Page 28 of Desire
Chapter Eight
DANTE
Dante sauntered into Salty Pete’s Seafood Shack, a weathered clapboard building nestled against the rocky Connecticut shoreline. Mismatched fishing nets and rusted lobster traps adorned the walls, lending an air of faded maritime charm. He inhaled deeply, savoring the briny scent of fresh seafood mingling with the tang of malt vinegar.
“Brown ale,” Dante ordered from the bar, and then walked into the restaurant area.
Joey slouched in a corner booth, nursing a frosty mug of beer. Dante slid in across from him.
“Glad to have you back on home turf.” Dante raised his own mug, clinking it against Joey’s with a dull thud. “Place hasn’t changed a bit, has it?”
A wry smile twisted Joey’s lips. “Nah, except I’m pretty sure these red vinyl seats have petrified since we were bussing tables.”
They both chuckled, a comfortable familiarity settling between them as Dante flagged down a frazzled waitress to put in their usual order. Two lobster rolls, piled high with tender chunks of meat drenched in butter and nestled in toasted split-top buns. A basket of golden fries and coleslaw would round out the spread.
As they dug into the feast, Dante studied Joey’s face, noting new lines etched around his eyes and mouth. A world-weariness that hadn’t been there the last time they’d had a beer and lobster dogs. “So, what’s Uncle Sam have you doing nowadays?” he asked.
“Ah, you know, just doing my duty,” Joey replied dismissively, taking a large bite of his lobster dog to avoid further elaboration.
“Last I heard from you, you sent me some pictures of you lounging in a hut on Bali.”
Joey snorted. “Yeah, it’s like that every day of the week. Hot showers, feather pillows, the whole nine.” His voice dripped with sarcasm, but there was an undercurrent of something else. An unspoken weight that seemed to lay heavy on him.
“Seriously, though. Is everything all right?”
Joey cut him off with a sharp shake of his head. “It’s nothing, man. Just the usual bullshit, you know?” A haunted look flickered across Joey’s face. The kind of bone-deep regret Dante knew would gnaw at a man, stealing sleep and infecting waking moments.
“Whatever went down, you can’t keep that shit locked up. It’ll eat you alive,” Dante said.
“I’m fine.”
But as they polished off the last of the food, Joey met Dante’s gaze, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “I’m not fine.”
Dante waited. He knew Joey was struggling to find words.
When Joey finally spoke, his voice was hoarse. “There was an incident a few months back.” The words were clipped, stripped bare. “Intel was off. Things got messy real fast.” Joey’s throat bobbed as he swallowed hard.
The unadorned agony in Joey’s voice made Dante reach out and grip his forearm, trying to anchor him. Something in Joey’s haunted gaze seemed to fracture then. His chin gave the barest wobble before the floodgates burst open. “Aw hell, Dante...” He scrubbed a hand over his face, smearing away the veneer he’d been struggling to maintain. “This last tour...I saw some shit, man. Stuff that keeps me up at night, staring at the ceiling while the screams just loop over and over in my head.”
Dante squeezed Joey’s arm, silently urging him to continue. To let the poison out after carrying it alone for too long.
“You remember that convoy that got hit outside Kandahar few months back? The one with all the civilian casualties?” Joey swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Well, I was the one calling in the airstrike after we took heavy fire.”
The words kept spilling out in a ragged torrent—the chaos of the ambush, the fog of gun smoke and adrenaline, the panicked radio calls for close air support as casualties mounted. How Joey had relied on the limited grid coordinates, authorizing the strike without realizing the target area also contained a clutch of village homes with families trapped inside.
“And when the smoke cleared...” Joey’s shoulders slumped, his hollow voice reverberating with defeat. “There were just bodies. Burnt, twisted remains of people who never stood a chance.”
Dante could only listen, his throat constricted, as the horrific scene unfolded. He searched for something—anything—to say to absolve the lifelong friend sitting across from him. But no platitudes could undo such haunting trauma.
“I know the rules of engagement. I know the score.” Joey’s laugh was a broken, bitter rasp. “But tell that to the nightmares, man. They don’t care about the damn rules.”
Dante listened intently, but the weight of his friend’s suffering began to press down on him as well. A darkness crept into his heart, threatening to consume him, but he fought against it for Joey’s sake.
“I had to make a call. And now...now I’ve got to live with it.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do. We’ll get you through it. One day at a goddamn time. Don’t you dare carry that alone. Not while I’m still breathing.”
A ghost of a smile flickered at the corner of Joey’s mouth, faint but unmistakable. He took a long pull from his beer, his gaze distant as he stared out at the churning waves visible through the smudged windowpane.