Blessed by Night

- 20 Years Ago…

A young woman stepped off a bus with a large backpack on her shoulders and an even larger duffel bag in her free hand.

She stood just outside of a half-decent hotel. The kind of place she would have tried to sneak into just two years ago to steal breakfast from.

But she was turning over a new leaf now. And this insanity was her first step to doing so.

Joanne tightened her grip on her bags and entered the hotel.

Near the front desk, her recruiter was sitting at a folding table and smiled at the sight of her.

"Almost thought you wouldn't show up. Thought I would have to find you and drag you out of whatever hidey hole you found to stick your head in."

Joanne put her bags down and picked up a pen to sign her name on the sheet of paper in front of her. "Thought you already had enough recruits to deal with, Major. Doubt you would have the time to come looking for little old me."

"For you? I would have made the time, kid. You still got the thing?"

Joanne dug inside of her pocket and pulled out a small plastic disk.

At the sight of it, her recruiter let out an impressed whistle.

"Two years of sobriety's not an easy feat, Little Lady. You should be proud. Most people don't make it that far without some sort of setback."

"Most people don't develop an oxy addiction either." Joanne said dismissively.

"Hey now, no pity parties here. You're not like the rest of these kids who come here for a free ride to school or because dear old dad made you feel like you didn't have a choice.

You're trying to reinvent yourself, cadet. That means you should be holding your head higher than any of these other young cadets. You're what the army needs. You're what America needs."

Joanne considered his words to be empty flattery, but they still made her smirk.

Being the child of first-generation immigrants, the irony of being told that she was what America needed was not lost on her.

'Dad would probably jump for joy if he knew. Damn bastard.'

"We leave for Fort Jackson at 0600. I hope to see you in the first seat on that bus. Let me get your room key."

Her recruiter stood up and went to the front desk, leaving her behind.

"Never heard him give anyone that kind of pep talk. Really gives you that 'hoo-rah' feeling, yeah?"

Joanne glanced over her shoulder at a new, surprising voice.

She found a young woman standing behind her, carrying the same set of bags.

For a moment, Joanne almost thought she was holding that stuff for someone else.

"Something about me surprising?" The young woman asked again.

"You're a crumpet eater..." Joanne noticed. "You joining the army??"

Twenty-year-old Awena Brenham had only been back in the states for a couple of years after leaving when she was five.

She had forgotten just how… colorful their personalities were.

"If that's your way of saying British, then sure."

Joanne only considered, after the fact, that her words could be seen as rude.

The filter between her brain and her mouth was left behind somewhere at the bottom of a bottle.

"…My bad. Not usually that thoughtless."

Joanne was lying. She hadn't properly thought about anything since she was thirteen.

But she had to at least pretend like she wasn't some former druggie wandering through life with her mind still in a perpetual state of inebriation.

"Alright, Cadet Grey. Here's your room key."

Joanne's recruiter returned, bearing a plastic card that she happily took.

But before her recruiter let it go, he held onto it and smiled at her like an old friend.

"You're doing the right thing, kid. Gonna make that daughter of yours real proud after 9 weeks."

Joanne felt the hairs on her neck bristle.

Shame welled up in her stomach. She could feel her back becoming hot from Awena's gaze.

"Sure thing, Major... I'll do my best."

She practically ripped the card out of his hand and hurried towards the elevator.

Her room was at the very end of the hall on the fourth floor.

She had nearly reached it when she heard the sound of footsteps rushing towards her.

"Hey, super-mom! Looks like we're neighbors, yeah?"

Joanne tried to hide her feelings of sickness. Through no fault of her own, Awena wasn't one of the people that she was keen on spending time around.

But just like Jo had her faults at this age, Awena was also the type of person who was painfully bad at reading the room.

"So you've got a kid, huh? Won't she and your baby's father miss you while you're gone getting screamed at for nine weeks?"

Joanne passed her keycard over the scanner and opened the door when a green light flashed.

"No idea. I have no clue who he is, and I gave her up so that she could have a better life."

With that, Joanne entered her room and shut the door behind her. Marking the end of the first meeting between her and the woman who would later become her best friend.

-

The thing about Joanne was that she was adept at pulling herself together quickly, even when under extreme duress.

Not thirty seconds after she started crying on Malachi, she wiped her face of tears and started taking deep breaths.

After a few short moments, it was hard to tell that anything had ever been wrong with her at all.

Joanne stared at Malachi, and Malachi stared back at her. His face displayed a clear shock as if he had no idea what he was supposed to do.

And he indeed did not.

For all of his experience as a boyfriend, a fiancé, and now a husband, he had never been placed into this sort of situation with Joanne before- barring the time he saved her from a literal internment camp.

He was honestly terrified to say or do the wrong thing. Resulting in an unnecessarily long staring contest.

Eventually, Joanne lifted her hand and gently tugged on his belt buckle. "..."

"...?" Malachi tilted his head.

"...Take your pants off."

The abrupt change in direction almost gave him whiplash. "What!? You just finished crying like two seconds ago!"

Joanne's face turned red as if she couldn't believe he would bring up her ugly past like that.

"Shut up, I had my moment, it's over, and now I want to have sex with my new husband! Now be obedient and take your pants off!"

"W-Wait a minute, woman! Damn!"

Joanne decided that Malachi was taking too long to remove his pants, so she started trying to take them off herself. And for the first time in his life, Malachi tried to stop her.

The two of them ended up wrestling on the floor while Joanne tried her best to rip off her husband's jeans.

The resulting commotion ended up attracting the attention of another woman near and dear to their heart poked their head inside the bathroom.

"What is going on in here..?" Luna asked with equal parts confusion and amusement.

Joanne and Malachi paused in unison to look up at her.

Joanne's gaze lingered on Luna's form.

She had only discovered her attraction to women relatively late in life, but now it was one of the things she thought about most consistently.

And Luna's plump thighs and round behind were never very far from the recesses of her mind.

Sometimes, she thought she had traded in her vices of drugs and alcohol in favor of sex and intimacy. As things currently stood, she was almost 100% certain no amount of meetings or pep talks were going to be able to fix her.

...But maybe that was alright. At least she wasn't doing something to cut her life short again.

"... Wanna have sex?" She asked Luna bluntly, but not hiding her desire.

Malachi tried to stop things before they could veer in a totally different direction than what was intended.

"Don't fall for it, she was just cry-"

Joanne forcefully covered her husband's mouth.

For a moment, Luna considered that something was clearly amiss with this scene. Jo's face was extra flushed for one, and her eyes were slightly puffy.

However, Luna was also still feeling the effects of being newly married. Sex had been all that she was thinking about all morning.

Since they were about to be very busy for the next few months, should she not take this opportunity while she still had the time?

"...Alright." She shrugged.

As she shimmied out of her clothes, Malachi silently wished, just this once, that they weren't all so easy when it came to each other.

He and Joanne exchanged a brief look between one another.

'This isn't over.'

Joanne responded by leaning down and twirling her tongue around his ear.

It wasn't fair. It was playing dirty. It was needlessly cruel.

...

It worked.