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“How do you know him? Shay said you were friends, and he mentioned you saved his life.” A thought occurred to her and her eyes drifted to the chair he was in.
“I took a bullet to the base of my spine. It was intended for Orlando and I stupidly stepped right in front of it. Where he would have only ended up with a knee shot out, I got hit right where my lumbar spine meets the sacrum. I saw the light from the sniper bead and tried to shove him out of the way. It was a dumb move and cost me the use of my legs.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not as sorry as I am.” He said sadly. “This, the loss of the use of my legs and the recovery delayed me being able to come to you.”
“You knew of me for the last seventeen years. Why?” she knew she was being accusatory.
He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed, “I will tell you everything. I have so many regrets, Zorah.”
“Orlando asked me to keep an open mind, and I will, but I think I deserve the truth.”
“First, my name is Chester Frye. I am thirty-eight and I am so incredibly pleased to meet you.” His smile was genuine as Zorah smiled back. “I met your mother when I was going through a particularly troubled time in my life. My mother passed away when I was young, and I was fortunate enough my Dad remarried a nice lady, and I got an older sister out of the deal. They are great but then my grandmother, my mother’s mom, passed away. She was my last connection to my mom, and I really struggled with her death. My mom had her eyes and when I looked at Granny, I always felt a little like I was looking at my mom.” He was quietly reflective. “I started down a path of feeling sorry for myself and being an ungrateful shit. I was hanging with the wrong crowd, drinking, smoking pot and doing all the things kids shouldn’t be doing. All which was left was sex to explore. Your mom was in my homeroom and four other classes, and we sat together. She started hanging out with us, sitting with us at lunch and coming to the mall with us. We studied together a lot, and she was at my house more than she was at her own because we were doing a science project, and I tutored her in math. Although we never actually used the words boyfriend and girlfriend, I thought it was what we were.”
“I can’t picture my mom being a typical teenager,” Zorah admitted quietly.
“Well, she was, we all were.” He shrugged. “Then one Thursday afternoon after school instead of studying, we ended up being intimate. It was the first time for both of us. I was so in love with her,” he gave a chuckle. “The next night we all went to a house party, and I overheard two of her friends saying how she was only using me to get closer to my rich friend and how it must have worked since Zipporah was in the bathroom with him. I kicked the bathroom door open and sure enough, they were going at it on the vanity.”
“Did you beat him up?”
“Worse. I cried and begged her to stop and explain. He simply carried her into another room, and they finished what they started. I left with my heart broken. At school for the next two or three weeks, they made a big show of their affection, to the point they were called to the office more than once for actually having sex in public spaces. His father paid everyone off, so they never really were punished. The bullying over me crying at the party got bad and Dad pulled me from my school and transferred me to a private school. The school enforced counselling and a zero tolerance for bullying. In six months, I made new friends, was no longer depressed and suicidal and I left that part of my life behind. I’d heard the rumors of how your mom was pregnant and how he denied being the baby’s father and I can’t lie, I laughed and said it was karma. It kind of made me happy at the time to know she was suffering a bit after what she did to me. It haunted me later when I knew the truth.”
“I imagine I would feel the same,” Zorah couldn’t deny it.
“After graduation, we enlisted. My grandfather, Dad’s dad was a Navy man. My Dad served in the reserves. It felt right. The three of us, me, Dane, and Orlando, we’re extremely competitive, always trying to outdo one another physically. I might be stuck in this chair, but I can still bench more than Dane,” he gave a laugh at Zorah’s giggle. “Since we were always outdoing one another in training, after our first at sea mission, we were asked if we wanted to do the SEAL training. We egged each other on and we got through it together.”
“Sounds like you had a good circle of friends.”
“The best,” he agreed. “Still do. We became incredibly specialized in our team. They were using us for operations which frankly if we got caught, we likely would have been shot on sight but damned we were good. Our missions were long. We came back from a year long tour and my sister and parents sat me down and told me they thought you were my daughter.”
Zorah clenched her hands around the mug of coffee and took a nervous sip.
“I denied it. I said there was absolutely no way the kid was mine when I knew they were having sex all over the school for weeks after the one time we did it. See, my first time I barely lasted a minute, Zorah and in my head, there was absolutely no way what we did for a few quick minutes on a Thursday afternoon could outweigh all the stuff they were doing.”
“They were doing it in the school?” Suddenly Zorah was understanding why her uncle judged her mom so hard.
“He was purposefully targeting me, for what I’ll never know, but if I was in a swim meet, they would be doing it on the bench in the change room beside my locker. If I was working on a science lab project, they would do it loudly in the supplies closet in the lab. I went to the library, they did it against the stacks behind my study table. Constantly, they were having sex, getting caught and laughing all the way to the office. Your mom swore to me she was on the pill. Surely, since what she and I did lasted seconds, what they were doing over the course of weeks was the cause. I refused to go with my sister to church to see you. I got called on another mission, despite us supposed to be on a six month leave and I left.”
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