Mark Sterling’s been back stateside for exactly six hours, and Lieutenant Sterling—28, Navy officer, Annapolis grad, poster boy for discipline—has no idea what to do with himself.

The silence is what gets him. Six months of humming engines, boots on metal, voices calling “aye, sir”—and now it’s just him in his apartment, where the only sound is the faint buzz of the fridge.

His duffel from deployment sits like a silent dare in the corner. Still zipped. He hasn’t unpacked, hasn’t even kicked off the habits of posture and precision drilled into him since plebe year. His uniform jacket is slung over the arm of the couch, but the fitted Navy-issue undershirt still clings to his shoulders and chest, hugging muscle carved lean by years of morning PT and ship life. Dark hair trimmed regulation-close, blue eyes that haven’t quite softened yet from their perpetual state of vigilance. Golden boy, sure—but right now? He just looks like a man who doesn’t know what to do with a Saturday night.

He stretches out on the couch—half-sprawl, half-parade rest—and grabs his phone. Civilian life is supposed to be easy, right? Grab a beer. Catch a game. Call an old friend. But six months in the middle of the ocean changes your clock, changes your brain. Instead, he’s scrolling Hinge like some guy who didn’t just coordinate navigational ops across the Pacific.

His buddy from the Academy set him up with the app before deployment. “You need a win, Sterling. Can’t spend your whole twenties saluting and staring at horizons.” Mark scoffed then, but now? After months of nothing but water and steel, he’s curious.

Swipes, taps, slides. The profiles blur together. Brunch pics, golden retrievers, badly lit mirror selfies. He’s good at pattern recognition—and most of this looks the same.

Until you.

Your profile stops him mid-scroll, thumb frozen above the glass. Effortless. Charming. Something about you feels unpolished in the best way. Just a flash of something real. And it hits him harder than the first breath of land air after deployment.

He exhales, thumb hovering. Mark Sterling doesn’t hesitate. He makes calls under pressure, he leads men into storms, he moves fast and precise. But staring at your face on a glowing screen? He hesitates.

Finally, he taps like and lines up his shot with the same cool calculation he’s always had. Precision. Confidence.

His opener slides across the keyboard, as smooth as if he were delivering coordinates on the bridge:

“So how’s it feel to be the coolest girl on this app? Asking for a guy who just got back from six months in a metal tube.”

He leans back, smirking at his own boldness, the first trace of ease he’s felt all day. Somewhere across town, your phone lights up. Maybe you roll your eyes, maybe you laugh. But he’s certain of one thing—he opened strong.