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“We’ll have to discuss your time there.”
“Not right now,” I demand. “I’ll talk about anything else, but that.”
“HOW SOON DID YOU and Evan start dating?”
I fold my hands in my lap and think back to those first days of school. “If you were to ask Evan, he’d say it’s the day we first kissed. It’s something we used to argue about all the time, but for me I think it was the first day he told another girl that he had a girlfriend. He had never said that word to me before, and I didn’t want to assume.”
“Why not?”
I shrug. “He had other girlfriends before me, and I thought he just went around kissing girls in ice creams shops. I don’t know. I didn’t want to believe that he had chosen me and I had all these questions.”
“Like what, Ryley?”
“Like, why me? I wasn’t anything special, and I was new. Evan had his pick of any girl in that school and he chose me. It made me wonder a lot and second guess his intentions.”
“I think that’s common among teenagers,” she says. I silently agree with her.
I sit up a bit straighter on the couch and smooth out my dress. “About two or three weeks into the school year, I was walking down the hall to my next class. It was right next to Evan’s locker, so I knew I’d see him. His back was facing me when I walked around the corner, but I could see that
he was with a blond. I didn’t know her, but had seen her around campus a few times. I stopped, not intending to eavesdrop, but more to brace myself for what I thought I was going to see.”
The therapist leans forward. Is my story exciting to her?
“What did you see?”
“Nothing,” I say, shaking my head. “It’s what I heard. She was asking him to go to homecoming with her, and he said he was taking his girlfriend. She asked who he was dating because she hadn’t heard and when he said my name… it was like my heart was trying to take over my body. It was beating so hard. I couldn’t catch my breath. I gasped so loudly. I was embarrassed. He turned around with this boyish grin on his face, and I knew he was talking about me.”
“Evan sounds romantic.”
“He was…” I fiddle with the end of my dress before dropping it back in place and folding my hands. “I’m sure, if given the opportunity, he still is. He’s very unassuming.”
“What do you mean by unassuming, Ryley?”
“Evan came off as the dumb jock type to his friends. He was always laughing and goofing off in the halls or after school. He never took anything seriously. If there was a big game or a championship game he was the one cracking jokes all day to ease everyone’s tension. He was the life of the party, except when we were alone.”
“What was he like then?”
A single tear drops. “Sweet, caring and loving. He taught me what it felt like to be loved. To be worshipped. He taught me, well, everything. I was this naïve girl who had her first kiss in an ice cream shop, but that didn’t seem to bother him. He didn’t see me as a challenge or a conquest. He never made fun of me because of my lack of experience. The way he made me feel… I still felt that way the day he left for his last deployment.”
“When did Evan first leave you?”
“It was the beginning of my junior year in college when he called and said he was leaving. I knew the day was coming, but never thought I’d actually hear him say those words.
“‘Hi, babe.’”
“‘Hi.’”
“‘I have to leave for a little bit.’”
“‘Where?’”
“‘Oh, you know, Ry. I’m going to go protect our country, but don’t worry though. I’ll be back.’”
“The next day, I went to the base and filled out some paperwork. The secretary said I was lucky because most of the single men leave everything to their moms and that he must really love me. I told her I didn’t want the money just him. The one thing I wouldn’t get was his death benefit; that was strictly next of kin, and until we were married that wasn’t me.
“I didn’t even want the life insurance, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. Anyway, we had a week until he left, and I was a mess, but not in front of him. I’d break down in the bathroom or in between classes. It was weird because I didn’t see him every day, but knowing he was an hour away made things a little easier for me. Knowing that I’d see him on the weekends was like my reward for doing well in school.
“So with a deadline looming, I was a wreck. All I could think about is what if he doesn’t come home or what if he comes home and doesn’t want me anymore? So many thoughts were running through my mind, but I couldn’t share them with him. I couldn’t put him under that stress. I needed him to leave with a clear head and with the knowledge that I loved him more than anything.
