Chapter 21
Magnolia
TWENTY-FOUR YEARS OLD
My phone rings, a shrill, ear-piercing sound that cuts through the dark of night. I roll over in my bed, squinting at my bedside clock. My breath hitches, knowing it’s got to be Lukas calling me in the middle of the night.
I don’t even look at the set of numbers on my glowing screen; I just quickly reach for my phone and swipe, pressing it to my ear. “Lukas?”
“Hey, baby.” His raspy, sleepy voice is so quiet, so broken, tears immediately spring to my eyes.
“Are you alright? Are you hurt?”
“No, baby, I’m fine. Just needed to hear your voice, that’s all.”
I take a deep breath, willing the adrenaline to calm, and I roll over, pressing the phone to my opposite ear. “God, I miss you. What’s going on? Where are you at?”
“We’re at a British base for a few days. Came to stock up on supplies, eat, shower, hopefully get a good night’s sleep before we head back out.”
“Did you get any of that done?”
He chuckles a little. “I ate and showered. Can’t sleep.”
“What time is it there?”
There’s some shuffling along the line, a little static, and then he says, “About three in the morning.”
The tears start to build. I worry about him all the time, but worrying about him not sleeping is the hardest. He has to patrol, to stand guard and be ready for anything they might encounter.
His mind needs to be sharp while somehow living in a state of constant sleep deprivation.
It’s going to wear him down until it eventually breaks him, if it hasn’t already.
“What’s keeping you up?” I ask softly, and he’s quiet for a while, but Lukas is always quiet when he’s trying to work through his thoughts.
“Everything, I guess.”
“Can you tell me maybe one thing?”
“You know that guy, Collins, I talk about?”
I nod. “The one that’s Harper’s age?”
“Yeah. He’s going through some rough stuff, thinks his wife might be cheating on him.”
I grimace at the thought of that. I’ve never understood cheating while in a committed relationship.
I’ve always been of the mindset that it is one of the most disrespectful things someone can do.
Cheating isn’t an accident. It isn’t an oopsie.
No matter how you spin it, it’s planned.
It takes effort to lie and make excuses like that.
It’s something I couldn’t ever come back from if it happened to me.
“I feel bad for him and I don’t even know him.”
“He’s a good guy. I hope it works out however it’s meant to be, you know?”
“Same.”
“He laughed when I told him I don’t worry about that.”
“About cheating?”
“Yeah,” he says softly. “You’d never.”
“Never,” I repeat. “Never, ever. That’s a promise.”
“That’s what I told him. Some guys don’t believe me, don’t believe us.”
“It’s just like you said that summer after school ended, do you remember?” I stretch out my body, pointing my toes toward the foot of the bed. “You said that not everyone gets to have what we have. Not everyone feels what we feel.”
“Seven years later, that’s still true.”
He falls quiet again, and I can tell there’s something on his mind. Something he wants to talk about, but he’s struggling to get the words out.
“Lukas?”
“I’m sorry,” he croaks, his voice breaking with the words. “I’m all messed up, Mags. And sometimes, I feel like I’ve let you down.”
“Baby…” My hand flies up to the center of my chest, rubbing over my aching heart. “Don’t think like that. Don’t beat yourself up, please.”
I can hear him trying to fight through the tears on the other end of the phone.
He clears his throat roughly, and there isn’t anything I wouldn’t give up to be able to hug him right now.
“Lukas,” I call out. “You know I love you more than anything. I want you, only you. Yeah, it sucks what we’re going through.
It sucks to only hear from you once every month or two, but this is all temporary.
It’s temporary, baby. It won’t always be like this.
And you're not letting me down, are you kidding?” Thinking of Lukas and our future is what drives me, what pushes me, what gives me my reason for waking. “You've never let me down, ever.”
He sniffles once more before clearing his throat. “Ahh, I think I’m just exhausted. My mind isn’t right these days, it seems to run away from me.”
There are very few times in our relationship that I’ve seen Lukas break down.
I’ve seen him angry, stressed, but the times he’s let himself crumble in front of me have been life-changing.
The night I flew to Copper Ridge after finding out he had surgery; the last summer we spent together back home.
He broke down those times, but the moments were brief.
Now, it seems like he lives in that state, always on the verge of cracking, and it’s terrifying.
“I know you probably don’t want to talk about it, or can’t, maybe. But I’d like to hear what you’re feeling, Lukas. I want to…” I pause, waiting to see if he’ll share. But when he doesn’t, I try a different route. “I started seeing a therapist.”
“A therapist? How come?”
I blow out a heavy breath. “Lots of reasons. Because I miss you. Because I worry about you constantly. Because I need to learn how to be able to live my life to the fullest while also missing you like crazy. I needed to learn why it’s been so hard for us to talk.
I’ve had a lot of guilt about how different our lives are right now. ”
“Why the guilt?”
“Because I brushed aside how miserable you were back home. I get that you wanted something else for yourself, for us. You wanted a second chance, you know?”
His “Yeah” is hesitant, and I think he’s listening, understanding, trying to work through everything I’m saying.
“She—the therapist—also pointed out what you’re going through.
The kind of life you’re living. You’re doing things that I don’t even know about, that I likely wouldn’t understand, I get that.
I want you to be able to call me and for us to have these lengthy, emotional conversations about how you feel, but that can’t happen right now. ”
I pause, waiting to see if he will add to that.
To say she’s right or wrong, but he’s silent.
“She said that you aren’t in a place where you’re able to show weakness.
That you need to stay tough, resilient to the outside world even if that’s not how you’re feeling on the inside.
It’s what’s going to keep you safe.” I broke down in her office when she pointed that out.
While I’m struggling to live two lives—the life in front of me and the life I have with Lukas.
He’s also struggling to live two lives—the one that’s on hold, the one where we’re back home and together, and the one he’s living every day.
The dangerous one. The one that’s literally life or death.
“In a very tactful way, she told me that I need to respect what you can’t give me right now, and I agree. ”
“Damn,” he finally says.
“Is she right? About all of that?”
He whispers a weak “Yeah,” and the first tear slides down my cheek.
“Okay, then…” I trail off, trying to come to terms with the gripping reality that the Lukas I want isn’t the Lukas I can have right now, but that doesn't mean he doesn’t care.
“I’m glad I know, you know? Maybe it’ll help both of us to know that what we’re feeling, and our kind of poor communication right now is somewhat normal?
I don’t want to ask too much of you. I don’t want my neediness to take away from what you need to do. ”
“You’re not needy, baby. I’m your boyfriend, I should be able to tell you things,” he whispers. “I want to, you know. It’s hard for me, but I want to try. I think I need to try, for us.”
I nod along, tears still brimming at the corners of my eyes. He sounds broken, depressed, but he’s talking. He’s listening. Acknowledging what we need to do to make it work is more than I had hoped for. It’s a big step forward for the both of us.
“I’ll probably keep asking what’s going on, even if you can’t tell me.
” It’s just who I am. It’s what anyone does in any relationship, I would imagine.
Whether it’s with family, a friend, or significant other.
When you care, when someone is such a part of your life, you want to help them. When he’s off, I’m off.
“Any talk of going home yet?” His deployment was supposed to be seven to ten months; that’s what they originally said. But now we’re on month eight, and he hasn’t received word either way.
“Nah, they haven’t said anything. I imagine it’ll be closer to ten, maybe more.”
I purse my lips together, pulling the bottom one in between my teeth to chew on it.
“You can say that it sucks,” he jokes. “It can make you mad, all of this being so uncertain. It makes me mad.”
“I’m working on being a supportive girlfriend, remember? I just need…” I blow out a shaking breath. “I just need to adapt.”
“I couldn’t sleep last night,” he says, abruptly changing the subject. “Do you know what I was thinking about?”
“What’s that?”
“Remember your first day of school in Copper Ridge? When you found me on the playground?”
I smile into the phone. I was so lonely.
My parents had moved back to their hometown to be closer to Nana.
My grandpa was newly diagnosed with cancer, and they both needed support.
I was too young to realize what a move like that truly meant.
I was sad to say goodbye to my childhood home, to my friends, to my ballet teachers.
That first day, I wandered around the playground, looking to see if anyone was looking at me, if anyone seemed approachable.
I saw a skinny boy with sandy brown hair playing basketball with his friends, and something about him drew me in. “I remember that day.”
I can hear his smile over the line. “You tapped me on the shoulder, and I spun around, thinking it’d be one of the guys. But it was this girl I hadn’t seen before, in a pink dress, asking to play basketball with us. “
His friends started to whisper, and when he turned back, I saw one of them shake their head no. “You grabbed the ball from them and tossed it to me, letting me come play with you guys.”
“I fell so hard, right then and there. I felt something twist in the center of my chest, and I thought maybe I pulled a muscle.”
I giggle at the memory of nine-year-old Lukas going home to tell his mom he pulled a muscle at recess. “Foolish boy just fell in love.”
“Best fucking day of my life.”