Homecoming (Lesbian)

CHAPTER 15 PART 2

Things were not what I expected. At the base, we played a lot of poker, watched old episodes of The Big Bang Theory and played football when the sun wasn't too hot. Iraq is too warm in summer and mercilessly cold in winter. Every now and then, I got to Skype with Faye and my family. Connor would tell me about his day in school and mom would talk to me about how her day was. She never talked to me about her job though, just about home, just a mom of the world like she said, but I didn't care. I could've heard her stories about how the washing machine was broken and dad tried to fix it by breaking it more all day long. It made me feel like I was there with them.

Faye told me about her new job selling paintings at Leo' Gallery while we talked through Skype. Leo Conant paid her decently and let her offer her own original paintings on the shelves in exchanged for a small twenty percent commission.

Days went by without caring to ask. The longer I stayed there, the more I became someone I never thought I would. I had killed people, I had seen pain in ways you cannot begin to imagine and I was responsible for it. After nine months in the base, Faye started noticing I was not the woman who left. I wasn't the girl she felt in love with. Things were changing slowly, but the change was there nonetheless.

However, she was patient, she understood I couldn't speak about the things I kept seeing every day. About how someone whom I talked to one day were dead the next. She never pushed me, never forced me. Until something happened.

One night, I was laying on my bed when John came close and showed me the picture of his wife.

"When I go back home for a couple of months, I'm gonna squeeze the living crap out of her."

I looked at the picture and then replied "She is pretty." I said. A blond girl with cheeks that sank when she smiled.

"What about you?" he asked "You've never told me if you have someone special back home."

"Yeah, there's a reason for that." I said, laying my head on the pillow.

John sat on his bunk, next to mine, "Come on, man! We've being friends for almost a year. I have your back out there and you have mine. You know everything about my girl. Come on, tell me."

I sighed. "Don't ask, don't tell." I replied trying to make him understand what I meant.

To my surprise, John shrugged and said "Please, that crap hasn't being up since 2011. Tell me. What's her name?"

I turned to look at him, he wasn't leaving this one alone. Not anymore. I sat up and said "Fine. Her name is Faye Burton."

"Burton? Like the director?"

"Yup. She's... twenty two now. I wasn't there for her birthday. It's never happened before. Ever since we met I've always being there."

"How long have you known each other?"

"Don't know... about thirteen years or something. Being together for six."

"Jesus, dude! That's a long time."

"Yeah, and I'm gonna make sure it's even longer."

John smiled at me and asked if I wanted to play cards.

The next day, we got some bad news. Kyler had been killed in Afghanistan. Bullet to the neck, bled to death. A horrible way to go. We hadn't really spoken to him after school, but knowing someone we considered to be close, someone we had gotten through training with was now dead, it was something difficult to grasp. That night I had a deep conversation with John about death. That thing you don't really think will happen to you, until it does.