Page 12 of Wrong Number, Right Soldier
I chill the eff out just long enough for him to explain that it will take a week or more to get home after they leave. There are, I guess…lots of stops.
“What were you gonna tell me?” Trey asks me. Right.That.
Do it now.
I open my mouth and the words fall out of me like a mess on the floor. I can’t even stop them. “I’m falling in love with you, Trey.”
And then I just wait—for him to say something, or show any expression or emotion at all. But there’s nothing. No reaction. No response…whatsoever.
What on earth? No, wait, his faceisn’t moving. Did his phone freeze? Did the line go dead, is he playing possum? Holy shit, this sucks!
I don’t know if he heard me or not, but it doesn’t matter—I’ll tell him again when he’s here. I’ll tell him again and again and again. I hang up, knowing he won’t call back tonight—he’ll be headed to formation soon. All that’s left in my brain is:
Come home, Trey. Come home.
Five
Trey
‘I’m falling in love with you.’
I hold those six words against my chest for days until I can hear her voice again. See her face. Hold her.
Kiss her.
I didn’t get to say the words back, didn’t get to tell her how I feel, all the ways she’s turned my world and my heart completely off kilter, in the most exhilarating way. It’s for the best; I want to whisper them, instead, right to her ear.
Not falling.
Fallen.
I love Saylis.
And so, maybe Mom will forgive me for the cardinal sin I’m committing right now: getting off the flight at DFW Airport instead of Austin, where my mom now lives. I love my mom—so fucking much. But it’s taken thirty-one years to reach Saylis. I’m not taking one more detour before I get to her.
We’re on high security alert, so we’re unable to use our cell phones or share any details about our route home or the timeline until we’re on American soil. The no-contact weighs heavy on my shoulders, especially since our very last call cut out at the worst possible moment. Deployments can be very frustrating in that way. I don’t know why it happened, but I know that it happens.Anypotential threat to security or the mission, even outside of our unit or base, means our access to communication is quickly and quietly snipped—no explanation asked for or given. Only acceptance, and waiting.
It takes several long days to get home. Being stationed in Kuwait means I got lucky this time. My last deployment was Iraq, and on our way home our second stop was Kuwait, wherewe stayed for five days before proceeding onward. Back then, I was just a young, green 11B: eleven-bravo technically; “eleven-bang” endearingly—a true grunt soldier. We not-so-lovingly referred to any and all military stationed in Kuwait as ‘fobbits’—with their cozy beds in a “nice” base which they rarely had to leave the safety of, while we’d worked outside the wire (off-base, in combat zones) basically daily.
Fobbit or foot soldier, it’s hell to be gone. And now, with a girl like Saylis to look forward to who is waiting for me? It’s been even harder to be away.Home, I realize now more than ever, is more than the place where you live: it’s the people you love, the ones you need like oxygen in your lungs and your blood. I grew up in Dallas, went to school there, took my happy ass down to the Army recruitment center where I passed the ASVAB only by the thinnest skin of my teeth.
And she was just…there. The perfect girl.My girl. Just right there all along. What if we had somehow met back then? What if—
No. We are not going to sit here and play what-if.We are just going home.
Some of our unit departs at LaGuardia, the final stop for a handful of the troops, but I don’t de-plane. I’ve got almost fifteen more hours of travel between the stops and the layovers, but thankfully, I’ve also got communications back. I eagerly FaceTime Saylis, but she doesn’t pick up, and my heart sinks heavy into my gut.
Maybe she’s getting another massage.
Maybe…she’s out with friends.
Maybe she called Derek.
No, she fucking wouldn’t.
Ignoring every deluded and invasive thought that hates my brain, I send her a text with my ETA, flight number, final destination. The address to my place in Dallas I’ve always kept,for a number of reasons that never really made any sense, but now they perfectly, exquisitely do.
This was always going to happen.
