Page 16 of Her Forever SEAL

“Lisa, this is really good.”

Lisa shrugged, but she was pleased. “I know.”

“No, I mean it.” Kayla looked at the drawing again, the clean lines, the sense of space between the planets, and felt something that was uncomfortably close to envy. She folded it back up and handed it over. “If my Art homework ends up kicking my butt tonight, I’m calling you for help.”

Lisa looked up at her with their father’s eyes, then patted her arm. “I’m always here for you.” Every ounce of envy fell away, and Kayla hugged her little sister. Then she turned to their mother. “Can I help with dinner? I don't have much homework.”

Sophia was already nodding. “Wash your hands first.”

Kayla grabbed her backpack from the entryway. “Can you call me when it's ready? I'm going to be drawing hallways for the rest of the night.”

“Still the hallway?” Sophia asked.

“Still the hallway.”

“You can do it,” Lisa called after her. “But if you can’t, I’m always here to help.”

“You’re the best.”

Kayla slipped into her bedroom and shut the door. It was quiet and familiar and smelled like the candle she'd burned last weekend. She dropped her backpack, pulled out her sketchbook, and sat on the floor with her back against the bed.

She looked at the hallway drawing from class.

Then she turned to a clean page and decided to draw a hallway from memory. Their hallway. The one from the front door to the kitchen, with the little table on the left where the mail piled up and the framed photo of her parents on their wedding day. She closed her eyes and waited until it was perfectly clear in her head. Then she opened them and put her pencil to paper. She didn't measure anything. She didn't think about vanishing points. She just drew what was in her head.

After three minutes she could clearly see it was better.

Significantly, annoyingly better.

How was that possible?

Her father had taught her her entire life, you plan. Then you plan again, then you make a contingency plan, and then you make a back-up plan to your contingency plan. You do not just close your eyes and give it your best shot.

This made no freaking sense!

Hell, even at her mom’s job, you had to be precise. When you were baking, you had to follow the recipe just so. Otherwise, the bread wouldn’t rise, or the pastry would come out wrong. Okay, okay, Mom fiddled with different ingredients to get different tastes, but that was after she got the basics down perfectly.

The only good thing was that she didn’t have to take any kind of Art class next semester.

Kayla set aside the sketchbook.

And then, because she'd been not-thinking about it since fifth period, she started thinking about Mandy.

The thing was, it didn't track.

Mandy had never once said anything like that to her. Not in eight years. They'd disagreed about plenty of things, Mandy thought pineapple on pizza was acceptable, which was a character flaw Kayla had chosen to overlook, but Mandy had never accused her of being pushy. And she'd definitely never brought up her dad being a SEAL.

Kayla sure didn’t. What her dad did was classified. Mentioning that he’d just left was not something you were supposed to do, so Kayla only ever mentioned things about her dad when he was doing things at home.

A lot of the other Navy kids knew her dad was a SEAL. There was always talk. So it wasn’t like she denied it, that’d be lying. But she didn’t go around bragging about it, even if she did think it was pretty darn cool.

Bottom line, it was just part of her life. Like living near the base, like living near the ocean, like being a blonde, like her dad's team being the people they called family. But she sure didn't wave it around.

And Mandy knew that. Mandy had always known that.

So why had she said it?

Kayla pulled her knees up and rested her arms on them. Mandy's dad was a helicopter mechanic for the Navy. He'd done overseas tours. He was good at it too, her dad had said once, in that specific way he talked about people he respected, that Dan Kowalski was one of the best mechanics he'd ever seen. He’d specifically said that Dan was somebody you wanted working on your bird.