Where It All Began

Chapter 1

"Due to storms all Texas bound trains are delayed until morning at the earliest." The crappy speakers of the train station blared.

I groaned and got up off the floor grabbed my luggage and started walking towards the exit. "Wait, you forgot your phone. Wait!" I kept going, the building was busy, there was no way that he was talking to me. "Girl in the blue polka-dot pajama pants and slippers!" I looked down, sure enough there were my trusty fluffy slippers.

Finally I turned around to see a man in a brownish green t-shirt and army pants. "You forgot your phone." He said breathing hard like he had run from the other side of the building.

"Thanks. I wouldn't have gotten very far without that. I was actually just headed to go call someone, ironically." I muttered grabbing my cracked phone from him. "Things been to hell and back but it is still faithful." I said showing him the screen.

"Mine beats yours." He said pulling a shattered iPhone out of his pocket. the screen was missing a few chunks and the back of the phone was all different colors like it had been dropped in a bunch of paint buckets.

"What have you done to that thing?"

"Lets just say, maybe wearing a phone and being on a 1000 animal that occasionally goes crazy isn't a good idea." He said shoving the phone into his bag.

"Horse or...." I left the question open, unknowing of what he was like without the uniform.

"Horses and bulls. I break horses and I do rodeos...well I did." He gestured down to the uniform with a sad smile on his face. "Probably what I miss most aside from my family of course.

"Don't think that I am rude or something... but why do you do it? Why did you enlist?"

"When I was a kid," He starts talking and gestures with his head towards the coffee shop that was in the train station, "my biggest dream was to do something useful in this world, something that would be remembered or at least something that could even possibly slightly change the world for kids like me in the future." He paused for a long minute with a look of sadness crossing his face, "and then my dad was deployed. I was young, but I knew that it wasn't a good thing when the man in the black army suit rode up with a chest and a folded flag along with a piece of paper. A few years later, my brother, who is significantly older than me, enlisted. He was discharged before being sent overseas when a drill in Florida caused him to loose his leg. Even through all the bad that had happened, I still felt like I needed to change something, so I enlisted too. I actually just got home. I was overseas for 19 months and before that I was here for three months and I actually only have another month on my contract before the ultimate choice comes." During his story I had gotten a coffee and a muffin and we had sat down on the table most secluded from the family with like nineteen crying children.

I didn't know what to say in response to that, "did you.... I don't know. Do you feel like you succeeded?" I asked not looking up from my coffee.

"I guess. I mean i still couldn't make my brother feel better, he thinks he failed because he lost a limb before he even made it over there. I have been trying to convince him that it isnt his fault for the past like 8 years." He was looking directly at me now, I could feel his stare but it felt...good.

"That's good." The conversation felt like it was coming to an end, I didn't want it to end. "I enlisted when I was eighteen, I toured two times. It made my parents so mad, my dad thought that it was cruel for a girl to be there. Like we are softer or something, but I...I don't know. I felt like it fit. As i went the tours seemed to get shorter rather than longer and it seemed easier to be in that kind of on edge state. My grandmother always feared that I would become hard, that it would be easy for me to kill if it came to that."

"I told my mom the same thing, she wanted me to in her words 'drop out' right then and there. She thought that I was going to bring it home with me and be like one of those veterans that you see in movies who turned their military training into something completely different and became paid assassins or something." He said when I paused.

"I haven't ever told anyone that before. The only ones who really knew where I was and what I was doing were my family. My friends all thought that I was just off traveling the world, I don't know if I am ever going to tell them what I was really doing. I don't want them to look at me any different knowing that I killed people in a war that so many people wish was never started." I paused looking up and looking around me. "This conversation started as you returning a phone and now somehow it has about assassins and secrets...I guess all I can say is, this is probably about the best conversation I have had with a complete stranger in a train station, aka the last place that I want to be right now. No offence."

"Oh yeah, none taken. Same for me... Sorry. My name is Damon." He said sticking his hand out for me to shake.

"I'm Malia." I told him as I shook his hand. "So are you headed home or back to base?"

"Back to base. I have a few more like training things before I have to make the decision. I am supposed to help train some new recruits in the field, weapons searching and stuff like that." He told me with a worried look on his face.

"You seem scared." I stopped realizing that it may have offended him, "well not scared more nervous...?" I attempted to cover for what I had said.

"No you were right with scared. I have these kids lives in my hands, I don't want to screw it up." He muttered swirling around his empty coffee cup. There was a pause. I don't know what to say. "So where are you headed?"

"My fathers cabin. It is an anniversary type thing." I paused waiting for him to say something but to my surprise it was actually me talking again. "There was an accident two years ago the day after tomorrow. My family and I were on our way to my moms friends beach house in California for my twin sister and I's birthday. A semi truck lost control going 50 miles an hour on a road that they weren't even supposed to be on, let alone going that fast. It killed everyone in my family except for me."

He just stared at me.

"I am sorry. I didn't mean to tell anyone that. I don't know why I told you that." I had tears running down my face. "I um...I'm sorry. I have to go." I got up and started running away with my suitcase trailing on the ground behind me.

"Wait. Don't go!" I didn't realize that he was so close behind me. He grabbed my arm and turned me around putting his hands on my face. "You don't have to run." He was looking into my eyes. I was looking into his eyes. He moved his hands from my face to around my shoulders pulling me into a hug. "Never be ashamed of telling people anything that you have told me tonight." He was stern in his tone of voice, it almost sounded like he was mad, but the look on his voice was telling me that it wasnt with me.

When he pulled away he moved down and kissed me on the lips. I kissed him back. It was gentle and for some reason it felt so right. Whether or not I knew his last name or that I hadn't known him for more than two hours.