The Lieutenants' Online Love

Who was his closest friend? His platoon sergeant came to mind immediately. They worked together every day, aiming for the same goals. They relied on one another. But Sergeant First Class Lloyd was not someone who would catch a famous quote in conversation—or who would laugh about it if he did. Heck, the platoon sergeant couldn’t even call Thane by his first name. Thane was addressed as Lieutenant Carter or Sir. Sometimes LT, the abbreviation of lieutenant, or, if they were being really casual, Boss. That was it.

His company commander was another good man. More than a boss in the civilian sense of the word, but not a buddy. They shared some laughs, they were on the same page when it came to training and discipline, and they’d spent one Sunday in the field huddled over the same radio to get the playoff scores, because they cheered for the same NFL team. But the company commander was always the commander, with all the legal authority and responsibility that the position entailed. Thane was always Lieutenant Carter, no matter how many whiskeys they’d downed during officer-only dining-in events in the brigade.

Thane was pretty sure Ballerina Baby would expect him to call a close friend by his first name, at a minimum.

The only people at work who didn’t call him Lieutenant Carter were the other two platoon leaders. They were good guys. One was married, one was not. The married guy’s wife was named... Cecilia? Serena? Something with an s sound. If you couldn’t name a friend’s wife, he probably wouldn’t qualify as a close friend in Ballerina’s book. The other platoon leader was from Phoenix. Thane felt like he should get points for knowing that...okay, not a close friend. A friend, though. More than an acquaintance.

Laughter from the pool floated up to his balcony. Maybe he ought to care more that he didn’t have a friend at his own apartment complex.

He tried to put the ball back in Ballerina’s court. Do you have a real friend in real life?

Then he waited. She’d probably say yes. Jealousy reared its ugly green head again, and in that moment, he realized how selfish that was. His life didn’t allow him to make friends in a normal way. Military rules didn’t allow him to date any woman who interested him. Military schedules were demanding. Did he wish the same for Ballerina Baby? Just because he felt isolated, just because he felt lonely among the very same people whom he would willingly fight beside, that was no reason for him to wish the same for her. He wanted her to have it better.

Her reply was a question. You’re real, aren’t you, Drummer?

Poor Ballerina. She was the same as he, sharing all her emotions with a stranger through an app. It filled a need, for certain, but even she didn’t call him by his first name. No one called him by name.

Whose fault was that?

Thane looked at the pool party with new eyes. If he wanted someone in real life who would call him by name, then he should do something about it. He could start by putting on his board shorts and flip-flops, going down there and telling people his real name. “Hello, I’m Thane.” And that would be followed by...

What? Awkward small talk. He and Ballerina had moved past that quickly, months ago. He wasn’t the kind of guy who told jokes, but Ballerina answered his attempts at humor with her little pink Ha. That wouldn’t be happening in the group down there, people who were laughing between the barbecue grill and the keg of beer.

Thane Carter in apartment 601 left his balcony and shut the door against the Texas heat and the party noise.

I’m real, Baby, and I’m here for you.

* * *

Chloe Michaels in apartment 401 wriggled into a sitting position on the floor of her new living room, sitting up with her back against a moving box. She never took her eyes off her laptop screen.

I’m real, Baby, and I’m here for you.

She slid right down to the carpet again. Jeez. The most romantic words she ever heard weren’t spoken, but typed.

Drummer was the perfect man, and she was so glad to have him in her life. Normal or abnormal, she couldn’t help but spin fantasies about a man who was so open with her. Her latest was that he might be a billionaire, for example, so determined to find out who she was and where she lived that he’d buy the company that ran this pen pal app. Then he’d find her when she wasn’t expecting it. He’d stride up to her and say, “Hello, I’m Drummer. I wanted to meet you, touch you, kiss you and take you away from all this.”

Of course, even a billionaire couldn’t tell the US Army they didn’t own her for the next five years. She would stay a lieutenant no matter whom she met and fell in love with. Frankly, she wouldn’t want to go anywhere. She’d been sworn into the army as a new cadet just two weeks after she’d graduated from high school, and she’d been training ever since to be an officer. She wanted to do what she’d been trained to do.

She looked up from her laptop. Through her sliding glass door, past the edge of her little concrete balcony, she could see the swimming pool in the center of the complex. It was crowded. There’d been a flyer posted by the mailboxes about free burgers at the pool today. It looked like a full-on party to her.

This was where she lived now, and even if a billionaire named Different Drummer went to extremes to find her and then declared his undying love for her, she would not only stay a lieutenant, she would continue to be stationed right here in Texas. For years.

She ought to make friends here.

Drummer’s icon flashed, indicating he was typing. Her heart did a little happy flip. They could type back and forth like this for an hour or two or more. They’d done just that many times.

Ok, Miss John Wayne, you said you were burning daylight. Big plans?

Chloe looked out to the pool. She had no doubt she was typing to a real person, but he wasn’t a billionaire and he couldn’t come sweep her off her feet.

I’ve been invited to a party. I want to take a nap, but I think I should go.

Why?

We just established that we don’t have any close friends except each other. I love

Chloe stopped typing. She deleted the word love. They’d agreed that they were either normal or abnormal together. She didn’t want to cross that line from abnormal to freaky-girl-with-fantasies. She typed like.

I like our long chats. I would miss you, too, if we couldn’t write one another. But it wouldn’t hurt to have friends around here. I might need a ride to the airport, you know, or need to call someone to jump-start my car battery. I know you’d reach through the clutter of all these pink and blue letters to lend a hand if you could, but since you can’t, I ought to go to this party just to meet the people in my neighborhood. Could be a fireman or a postman in my neighborhood, you know? Right here on my very own street.

She hit Send. Good grief, she felt like she was cheating on the man, or at the very least suggesting to a boyfriend that they start seeing other people. She’d paraphrased what she could remember from an old song from Sesame Street, as if sounding like a cute child would soften her words. Abnormal was a mild term for her.

You should go. You’ll make friends fast, I know it.

Oh. Chloe blinked at her screen in surprise. He wanted her to sign off and go to the party. What had she expected? That he would beg her to stay by her computer and talk to him and only him this weekend? He hadn’t caught the reference to the children’s show, either. She felt lonelier than ever. She couldn’t exactly tell Drummer that she’d rather type to him than meet real people, even though it was true.

She wrote a different truth. I appreciate your vote of confidence in my ability to make friends, but I don’t go to many parties. I doubt I’ll make friends fast. I’m not really a “life of the party” kind of girl.

That was an understatement. While it seemed everyone else was pulling keggers at their civilian colleges, alcohol was forbidden in the barracks at West Point, and cadets weren’t free to come and go as they pleased on or off post. Cadets who were caught breaking those rules faced serious punishment, even expulsion. Ergo, her party experience was about four years behind the average twenty-two-year-old’s.

Drummer’s answer was kind. Anyone who quotes Sesame Street is sure to make friends. How could anyone not like a person like you?

She felt a pang in her chest. He’d gotten it. He got her. If only...

I wish I knew you’d be there. It would be so much easier to put myself out there and say hello to strangers if I knew, at some point as I worked my way through the room, I’d eventually end up next to you. I’d be so glad to see your friendly face, and we’d kind of huddle together in a corner and ignore everyone as we updated each other on who was who at the party. I’d tell you not to leave me alone with the guy who just spent ten minutes lecturing me on the virtues of colon cleanses, and you’d say “What? That wasn’t the start of a beautiful friendship?”

One swift, blue word: Casablanca.

LOL. Yes, and we’d spend the rest of the party hanging out together and talking only to each other, nonstop, and I’d be so glad I came.

Chloe looked at her little pink scenario fondly. A little sadly. This was an even better fantasy than the silly billionaire one, but neither one could come true.

If that’s what you want, Ballerina, then let’s do that. There’s an event I could go to today, too. We’ll find each other afterward, and tell each other who was who at our respective outings. I want you to have a friend to call if your car battery dies. I could use one, too, for that ride to the airport. Let’s do this together. Deal?

Chloe looked at the friendly blue words, happiness and sadness warring within her. He was the perfect guy and he’d come up with a perfect solution, but the bottom line was that they both needed to find someone perfect outside of this app.

If she went out, he’d go out. So, for his sake as well as her own, she started looking around her apartment for the box most likely to be hiding her bathing suit.

It’s a deal. Talk to you later.

Looking forward to it, Baby.

Chapter Three

Life was better than she’d expected it to be.

The realization hit Chloe as she stood on her third-story balcony, performing a recon on the party down below. The Central Texas landscape was brown and sparse when she looked in between the identical buildings toward the horizon, but if she looked down, she saw a sparkling blue swimming pool. It was fall, but this was Texas, and there was plenty of warmth and sun to be had. Maybe Central Texas was more desert than tropical, but the whole apartment complex felt like a resort hotel to her.

Life had been pretty Spartan for the past four years. Room assignments at West Point had changed every semester; she’d had no choice but to move from one end of the same barracks hallway to the other, again and again and again. She’d always had a roommate, and they’d always slept in their assigned twin beds in alphabetical order. When she roomed with Schweitzer, Chloe Michaels slept on the left side of the room, because Michaels outranked Schweitzer alphabetically. When she roomed with Chavez, she slept on the right, but always, no matter which semester and no matter what her rank, she slept on a twin bed made up with a gray wool blanket that was stretched taut and tucked tightly into hospital corners, every single day for four years.

After graduation, the Basic Officer Leadership Course had housed her in the BOQ, the Bachelor Officer Quarters, at Fort Leonard Wood. The mini-apartment had seemed like a luxury despite being furnished in institutional army style with a vinyl couch and a chunky, square coffee table that had survived a whole lot of boots resting on it. Once more, she’d had an assigned roommate, but they’d had an actual kitchen. No more eating whatever was served in the mess hall three times a day. Even better, she’d had a bedroom with only one twin bed in it and a door that closed for privacy. That was a real luxury.

But now...

Chloe surveyed her new world. The complex had been built fairly recently, so everything was current, from the fresh paint on the buildings to the fresh carpet in her apartment. It wasn’t a long drive to post, and while there were cheaper places to live, this apartment was still in her budget. She didn’t need a roommate to split costs. She had the whole place to herself.

But the biggest luxury of all was this: the army hadn’t told her to live here. She could live anywhere she wanted to, as long as she showed up for duty. She’d visited five different apartment complexes. She’d chosen this place, Two Rivers Apartments. That was more than a luxury. That was freedom.

How strange—how intoxicating—to realize she’d never have to stand at attention during a room inspection again. She’d crossed a finish line in a race she’d been running since the day she’d graduated from high school. This was it. This was the view from the winner’s circle, a blue pool that she could swim in if she wanted to, or ignore altogether. Freedom.

She went inside, making a beeline for her laptop, an automatic reflex to share her joy with Drummer, before she remembered that he wasn’t online. He was at an event. She was supposed to go to a pool party and make a friend, someone who was not him. Someone who was not whom she really wanted to be talking to. Her pleasure dimmed a little bit, but she was going to keep her word and go, and then she was going to cozy up with Drummer later and tell him all about it.

She closed her laptop and headed down the stairs. The flip-flops that left her toes bare and the sundress that left her shoulders bare felt exotic. Her hair swished over her shoulders with each step and tickled her cheek. As a cadet, she’d only had an hour or two each night before taps when, if she stayed in her barracks room to study, she could let her hair down. At BOLC, she’d been able to wear it down when she was in civilian clothes, which had been most weekends. Now, she intended to pin it up only when she was at work. Luxury. Freedom. Control over her own hair.

There was music coming from the pool. She could smell burgers on the grill. Those were things she’d be able to put into words when she wrote to Drummer tonight. But she didn’t know how to describe the change in her life, this payoff for years of hard work, for years of voluntarily subjecting herself to strict rules and a demanding regimen, all with the hope that someday, she would be done and it would all have been worth it.

Someday was today.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life. That quote would do, but she didn’t know who’d said it or in which book or movie.

I’m saying it.

Yes, she was. She’d arrived at the party—figuratively and literally. Chloe opened the gate to walk onto the white concrete pool decking. Life was good and it was only going to get better.

And that was when she saw...him.

* * *

Their eyes met across a crowded pool deck.

Thane had never seen her before. He would have remembered if she’d gotten out of a car in the parking lot or checked her mail in the stairwell. Her hair was long but not too long. Brown but not very dark, almost blond in the sunlight. She was tall-ish. And since they were staring at each other a moment too long, he could tell from this side of the pool that her eyes were as dark as his were light. She’d come through that gate smiling, like she was eager to be here, and that smile never dimmed as their gazes met and held.

He liked the way she looked.

Then the moment was over because she turned away to claim a chair, kicking off her flip-flops underneath it. She shook off a small case that dangled from her wrist by a strap and let it drop on the seat of the chair. It looked like a wallet. Thane’s law enforcement training automatically calculated the odds for a theft. She shouldn’t leave it sitting on a chair in plain view, even though this was hardly a high-crime area.

The apartment rent was just a little more than his monthly military housing allowance, an amount that increased as a soldier’s rank increased. Everyone here could afford about the same apartment, which meant everyone here was about the same rank, first or second lieutenants, a few bachelor captains, and a handful of mid-career sergeants whose allowances were equal to a new lieutenant’s. Not a hotbed of thieves, in Thane’s professional police opinion, but still, she shouldn’t leave a wallet out in plain sight like that.

She kept her back to him as she pulled off her sundress over her head. She wore a bikini underneath, but it was the sport kind like the female competitors wore on TV in beach volleyball or Ironman competitions. The suit suited her, so to speak. She wasn’t just slender, she was toned, the muscles in her arms and legs tight—nicely firm backside, too. He fully appreciated the sight of a physically fit woman baring an acre of smooth skin to the sun. Whoever had come up with the idea for a pool party was a genius.

She rolled her wallet up in the dress and tucked it in with her shoes underneath the chair, out of sight. Beauty, athleticism, common sense—he’d definitely never seen her around here before. Which meant the odds were that she was someone’s guest, which sucked, because the apartment residents were mostly male, so the odds were that she was here as some other man’s guest.

Or maybe not. She peeked to see if he was still there, a millisecond of a glance, before she pretended she wasn’t aware of him and studiously looked toward the barbecue crowd instead. The smile still lingered on her lips.

I’m still here, beautiful. It’s okay to be interested in me. I’m interested in you.

Thane tore his eyes away from that smile to look where she was looking. None of the men around the grill seemed to be searching for his girlfriend. Be single, be single. This could be the start of a beautiful friendship.

Casablanca—in a flash, Thane thought of Ballerina and felt...guilty. Like he was cheating on her, which was ridiculous. They’d agreed they needed real-life friends and were both going out today to try to meet some. Instead, in had walked this beautiful woman, and his mind had chucked the friend quest far away and pulled the idea of a girlfriend close. That was fine, though. There was no reason in the world why he couldn’t find a real-life girlfriend. After all, a girlfriend could jump-start a car or give him a lift to the airport and do all those things a pen pal couldn’t do.

The woman—the very real woman—slid her hand under her hair and lifted it from the back of her neck for a moment. Then she let it go again, all that feminine hair falling over all that bare skin.

Thane looked away and took a deeper breath, a little extra oxygen to keep his thoughts from going haywire. But there was no doubt his thoughts were heading toward a whole new category of things that a pen pal couldn’t do.

“How about those Cowboys?”

One of the mailbox guys called the question to him while working the tap of a keg, filling a red Solo cup with beer. He held up one that was already full and nodded toward Thane with that look that said, Do you want one?

Thane took it from him with a nod of thanks. “I think the Cowboys will take the Packers tomorrow. You back from a deployment?”

“Yeah.” His neighbor shrugged.

“Thought so,” Thane answered. “Hadn’t seen you around in a while.”

His neighbor lifted his now-full beer in a bit of a toast, then sauntered away from the keg as Thane took a step in the other direction.

That was it, the complete guy conversation. Same as always.

It reminded Thane why he was here. He headed around the edge of the pool, walking with a purpose to get to the other side. He wanted someone to call him by his first name, and he knew exactly which person he wanted that to be.

“Chloe!”

And...damn it. There was the man she must have been looking for. Thane slowed his steps and took in the scene. The beautiful woman, Chloe, hugged the shirtless man who’d just run up to her with all the eagerness of a golden retriever.

Okay, so Thane wasn’t feeling too kind. The man slobbering for her attention was probably just a couple of years younger than Thane, and probably an officer, too. But that man had something Thane didn’t. He apparently had the affection of one woman named Chloe, whose smile for him was open, unrestrained. Dazzling.

Thane walked around the edge of the pool to her side. He was at the farthest corner from her, but even from this distance, that smile was everything. Some guys were breast men and some were into legs, and while Thane was all in favor of all of that, it was Chloe’s smile that really knocked his socks off. It was happiness. Who could resist happiness?

Apparently not the men around this pool. Two more men left the grill and hugged Chloe. She was surrounded. The guys all looked the same. Everyone had a military haircut, everyone was physically fit, no one was younger than twenty-one and no one had reached thirty yet. Only Chloe was special. Thane couldn’t take his eyes off her.

He didn’t think she was in the military. She had the fitness thing going on, but there was something about her bearing...

She was too relaxed. In the eight years since he’d first enlisted, he’d come to realize that military life tended to make soldiers feel like they were stealing moments of fun or relaxation between deployments or missions or shifts, which was how he felt because it was indeed what he was doing. This woman looked like she had time, like she was where she wanted to be and enjoying it.

Maybe she was a local. She could be a yoga instructor, all smooth muscle and Zen contentment, the polar opposite of him and his career.

The guys around her talked over one another, laughing and gesturing. Chloe was laughing with them, but this didn’t look like a boyfriend introducing his girlfriend to his pals. This looked like a reunion of people who were surprised to find each other here. Long-lost college buddies, maybe. That kind of thing happened in an army town all the time. Paths crossed unexpectedly with so many people coming and going as assignments began and ended.

She glanced his way and did a subtle double take when she saw that he was walking directly toward her. She didn’t look away. Neither did he.

Another man came running up behind her, full speed. She started to turn with an elbow raised in a defensive move but the man plowed into her, wrapped his arms around her in a bear hug and let his momentum carry them off the edge of the pool to plunge into the water.

Idiot.

Thane didn’t know a woman alive who appreciated getting thrown into a pool without warning. That fabulous smile of hers was going to be gone.

They popped up a couple of feet apart.

“Idiot,” Chloe said.

Exactly.

But then Chloe broke into laughter. “You are so, so lucky you still have all your teeth, Keith. I was about to clock you with my elbow when I realized it was you. You better be grateful I’ve got ninja-like mastery of my ninja-like reflexes.” They exchanged trash-talking banter until Chloe hoisted herself out of the pool.

Okay, she didn’t sound like a Zen yogini. She’d gotten in some good zingers, though. Now she sat on the edge, her hair a waterfall down her back, her feet still in the pool. “I don’t suppose any of you guys brought a towel? I don’t have one. I wasn’t planning on going in.”

“Me, neither,” said one of the dry guys. “Sorry.”

“The sun’s out,” said another dry guy. “You’ll be fine.”

“Hey, the keg’s been tapped.” The tackling guy hauled himself out of the pool and headed over to the keg, dripping wet.

College buddies, for sure. If any one of them wanted to try to become more, he’d best get his act together. Thane wasn’t going to hang back and wait for the pack of golden retrievers to grow up and man up.