Our Little Love Story *NOW PUBLISHED ON AMAZON KINDLE!!*

chapter thirty nine

Jared and I had been living together for about a year and a half in California. We had grown into a routine. I still didn’t know very many other people in California than I had when I had first moved in with him, and therefore I spent most of my time while Jared was at work cleaning house and on the internet, passing the time until he returned home in the afternoons. 

Sometimes he had to be out in the field for an entire weekend, and occasionally for a whole week. Those were miserable and seemed to last a lifetime. Thankfully, though, he could have his cell phone on him. Even though he wasn’t allowed to talk, we managed to text back and forth a few times, although I was sure he wasn’t really ‘supposed’ to be doing that, either. 

Early one morning, I felt Jared climbing into our bed with me. 

“Mmm, what time is it?” I asked groggily, still half asleep. 

“Uhh,” Jared paused for a brief second, “a little after four in the morning. I just got home,” he answered. He sounded so tired. 

“Oh,” I mumbled, scooting closer to him in the bed and wrapping my arms around him. 

“Tiffany?” he asked quietly in the dark of the bedroom.

“Hmm?” I asked, my cheek resting lightly on his chest. 

“My four years is up here in a few months,” he began.

“Yeah, I know,” I mumbled, wondering what he was getting at. 

“Well, I was thinking, in March, instead of reenlisting, what if I just got out?” he finished. 

My eyes flashed open, and I raised my head to look at him. He was looking down at me. “What do you mean ‘get out’?” I asked, suddenly wide awake. 

“Be finished with the Marines, is what I mean. I want us to have a life together, without the military getting in the way constantly,” he explained. 

“Well, if that’s what you want to do…” I trailed off, not wanting to sound too eager or excited. I found it slightly hard to believe that he was seriously considering leaving the Marines. 

“What? You sound like you don’t believe me,” he said.

“Well, it’s not that I don’t believe you,” I replied, sitting up a little in the bed, “It’s just that, you’ve been in the Marines for almost eight years now. That’s a long time, Jared. You’re just going to ‘quit,’ just like that?” I asked, looking deep into his tired eyes.

“For you, I will. For us, anything,” he said simply, like it should have been so obvious to me. 

“I guess, Jared. But like I said, it just seems like this has come out of nowhere. I would love to go back home and start a life, and a family, with you,” I replied, thinking of our future children not yet conceived. I pictured us in a white house with a picket fence; maybe a dog running around in the yard. A yellow lab. He would be a yellow Labrador retriever. I smiled.