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Sam would have made a terrible biblical figure. She trusted the colonel, and she trusted that Cassie had no desire to harm her Volvo, but she couldn’t help watching the car meander away from the curb and all the way out of sight down the block.
She would’ve turned everyone she knew into a pillar of salt, because she always had to see for herself.
Colonel O’Neill was right, and he’d done the smart thing by making her take a break from Cassie’s driving lesson. That didn’t mean she wasn’t annoyed at him, irked that he was right, irritated that he’d dressed her down (gently) with Cassie watching from the car, frustrated to find that he was even more attractive than usual when he was being a patient teacher to an anxious kid and doing what was needed to calm said kid down. Even as he dismissed Sam from the driving lesson with a nickel and a pat on the head, she’d thought man, he’d make a great dad. It had made her a little weak in the knees, and she didn’t even particularly want kids.
Other than Cassie, of course. The part-time kid she sort of already shared with Colonel O’Neill, whenever Janet needed a break or Cassie just wanted to see them. Not that it was always both of them taking her out, of course. Although it had been lately, for driving lessons. Until Sam had been summarily kicked out of her own car for contagious anxiety.
He was right. He was absolutely right. If Cassie was calm and paying attention to the road she would be less likely to crash, less likely to get hurt, less likely to wreck the car. More likely to actually learn.
A bell over the door rang merrily as Sam entered the coffee shop. It was a non-chain place closer to the colonel’s house than to hers, so she’d never been inside, although she’d seen him with cups from the shop a few times.
“Hello!” The young barista was leaning on the counter, grinning. “Is Jack not coming in?”
“Oh…you mean…?”
The kid nodded. “Yeah, Jack. He’s in here a few times a week. You a friend of his?”
Sam started to say yes, then decided against it. She wouldn’t want to make it awkward for the colonel if this kid mentioned meeting a “friend” of his.
“He’s my boss.”
“Oh, cool. So what can I get started for you today?”
“Medium latte with a shot of sugar-free hazelnut.”
“Name?”
“Sam.”
You got it, Sam.”
While he busied himself with the drink—it was proper, pulled espresso, she noted with approval—Sam glanced around the shop. It was cozy and quiet, with only two other customers. Vintage-style travel posters from different coffee-growing regions on dark, wood-paneled walls. It looked like it could seat maybe ten or twelve people at most, with a long bar along one wall, and an assortment of small tables and chairs along the other.
There was an array of decadent-looking pastries behind glass next to the cash register, and Sam tried to convince herself she wasn’t going to order one. She would have to jog an extra mile every day for a week to counteract that many calories worth of butter and sugar.
“Okay, tall latte with a shot of sugar-free hazelnut, to go.” The barista—Andre, according to his name tag—slid her the cup and hovered over the register. “Can I get you anything else?”
“Raspberry Danish, please.”
“Coming right up.” He slid one of the pastries into a bag and rang her up. By reflex, she reached for her purse, then remembered she was holding the colonel’s wallet.
He’d still had another two twenties in there, she was relieved to see. One was more than enough to cover the bill and leave a generous tip for Andre.
The newsstand next door seemed like too much trouble, when she could just look at news or a book on her phone. The table closest to the cafe’s window was free, so Sam sat there but told herself she would not look out at the street and try to spot her car driving by. Intact, with personnel unharmed.
Or… Her eyes fell on the wallet, sitting casually by her coffee cup.
Dark brown leather, single fold, nice quality but starting to fall apart. Shaped to the curve of his haunch from years spent in his back pocket. God knows how long he’d had the thing.
A minuscule snippet of frayed thread stood out along one seam of the fold where the leather was worn down almost to the stitching.
Her eyes flicked up to the street, scanned quickly, then returned to the wallet. She pictured it lying in a wooden tray at night, with a handful of loose change and a set of dog tags.
The colonel wouldn’t have let her take it if he’d cared about her seeing its contents…right? And she needed to put the extra twenty and change back anyway.
With a bite of pastry and a sip of excellent coffee to fortify her, Sam eased the wallet open and slipped the twenty into the long bill pocket. It nestled into place alongside some smaller bills, a few receipts, a dry cleaning stub, and Jack’s printed car insurance card, which he probably should have taken with him.
With the wallet open, it was easy enough to see what the various pockets held. It wasn’t like she really had to snoop; she could recognize most of the cards without even taking them from their slots.
One side had an empty slot, his military ID (good picture), and his pilot’s license (slightly dorky picture). Opposite those were his TriCare card, a USAA credit card, and another USAA thing that was probably a debit card. Pretty standard stuff.
That left only the few vinyl picture sleeves fanning out in the center, and there weren’t very many.
She smiled at the photo of SG-1 that Janet had taken at some gathering or another. It was folded in half to fit in the wallet, and by coincidence the crease left her and colonel O’Neill on one side, Daniel and Teal’c on the other. She liked the way they looked together in the photo: both of them laughing, his arm thrown around her shoulder, his elegant fingers dangling a beer, and their heads slightly inclined towards each other as if they’d been caught conspiring.
The next slot held a folded-up dollar bill that looked many decades old, and like it had been through the wars, which it might well have. She wondered what the story was behind it. The photo backing it was easier to figure out—a shockingly handsome young Lieutenant in a flight suit next to an F-16, helmet under one arm, the yellowed photo and textured white border screaming “mid-seventies.” The young Jack O’Neill had been a little too handsome, and looked as cocky as any young hotshot pilot; she preferred the way he looked now that he knew a thing or two, and had more respect for all that he didn’t know.
The last sleeve held a school picture of a little boy in a red t-shirt who looked too much like the colonel to be anyone but the son he’d lost. Charlie. He had the same deep brown eyes, the same deep dimples, but a devilish grin she’d never seen on the colonel’s face. Fine, light brown hair, and long, thick little-kid eyelashes. He would never outgrow those lashes, or look in the mirror and decide to call his lengthening dimples “character lines” from then on. She recognized the outlines of the face, but the alien who’d taken Charlie’s image from Jack’s mind hadn’t captured the bright spark behind this child’s eyes.
Behind that photo was a grubby, flattened-out, origami fox made from pink and green paper.
And that was all.
Sam wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, but she would’ve liked at least one surprise, one chuckle. A Chuck E Cheese token, a frequent customer card from a frozen yogurt shop, a flier for disco night at the roller rink, something.
As she flipped the wallet closed, her fingers registered a slight difference in thickness between the two wallet sides. It struck her because it should’ve been almost symmetrical, but for the missing driver’s license. That side was a slightly inexplicable shape, though.
Weird.
Opening it again, she traced a finger along each outer seam, then beside the card pockets, and there it was—a secret compartment behind the left-hand slots, almost invisible in the darkened, worn-out crease.
Something was definitely in there.
Glancing up again, she saw no silver Volvo on the road or in the parking lot. The coast was clear. Which was good, because this absolutely qualified as snooping.
Swiping a finger into the hidden space, she tugged out a foil packet that was instantly recognizable despite most of the printed labeling having long since worn off.
There was really no mistaking a condom packet.
Her first thought was a stunned, slightly panicked, Oh my god he has a rubber in his wallet, that’s the colonel’s rubber, for sex, I can’t think about him having a penis or doing sex stuff, no no no.
Her second thought, once the initial flash of panic faded, was, Please tell me he isn’t ever planning to use that thing. Because it was old. Really old, for a condom. And she was pretty sure you weren’t supposed to keep them in a wallet, anyway.
The crinkled edge on one end was embossed with something, a message that had outlasted most of the ink on the packet. Holding it up and peering at it, Sam could just make out the lettering:
EXP: 1985-04-30
The condom had expired when Sam was about fifteen.
So…probably safe to assume he didn’t plan to use it. It was a long time to keep it as a souvenir, though. And a souvenir of what, exactly? A good time he hadn’t had?
With a final glance at the parking lot, she slid the curiosity back into its hiding place and closed the wallet firmly, nudging it slightly away from her on the table.
She knew she should feel embarrassed, but her brain was too busy doing the math. 1985. The colonel would have been around thirty, thirty-one… younger than she was now, which was strange to think about. In her mind he was always weathered, hardened, his face showing not the years but the experience. But sometime, between that overconfident flyboy and Colonel Dad Material currently teaching their foundling child not to strip her car’s gears, there had been a man hoping to get lucky.
Sam had no idea when the colonel had gotten married to Charlie’s mother, or how long they’d been together before having their son. She wasn’t sure exactly how old Charlie had been when he’d died, or even exactly when he’d died. This artifact might predate all of that. Regardless, she couldn’t speculate any further on the origin or backstory of a lone, obsolete rubber from her high school years that her boss kept hidden in his wallet.
Rather, she could do so—in fact her mind was trying very hard to do so—but she had the strength of character to resist.
Because really, she absolutely couldn’t allow herself to put this condom and Colonel O’Neill together in any sort of plausible scenario without risking supreme embarrassment the next time she looked at him.
Dear god, the strength of character it took, though.
When the colonel and Cassie opened the coffee shop door, ringing the bell in a bright double-peal, Sam was innocently reading a recent physics journal article on her phone and sipping her latte. She’d tidied away the evidence of her pastry weakness, and smiled at the pair as happily and calmly as if she’d had a relaxing spa day while they drove.
Even if he suspected she’d snooped, the colonel probably wouldn’t ask if she’d found the secret condom. And even if he did ask, she wasn’t likely to tell him. Any more than she was likely to ask if he’d remembered it was in there before letting her keep it. He probably wouldn’t tell her that, either.
Sam didn’t think this informational stalemate would last forever, though. Eventually, curiosity or frustration would break one of them, and the questions would come out. Maybe there would come a time they could actually discuss things like this without it jeopardizing either of their careers.
For now, she would settle for strategic silence, and the furtive, sweet enjoyment of having a question she might finally be able to ask, someday, when he was finally able to answer.