The Army Girl (lesbian) completed

11. Carmens Point Of View

I jumped awake at the sound of my alarm clock, slapping my hand on the button, I switched it off. I glanced over to look at Sammantha but she wasn't in bed with me.

I furrowed my eyebrows, as I climbed out of bed with a groan as I threw on a pair of sweatpants and a baggy T-shirt. I walked out to the kitchen, after grabbing some cash from my dresser and was greeted with the smell of pancakes. Everyone was sat down eating while Samantha was cooking.

"Happy Birthday Army Baby!" Sophie and Sonja both shouted as I sat down. I responded with a grunt and a glare folding my arms on the table and resting my head on them with closed eyes.

"Woah, what's with the evil look, dude?" Sophie asked in surprise, since she had never witnessed me act like this in the mornings while we were on duty. I was normally the most wide awake person while away.

"Don't take it to heart and don't ask why," Sammantha informed the two girls, "But, for some reason, on her birthday, Carmen can't get going without a kickstart from coffee even though she usually has no problem getting going without coffee all the other days of the year."

She placed a mug of coffee and a plate of pancakes in front of me and before she could walk away I pulled her sideways onto my lap. I buried my face into her shoulder and neck and relaxed into her closing my eyes, wanting to go back to sleep. Sammantha rubbed my back soothingly as she chuckled at my behaviour, I had always been like this on my birthday.

"Drink." Sammantha ordered as she held my coffee up to me, "Black with two sugars, just the way you like it." I took a sip humming in approval before Sammantha pulled it away and replaced it with a fork full of pancake.

"Plain and boring just like you like it too, weirdo." Sammantha laughed as I chewed slowly my eyes peeking open to look at her.

We carried on like this, eyes locked on each other while she gave me a soft and gentle smile until my coffee and pancakes were finished, Sophie and Sonja watching on in confused amusement due to them never seeing this side of me. Sammantha jumped up from my lap and took my dishes away to wash.

"Morning." I croaked out to everyone as I stood and stretched, running my hands through my messy hair.

"Finally!" Antonio exclaimed, sweeping me into a hug, "Happy Birthday sis!" He handed over a long thin gift, and stood looking at me expectantly.

"What?" I raised my eyebrow at him, smirking at him as he bounced impatiently on the spot, "Here, happy birthday kid." I handed the money to him, one hundred pounds to go towards his tattoo.

After Antonio and I had exchanged our gifts with each other, as per tradition we had to exchange our gifts before anyone else, everyone else handed their gifts over.

Antonio received money from everyone for his tattoo, while I got a personalised licence plate from Antonio that had spelt out Sally. Jay got me some new guitar accessories. Lucas had given me a new gun cleaning kit for our next tour.

Sophie and Sonja had given me a couple of new shemagh scarves in beige, green and black and some matching fingerless gloves. My mum and Kate had given me a new customised surfboard covered with an Ed Hardy design.

Sammantha was the last one to give me a gift, she approached me slowly carrying a small wrapped box. She sat down after handing the box over and fidgeted nervously with her hands as I unwrapped it. I opened up the box and pulled out some dog tags.

On closer inspection I realised that the tags were customised, the sentences engraved onto them burned into my memory. 'When you are weak, I will give you strength. I'll hold you in my heart, till I can hold you in my arms."

The silence in the kitchen grew as I stared intently at the dog tags, my heart started pounding in my chest as I took my military tags off my neck for the first time since receiving them. I placed one of my military tags onto the chain Sammantha had given me and placed the new tags, accompanied by one military tag, around my neck.

I rose slowly from my seat and made my way over to Sammantha carrying my other military tag and chain with me. She looked at me uncertainly as I placed my military tag around her neck and pulled her to her feet and into a hug.

"I'll come back to you." I whispered into her ear so no one else could hear.

I felt Sammantha's grip tighten around me and noticed everyone making their way out of the kitchen as we stayed there hugging. Sammantha was the first to pull away.

"You really like them?" She asked quietly, running her fingers over my new tags.

"Yes." I smiled and looked Sammantha in the eyes as I spoke.

Our gazes broke when we were interrupted by someone clearing their throat.

"Hey, Sis. Hate to be a buzzkill, but, we've got to head to work." Jay told Sammantha as she nodded in acknowledgement.

"You go, I've got to get on with packing. I'll see you later." I gave Sammantha one last hug before departing for my room.

I set my iPod up in my speaker system and started blasting music as I set up the iron and ironing board. I organised all of my military clothes into piles ready for ironing, shirts, vests, trousers all a mixture of jungle camouflage and desert camouflage.

The first jungle camouflage shirt, vest and trousers I ironed I hung up on a hanger before ironing the rest and packing them into a bag. Once all my clothes were packed I moved on to pack my army bag with more supplies, including my new gun cleaning kit, a spare pair of boots and my desert camouflage combat jacket and rank slides.

I pulled my jungle camouflage combat jacket out of my closet and hung it next to my uniform, I slid a rank slide onto the epaulettes on my combat jackets front and shoulders before moving across to my uniform shirt and adding my rank slides to the shoulder epaulettes.

I reshaped my beret on my head after soaking it in hot water and let it dry while I set to cleaning and polishing my boots on an old towel. Once I was all packed I went and had a shower just as everyone came back.

I got myself ready for the birthday celebrations, it wasn't a major deal. We were just going down to the beach and having a barbecue and some drinks around a bonfire. I threw on some shorts, T-shirt and some trainers before picking up my hoodie and meeting everyone downstairs.

We headed out and the night was filled with plenty of fun and laughter, everyone was in high spirits including me. We stayed there until the fire had died out before making our way back to the pub to sleep. It was past four in the morning by the time we all fell into bed.

We all slept through most of the next day and spent the day relaxing in front of the television watch old movies. The pub stayed closed for the night due to it being mine and Lucas' last night home and we eventually called it a day and retired to our rooms to rest before our upcoming journey.