The Leave Pass

I was sitting in the diner off Route 9 doing what I always did on Thursdays, which was eating a grilled cheese and ignoring my phone, when the bell over the door went off and I looked up out of habit.

Denae. I knew it was her before my brain caught up. She'd filled out since college, and her hair was short now, cut close on the sides, but the way she carried her shoulders was the same. She was in civilian clothes, jeans and a green jacket, and she was scanning the room like she was counting exits.

She spotted me about two seconds later. Her face did a thing. Then she walked over.

"Angelica? Angelica Santos?"

"Oh my god, Denae!" I stood up halfway because standing up felt like the thing to do. "Hi. Hey. Wow!"

"Can I?" She put a hand on the back of the booth seat.

"Yes, sit, sit. Please!"

She slid in across from me and set her keys on the table. "You look good. You look really good."

"So do you. You look..." I waved a hand at her. "Different. Good different."

"I cut it off in the spring." She ran a hand over the side of her head. "Easier."

"When did you get back? I mean, are you back?"

"Leave. Ten days. I'm at the base up past Ridgeview, been there almost three years now." The waitress came by and Denae ordered coffee and a piece of pie like she'd been doing it her whole life here. "You still around?"

"Six years now. I'm a therapist. I've got an office two blocks from here, actually. And a little apartment out back of my house, converted garage."

"A therapist." She smiled. "You were the one everyone came to with their problems on our floor. Guess it tracked."

"You were the one everyone came to when they wanted somebody told off."

"That also tracked." She thanked the waitress for the coffee, stirred in sugar, didn't touch it. "So. Married? Kids?"

"Divorced, actually. Six months ago. No kids."

"Sorry."

"Don't be, it was time. He's a decent guy and we were bad together." I took a bite of grilled cheese so I had something to do. "You?"

"Thad. Two and a half years. He's on leave too, same window as me. He's up at the rental getting groceries right now."

"Must be nice, same leave dates."

"That's the whole trick of dating in the same unit. Nobody fights about whose holiday it is." She finally drank her coffee. "Listen. This is going to come out weird no matter how I say it, so I'm just going to say it."

"Okay."

"I'm having a small thing at my place tonight. Me and Thad and one guy from his squad, Avi. And I'd like you to come. Sevenish. It's nothing formal. There will be beer and probably nothing to eat because Thad buys groceries like a raccoon."

"That's... actually not weird at all. That's just an invitation."

"Yeah, well, wait till later, it gets weirder." She grinned and ate a bite of pie. "Are you in?"

"I'm in. Address?"

She wrote it on a napkin, printed, like a military thing. "It's the blue duplex off Harker. Bring nothing."

***

I changed clothes three times, which was ridiculous, and settled on jeans and the black sweater I'd bought during the divorce as some kind of statement about who I was becoming. At six fifty-five I parked in front of the blue duplex. There was a truck and a little silver hatchback in the drive.

Denae answered the door before I knocked.

"You wore the sweater," she said.

"You don't know this sweater."

"I know a good sweater." She pulled me in and hugged me, and she smelled like cedar and something warm underneath. "Come on, everybody's out back."

The rental was half furnished, boxes stacked along one wall, a couch that had clearly been bought new for the deployment and never broken in. In the kitchen two men looked up. The taller one had a beard and Thad written all over him, and he put down the dish towel he was holding.

"You're the college friend," he said. "She texted me a one-line summary from the diner and then called back to say it again."

"Thad." Denae said it like a warning.

"That's a good talk, or a bad talk?"

"Good talk," Denae said, and Thad looked pleased about that.

The younger one was sitting on the counter with a beer. Sandy hair, big hands, a little nervous around the eyes. He hopped down and stuck out his hand.

"Avi. Hi. Twenty-five, by the way, not that you asked, Denae just keeps saying it like it matters."

"Avi," Denae said, exasperated.

"What? It's a fact. I'm twenty-five, I'm allowed to state it."

"Angelica," I said, shaking his hand. "Twenty-nine. See, now we all know."

"See?" Avi said to Denae. "She did it too."

I liked him immediately.

Thad opened a beer for me and we ended up at the little table, because the back porch was cold and nobody wanted to go get chairs. Denae sat next to me. Thad sat next to her. Avi sat across and ate most of a bag of chips.

"So how long have you two been together?" I asked.

"Two and a half years," Thad said. "We met on post. She corrected my paperwork and I fell in love immediately."

"She corrected your paperwork?"

"I had a form wrong and she fixed it without asking, and I thought, that's the person. That's the one."

"That's the least romantic proposal story I've ever heard," Denae said.

"You married a guy for his cooking?"

"I didn't marry anyone," Denae said. "That's the point of me."

"I'm single too," Thad said, which made no sense, and he and Denae looked at each other and laughed like it was an old joke.

"We're open," Denae said. "Not open in a vague way. Open. We've been that way the whole time. It works for us."

"Okay," I said, because what do you say, and drank my beer.

"And I'm single," Avi said, raising his hand like he was at a meeting. "Very single. Historically single."

"Historically?" I asked.

"Two years in the same unit as these two, zero dates. There's a lot of men. It's a lot of men out there."

"So it's four singles around a table," Thad said, "which is a nice number."

"It's a fine number," Denae said.

"It's a good number," Thad said.

I looked at Denae. She was watching me with an expression I remembered from a night junior year when she'd dared me to climb onto the dorm roof and I'd actually done it.

"Okay," I said slowly. "What's the weird part? You said it gets weirder later. It's later."

Denae turned her beer bottle a quarter turn on the table. "The weird part is the kind of thing I'm asking for tonight is more than cards and beer. Thad and I have talked about having a night like this with people we actually like and trust, and that's a short list, and you're on it, and Avi's on it, and everybody at this table is a grown adult who can say no whenever they want to, all night, about anything."

The kitchen got very quiet. Avi stopped chewing.

"So it's a four-person thing," I said. "Or a three-person thing. Or a two-person thing. Whatever anyone wants it to be."

"Exactly," Denae said. "Nobody's pushing anything. I'd rather ask plain and get a real answer than steer you in sideways."

"And if I say I'm intrigued but I want another beer first?"

"Then you get another beer," Thad said, already getting up to get one.

Avi cleared his throat. "For the record, I was not told the exact shape of tonight either. I was told 'come over, bring the good chips.' So we're all learning things together."

"You were told," Denae said.

"I was told vibes, Denae. Vibes is not details."

Thad put a fresh beer in front of me and leaned on the counter. "Take your time. Seriously. It only works if everybody's actually into it, and we've got all night. Nobody's going anywhere."

I looked around the table. Denae, who I'd wondered about for eight years and never said a word about. Thad, who was easy to like in about four minutes. Avi, who'd announced his age to a stranger for no reason.

"I'm intrigued," I said. "Fully. Just, talk to me while I catch up. All of you. I want to know who I'm here with."

Denae smiled and knocked her bottle gently against mine. "Deal."

***

We talked for another hour or so, over water and one more beer apiece at most, about the base and my practice and the dorm roof, until I knew exactly who I was saying yes to and that I was clear-headed enough to say it.

"Okay," Denae said, standing up. "Come here."

I got up. My legs felt strange, like I'd been sitting too long at the airport. She took my beer out of my hand and set it on the counter, and then she put her hand on my jaw, just resting it there.

"Can I kiss you?" she asked.

"God, yes."

She kissed me slow, and I mean slow, the kind of slow that made me forget there were two other men in the kitchen. Her mouth was warm and she tasted like the beer and she made a small sound against me that I felt in my own chest. My hands found the back of her jacket and held on.

"Well," Thad said from the counter, but he said it kindly, not like a joke.

We broke apart. I was breathing like I'd climbed something.

"Eight years," I said.

"I know," Denae said. "You should've climbed onto the roof more often."

"You dared me to climb the roof, not to do this."

"Same energy though."

And then Avi's hand was on my knee. Just resting there, his big hand warm through my jeans. I looked at him.

"Is this okay?" he asked. "I can take it back."

"You can keep it," I said. "You can also kiss me, if you want. You don't have to build up to it like it's a permit process."

"I like permits," he said, but he leaned in and kissed me anyway, quicker than Denae, still careful, one hand on my knee and the other not sure where it was going until Denae reached over and moved it to my waist for him.

"There," she said. "See? Teamwork."

Thad came around the table and put a hand on