Chapter 9

The following day at school, Tyler stopped by the principal’s office first thing. When he was waved in, he said, “I just wanted to thank you personally, Mr. Thomas.”

The principal didn’t frown, but he did look curious. He said, “I’m unsure what you’re thanking me for. It was the superintendent and the school board who decided to lift your suspension, though I did recommend they do so.”

“Oh, not for that, sir.” Tyler pointed to the wall where a document hung. “I knew a little about your history. I was confident a retired Commander would understand honor, but I wanted to thank you for making sure everyone else was thinking about it. A few people told me yesterday that they think the students are standing taller, if you will, since you told them that honor was still important.”

The principal smiled. “I’m happy to hear that, and that you would take the time to bring it to my attention. I know we haven’t spoken much, so you can imagine that I took an interest in the student who caused such a stir, and I asked around a little.”

After a moment’s pause, he said, “Tyler, I knew your grandfather.” Tyler’s eyes widened in surprise, then the principal went on, “I didn’t know him that well, I had just graduated ROTC, and he was already a Lieutenant Commander and up for promotion. He taught a course that I took on naval task force strategy and seemed very sharp. Scuttlebutt was that he was destined to make Captain. I’m sorry he didn’t get the chance. Still, if you know honor in the same way that he did, we’ll get along fine. But please, no more fighting.”

“Wow. Thank you for sharing that, sir. I promise I’ll do my best to not get into any more fights.”

“Good enough, Mr. Jensen. Now you need to get to your first class.”

Later that day, he saw Coach Johnson and thanked him for his assistance and for putting citizenship first. Overall, Tyler liked the school a lot and this latest was a good example of why.

After dropping Tyler at home to finish catching up, Carol drove Naomi to the clinic. She was both apprehensive and excited about Naomi’s appointment. She understood Naomi would have some discomfort due to the procedure, so she was worried for her girlfriend. On the other hand, she knew that Naomi would soon be safe from pregnancy — there’d be no repeats of the previous day’s embarrassing scene. Naomi had specifically asked for a non-hormonal IUD, which would be effective immediately, though she’d said she was unlikely to be feeling frisky for a couple of days.

As they pulled up to the clinic, Naomi said, “I’m so excited! A couple of months ago, I didn’t imagine I’d ever need this, and now I’m counting the days until we can both make love to our boyfriend.”

“I just wish this was going to be painless for you, love,” Carol said. “Please promise that you’ll let us know if there’s anything we can do for you while your body adjusts.”

“I promise. I’ve done the suffer-in-silence thing before, but it wouldn’t be fair to two people who love me so much to do it anymore.”

The clinic was crowded and, as usual for an afternoon appointment, they were running a bit behind, but the delay wasn’t too bad, and before five o’clock she was helping Naomi into the car.

“They suggested vitamin ‘I’ for the discomfort, so I took some before I left school, and wow! I’m glad I did.”

“Vitamin ‘I’?”

“Ibuprofen, silly,” Naomi said with a smile. “It’s what I normally turn to for pain, as it does more for me than aspirin or acetaminophen. Given how I feel now, this would have been very uncomfortable without that prophylactic dose. I wonder if the extra the doctor did to make my hymen less of an obstacle is adding to the issues.”

Carol rolled her eyes at Naomi’s wording. “I love you, little girl, but how many people would have called a painkiller taken in anticipation a prophylactic? OK, how many people other than a doctor?”

Her girlfriend just grinned in response.

Before taking Naomi home to her apartment, she swung by the house so Tyler would have a chance to give their now protected girlfriend a kiss and some commiseration. She wanted to stay with Naomi once she got her home, but she asked her to go back and comfort their boyfriend while she took a nap.

At home, she and Tyler shared the downstairs’ sofa and studied for a while. Their parents were out again that night, so they ate a quiet meal together and went back downstairs. Once there, he surprised her.

“This is going to sound strange, sis, but how are your breasts feeling?”

Her breasts? “You’re right, it does sound a little strange, or it would coming from someone else. They’re fine now. That’s only usually a problem before and for the first day of my period.”

“I feel rotten that I didn’t have the chance to do anything for either of you, yesterday, so I was hoping to have a chance to help you feel as good as I can right now, even though you’re on your period.”

She caught herself before she said something silly. Of course, he already knew he didn’t have to do something for her — he wanted to. Who was she to deny him his fun! “I’d love that, Ty.” She hugged him for a moment, before kissing him and settling back to enjoy his attentions.

He smiled, then spent the next ten minutes kissing, stroking, licking and nibbling — all before he finally took off her T-shirt and bra. Her breath was ragged and a warm glow was building down lower. Then he startled her when he popped the snap on her jeans, unzipped them and carefully tugged them down a little. She didn’t know what he planned, but she trusted him not to do anything too nasty. Instead of worrying about it, she concentrated on enjoying herself.

He went back to what he was doing before, kissing her neck and stroking his hand down over her collarbone to her breasts. Now that they were uncovered, he traced around her nipples and gently palmed and lifted her breasts, almost like he was weighing them, not that she had that much to weigh. As he started kissing and licking downward again, his hand trailed down across her stomach to her waist, stroking and rubbing along the way.

The feel of his mouth gently sucking on her left breast caused her breath to catch for a moment, then he very gently raked his teeth across it before giving her nipple some additional attention. While she was distracted by that, he started stroking his fingers over her panties, not going low enough to put her off, but far enough to catch her clit and send waves of pleasure to her center. She felt the buildup that always preceded her orgasm, felt it climbing toward that point of near-inevitability, when he suddenly lightly nipped her nipple while firmly pressing and rubbing her clit through her panties. That was all it took — the orgasm wasn’t earth-shattering, but instead matched the pleasant release and glow that she’d given herself so many times since she discovered how much fun it was.

In the afterglow, she hugged and kissed him, then said, “Damn, Ty! That was nice. Would you like me to do the same?”

Part of her wasn’t surprised when he said, “Honestly, no. It was incredible yesterday, and it will be again, but today I want to hold my wonderful sister and just enjoy having given you some pleasure. Are you okay with that?”

She looked at him and smiled. She could hear it in his voice — both his pleasure at what he’d just done, and his desire to hold her and just enjoy their closeness. “Part of me wants to argue, but I know you and I know you’re not kidding, so I’m okay with it.”

“Thank you! I think we get so used to everything being transactional that we forget that sometimes we can just want to be nice to someone.”

“Transactional, huh? You’ve been hanging around our girlfriend too much.”

He laughed a little and said, “Hanging around her, yes. Too much? No such thing!”

That night, they slept in her bed and she wrapped her arms around her little brother. As they drifted off she quietly talked about how much she loved him, and that she’d always be there for him.

Naomi was feeling much better when she woke up Thursday morning. She was still a little tender, and there was some minor cramping, but nothing that would keep her from going to school. She smiled when she hopped in the car with Carol and Tyler, but admitted that she still wasn’t feeling great. They were sympathetic, which was nice, and she was able to simply be happy for them when they told her of their fun the previous night. She kept reminding herself that the reason she was suffering was to allow her to have more fun in a few days.

The discomfort was a bit worse than a bad period, which added a little stress to the school day. The ibuprofen she’d brought, along with a doctor’s note explaining why she was taking it, helped, and she managed to make it to the last bell. Actually, by the end of the day, the discomfort had ebbed considerably. On the other hand, the stress of dealing with the discomfort all day had taken its toll, so she was tired enough that a nap was in order.

In the car, Tyler asked, “Do you feel good enough to go with us to meet Uncle Kenny?”

That caught her off guard. “Oh! I didn’t really think I’d go with you for that. He’s your family, and you know him, after all.”

Carol said, “Did you hear what Mom said? He’s looking forward to meeting his new niece, so you’re family as well. We’ll understand if you’re feeling too fragile at the moment, though.”

That made some sense, and she was feeling a lot better. “I’m not feeling so tender now, but I am tired. Is there enough time for me to take a quick nap before heading to the airport?”

Carol said, “It’s worth a try. If you’re still sleeping when Mom gets ready to leave, I’ll stay with you, and we can all greet him when they get back. Does that work for you?”

“That sounds fair. I do want to meet him, and thank him for what I’ve learned second hand.”

Tyler said, “Neither of us plan to do without you, so he’ll be seeing you plenty often, anyway. I like the idea of her staying with you, though. If I wasn’t there, he might get the idea that we had stayed home to have some fun instead of greeting him. If Carol does, he won’t know that that’s why she stayed home.” She knew he was teasing, but she still smacked the back of his head.

In the end, she woke up in time, but still didn’t feel up to it, so Carol stayed with her and Tyler went with Jennifer.

While she and Carol waited, they studied for their finals then cuddled on the sofa. Carol coaxed Naomi to lay her head in her lap, then she gently stroked her hair and face. She was still laying like that when she heard the car pull up.

Jennifer was a touch nervous as she made her way from the cell phone lot to pick up Ken — unable to shake the feeling that something was wrong. His voice when he’d told her he was getting out had sounded just a little off. Maybe he was just resigned to leaving his career, but her imagination wouldn’t let her off that easy. Had he lost a leg? Been blinded? Was he in a wheelchair? She knew deep inside that it wasn’t anything like that. He knew the layout of their house and physical disabilities would have required some accommodation. Still, her imagination persisted in putting up unlikely scenarios.

She’d always loved Ken, though there had never been anything romantic between them. They had been very close, and she had been attracted to him, but neither of them had made a first move and any possibilities in that direction had slipped away. Ken had been her protector growing up in much the same way that Carol had been Tyler’s — he’d been menacing enough that all of her dates during high school behaved themselves. She knew that her closeness to him was one of the reasons she finally accepted Carol and Tyler’s relationship, though she and Ken had never shared anything like Tyler’s almost psychic connection to his sister.

Her heart leapt when she spotted him on the sidewalk with a small pile of luggage. At first glance, all the pieces seemed to be there, so she let herself relax a little as she jockeyed for a place near him. Once they stopped, Tyler jumped out and gave his uncle a hug, then helped him pile the luggage in the back of the car.

When they were all loaded up, he slid into the front seat that Tyler had vacated and buckled in. Despite being in a loading zone, she allowed herself the time to lean over and hug him. Go ahead and honk, she thought to an impatient driver who wanted her space — my brother is home and never going off to war again! That was worth a few seconds inconvenience. As they pulled out into the flow of traffic, she said, “It’s so good to see you, Ken! I was worried you might be getting out because you’d been hurt, but you look like all the pieces are there to me.”

“Physically I’m fine, JP, but things have changed, and the service is no longer a comfortable place for me, so I needed to break away. I’ll get into it more when we’re all together, but right now, I’ll say that I’ve fallen in love, and it’s complicated matters for me.”

Ken was in love?! “Oh, Ken! I never thought you’d find real love. But why would that complicate things?”

“Like I said, I’d rather talk about it later, though I will talk about it. For the moment, though, I thought I was going to see two nieces and instead there are none. What’s up with that?”

Tyler answered from behind her, “Naomi was taking a nap, and Carol stayed with her.”

She admired her son’s talent for only saying what needed to be said, but knew Ken wasn’t fooled. He wasn’t the same type of brilliant as Naomi, but he wasn’t dumb either, and he was used to noticing the little details. She wasn’t sure, since he never talked about it, but she thought he’d probably spent a lot of his service time gathering intelligence.

“OK, now that’s an incomplete report if I’ve ever heard one. Seems there will be some other things coming out when we get back. Still, fair’s fair.”

She smiled, then decided to tweak him a bit. “Naomi’s mother, Lee, will also be there tonight. And don’t bother speculating — you won’t figure it out ahead of time. So there! That’s what you get for naming me after that clown.” Early on, he’d noted that her initials were also those of a locally famous clown: J.P. Patches, the mayor of the city dump. She’d been JP ever since. She’d been a little annoyed at first, but had come to accept it as the sign of affection that she was sure he’d intended it to be. He only tried calling her Patches once, though — nothing about that sounded affectionate and she’d hated it. She’d cried for what seemed like hours before she finally accepted his apology.

Fifty minutes after leaving the airport, she pulled into the garage. Carl and Carol came out to greet Ken and to help ferry things to the guest bedroom. Once that was done, they went to the living room and Carol made the introductions.

“Uncle Ken, I’d like you to meet your new niece, Naomi, and her mother, Lee Clarke. Mrs. Clarke, Naomi, this is Mom’s older brother, Kenneth Perrine. He just retired from the Marines after, what was it, Uncle Ken, twenty-four years?”

“I had just rolled over twenty-five. I’m pleased to meet you both, and I have to say the introductions have only made me more curious for the story here.”

“And we’re looking for the rest of the story from you, too, brother dear,” Jennifer said. She was looking for it and saw a flash of discomfort in his expression, but said, “I know you haven’t met Naomi and Lee before, but they have quickly become part of our family.” When she saw him warily nod, she asked everyone to take a seat so they could discuss whatever needed talking about.

Lee took the lead, saying, “I’m proud to meet another who served. My husband, Naomi’s father, Tom, was an Army combat medic. Sadly, his helicopter was shot down shortly after taking off with an evac and everyone on board died. I’ve done my best for the last six years to raise our little girl in a way that Tom would have approved of. I’m not sure I’ve succeeded, but she’s a remarkable young lady.”

Ken stood, then, and went to Lee. He pulled her up from her chair and gave her a hug. When he stepped back, he said, “That you’re not bitter at the Army says a lot about you. Would that we could finally beat our swords into plowshares, but that’s not the world we live in today. Until that day, we’ll need brave men and women who understand that there are things worth putting your life on the line for. Your husband was obviously one of them.”

Naomi stood and went to her mother and hugged her, too. Then she stood facing Ken, back ramrod straight, and, with a straight face, said, “Thank you. I’d say thank you sir, but I heard you were a Gunnery Sergeant, so you’d just tell me you weren’t a sir, that you worked for a living, so instead I’ll stick with Gunny.”

Jennifer watched her brother almost collapse in laughter. It wasn’t a new joke, but she had to admit Naomi had integrated it beautifully, and her deadpan delivery caught everyone’s funny bone.

“As I was saying,” she continued, “Thank you for your words and for the honor you show my parents. I certainly agree about the world in which we live, and I’ll try my best to work toward a better world, no matter what profession I enter. I doubt I’ll ever serve, but if I can do anything to make it less likely that others have to, I’ll feel I’ve lived a good life.”

Jen then saw her brother draw himself up to full attention and crisply render a salute to his new niece. Then he extended his hand and said, “It’s almost a shame that you don’t plan to serve. There are too few good junior officers, and recognizing the dignity of enlisted men is a good sign. Too many of them seem to think we’re just dumb grunts, strong backs and weak minds. The good ones are precious, though. If their sergeant tells you the men would follow them to Hell carrying gas cans, you’ve found one.”

After shaking his hand, Naomi rendered a picture-perfect salute of her own, incongruous in her typical blouse and skirt, and said, “I understand what you mean, but it’ll still be the sergeant who’ll figure out how to do it.”

Ken laughed and picked her up into a gentle hug. Jennifer could see years and cares melt from him and wondered again about her new daughter. How in the world did she know how to do that?

Carol stepped in again and said, “Just a couple more things, Uncle Ken. Mrs. Clarke is a psychologist and has been a lot of help to Tyler and me. Anyway, I know you have some questions about how they’re related to us, and I’m going to get it out there at one swell foop, so to speak.”

She held out her arms and Naomi and Tyler took her hands. Looking squarely at her uncle, she said, “We consider ourselves married. The law won’t allow us to make it formal, but our love is strong enough to weather that storm, and we’ve committed to each other.”

Lee watched the proud, weathered face of the Marine in front of her as he heard Carol’s pronouncement, and cataloged what she was seeing. Some humor, probably at one so young making such a statement. Some confusion, only to be expected. Then, wonder of wonders, acceptance. And lastly pleasure.

He stood, went to the teens, and shook their hands. He then turned to his original niece and nephew and said, “I know Tyler has loved Carol, probably all his life, and I’m not surprised Carol feels the same way about him. You said that Lee helped you, and I suspect that was a big part of it. You all three are incredibly fortunate to have such understanding parents and to know a professional who could help you through what had to have been a rough spot.”

Tyler said, “It was, Uncle Ken. It was even stranger than it sounds, but we can talk about that later. I’m glad that you’re happy for us. I’ve always looked up to you, and your approval means a lot to me.”

She then saw Naomi approach Ken and say, “And I thank you for the acceptance, as well. I also want to thank you for protecting me, above and beyond your work defending our nation. Even though we’ve never met, you’ve protected me, if only by proxy. In the last week, first Tyler, then Carol, have been put in the position of having to defend me. They credit the training you’ve given them over the years for their ability to do so. In the process of defending me against human monsters, they’ve also helped me slay one from my past.” She then rushed forward and hugged him while he looked around in confusion.

“We’ll explain about that later as well since it’s all tied together,” said Tyler. “Now, though, I think some of us are curious about you and your sudden exit from the service. I know Mom and I both expected you to go for the full thirty.”