Don't Forget About Me

By Eve Morton

After Shawn Connors returns from the war, he's facing life with an injured leg and a changed perspective on what it really means to be a solider and to fall in love.

Shawn Connors had no illusions about the war. But after injuring his leg in a blast, he goes home to his sister's in Maine and isn't prepared for the reality of his return. As everyone around him gets married, promoted, or moves on with their lives, Shawn is left drinking alone at a bar on a Thursday night.

His best friend had warned him that life after deployment would start to feel like a high school reunion, but as Shawn meets a stranger at the bar, he begins to think that his life is more like a high school movie instead.

• Language: English
• Publisher: JMS Books LLC
• Release date: Apr 6, 2024
• ISBN: 9781685506643

Book preview

Chapter 1

Coming back from the military after being discharged was like going to a high school reunion. Shawn Connors knew this to be true, only because every single other army vet he met while stationed in Iraq had told him in so many words.

You leave home. You fight. You come back home. And usually when you do come back, you get a party, Pete, his bunkmate, explained to Shawn one night. He was the third person to mention the surreal nature of returning, but Pete’s small speech was by far the most eloquent. Most men didn’t dwell long enough to get beyond three word responses. "You go into this room, filled with people you used to know, and expect something big to occur. For it to be a John Hughes movie—you know the ones, right? Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles. The high school stuff from the ‘80s where everything turns out okay in the end. But there’s no final speech or even a cool song to play you out. All I’m saying, man, is don’t be surprised that nostalgia’s more of a trap than anything else."

What do you mean? About nostalgia being a trap? I thought that was what made our memories good?

Shawn turned over in his bunk to look at Pete, but kept his voice low. The two of them had the night off—at least for a while. They weren’t too sure when they would be called upon again and it wouldn’t be the first time they had been interrupted mid-conversation without warning. Anytime a solider got a few hours off, Shawn handled it the way a mother treated quietness: it was calm, wonderful, and elating—but tinged with a persistent urgency that every second could be the last.

Their superior officer walked up and down the barracks, eyeing some of the men who were still awake. He said nothing, so Pete and Shawn kept talking long into the night. Pete, a tall black man with a shaved head and a ridiculously wide smile, held up a picture of his girlfriend. It was a Polaroid, something of which Shawn hadn’t seen since visiting his grandmother’s house when he was a little kid.

Nostalgia comes from the Greek words for homecoming and pain. I can’t pronounce the words so don’t ask me to.

Don’t worry, I won’t. But how the hell do you even know that? Shawn chuckled and knocked Pete’s metal-frame bed.

I do because my girl is smart. And I listen when she talks. She sent me this photo—I didn’t take it. But she sent it to me and told me the meaning of nostalgia in the letter she sent. She said the Polaroid camera reminded her of memories of her childhood home. She took the picture expecting to somehow recreate that moment—that nostalgia—only to realize that all it produced was a crappy picture. Nostalgia, for her, was more about a frame of mind than an actual thing. Still… Pete laughed. The picture is pretty. And you know what? I really do get what she means. It hurts to look back on things sometimes because you think it won’t change. But the moment you have something tangible, like this photo, it means that a new moment has occurred and what you thought was so real was really just a memory. The past will never be present again.

Shawn nodded along. Sometimes he teased Pete for his digressions, but the insults were never true or serious. Pete went along with them, understanding how he often violated the silent masculine code of not speaking beyond gruff whispers or commands. In reality, Shawn was sure that Pete looked forward to these nighttime conversations as much as Shawn did. Or at least, Shawn hoped so. Pete was good at rambling, especially at night. And for a while, Shawn was good at listening. He didn’t like to interrupt when