst it would have been a 'hey, let's fix this and do better next time' kind of thing. A seaman's apprentice is just starting out, y'know? You gotta give 'em a chance to mess up. You never, ever scream at them like that. You don't make it personal, you don't insult, and you don’t do any of it in public except when correction is time-sensitive. Anyway. That's how I got outed as a Tiernan. See, the petty officer in question wasn’t even under my umbrella, so I marched him to his direct superior and explained the situation. And that superior officer was a master chief who'd served with my dad on that same ship and saw the family resemblance."

"Dude, that's so badass," I said.

She blinked at me. "It is?"

“Hell yes. Funny, yes, but also badass. I mean, in what other conceivable context could a five-foot-five chick reduce a big, grown-ass man to tears without a word or violence? Badass."

"Oh." She seemed uncomfortable again. "Thanks?"

She wasn't good with praise or direct, positive attention. From growing up in a household where criticism was de rigeur and perfection was the standard, I'd guess.

I jutted my chin at the joint she’d rolled, which was straight enough but a little bulgy and uneven. "What's that about?"

She shrugged. "I was bored, and it bothers me to not be good at something."

"So you have to be good at everything?"

She shook her head. "No, that's obviously unrealistic. But I like to try my hand at new things so at least I know if I am or not." She handed me the pinner. "Here."

I tucked it behind my ear for later—the pain wasn't too bad at the moment, and I didn't want to be spaced all the time.

We sat in silence for a while, Tea lost in thoughts I couldn’t even begin to guess at.

"What do you do for fun?" she asked, bringing up that earlier conversation.

I shrugged. "Depends. On my own? Play a video game for a bit, watch YouTube, maybe. But my idea of fun generally involves other people. I like board games, or, like, Cards Against Humanity kind of things. Me and the cousins sometimes have sailing races if the weather is right. Or just a big hang at Uncle Bast and Aunt Dru's. Get a little messy and perpetrate some harmless shenanigans."

Tea snickered. "Shenanigans?"

"Tomfoolery, if you will."

"I don't know what that means." She held up a hand. "I understand the definitions. What does it look like is what I'm asking."

I laughed. "God, you must have been just the most serious little girl, huh? I don't know if I can explain it or describe it, to be honest. We mock each other, roughhouse, play pranks on each other and on the old folks. Just…shenanigans."

“What kind of pranks?" she asked.

"Oh, nothing that would hurt or seriously embarrass anyone, generally. Once, my next younger brother, Marco, mixed an unholy shitload of cayenne pepper into Dad's pre-ground coffee. See, Dad makes his coffee at night and sets it to go off at, like, four AM, because even though he's been out of the military for like, almost thirty years, he still wakes up at an ungodly hour. So Dad just set his coffee up and didn't really pay attention. I mean, how often, when you're making coffee, do you closely examine it as you're scooping? You don't. And he didn't." Tea was covering her mouth with her hands. "Yeah, exactly. And when I say he put a shitload in there, I mean it was a lot. Dad took a sip and fuckin'…god, he yodeled. It was fuckin' hilarious. He was so, so, so mad."

Tea bit the corner of his lip. "I know SEALs, and I know for a fact he didn't let that slide."

"Oh hell no. The uncs get in on the prank games as much as we kids do."

"What was his retaliation?" she asked.

"He filled both of Marco's hockey gloves with Vaseline."

"Oh my god.”