Chapter 28
To: Charlotte Jackson [email protected]
From: William Kavanagh [email protected]
Subject: Unsettled [unsent draft]
S parkles,
I feel like a caged tiger.
We’ve been on base for a while without being deployed, and it’s unsettling. I keep asking myself if I should get out now while there’s nothing going on. My enlistment period will be up soon. I could go out on my own terms, you know? Wouldn’t that be better?
But then I think about my guys. What if they’re on a mission and I’m not there to help out? What if it goes FUBAR and I could’ve saved them all if I’d been there? Maybe I’ve got a hero complex or something. I don’t know.
What I do know is that these guys are my family. This job has been the only constant in my life since I was seventeen. How do I just up and leave?
I can’t, which is why I still haven’t left when I said I was going to three years ago.
The unknowns are scary. Where would I go? What would I do? I don’t have anyone on the outside anymore.
Except for you.
But I can’t let myself count you. I don’t even know what you’re up to anymore. I guess you’d have graduated college by now. Did you settle down? Are you happy?
I hope so because I can’t let myself wonder if I’ve got a chance with you. I don’t, and that’s the end of it.
–T