Then he told me the truth.
Ezoic
About Iraq. About what happened on a road outside Tikrit in 2005, two months before I met him. About the truck in front of his. About three men he’d eaten breakfast with that morning. About carrying pieces of them back to the base in his arms. About how he’d never told anybody, not even me, because if he said it out loud it would be real.
Ezoic
About the first drink he had when he got home. To make the pictures stop.
About the pills, after his back. How they made the pictures go completely black. How he’d never felt anything so good in his life. How he’d have traded anything for that black. Even me. Even Nathan.
About the day of the curb. How he’d taken the pills at noon and woken up on the kitchen floor at four-thirty with Nathan standing over him. How Nathan had been holding his little backpack. How he’d looked at Greg with a face Greg would see every single night for the next six years.
