Free His Road Home by Anna Richland

to clear it and tried to think. You look good.
    Feel good this week. Expect full - size C - legs Wednesday. Going to stare straight in the Marquis’s eyes , mano a mano.
    The image of grappling with Rey took her back again to the heat of his lips under hers, his hands digging into her shoulders and pulling her into his bed on the last morning together at Walter Reed. Tonight the slightest allusion made her think of their too-brief liplock, memories that were simultaneously not detailed enough to be satisfying, yet too detailed to be ignored. She rolled to her side, but the new position didn’t relieve the fidgety urge to move her legs.
    Time to shift to a safe topic like a book. Did you like Endurance?
    Not as much as Kon - Tiki. You?
    She’d fallen asleep over the adventure sailing stories. Rey seemed to read a book a day, a pace she couldn’t match. Dirty secret: didn’t get far. Sea air did me in.
    If that’s a dirty secret , you need help.
    When do you read? She almost wanted him to say good-night so she could look at his picture again, which felt like sneaking candy. Don’t you ever sleep?
    Still wake up at 4 , so I read. He’d explained his phantom leg pains, but she wondered if he also had nightmares. You in your bunk?
    This must be the night for personal questions. She and Rey texted every night, but neither of them had mentioned seeing each other again, nor had they ever referred to their goodbye kisses. The brief question heightened her awareness that he was a man, a man with whom she talked every day and with whom she’d once exchanged a handful of searing kisses. The ship’s surging movements amplified the vibrations in her fingers as she typed her answer in equally short words, but she suspected they would open a new door. Yes. You too?
    In my bed. Remember?
    The single word, which must refer to their last minutes together at Walter Reed, knocked a giant hole in the invisible barrier between them. Given that the calendar said August and the interlude on his hospital bed had been in April, she thought about the feel of his lips often enough to earn the label frequent. Or maybe desperate.
    Can you send a photo with your hair loose? That’s how I think of you.
    She read his request twice before she remembered to breathe.
    Sorry if that was out of line.
    Why not do it? She flicked her hair and lay on her pillow, but felt too exposed and closed her eyes before she pushed the button.
    His answer came quickly. Now I can imagine what you look like asleep after we text. Me:
    He’d applied some sort of magazine-model filter to his photo, because he shouldn’t look that good sprawled on a pillow. He had one hand behind his head, which stretched his sleeve over his arm muscles and revealed the edges of his tattoo. His eyes looked almost asleep, or maybe barely awake, and she could imagine he was next to her.
    She rolled to her stomach, worried that if she didn’t cool off, in five minutes she’d be removing clothes like a teenager.
    The knock on the steel bulkhead door made her jump. “Phone sex patrol,” her roommate’s voice called.
    “We’re not even talking,” she yelled while she typed, Casey’s here.
    “Whatcha doing then?” Casey’s laugh was loud enough to hear through the door, the product of the deck-side celebration. “Sexting or something?”
    Casey had a point. Or maybe an idea.
    * * *
    Cruz had to send a 750—to 1,000-word comprehensive narrative essay to the University of Washington by September 1 to have a prayer of beginning winter quarter. Flat on his ass four months ago, he hadn’t planned past his next physical therapy session. Now, assuming he didn’t develop heterotopic ossification bone growths, he’d finish outpatient therapy by the holidays. If he wanted to sit in a classroom near Grace instead of on his butt at home in Pateros, the transfer student application in front of him was the first hurdle.
    I spent ten great years around the world blowing things up and patching