Free Patriotic Duty by C.J. Pinard

you’ll be forgetting about that road-head any time soon.”
    He nodded with a lazy grin
and hit the gas as I pointed at the now-flowing traffic.

CHAPTER 9

 
    Aiden
and I pulled up to the local park to meet Miranda and Ashlynn for a play date, and so Miranda and I could catch up. Since Riley and I had
been seeing each other, I felt like I hadn’t seen Miranda in forever, even
though we did work together. She worked inside the main perimeter of the prison
while I worked at an attached satellite camp that housed lower-security
offenders, and I rarely went inside the larger facility, so we mostly talked on
the phone.
    “Hey,” I said, spotting
Miranda sitting on a bench. I had Aiden by the hand and as I sat, I pulled his
sweatshirt off and sprayed some sunscreen on his exposed arms. I rubbed it in,
and adjusted his little 49ers baseball cap and kissed him on the tip of his
freckled nose. He was squirming to go play so I let him go and he ran over to
where Ashlynn was sitting on one of the
spring-mounted animals, rocking back and forth.
    I looked at Miranda who
was studying me intently. “What’s up, girl?”
    “Nothing. You tell me, miss Army wife.”
    My mouth dropped open.
“What? No way. Just having fun. You know.” I winked at
her for effect.
    She waved me off and went
back to filing her nails. “Okay, sure, whatever you say.”
    I laid a hand on her arm
to stop her filing. “What’s wrong?”
    She stared at me, the warm
amber of her eyes boring into me. “Nothing’s wrong. I just think that you’re
falling for this guy but he’s leaving and you’re making a mistake.”
    Her words pierced my heart
because I knew they were true and I had been chastising myself for the very
same thing for a couple of weeks. There was no way I would admit that to
Miranda, though. “No, really. He’s leaving and we’re
just having fun. He’s great in bed and it’s nice to have someone to go places
with, you know.”
    “Well, what am I? Chopped
liver?” she said with a teasing tone.
    “Of course I love going
places with you. But I don’t know how you are in bed.”
    She laughed and I was
relieved to hear it. She had a great laugh and sometimes we would get into
laughing fits so hard, we couldn’t breathe and tears would be streaming out of
our eyes. I admit I did miss our Saturday nights together, where we would hang
out inside making a bunch of appetizers and desserts and drink wine while our
kids played and then went to sleep. In about a month, we’d be back at it, after
Riley left, but I did feel kind of bad for missing out while he was here.
    “Look, please just be
careful,” she said, moving her gaze away from me and back to her nails. “I’ve
done the military guy thing, it’s hard when they
leave. Like, really hard.”
    I nodded and looked down.
“I know. I’ll be okay, though. I promise.”
    “Yes, and I’ll be here to
pick up the pieces when he leaves.”
    Damn her for knowing me
better than I knew myself. I had to change the subject. “So how’s Mister
Homerun?”
    She stopped filing and
looked at me. “You don’t even know his name, do you?”
    I bit my lip and shook my
head. “I’m sorry.”
    She grinned. “It’s Jace .”
    My eyes got big. Jason was
the name of Ashlynn’s asshole father, but she
sometimes called him Jace . “Oh, my God, how can you
stand that?”
    “I try not to cry out his
name while he’s pleasuring me,” she laughed.
    I laughed too. “Yeah, that
would be awkward. Does he know?”
    “ Noooo ,”
she said. “I don’t plan on telling him, either. I’ve been calling him ‘J’ and
he doesn’t say anything.”
    “That sounds good. So is
he gone all the time, too?”
    She nodded. “Yeah, it’s
baseball season so I rarely see him.”
    I raised a pale eyebrow at
her. “And you’re lecturing me about unavailable men? Groupie
much?”
    She laughed. “Like yours,
it’s not serious. We have fun when he’s in town, when he’s gone, I try not to worry about