When I woke up feeling guilty and turned on, I called Eve for some courage and advice.
"You aren't supposed to have feelings for the rebound guy, right?" I asked Eve the next morning.
"Right!" she exclaimed. "Tell me you aren't falling for soldier boy."
I didn't say anything.
"Are you there?" Eve asked.
"You told me not to tell you anything."
"Dammit, Sam." The gusty sigh whistled over the telephone line.
"I know but he's so vulnerable." I told Eve about his friends with benefits.
"So he's not over his ex?"
"No, he's over her, but he's still suffering from the negative side effects. I get it."
"He's not a widower." Eve tried to depress my mounting excitement.
"I know, but he's suffered. I feel, I don't know, like he’s a kindred spirit or something."
"I think you're reading too much into this."
"I'm not," I protested. We'd even exchanged phone numbers before he'd kissed me sweetly good night. The memory of last night made my body tingle all over. "He's very sweet beneath his prickly exterior. He really longs for a special connection with someone but is too scared to reach for it."
Eve contemplated this for a moment. "That sounds like how you feel."
"Could be. Could be we both feel this way."
"Just be careful." Eve sighed.
"Thanks for the pep talk." I smiled and hung up at her blowing me a raspberry over the phone.
GRAY TEXTED ME MID-MORNING.
U around?
Yes.
A few seconds later my phone rang. It was Gray.
“How are you feeling this morning?”
“Good, you?”
“Felt…odd,” he said and before any anxiety had set in, he continued. “I missed you.” Then he laughed. “I think. Sleeping over isn’t something I’m familiar with but I woke up thinking about you. When I jogged over to your parents’ house your Rover was gone.”
I felt warm all over. “I went back to the condo and now I’m sitting on my balcony knitting.”
“I wish I could come over but the boys want to head to the Boundary Waters and do some portaging.”
“That’s what? Carrying your canoe around?”
“Yeah and eating uncooked beans and rice.”
“Sounds really fabulous,” I said, completely insincere.
Gray chuckled. “Anyway, I wanted to call and let you know that I’ll have no cell phone service for a week. Can I see you when I get back?”
I covered the phone and let out a shaky breath. Until that moment I hadn’t realized how much I wanted, maybe even needed, to see him again and for him to want to be with me. “I’d like that,” I told him once I gathered my self-possession.
“I’ll be thinking about you,” he said and his low tone made me tremble.
I took a step off the cliff, hoping the safety rope was still there. “I’ll be fantasizing about you.” It was about as edgy and sexy as I felt like I could get.
A long pause followed my words and I grew concerned that I’d interpreted all of this incorrectly. Then I heard a cough, a rustle, and a slight groan. The sound was different when he spoke too. “Sorry, had to get some privacy here,” he said. “I’m going to need you to go into greater detail.”
“Ahhh,” I stalled. I had very little practice in talking dirty to someone. “Um, sorry, I’m sitting out here on my balcony and I think I’m redder than my neighbor’s peonies.”
He burst out laughing and the sound of it made me want to float up in the air. “That’s okay.” A pounding on the door echoed down phone lines and I heard Gray’s muffled voice yell, “I’ll be out in sec.” To me, he said in gruff voice, “I gotta go. I’ll call you the minute I get back and we’ll do something fun. I promise.”
The time apart was smart for both of us. I think we were both caught off guard by the intensity our encounter. I spent the week thinking about him and Will. Whenever Will would come home for leave, he’d try to convince me to move to Alaska with him, but I’d always rebuffed him with a litany of reasons. I had too many friends here. I would miss my family. I hated the cold. I may have been hoping that he’d give up jumping out of airplanes for me and realize that our dream of going to college together was so much better. But he was stubborn and the fervor of being a soldier held more power over him than I did.
Gray was like Will in some aspects. They both loved the military. But Gray’s love was a bittersweet one, tested by loss and experience. He spoke so passionately about the men he served with and made sure that they were ready and safe. His confusion about whether to reenlist or separate was one that would easily resolve when he sat down and accepted that responsibility he thought he couldn’t handle. Deep down, he knew he could do it but while there was time to resist, he would. As for him not trusting a woman enough to have a relationship? That was a different story but what I’d said to Eve was true. I felt a kinship with Gray and no matter what happened to us, I hoped we would be friends.