“Did he look the same?” she inquires.
“Yes and no.”
“What the heck does that mean?” she mutters.
“Physically, yes. Same hair and eyes. Same intensity. Same full lips. His build is different, though. He limps a little, and I know he was injured in Afghanistan, but I don’t know the extent of his injuries. Overall, he’s more muscular than he was the last time we were together. It’s his gaze, though. His eyes are full of pain. I don’t know if I’m partially to blame for that, and it guts me to know I might be.”
“You can’t possibly be to blame for him being angry or upset. The breakup was so many years ago. He’s made no effort to contact you, so maybe he moved on. Something you should have done as well, you know,” Whitley points out. Her eyes are laser focused on mine as she waits for my response.
“You’ve made your opinion of my choices very clear,” I finally say.
“I still can’t believe you’ve gone this long without sex. Who the hell does that in their thirties? It’s not realistic at all,” she comments.
Yep. I know. It’s been years since I’ve been with someone. Leo was the last guy I was with. Actually, Leo is the only man I’ve ever been with. I fell for him when I was still a child, and even when we were broken up, I couldn’t fathom the thought of moving on. He was always it for me.
And, frankly, he still is.
I knew the moment he stepped into my apartment that I was still a goner for the man. I wanted to collapse into his arms, beg for forgiveness, and let his steady heartbeat calm me. Leo was always the calm in my storm, and I know I was for him as well.
But the Leo I loved as a teenager, and the Leo I knew in my twenties, is not the Leo of today. Now he’s jaded and guarded. He’s seen things I can only imagine in my worst nightmares.
“Are you going to see him again?” Whitley asks.
I shrug. “I guess I’ll see him around. He said he’d fix a couple of things around my apartment, but I’m not holding him to that. Oliver has asked about him every day, though. He’s pretty taken with Leo.”
“Of course he is,” Whitley says with a smile. “They have the same analytical brain. See a problem, figure it out, and fix it. No gray areas there. It’s been a few days since he was there, right?”
“Yeah. I don’t want to force Leo to interact with Oliver. I can already imagine what they’d be like, teaming up against me.” I laugh quietly. “Leo asked if Oliver was his son. Honestly, based solely on personality, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to say yes. They are remarkably similar. If I didn’t know where Leo was when Oliver was conceived, and the fact that Ember would never sleep with Leo, I’d wonder if there was a relation.”
“You told me once that Ember was ready to fly to North Carolina and yell at him one time, right?” Whitley didn’t know my sister very well, but has heard many stories about my big sister. Ember would have burned down the world for me if she thought it would help me in any way.
“She was,” I say with a grin. “The last time I broke up with Leo, she felt like he gave up too easily. I was heartbroken, and since she couldn’t really yell at me, she wanted to go rip him a new one.”
“Why did you guys break up? What was your thought process?” Whitley asks quietly as she watches me break down the shipping box.
“Leo wanted me to move to North Carolina, and I didn’t feel comfortable leaving my mom. He’d admitted his last deployment he hadn’t felt fully focused because he was worried about me. I felt like I’d be even worse away from home, and he definitely couldn’t focus then. We were in a stalemate. I wanted him to feel like he could move on with his life, even if I knew I couldn’t move on with mine.”
“So you knew you’d struggle?” Whitley asks, and I nod. She sighs. “That’s no way to live a life, El. And honestly, that’s not a reason to end a relationship, either. But your mom died not too soon thereafter, right? Would you have moved then?”
Emotions clog my throat as my vision clouds. As if I haven’t thought about that. I racked my brain for months trying to find a suitable outcome where we were both happy. After my dad died, my mom was a shell of her former self. Ember was all over the place. Our brother moved out of town as soon as he could. I was the stable one. I needed to provide the safety and security my mom desperately needed. I knew I couldn’t do that from across the country.
There are thousands of women who manage deployments well. They’re independent, go-getters, and can thrive when their partners are overseas for months at a time. I was never one of them.Every time Leo deployed, I was miserable. Every time the phone rang at an odd hour, I was convinced it would be someone from his family tasked with telling me he’d been killed. I lost track of the number of nightmares I’d had. I couldn’t go on social media, or watch television, because I’d inevitably see a report about a soldier’s death, and convince myself it was Leo.
For the majority of my twenties, I kept those fears to myself. Leo had no idea I struggled as badly as I did. Or, if he did, he didn’t talk to me about them. He didn’t know I’d been diagnosed with depression and anxiety, or that I had started meeting with a therapist. I’d only asked him a couple of times if he’d ever thought about a discharge and moving home. Once I realized he had no intention of getting out of the Army, I began to realize our relationship had a timer on it. I wouldn’t move to North Carolina, and he wouldn’t move home. There was no reason to continue, even if I knew my heart would never be the same.
“I couldn’t leave. Even after my mom passed. It was like being here kept the connection to my parents alive,” I finally say, clearing my throat. “And Leo didn’t want to get out of the Army. We were at two different points in life. I knew I couldn’t demand he move home. I’d never do that. Leo loved being in the Army. I would never want him to regret moving home for me. I’d worried he’d hold it over my head.”
“Was he like that? Where he’d be vindictive like that?”
“No. But I think I’d have always walked on eggshells in fear. And I couldn’t live like that. I wanted Leo to choose me for me, not because he felt forced to.”
“That makes sense,” Whitley says with a yawn. When the bell above the door dings, she stands, stretching her arms above her head. “I’m going to make a latte. Do you want one?”
“Yes, please,” I say, mimicking her yawn. They really are contagious. “Once the kids stopped puking, I was still up cleaning the apartment well past midnight. I’m working on fumes right now.”
“You want your usual, or can I surprise you?” she asks.
“Oh, surprise me. I have yet to dislike one of your creations.” Whitley loves running the attached café. With a few baked goods we get from Leo’s sister, Isabella’s, bakery, Whitley offers up one special sandwich per day, a soup during the winter months, and a salad during the summer. Coffee is her happy place, however, and she loves creating new and unique drinks to coincide with different holidays. For St. Patrick’s Day last year, she created a rainbow latte that blew me away, and regularly uses herbs and spices that aren’t considered normal for coffee.
