19. George
Chapter Nineteen
George
Time moves differently out here.
Some days stretch so long they feel like they're bending. Others pass fast enough that I blink and the sun is already dropping behind the ridge.
But somewhere between the missions, the waiting, the sand, the noise, and the quiet, Mia's letters become the one thing that helps me measure it. I don't tell her that. I’m not that stupid, but it's true.
By now, every time I receive an envelope, I can identify how she is feeling just by seeing the way my name is slightly tilted to one side. I know her handwriting looks a little rushed when she's excited. I also know that it looks cleaner when she's trying to sound more composed than she is.
Which is a problem, a manageable one for now. But a problem nonetheless.
Her latest letter finds me after a long day and a longer briefing. I open it sitting on the edge of my bunk, boots still on, dust still stuck to my skin.
George,
Today I tried to cook something decent and ended up with a pan of what I can only describe as moral failure.
If you ever wondered what crime smells like, it's burnt garlic and overconfidence.
I snort, and Mack looks over from his bunk. “Your accountant again?”
I don't look up. “Shut up.”
“That's a yes.”
“She's not my accountant.”
“Yeah, I got that when you smiled at the paper.” I fold the letter halfway, mostly to stop him from reading over my shoulder. Mack grins. “Secret girlfriend?”
“No.” Shit, that was too fast, too sharp even for me. His eyebrows lift. “She's a friend,” I add. The word sits strangely.
Well, she is a friend. I think.
Mack hums like the asshole he is, and goes back to whatever he's doing.
I read the rest of her letter after he leaves.
She tells me about burning garlic, about her boss using the phrase ‘circle back’ four times in one meeting, about standing at the window during a storm and threatening it exactly the way I told her to. It shouldn't mean as much as it does.
I start writing back that night.
Mia,
I've eaten things in the field that probably weren't food. Burnt garlic sounds ambitious compared to some of my meals.
There are several things I could write next. Something like, I'd eat anything you made, or I wish I'd been there to see it, or even I wish I knew what your kitchen sounds like when you're moving around in it. No. The hell not. I scratch the last thought out before it reaches the page.
Overconfidence is where most bad decisions start, so at least you're consistent with the rest of humanity.
I stare at the sentence…yeah, that’s better.
It’s ridiculous, casual, and funny.
The weeks start folding into each other.
There are more missions now, which means more dust and more nights when the only light comes from my headlamp as I read the letters of a woman I also write to, while being thousands of miles away.
Do you ever get scared?
Her question sits in the middle of the page like she tried to hide it between easier things. Before it, she wrote about buying the wrong kind of coffee creamer. After it, she wrote about Lyann sending her a meme that made her laugh so hard she spilled tea on herself.
But the question is there.
Not like scared-scared.
More like the kind that waits until the lights go off. I think everyone has a version of that. Mine shows up when the apartment gets too quiet.
I read that question three times.
‘Do I get scared?’ Hell yeah, I do. More often than I'll ever say out loud. I answer her carefully. Not because I want to lie to her, but because there are truths you don't hand someone all at once. And she already knows far more than I tend to share.
Yeah, I get scared.
Anyone who says they don't is lying or stupid. The trick is not letting fear convince you that you're alone.
I’m still working on that part.
Writing to you helps. More than I expected.
I sit with that for a long time. Then I fold the letter before I can take it back.
Her reply comes almost two weeks later.
That meant a lot to me, probably because writing to you helps me too.
I read that sentence too many times…
Today is the day I realize I’m starting to think of her when I shouldn’t, and about things I shouldn’t think about either.
I start imagining what her laugh sounds like when she isn't writing it onto paper.
Whether she reads curled up on the couch or sprawled across the floor.
How she looks standing at the window. The shape of her body when she's backlit by that seven o'clock light she writes about. Whether her skin is pale or warm.
What her hair looks like when she wakes up.
Messy, probably, falling across her shoulders or tangled against a pillow.
Whether she bites her pen when she's thinking.
Whether she makes the same face she draws in the margins of her letters when she's annoyed.
What her mouth looks like when she smiles.
I know all of those are just small, human things, but they are dangerous, because they make her real.
This last letter was funnier and more relaxed, like she’s finally showing me more of herself. She wrote three separate paragraphs about nearly fighting a self-checkout machine. She told me all about her day and her grocery shopping list.
Then she mentioned that she was in bed writing this letter, and all of a sudden I caught myself wondering what she sleeps in, if she sleeps in anything at all. I put the letter down immediately. “Absolutely not.”
Jackson looks over. “What?”
“Nothing.” He nods and goes back to his book.
I don’t want to think about Mia in bed.
Except I do.
I think about her stretched out on the bed I used to sleep on, her body warm and soft in a way I have no business imagining. I think about the curve of her hip. The line of her neck. Whether she'd look at me the way she writes…careful at first, then braver.
Whether her skin would flush if I touched her.
“Fuck.” I say it under my breath.
This is a problem. She’s a twenty-six-year-old woman I've never seen, and I'm lying here in a tent five thousand miles away thinking about what she'd feel like beneath my hands.
It's pathetic, but it's not stopping.
I'm thirty-six years old. I should have better control than this. So, I fold the letter and shove it under my pillow like that will help. I roll onto my side and close my eyes.
This has to stop.
Her next letter comes with a bit of a spark.
Maybe she’s teasing me.
The guys in your unit probably think I'm a ninety-year-old woman with twelve cats.
Please tell me you've told them otherwise.
I laugh under my breath.
Mia,
I told them you're my accountant. I don't know why. It was the first thing that came out of my mouth.
They don't believe me.
No one believes me.
…
You're ridiculous.
Why would I be your accountant?
This keeps getting messier.
I should fold the letter, put it away, and decide whatever this is needs to end.
Because we have a ten-year age gap, which might sound like nothing, but in the line of work I’m in, I’ve seen things most people her age wouldn’t dare even imagine.
Also, because I’m lonely, and she is lonely.
And lonely people can turn kindness into something it isn't if they aren't careful.
I know that.
Mack is watching me. I can sense him. “You're really committed to tax season.”
“Fuck off.”
This should stop, I’m sure of it, except the way I wait for mail says I'm already losing that fight.
The next letter from Mia changes something in me, something in what we have been building. Are we building something here?
I wish I could see what you see.
It feels strange to have pieces of your world without the picture.
Like listening to a movie with the screen turned off.
There are rules about what we can send. Rules about what we can show. I can't give her the base, or places nearby, any detail whatsoever, nothing that could put people at risk.
But I can give her something.
The idea gets stuck in my head and stays there all day. Through breakfast, through a gear check, through Mack giving me shit for being distracted.
That night, I find a cheap instant camera in a pile of random stuff near the resupply table. Someone ordered it months ago and forgot about it. Or traded it. Or lost interest. I ask around, and nobody claims it. So I buy it off the guy for twenty bucks.
“You got robbed,” Mack says.
“Probably.”
“What are you taking pictures of?”
“None of your business.”
He grins slowly. “Oh.”
“No.”
“Oh, absolutely.”
“Don't.”
“Tax forms need a headshot or dickshot?” I walk away, as he laughs behind me.
It takes me an hour to take one picture, which is embarrassing.
I wait until the tent is quieter, sit on my bunk, and hold the camera out, lower it, and try again. I feel like a fucking idiot.
Finally, I take the damn picture before I can think about it anymore. The flash is too damn bright… I wait for the photo to slide out. I stare at the blank square while it develops in my hand.
Slowly, my face appears.
My eyes are tired, my hair is longer than regulation would like.
I have a healing cut near my cheekbone. There is dust in the lines of my skin.
I look like a man who's been deployed too many times and hasn't slept right in months.
Will she think I'm attractive? I want her to find me attractive.
I want her to look at this photo and feel something.
I almost throw it away.
Is not that I think Mia expects anything else, but I don't know what it means to let her see me. To let her know what I look like when I'm thinking about her. When I'm lying in the dark wondering what her mouth tastes like. What her skin feels like. Whether she'd want me if she saw me.
All of me.
Not just my face.
I sit there with the photo for a long time, my pulse still too fast, then I turn it over and write:
This is me.
I slide it into an envelope before I can change my mind, then I take out a sheet of paper.
Mia,
You said you wanted to see what I see.
I can't show you most of this place. Rules. Safety. Common sense. Pick one.
But I can show you me.
No filter, no good lighting, and no pretending I look less tired than I am.
This is what I look like right now.
You don't have to send anything back.
The camera is cheap, but it works. I'm sending it with this letter. If you want to use it, use it. If you don't, throw it in a drawer and pretend I never sent it.
I would like to see you.
Only if you want that too.
For what it's worth, I'm glad you're the one living there.
In the apartment, I mean.
—George
I’m trying not to make it weird, but I want to see her…. I need to see her…
“Jesus Christ.”
I’m crossing a line I shouldn't cross.