Page 25 of Brick’s Anchor

Rosie hesitates at the threshold. Looking into my private space like she's about to cross a line she can't uncross. "I've never been in a man's room before. I mean, except my ex's. And that was—"

"Different," I finish for her. "I know. You don't have to come in. We can talk in the hallway if that's better."

"No. I want—" She takes a breath. "I want to stop being afraid of everything. And that includes men's rooms. So. Yeah. I'm coming in."

She steps inside.

My room isn't much. Queen bed with gray sheets. Dresser with motorcycle parts on top. Bookshelf crammed with paperbacks about war and violence and trying to understand both. Small desk with a laptop. Window overlooking the back courtyard. Weights in the corner. Punching bag hanging from a reinforced beam.

"It's clean," she says, sounding surprised.

"What did you expect? Dirty clothes and beer cans?"

"Maybe."

"I'm military. We learn to keep our space organized or suffer the consequences."

She walks to the bookshelf, running her fingers along the spines. "You really do read."

"I told you I did."

"People say a lot of things." She pulls out a book. "The Things They Carried. Tim O'Brien."

"It's about Vietnam. About carrying the weight of war. Both physical and emotional."

"Have you read it multiple times?" She's looking at how worn the spine is, how the pages are dog-eared.

"Yeah. Keeps teaching me new things every time."

She puts it back and pulls out another. "On Killing. Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman."

"About the psychological cost of learning to kill. How the military conditions people to overcome the natural resistance to taking another human life." I watch her handle my books like they're precious. "It's dark. But accurate."

"You're trying to understand yourself through these books."

"Yeah. Trying to figure out if the violence is who I am or just what I learned. If there's a difference."

"And? Is there?"

"Still figuring that out."

She moves to the window. Looks out at the rain pounding the courtyard we just left. "My sister is twenty-two. Just graduated college. Smart. Beautiful. Makes good choices." Her voice goes quiet. "Everything I'm not."

"You're twenty-four. That's not old enough to have failed at life."

"Feels like it sometimes."

"Your sister ever survived a week in captivity and came out still fighting?"

"No."

"Then maybe you're stronger than you think. Maybe good choices aren't the only measure of worth."

She turns from the window. "Why are you being nice to me?"

"We covered this already."

"We didn't. Not really. You gave me non-answers. I want the real reason."