Page 9 of Wrong Number, Right Soldier
What. The. Fuck. Though.
My phone lights up again.
I swipe to answer before it can make even one pulse of vibration. Trey’s handsome face fills the screen and fills up my heart.Traitorous heart.
Heghostedus.
His first word to me isn’t a word at all, but a long,longbreath out. “Saylis,” he says my name like it’s the very thing that will cure all of his weariness—and as I just look at him a moment, that’s what I see. Weary lines around his dark, soulful brown eyes that I have gazed so much into, his soft, full mouth, his ruddy cheeks and sculpted jaw that’s covered in more hair than I thought was regulation. There’s a line down his forehead I never noticed so prominent before.
The man isspent.
“What…happened?” I manage.
“We had to leave, deployed on a mission.”
“You’re already deployed,” I state, confused.
“I can’t really explain it more than that,” Trey says, then he looks at me, into me, and then he pauses, drags a big hand down his tired face.
“You could’ve given me a heads-up,” I mutter, still feeling heartbroken in spite of the explanation. My head knows now that he didn’t really “ghost” me—or rather, my head chooses to believe his words. My heart is still bruised, and even hearing that it wasn’t…on purpose…it can’t just un-bruise, just like that.
“No, sweetheart. I couldn’t have.” Sweetheart. The endearment lands as tenderly as it always does. A tiny balm on my feelings.
“I’m…sorry,” I say for some reason.
He lets out a breath that’s sort of also a chuckle. “I’msorry.”
“It doesn’t sound like you have a reason to be.”
His shoulders relax, and he exhales once more. He looks at me, smiling—halfway there now to his normal, full grin.We’ll get it back.
“How did your test go?” Trey asks me.
“Good. I passed! How are…the rest of the unit there?”
Trey just nods.
“Can I ask you something, Trey?”
“Anything. Please.”
“How long are you staying in for? The service, I mean.”
“I’ve got almost ten years in,” Trey says to me. “Halfway to retirement, unless for some reason, I just love it so much I want to do longer.”
“Oh.”
He’s a lifer.
“This is my career,” Trey adds. “It’s all I can do. What I’m…cut out for. Like you’re meant to serve through teaching? I’m meant for this.”
I nod, probably too many times. And I smile, probably a little bit wobbly. These past two weeks…that wasrough. Can I handle this life for ten or fifteen more years, or maybe even longer?
I dwell on that question for all eternity after we hang up. Until finally, I come to the only true answer:
How can I not?
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