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A few minutes of glorious silence before he speaks up again. At least now I know his one flaw: the guy can’t stop talking. "How about this. If you turn over to show me you’re alive over there and I’m not talking to a damn corpse, I'll tell you something about me."

As interesting as it sounds, it's not enough to snap me out of my zombielike trance.

"Fine," he says with a sad sigh. "You win. I'll still tell you, since I know you’re awake over there and listening to everything I’m saying.” How does he...? You know what? Who cares. “At least raise your hand or something so I know I'm not talking to a dead person. That would make me certifiably crazy, because I'm expecting you to respond at some point and if you're dead, you couldn't. Obviously. Poppy?"

To ease the throbbing in my shoulder and put a pause on the insistent rambling, I roll my back to the hard ground and shift my zoned-out stare to the ceiling.

"Good. Progress. You're alive. Not a corpse. Step in the right direction, I always say. Well I don't always say that, because that would be strange. I'm not around a lot of dead people. Wait, I take that back. The people I shoot during operations die. Well, I assume they die since I'm a good shot, but I never stop to take their pulse and hold their hand or anything like that."

Wow. I roll my head to the side and shoot him an annoyed glare from beneath the veil.

"Right. Sorry. I never ramble. Let's see here. What do you want to know about me? How I keep up my amazing hair?" He pauses, maybe hoping I'll actually respond. "No? Well it’s Mane n' Tail, in case you were wondering but didn't want to ask. Liza got me addicted to the stuff. She’s all about hair. You’d get along with her, probably even gang up on me or something. What else? Oh the Army ‘fired’ thing." From the middle of his pen, where he lies in his typical relaxed position, he rests his arms on his bare chest and looks to the ceiling. "With four younger sisters, I'm a bit more protective of women than others.”

His resigned sigh tugs at my numb heart. Huh, maybe I’m not as dead inside as I thought.

"I was five years in when shit hit the fan. The rules were brutal for someone as... open-minded as me, but somehow I made it through boot camp and survived those five years. Even though I was a smartass, I was good. Really good. They wanted me to consider special forces at one point, but I didn’t want to go that route. The Army was never a career for me, only a means to an end after high school, I guess. It was what you did in my town, you know. Anyway, I was on patrol when it happened. I rounded a corner and found three jackasses cornering a female officer between two buildings. They heard me and stopped."

The pop of each of his knuckles is the only sound until he starts back up again. "When I approached them and asked what was going on, they said they were just hanging out and I should move on. But one look at the woman and I knew. Hell, I could almost smell her fear. I instructed the bastards to back off. They replied with several forms of ‘fuck you.’ But it escalated when one tried to bribe me to look the other way for a bit with 'a turn of my own' after they were done. I lost it. Lost it as in I don’t remember much, only that when it was done, she was safe and the three... well, two ended up staying overnight in the infirmary, and the third drank through a straw for a few months."

"Why did that get you fired?" I ask, my voice scratchy against my dry throat.

His head whips to the side and a small smile pulls at his lips. "Hey there, Poppy. I missed you. Don’t leave me again, okay." With what sounds like a relieved sigh, he turns to stare back at the ceiling. "One of the guys was a general’s son. It was my word against theirs, and I didn't want the female officer to be put on the stand during a trial for my career’s sake. So I was fired, or dishonorably discharged as you like to call it."

A distant part of me wants to ask more questions, but I don't. Can't.

"I'm here when you're ready to talk. Just know I'll listen. And Pops, I really did try to stop whatever happened. I fucking failed you when you needed me the most. Don’t leave me."

The weight of the memories from last night presses against my chest. Instead of responding, I roll over, placing my back to him once again.