Mess Hall Reunion

The neon sign outside the bar buzzed like it always did. I was wiping down the counter with a rag that had seen better days, thinking about the truck still parked out back. Fryer grease and desert dust. That's Elko for you.

It was a Tuesday, close to ten. Slow. The last few soldiers at the far end were nursing their drinks and arguing about something dumb. I'd just stacked the last of the clean glasses when the door swung open.

Dress greens.

I froze with the rag in my hand. Just stood there like an idiot, rag dripping onto the bar.

Stewart Lowenstein walked in like he owned the place. Three years since I'd seen him and the first thing I noticed was he'd filled out. He was a corporal when we met, twenty-four, all elbows. Now he was twenty-seven and looked like he could carry a refrigerator up a flight of stairs.

His eyes found me and stopped.

"Daniella."

"Stewart."

Great start. Really smooth.

He crossed the room and sat down right in front of me, of all the stools in the world. "You're tending bar at the annex now?"

"I cater. Off-site. They asked me to cover a shift tonight because their girl called out." I wrung out the rag. "What are you doing here? I thought you deployed."

"I did. Twice, actually. I'm on leave now. Stationed back at Fort Morrison."

Of course. Of course he was.

"So you're back," I said.

"For good, apparently. Sergeant now."

"Congratulations. You want a beer?"

"Sure. Whatever's on tap."

I poured it. My hands were steadier than I expected. I set it down and he wrapped his hand around it but didn't drink.

"You look good," he said.

"You look older."

"You're one to talk. How old are you now, thirty-four?"

"Thirty-four. And I knew that number before you did, sunshine."

He grinned. That grin. I hated that it still worked on me.

"We were good together," he said.

"We were okay together. Then you got on a plane."

"That wasn't my call and you know it."

"It was your call to not answer your phone for four months."

"I was in a place where answering phones wasn't really..." He trailed off and took a pull of his beer. "Okay, fair. I could've written more."

"You could've written at all."

He turned on the stool to face me. "You know what I remember about you? You always kept score."

"Somebody has to."

"That's the thing though. I've been thinking about you. Two years we dated and I still think about you. And I kept wondering if you'd even..." He waved a hand at me. "You know. Still think about me."

"You're a sergeant now. You should be better at asking questions you don't want answered."

"So you do."

"I didn't say that."

"You kind of did."

I threw the rag over my shoulder. "Listen, kid."

"I'm not a kid. I outrank most guys my age."

"You're still seven years younger than me, and at this point in my life that gap matters more than it did when I was thirty-one. Back then it was cute. Now you're a young man drinking in a bar and I'm a woman who smells like a catering truck."

"You don't smell like a truck."

"Thank you."

"You smell like onions and fryer grease, which is different."

"Oh my god."

"No, I mean it as a compliment," he said, laughing now. "Look, my point is, I bet you couldn't keep up with me anymore. That's all. Older guy stuff, you know? You'd probably want to be asleep by ten."

It's a stupid joke. It's the kind of joke a twenty-seven-year-old makes because he's nervous. But I heard myself before I could stop it.

"Chug your beer."

"What?"

"Chug it. We're leaving. I'll prove you wrong right now."

He blinked at me. "Wait, really?"

"You said I can't keep up. Either put up or shut up, sergeant."

He tipped the glass back and drained it in about four swallows. I grabbed my own bottle off the counter and matched him, which is how I ended up chugging a beer while three soldiers at the end of the bar whooped like it was a rodeo.

"Okay," he said, wiping his mouth. "My rental's out past the water tower. You following me or..."

"I'll follow. If I lose you I'm going home, so don't drive like an idiot."

"Yes ma'am."

"Don't ma'am me."

* * *

His rental was a little tan box of a house on the edge of town, brown lawn, one cactus in a pot by the door. Inside it was mostly boxes. He'd been back maybe three weeks.

"Nice place," I said.

"It's a place. Sit anywhere that isn't a box."

I sat on the arm of a couch that was clearly inherited from somebody's dead grandmother. He came in with two waters, which was smart of him, and handed me one.

"So," he said.

"So."

He sat down next to me, close. Close enough that I could feel the warmth coming off his arm.

"Here's my question," I said. "Is this a one-night reunion thing or are you trying to restart something? Because I need to know before we..."

"I'm asking for the real thing. If you'll have it."

"That's a big ask after how it ended."

"It is. I'm asking anyway."

I looked at him for a beat. "Okay. But we go slow, and I get to change my mind whenever I want."

"Deal. Can I kiss you?"

That he asked affected me, and I'm not going to analyze it here. "Yeah. You can."

He kissed me soft at first, then not soft. His hand came up to my jaw and I made a noise into his mouth that I'll deny in front of anyone. He walked me back against the couch arm and I pulled him down over me.

"God, you got big," I said against his neck.

"You got... same, actually. You look exactly the same."

"Flattery works on me, keep going."

He laughed into my collarbone. Then he pulled back and looked at me, dead serious, and I knew that face. I'd seen it three years ago right before he told me things he didn't want to tell me.

"What," I said.

"Nothing."

"Stewart. What."

"It's dumb."

"Tell me anyway."

He sat up a little, ran a hand over his face. "Okay. There's something I always wanted to try. With you. Back then. And I never asked because it felt like too much to ask, you know? And then you left and I figured, well, missed my window."

I sat up too. "What thing?"

"You're going to make me say it."

"Yeah, I'm going to make you say it."

He stared at the coffee table. "Anal. I always wanted to try anal. Giving, I mean. With you specifically. And I never asked because I didn't want you to think that's all I..." He shook his head. "Anyway. Dumb."

I was quiet for a second, doing math in my head, and not the arithmetic kind.

"Okay, here's my confession then," I said. "I've never done it. Not once. Thirty-four years old and never."

"That's not a confession, that's just information."

"It's a confession because here's the second part." I took a breath. "I've wanted to try it too. For a while now. Never found anyone I trusted enough to do it with. And there's something about the idea of being the first, and you being the first for me wanting it too, and..."

"You're rambling."

"I'm building to a point."

"Which is?"

"Which is yes. Obviously yes. But we do it my way. Slow, lots of..." I waved a hand vaguely. "Preparation. I've read things. I hold views about lube now, Stewart. I'm a woman with lube opinions."

He grinned again. "That might be the best sentence anyone's ever said to me."

"Don't get excited yet. There's conditions."

"Name them."

"One, you use protection, no arguments. Two, we take as long as it takes, and if I say stop, we stop. Not slow down, stop. Three..." I paused. "Three, this doesn't count as keeping up with you. This counts as me winning."

"Those are the worst conditions I've ever agreed to," he said, already reaching for my waist. "Where do you keep condoms? Please tell me you have some, because the moving boxes contain exactly zero condoms."

"In the truck. Out back. Give me five minutes."

"It's ten-fifteen."

"Then you'll wait five minutes, won't you."

I stood up off the couch and he watched me walk to the door. I'll admit I put a little extra in it. A woman my age learns to put a little extra in it.

"Don't fall asleep out there," he called.

"Keep dreaming, sergeant. Keep dreaming."

I jogged out to my catering truck, popped the glove box, and grabbed the box of condoms I kept there. Then I grabbed the good lube from the supply bin, because I was not about to start this with drugstore garbage.

The silicone stuff costs more. It also works. I've catered enough weddings to know when to spend.

He was standing in the doorway when I got back, shirt already off, and I stopped on the porch to look. Three years ago he was all collarbones and ribs. Now there was actual chest. Actual shoulders.

"Stop staring," he said.

"Absolutely not. Get inside."

The bedroom had a mattress on the floor and a lamp on a box marked KITCHEN. Romantic it was not. He took the condoms from me, set them by the lamp, and I handed him the lube bottle.

"Read the label," I said. "Silicone. Means no drying out halfway through, which matters, because I'm told this takes a while."

"Told by who?"

"The internet, mostly. And a bride at a wedding last summer who had entirely too much wine and zero filter." I started unbuttoning my shirt. "Point is, we're doing this properly. Slow. Fingers first. And I mean slow, Stewart, slower than you think."

"Got it."

"Do you? Because men always think they've got it and then it's like they're trying to catch a fly with chopsticks."

He laughed and sat down on the mattress. I got down to skin and laid back, and he stretched out next to me, warm, his hand flat on my stomach. He took his time. Kissed my neck, my collarbone, worked down. By the time his fingers slipped between my legs I was already breathing harder.

"Okay," I said. "Lube. Generous amount. Then one finger, just the tip, and hold it there. Let me get used to it."

He did what I said, which was new for him. He squeezed lube onto his fingers and warmed it between them first, which I hadn't even told him to do, and I decided right then that the Army had improved him.

"Ready?"

"Yeah. Go."

The tip of his finger pressed in, my whole body went tense.

"Stop there," I said. "Hold. Just... hold."

He held. His other hand kept moving slow circles on my hip and I breathed and told my muscles what to do. After a minute the tension drained out and it went from strange to just pressure. Then the pressure got interesting.

"Okay. A little more. Slow, slow... there. Now curl it, tiny bit. There's a..." He found it and I sucked in a breath. "Yeah. That. Right there. Don't jab it, just... pressure. Steady pressure."

"Like this?"

"Ohh. Yes. God, okay, you're a fast learner, I hate it."

"You love it."

"I love it, whatever. More lube. Second finger when I'm ready, and I'll tell you when."

He added lube and kept working and I floated there somewhere between nervous and desperate. It was a lot. It was also, I was discovering, extremely good in a way I did not have vocabulary for. He waited for my go-ahead before the second finger, and the stretch this time made me grab his wrist.

"Breathe," he said.

"I know how to breathe, I'm not a rookie at..." I breathed. "Okay. Okay, that's... give it a second."

He gave it a second. He kept his mouth busy on my neck the whole time, and the combination of his fingers and his teeth on my earlobe had me making sounds I'd charge money to hear again.

"More," I finally said. "Both fingers, deeper, and just... work them. Slow."

He worked them. My hips started moving without my permission.

"Condom," I said, louder than I meant to. "Now. Before I change my mind about the pacing."

He pulled his fingers out, wiped his hand on his boxers, and rolled the condom on while I watched. Then he settled between my legs and I reached down and guided him.

"Tip only. Slow. Slower than..." The head pressed in and I gasped. "Oh. Oh, that's..."

"That's good?"

"That's a lot. Don't move. Don't move, just..." I gripped his arms and breathed through it. The stretch burned for about ten seconds and then, like the fingers, it melted into something else. Fullness. Deep, thick fullness. "Okay. More. Slow, all the way, slow."

He fed it into me an inch at a time, watching my face the whole way, and when he was fully in I let out a sound that came from somewhere prehistoric.

"Holy shit," I said.

"Good holy shit or..."

"Good. Very good. Nobody told me it felt like being... just hold still a second, I'm having an experience."

He held still, shaking a little with the effort, and I honestly respected that. Then I rolled my hips, testing, and we both groaned.

"Okay. Move. Slow."

He moved. Long, careful strokes, almost all the way out and back in, and each one dragged across something inside me that made my toes curl. This was not like the other thing. This was a different geography entirely.

"Faster," I said after a while. "Still controlled, but faster."

He picked up the pace and I grabbed the sheet with one hand and the back of his head with the other.

"Harder. You can... yeah. Yeah, like that." My voice was coming out wrecked. "Hand. Hand between my legs, I need..."

His fingers found my clit and pressed, circling, and that was the missing piece. Full and rubbed at the same time. My whole body locked up.

"Don't stop, don't change anything, I'm..."

"Come for me," he said into my neck. "Come on, Daniella."

"Shut up, don't talk, ohh... ohh, fuck, fuuuck..."

It struck me the way a wave strikes a sandcastle. I gripped the sheets and swore, a long string of it, words that would've gotten me thrown out of my own bar, and he kept going through all of it, steady, until I pushed at his hip because my clit couldn't take another second.

He slowed, then stopped, still deep inside me.

"You okay?"

"I'm..." I was still seeing colors. "I'm fantastic. Keep going. Not the hand, but the rest. Harder now. I mean it."

He meant it too. He fucked me harder then, hips slapping mine, and I held on and made noises into the mattress. When he came he buried his face in my shoulder and groaned, long and low, and I felt him throb even through the condom.

He pulled out carefully and I felt weirdly empty. He dealt with the condom and came back and pulled me against his chest.

"So," he said.

"So."

"Verdict?"

"I'm going to need to run more trials. For science." I traced a finger along his ribs. "Also I'm never telling that bride she was right."

* * *

I woke up with my face in his armpit and sunlight coming through a window that had no curtains. Some things you don't plan, you just wake up in them. My leg was over his. His hand was on my hip.

"What time is it," he mumbled.

"Too early to care." I was thirty-four and had slept on a mattress on a floor and felt about nineteen, which was a sentence I kept to myself.

"I have to check in at the base by noon," he said. "But that leaves..."

"Leaves what?"

"Leaves time. If you wanted. Before your shift."

I laughed into his shoulder. "You're insatiable. You got laid eleven hours ago."

"And I've been lying here for twenty minutes trying to figure out how to ask for round two without sounding like a dog."

"And how's that going?"

"Terribly. I think I said barracks out loud."

I propped up on an elbow and looked at him. Here's what I figured out somewhere in that dark hour before morning. I'd spent three years thinking the age gap was this thing between us, this seven-year problem, this thing that made me the old one, the one who should've known better. And the whole time it lived exactly in my head and nowhere else. He never once made me feel thirty-four. He made me feel like Daniella, who was a lot.

"Hey," I said. "Last night, when I said this counts as me winning?"

"Yeah?"

"It does. I just wanted to say it again in daylight."

He grinned and pulled me on top of him. "You want to keep winning?"

"For about forty more minutes." I kissed him. "Then I've got a bar to cover and a truck full of guilt about my lube budget."

"Round two's on me. I'll bring more of that silicone stuff."

"You'd better. I have opinions."

The cactus by the door watched us go at it again, and I decided that was the rental house's problem, not mine. By eight I was showered and dressed and mostly human. He walked me out to the truck, still shirtless, and leaned in my window.

"Tomorrow. I'll find you."

"You better be. And Stewart?" He waited. "Bring lube. My treat next time."

I pulled out past the water tower with the windows down and Elko smelling like desert and fryer grease, and I caught myself grinning the whole way to work.