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Maybe now was a good time to start.
CHAPTER SIX
nate
“Your call. Nate?”
Four members of my unit and I sat around an old card table on a Friday night. Three days a week when we were inside the wire, we played cards, which was a respite from long days training, in meetings, at the range. . . life in an active combat zone. Some days were boring as hell. Others, we wished for some monotony.
I looked at my cards. They were shit. Tossing them in, I folded and picked up my phone. Checking text messages had become a bad habit lately. With a burner phone and data-double VPN, I was able to text back to the states. Which passed the time—exchanging crude memes with some of my buddies back home and getting updates from my former partner about his new life in an old hometown.
It was from that town I waited for a text now. Though not from Lucas.
“You alright over there?” one of the guys asked.
“He met a girl,” another said. Let the ribbing commence. I ignored it until someone called her by name. Zoe was hard to miss. I snapped up my head.
“How do you know her name?”
“Your phone, dude. It’s always out and buzzing with updates from Zoe.”
As the guys went round and round, I pushed back my seat.
“Uh oh. Looks like someone got a text.”
Ignoring them, I stared at my phone. It was, indeed, a message from Zoe. A question about what I’d been doing today. Done with cards, I made my way through the base. It was dark now, but during the day I could see smoke fires, villagers, goat herders, and glaring sun. . . among other things.
It had been more than ten months, and I was ready to get the hell home. What I wouldn’t do for a slice of pizza or a big, juicy cut of steak right about now.
My room, with enough privacy for some things and not enough for others, awaited. Sitting down on the bed, figuring enough time had gone by, I thought about how to answer her question without compromising OPSEC. Any time I sent a message back home, operational security was in the back of my mind.
It was hard to believe Charlee had given Zoe my number less than a week ago. At this point, we texted multiple times a day. Another came through from her.
Oh, sorry. I forget you can’t really answer that.
The woman was either one of the nicest I’d ever met or just really liked to apologize. She did it often.
No apologies necessary. If you ask me something I can’t answer, I’ll just tell you.
Sounds good. So it’s like ten o’clock over there now. Bedtime?
Almost. Just got back from playing cards.
Ahh, fun. That’s cool you have stuff like that to do over there. In between fighting terrorists and all.
And before I got a chance to respond. . .
OMG I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to give anything away.
Chuckling to myself, I responded.
You didn’t. That’s no secret.
She made me laugh at least five times a day.
At first, we’d messaged once. Then the second day, almost all morning. After a week in, we’d gotten into the habit of texting quite a bit. For me, mostly before the day started and when it wound down. For Zoe, she jumped on when she could, and a certain rhythm to our communication had been established.
Then yesterday, the question.
