“Well…it went pretty much as you’d expect,” I started, knowing my answer was beyond cagey. “We spent the night together and it was…” I paused, grappling for the right words to describe the experience. Overwhelming. Intense. Freeing.
Rachel interjected with a squeal before I landed on an option. “Amazing?”
I smiled and nodded. “It really was. But—”
“But?” She repeated, wrinkling her nose.
I sighed and the smile slid from my face. “It was really hard, Rach. Saying goodbye to him this morning. Knowing that last night was the last time we’d see each other for so long and knowing that he is about to be in a very dangerous position. It was all so overwhelming. Which made it all that much sweeter—but at the same time…it kinda wrecked me.”
“Oh, honey,” she scooped me into her arms, and held me tight. “I’m sorry.”
I breathed in her familiar scent and relaxed into her comforting embrace, releasing some of the weight I’d been carrying. “I wasn’t expecting it to be that hard. You know?”
Rachel nodded, her chin bumping my cheek. “It’ll be okay, though, Holly.” She released me and stared into my eyes.
“I know,” I agreed, forcing some confidence into my voice. “I mean, we talked about how we could make it all…work.”
“You don’t sound too convinced.” Rachel wrinkled her nose.
“Well…”
She gave me a puzzled glance.
“I know this is going to sound ridiculous, but there’s a part of me that feels like I’ve already been through this once before. So, as much as I can tell myself it’s different—or that he’s different—I can’t help but feel like all of it is just words right now. And until I see what happens on the other side of this, I don’t want to get too excited.” I looked down at my hands and ran a fingernail around the cuticle of my thumb. “I want to be prepared this time.”
“Because of Kenny?”
I hated to admit that my ex-husband had some power still holding me after all these years.
“Yeah.” I dropped my hands to my sides and looked back into Rachel’s blue eyes. “Do you think I’m insane?”
“No. Not even a little bit, Holly. But you know you have to let that go and trust the process. Don’t judge Jack based on your ex. Everyone is different and every experience is different.”
“I know.”
And I did. When my ex-husband had joined the Marines, he’d gone overseas and came home a completely different person. Our marriage had been in trouble long before his deployment, but the issues he’d carried home from war had proved to be more than our relationship could take. When he’d chosen another woman as his outlet to deal with our problems, I walked away.
The scars of war hadn’t just touched his soul—they would be marked on mine for the rest of my life as well.
“I don’t even know how any of this happened. It’s like I blinked and poof!” I shook my head, still in disbelief. “I said I wouldn’t date a soldier ever again.”
“Don’t think of it like that, Holly. You’re not dating a soldier, you’re dating Jack,” Rachel corrected. “And he’s not even a soldier, he’s a sailor—a pilot.”
“You’re right,” I replied, nodding thoughtfully.
Rachel masked her expression, but I could see thoughts brewing in her eyes. “So, how did it end then?” She cocked her head. “I mean, he’s gone, so what happens when he gets back?”
I shrugged. “That’s the part I don’t know. But, unfortunately, there isn’t a way to find out until he gets back.”
22
Jack
A few very long days, full of preparation and more meetings than I could count had finally birthed the beginning of the tour, and we landed on board a few hours after the ship pulled away from the shores of San Diego.
What should have been a seamless transition, one I’d gone through on multiple other occasions, left me jarred and antsy as I tried to settle into life onboard the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt CVN 71. Our squadron began the trip that would ultimately bring us to the Persian Gulf to relieve the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan as they ran OPS in the Middle East.
Although it was a struggle to adapt to confined spaces, shared quarters, and life in the middle of the ocean, those things weren’t the source of the pent up frustration that grit against me every waking moment. No, the blame for those irritations lay solely with a leggy blonde that I’d been forced to say goodbye to only a few days before.
Holly Parker.
Not a moment had passed where she didn’t occupy the majority of my thoughts and made it impossible for me to fully accept that my life for the next six months was to be spent flying on and off an aircraft carrier.
We’d had one final phone call the night before I landed on the Roosevelt. I’d promised to keep in touch as often as I could but made sure she understood there was no guarantee how frequently we would be able to communicate. I wouldn’t always have access to the internet, and phone calls were few and far between. She’d accepted everything I told her, but I could tell in her tone of voice that she was even more unprepared for the separation than I was.