I was tipsy and it was no secret. I had also cried which was no secret either, even if I wanted it to be.

The gin I had found and then chugged down like soda was my current anesthetic to what I was about to do. My heart was hurting and my body was throbbing, and my entire system was shaking and on edge, but my head knew what it wanted to do. Knew what it wanted to try.

And it was the worst goddamn idea, but I was scared that I wouldn't be able to pull through it any other way. Not unless I payed hundreds for therapy, which I really didn't have the money for now that Trump was President. Plus, this was faster.

Toeing into the bedroom, I found Vince sleeping soundly in his kingsize bed. At least one of us had no trouble resting.

"Be brave," I whispered to myself, before taking a deep breath and then carefully crawled into the bed with him. This could either end catastrophic or be the best thing that ever happened to me. Maybe to the both of us. But it was going to be hard. I was going to have to break through a fear so deeply incorporated into my body, it was going to take every ounce of my willpower to make it through without breaking down or running away.

So that's why, before I lost my nerve and the buzz from the alcohol that was already fading away, I swung my leg over Vince and sat astride his hips. Almost instantaneously, he awoke with a jolt, reflex making him reach for the gun under his pillow. I stopped him quickly by pinning his hands down. When his eyes focused on me, he frowned and instantly turned cold.

"What the fuck, Ry—"

I shut him up with my mouth. I pressed my lips against his and kissed him as well as I could while keeping his arms locked down – but of course that only lasted two seconds before Vince used his strength against mine and turned his head away.

"What the fuck, Rya?" He growled again and grabbed my wrists tightly. "Enough. You're drunk. You can't just come to me whenever you fucking—"

"Please," I pleaded with a dry throat. "Please, Vince, I, just... please, just give me one minute. A half. Just... I have to... I need to... try something. P-please. I'll go afterwards, just l-let me try something."

I don't know if it was the way my voice broke or if it was the stupid tears in my eyes that made him inexplicably loosen his grip on my wrists and let them go. There was a look in his eyes that changed when he saw the one in mine. He could tell something was up and that I wasn't just drunkenly throwing myself at him here. I was was a purpose with this and I needed his help.

So before I lost my cool, I swallowed the lump in my throat and brought my hands down to his chest and felt his heartbeat as I ran my hands over his tan skin. It beat stealthily, if not a little harder than normal.

It was now or never.

Slowly, I leaned down to his lips again, and this time he didn't turn his head. He let me softly press my lips against his, let me kiss him. He kissed me back slowly and allowed me to set the pace. He followed my rhythm and only lifted his head slightly to kiss me better as I parted my lips and let my tongue mingle with his. I felt him swipe his across my bottom lip, coating the seams of my mouth and then stroked my own tongue. A violent shudder ran through my body and made me panic. It zinged through me and made the hairs on my back stand up and had my shoulders tensioning.

I tried to remind myself to keep breathing. Told myself to power through it. But when Vince's hands tentatively smoothed over my thighs and softly ran up to my waist, all my alarms rang. My heart pounded in my chest and panic shot up my spine. Coldsweat broke out on my forehead and I realized I couldn't breathe, just as Vince's hands came to my torso, smoothed gently over my bare skin.

It wasn't wild or angry. It was sweet and tentative. Like love.

I tore my lips away and jolted away from him, trembling. "N-no. I can't. I just c-can't, I'm sorry," I scrambled to get off of him, hyperventilating and shaking. Vince immediately caught me just as I was making a run for it.

"Rya, what's going on—"

"Just let me go, let me go," I panicked and twisted my wrists out of his grip. I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and sat there for a second, saw how my knees were shaking. "Shit. Oh fuck, I can't do this. Oh fuck, Jesus, God, help me."

The next thing I knew, Vince swooped up behind me and curled his big arms around my body. He pressed me back into his chest and held me firmly against his body as I continued to writhe and shake, my panic attack controlling me.

"Vince, oh God, please, I can't," Tears were streaming down my face. I hadn't been this vulnerable in years, hadn't been this big of a mess since... since it happened. "I can't, Vince, I want to, but I just can't, please—"

"Schh, easy," He whispered and squeezed me tighter until I couldn't move a bone; couldn't fall apart. "I got you, Rya. Deep breaths. Slowly."

I tried getting my body under control. I listened to the sound of his voice and focused on him; His arms that held me together; His heart that beat strongly against my back; His warmth that enveloped me and his breath that fanned my shoulder.

"That's it," He whispered when I started taking deeper breaths. "One at a time, tesoro. Breathe."

I took one deep breath after another, but I still felt too hot. He was too close, too much.

"I can't, Vince. It's too warm, I ca.. can't breathe... please..."

Before I even finished my sentence, he swooped me effortlessly into his arms and begun carrying me. For once I didn't protest, but just closed my eyes and let him take me somewhere else. I heard the patio door slide open and then I felt the lukewarm night air hit my body. But it wasn't enough. And as if he knew, I felt him keep walking.

I heard water sloshing now. Next thing I knew, I felt cold water on my butt, then my feet and then my chest.

Vince walked us down into the pool and let the pool water chill me down.  He then just stood there with me, holding me bridal style while gently whispering sweet things to me. Some in English, some in Italian. I tried focusing on the string of whispers that made sense and no sense. They somehow calmed me down and made me forget the panic coursing through my body.

After a few minutes of soaking in the pool, I placed my hand on his right pec. I felt him look down at me and it made me slowly open my eyes. I squirmed a little in his hold and he then calmly put me down, but he didn't let me go. He kept holding onto my arms, keeping me close to him.

"Thank you," I whispered and took a deep, calming breath. "I think... I think it passed. Thank you."

He slowly cupped my face and made me look up at him. Seeing the deep concern written all over his face and seeing how it aged his features, it stabbed my heart. His brows were furrowed and his lips were pressed together, corners facing down. He took a small step closer and kept my gaze on his. "What happened in there?"

I blinked away and shook my head. "I just had to... try something. And it didn't work."

"What were you trying to do?"

I squeezed my lips tightly together, feeling tears well up in my eyes. "I tried to l-love you."

That surprised him for a moment. It flashed through his eyes, but he then quickly pushed past it and focused again. "And that made you have a panic attack?"

I looked down again. "I told you, I'm not cut out for love."

"And I told you, you're just afraid." When I looked away, Vince sighed and dropped his hand from my face. "What happened to you, Rya? What made you like this?"

I shook my head. "You don't want to hear my sob story."

"Let me be the judge of that."

"It's cliché."

"I like clichés."

"I hate them."

"Maybe you're scared of loving them as well."

Damn him. I hated when he was so goddamn clever.

There you go again, hating.

Damn it.

Slowly, I opened my eyes and looked into the shining pool water, watching the water ripple between us, even as we stood still. It kind of represented life; no matter how still you stayed, life would continue moving.

"He was my high school sweetheart. We were... close," I started. Pain flashed through my heart and I was forced to close my eyes again. I had to get through it now when I finally had the courage or I never would.  "He... he..."

"Breathe," Vince reminded me when I begun hiccupping again. "Don't force it."

I took a deep breath and then shakily exhaled. Vince rubbed my arm gently with his thumb and it somehow helped calm me. I took a few more deep breaths and then hesitantly continued.

"It was... I met him right after my parents' death. I had changed school for the fifth time and he... he wasn't a jock. Or a nerd. Or goth, or any other cliché from the classic high school," I explained with a hoarse voice. "He was himself. He didn't belong to any clique, he just did his own thing. I really liked that.

"I was a tomboy type of girl back then," I stealthily continued. Somehow talking about the past before it all happened was easier. "I didn't take shit from anybody."

"Still don't," Vince interjected with a little smile. I couldn't help but pull at my own smile as well. It quickly faded, though.

"I was a loser, but he... Anthony," I whispered and closed my eyes. It was the first time I had said his name out loud in years. "Anthony was so brilliant. He had talent dripping off his fingertips and all he did with it was... ignore it. I heard him one afternoon, playing in an empty classroom. It was so beautiful the hardcore tomboy in me crumbled and made me want to cry."

"What was he playing?" Vince asked.

"The violin," I replied. "Vince, he was so gifted. A natural. When he played, the music just came to him. He never wrote or looked at any sheet music, he never studied the violin. He just picked one up one day, spent a few hours fiddling with it, and then he was playing. Just like that. He was a musical prodigy."

I needed a breath. I held a long pause while the memories flooded me and let them course through me, but I didn't allow them to bring me down. Vince was patient and silently stood in the water with me, still caressing my arm with his thumb. I let that sensation become my everything and it allowed me to continue.

"We got intimate," I exhaled. "I can't for the life of me remember how, but one day, we were just... well, we were fucking. He was my first, but I wasn't his. Turned out, Anthony didn't have it easy at home," I involuntarily let out a pathetic chuckle. "I told you, it's so cliché. He had a couple of rich parents that spend zero time caring about him. They didn't even know he played. My own parents were dead and I had nobody to look out for me. I got emancipated right after their death. Anthony kind of became my family a-and... I became his.

"After high school ended, me and him found our own place. I had convinced him to apply at Julliard and he had gotten in. I myself had applied for this CIA bootcamp I found online, for young people specifically. The CIA had created it to recruit young people with healthy bodies and a strong mind. You know, for better agents. Starting them out young and all that. Anyways, I applied and got in.

"For a while there, we were pretty happy," I said and now a smile crept onto my lips as one of my favorite memories came back. "Did I tell you that when we first started looking for an apartment, we came across this little dump of a place that Anthony really liked? I wasn't fond of it, but he said he could see us living there. He was always a visionaire. Anyways, I told him I didn't want to live there, but he wanted me to give it a second chance. A few days later, he brought me back to the place, and the first thing I saw as we walked in was this fishbowl standing in the middle of the apartment with just the tiniest little fish swimming around in circles in there."

"Bob?"

"He was the size of a guppy back then," I squeaked out. "He changed everything. Anthony bought him to make me feel at home there because he had went behind my back and bought the damn apartment anyway. I guess somehow he knew he could change my mind. And he did. The minute I saw Bob swimming around in there, in his little fishbowl, I felt at home. We moved in the very next day."

My smile died. I realized I had gotten to the hard part now. Vince maybe did, too.

"Take it slowly," He told me and gave my arm a comforting little squeeze. "You can stop when you don't want to anymore, mia cara."

I shook my head. It was time to get it all out. All of it. Vince needed to know. He deserved that much after everything, like he had said himself. "Things went well for a good time, but then, a few weeks into both our busy lives, I came home from bootcamp and saw Anthony was sitting with his violin like he always did, except he wasn't playing like he usually did around that time. He was sitting in complete darkness, just... staring into nothingness.

"I asked him what was wrong," I swallowed a hard lump. "To this day, I still remember his words precisely as he spoke them; 'Music can fight the wars that goes on inside the heart, but it can't fight the wars that goes on outside of it.'" I almost choked, quoting the words I had repeated over and over inside my head after he... "I remember just looking at him, and then he looked up at me and told me he had dropped out of Juilliard and had applied for the same CIA bootcamp I went to. He told me he wanted to make a change in the world.

"I lost it that night," I said and felt my tears begin to roll now. "I screamed at him, told him he was wasting the brilliant talent that God had put inside him and that he shouldn't go charging into wars with me. That he wasn't a soldier, that he was being stupid. But Anthony..." I closed my eyes as I saw his handsome ghost of a face flash before me. "He just took my hand, looked down at me and kissed me. It shut me right up. We stood like that for... a few minutes, an eternity, I don't know. I just remember when he pulled back, he looked at me again and told me this was what he needed to do. He wouldn't tell me why, just that he had to. I tried asking him what made him change so suddenly, but he just shook his head and kissed me again."

Vince squeezed my arm again and helped me breathe when I couldn't. He allowed me to take some deep breaths while he just stood there, being my only anchor, but funnily was the only one holding me up, too. He just knew somehow what I needed.

Finally, after a moment, I continued. "So he started bootcamp with me. The first few weeks actually went okay. We went to bootcamp together and I saw how hard he worked. But the harder he worked, the less he played. I thought it was just a transition. You know, finding the balance between working and relaxing. It's normal to get it skewed a bit, but then a full month went by where he didn't pick up the violin once. That month turned into two, then three and then finally six. He loved that violin." I shook my head and closed my eyes when the pain crippled me again.

"I confronted him one morning, the day before him and his team were sent out into the field for the first time. It was a puppy-trip. To take us puppies out into the field and show us what it would be like if we passed our exams. Anthony and his team were the first to go out and he was leaving that morning. We f-fought..." I shook my head and cupped my face when the tears now came, overwhelmed me. I couldn't get through it.

"Hey, easy," Vince whispered and instantly wrapped his arms around me when I broke down. My heart got torn to pieces all over again as the memories came back. All of them.

"He p-proposed to me," I finally got out between sobs. "I was yelling at him for throwing his talent away again, for never playing anymore, and just as he was about to leave, the idiot got down on one fucking knee and gave me a goddamn ring. T-told me that when he got back, h-he was going to marry my screaming ass and make me shut up about him throwing his gifts away. I told him..." I swallowed hard, "I told him to go fuck himself and then told him I didn't want to marry him. I was so angry. That's when he stood up, looked at me and then just turned around and left. I didn't care, because I knew we could continue fighting when h-he... got b-back."

Vince rubbed my back silently while I cried, because he knew, just as any cliché story went, that Anthony never came back. He just had to fucking leave me and I had to fucking play the widow-role with survivors guilt and remorse about the last thing I told him.

The worst part was, I didn't find out before everyone else did. No, I got told with all the others. Our commanding officer had stood up on that podium in front of all of us while we had all wondered why we had been gathered. We thought someone was going to get accepted into the CIA prematurely, and that's when he had opened his mouth and told that... 'Cadet Anthony Williams has lost contact with the platoon and haven't made contact in over a week. He is therefore, as of this moment, considered Missing In Action.'

I remembered I stopped breathing. Everyone was distressed and worried around me for the guy they hardly knew as anything more but their fellow student.

But me... the second he was declared M.I.A, my heart went missing in action as well.

At first, I tried to stay above waters. I really did. I didn't want to break down and be that person, so I tried optimism; I told myself he would show up and we would fix things. I would make them right and we were going to get married. Somehow, he could still be alive. He was too stubborn to die. No body, no death, right? He had to be alive somewhere.

But then a month passed. Then half a year. And then a whole year. To this day, I still couldn't remember a thing I did in that year. I kept attending bootcamp, that much I knew, but what I did with myself when I wasn't training, I had no idea.

"Did he suffer?" Vince now gently asked. I had almost forgotten I was still standing in the pool with his arms wrapped around me. I realized that's why I wasn't cold or felt numb. His heart drummed against my cheek and somehow kept my own beating.

I silently shook my head. "I don't know. I never found out what happened to him. He went missing, and when someone's been missing for over a year..."

"They get declared dead."

I nodded silently and let my arms wrap around his waist. Vince squeezed me back and softly kissed the top of my head.

"That's why you're afraid," He softly whispered. "You're afraid that because I'm an agent as well, you're going to lose me like you lost Anthony."

"History has a way of repeating itself," I silently replied. "And I can't go through it again, Vince. I know I show I'm though as shit, but my heart can't take that kind of torture one more time. When you break up with someone, all you typically want is for them to die a slow, painful death. I never broke up with Anthony, but I broke his heart. He proposed and I shot him down, and..." I closed my eyes and let the sobs take over. "I k-killed him before h-he even stepped into that b-battlefield."

"No," Vince said, sternly. "No, Rya, you didn't kill him. You might've bruised his ego a little, but you didn't kill him. Your Anthony sounded like the kind of guy who didn't give up. It's like you said, he convinced you to live in that apartment with him. I think if he hadn't gone missing, he would've returned to you and proposed again and not taken no for an answer that time."

I sobbed like a baby. Fuck. I hated that. The idea of what could've happened if he hadn't stormed out that day... if I hadn't shot him down... would he still have been alive and been more focused in the field? Could I have prevented it?

All the one million questions I would never get one single answer to.

I kept on crying. I was beyond words by now. Vince knew that. He wordlessly lifted me up again and carried us out of the pool, back inside his house. Our wet clothes dripped onto the floor, but he didn't care. He set me down on the side of the bed, stripped me out of my wet top and panties. He then made me lie down and pulled the covers over me, then walked behind me and discarded his own wet sweats before slipping in under the covers with me. He wrapped his arm around me and I curled up to wrap my arm around him, too.

And then we just lied there. None of us spoke. Vince knew I had went to my limit today and that tomorrow was a new day to try again if that's what I needed. But right now, I just needed his comfort.

"I know I didn't know your Anthony..." He quietly whispered, just as I felt myself slip into a tired sleep, "But I know you. And you can love again, dolcezza. I'll help show you."

And then I fell asleep, feeling warm, and for the first time in years, at home in someone's arms.

• • •

Great job, America. At least now we know how many idiots we have both in congress, senates and citizens.