"What's up? I didn't see you much at the barbecue after the colonel stopped by."
"Yeah... I just... had to think." Brutus ran his hand through his hair. "Look, Linda... I'm sorry about Wednesday."
"You're sorry?" she asked warily. "Why?"
Brutus stuck his hands in his pockets, struggling to find the words. "I should have respected you as a professional. I should have... look, I'm not saying anything I did wasn't true. Hell, I wanted to... you know."
"Lay one on me?" Linda asked.
Brutus nodded.
"You can talk plainly, Brutus. These walls are thick and nobody comes down to this corner unless they're coming to see me. So you wanted to kiss me."
"I did. But I shouldn't have. The more I thought about it, the more I thought of what my therapist would tell me."
"So kissing me was psychologically scarring?" Linda asked.
Brutus looked at her, his eyes flaring with anger and shame.
"Sorry. It shook me up too. What would your therapist say?"
“That while I might have acted honestly, I didn't act wisely. In football, there's times for both. When you're in the film room, in the huddle... hell, up until the ball snaps, you're in thinking mode. But when that ball snaps, you don't have time to think. You have time to see and react."
"Something I'm familiar with, as the past few days have taught you."
"Right, totally. You were right, I said I respected you, but I didn't really respect you.” Brutus took a deep breath. "But that's changed. And I'm sorry. That moment in the arms room, I should have thought, and not acted. If I could take Wednesday back, at least the kiss, I would."
"You've got some impulse issues for sure." Linda chuckled. "I can't put all the blame on you though. I did kiss you back."
"That you did... and wow it was good," Brutus said with a soft laugh. "Best I've had in a very long time."
The heat in his words felt good, and Linda tilted her head.
"So what drove it home for you? Because the words you said out in front of the company were pretty similar. But I could tell they were a lot more heartfelt than Wednesday."
"Yeah, I know, but... you remember Friday?" Brutus said. "The tower?"
Linda nodded, remembering. One of the basic activities they'd taken Brutus through was rappelling, and at first things had gone well. He'd demonstrated all the right positions, keeping a strong L-shape on the six foot high practice wall, his braking hand strong and his knees soft.
But when he'd gone off the tower, he'd frozen, his primal mind telling him that the idea of hanging from a deadly height by nothing more than a thin rope was inherently wrong. Linda quickly realized what had happened, and hooked up to go down next to him, quietly talking him all the way down to the ground. He'd been terrified, and he nearly fell to his knees in relief when his boots crunched into the sawdust at the bottom of the tower.
"You know, when I went through Air Assault school, our final rappel was going out of an actual helicopter," Linda recalled, smiling at the memory. "For my class, they used Blackhawks. Because of the weight of my pack and everything, I decided to do a friction hookup. I was really new at the time, didn't have the grip strength I do now, and worried I'd go down that rope like a greased goat."
"Greased goat?"
"It's a Puerto Rican saying, or maybe just mi barrio saying," Linda said. "Anyway, I get to the edge of the chopper, and the rappel master calls for us to go. So I push off, swing my arm out wide to give myself the slack to drop... and proceed to go chest first into the bottom door frame."
"Ouch!" Brutus gasped. "Why?"
"The friction hookup had gotten crossed over," Linda admitted. "Anyway, there I was, a hundred feet above the grass, dangling. I looked at the carabiner, trying to figure out how to get this fucking thing unstuck when bam! I get hit in the helmet. I look up to see the rappel master on his knees, bonking me on the helmet. 'What's wrong?' he asked, and I told him. His solution was to keep bonking me on the goddamn helmet until the rope clicked in right and I went down the rope... slow as an old man walking the stairs. I really, really didn't need that friction hookup."
Brutus laughed. "But you did it. Look, I watched you over the entire exercise, Linda. You fought better than me, but like the tower, you kept trying to help me too."
He was using her first name again, and she didn't mind. In fact, it sounded good coming from his lips. "That was my job."
"No, that's leadership," Brutus said. "I might not know how to be a soldier, even after a long week of cosplaying. Because, that's what I did. But I know leadership. I've shared locker rooms with real bastards, assholes I wouldn't trust with fifty cents. But I've figured out how to get the most out of them on the field, in the huddle. We've won playoff games together. I got to hoist a championship with one group of them, something I'll always be proud of. But you did that over a simple exercise to help a spoiled football player learn his place, even when you could have let me fall on my ass. That's leadership, Linda. And I... thank you."
"You're welcome, Brutus." Linda stood up. "You weren't that bad though. I mean, you tried. And if you're a spoiled football player, you unspoiled yourself by the day in my eyes."
