“They’ve seen me naked. You know when I get shot, they can’t extract the bullet with my clothes on? Crazy, I know.” I unbuttoned then unzipped my jeans. “Look.”

He turned.

I peeled back one side of the denim, revealing a round scar a few inches interior of my hip bone and as many inches above my pelvic bone. “Trex dug that one out. Just missed my ovary, not that I’m happy about it.”

Zeke showed me his forearm. “Burning branch fell on me. A big one.”

I turned, showing him my side with a thick horizontal scar. “My first deployment. Haji had a knife. I let him get the jump on me. Stupid.”

“Looks like it went deep.”

I laughed. “Little shit tried to filet me.”

He turned around, struggling to point to a jagged scar in the middle of his back. “Slipped down a ravine during a rainstorm. Whatever created this scar broke my fall. I actually hung there for a while until my skin ripped and…” He hesitated.

“What?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I had an entire train of thought just then. I was going to stop because the details were gory, but I decided you’ve probably seen worse.”

“I have,” I said. I reached out, mindlessly running my finger along the sharp curves and the equidistant dots on each side from the stitches. Zeke tensed, looking back at my hand touching his skin.

“Sorry,” I said, stepping back.

“No … it’s … it’s okay. I don’t mind.”

“What about that one?” I asked, pointing to his shoulder.

His cheeks flushed. “My brother shot me with a bb gun when I was fourteen.”

I covered my mouth, trying not to laugh.

“Yeah, yeah…” he said. “Go ahead and laugh.”

“Well, we both have scars from GSWs.”

“Very funny,” he said, poking at me.

I caught his wrist, and he smiled, trying again.

“Don’t,” I playfully warned. I could tell by the look on his face his curiosity was outweighing common sense. “The answer is no. You won’t best me in hand-to-hand,” I said.

“What if I just want to wrestle? If I pin you, does that count as winning?”

“You won’t pin me,” I said.

Zeke poked at me again then tried to wriggle out of my grasp. He tried to overpower me by using his body to make moves I knew he’d make before he made them.

“Damn it!” he yelled, both hands secured behind his back. “How do you know?”

I laughed. “How did you know the fire would turn? It’s what I do. I live and breathe this shit.”

His smile faded. We were close, my backside against the dryer, our shirts still making a calming, rhythmic sound, the smell of fabric softener in the air.