“Trust me, women like her never outrank anybody,” Vanessa whispered behind me at the wedding bar. I was reaching for a glass of ice water when she said it. Not champagne, not wine, water.
Because I’d taken two Aleve in my hotel room twenty minutes earlier, and my left knee had been giving me trouble since the flight from Norfolk. That’s the glamorous truth nobody puts in military brochures. The bar was set up under a white tent near the water in Charleston, South Carolina, close enough to Patriots Point that you could see the old naval ship sitting dark and proud against the evening sky.
The harbor smelled like salt, diesel, and wedding flowers. Somebody had paid a fortune for white roses, navy blue table runners, and little gold place cards with everyone’s name written in looping cursive. Mine said simply Riley Walker.
No rank, no title, no plus one, which was fine by me. I’d learned a long time ago that putting commander in front of my name at family events made people act strange. Either they got stiff and formal, or they made jokes about me bossing everyone around.
And honestly, I was tired. I had been tired for years in that quiet way you don’t explain because people either understand it or they don’t. So I came to my brother Ben’s wedding as Riley.
Just Riley. A woman in a dark green dress that fit a little tighter around the waist than it had in the store. A woman with a small scar under her left collarbone covered by makeup.
A woman standing alone at a bar asking the bartender for water with lemon. Behind me, Vanessa gave a soft laugh. “She’s got that look,” she said.
Another woman asked, “What look?”
“You know, pretty enough to get invited. Not important enough to be introduced.”
I kept my hand around the water glass. The bartender, a college kid with freckles and a black bow tie, looked at me like he’d heard it, too.
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