They finished AIT on a Friday that smelled like starch and rain. Orders in envelopes. Ten days the Army forgot to schedule.
Some of the cycle fly home. Some drink until a city forgets their names. Riley looks at Cole and says the simple thing: he has land, water, and a cabin that is not a hotel. Take them there. She wants a vacation that looks like a place. She wants to swim and eat too much and fuck them without a clock.
Texas unrolls. Fence. Sky. A cabin of board and tin. A tank ringed in mesquite. Cicadas. A dock that had been a dock in a more ambitious decade. Cole's folks are gone. The cows are not a problem. For ten days they are not soldiers.
They fish badly. They cook on a grate. They watch a heron land like it reserved the far bank. Riley takes Cole on his own dock, then sleeps in a pile so nobody spends the first night wondering if the lake changed the rules. The leave policy is simple: every day she gets her hands on them. Nobody is second. Nobody is a leftover. The filthy thing is extra. It is not the whole animal.
When the ten days run out they leave the hinge fixed and the skillet clean and a note that does not say the rest. First duty is coming. The deal still stands. They write. They take leave like this when they can. They do not get mean because a clerk got bored.
