Always a Soldier by Rob Smith

Author:Rob Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: N/A
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Published: 2020-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

Alex and Murphy were very careful after their brush with almost being caught. They stayed together for a few years, even as Alex decided to leave the Army and Murphy decided to do a yearlong deployment to Korea before he exited. Deployments were a way of saving money for many young soldiers. The money was not only tax-free, but included all sorts of bonuses for war-zone pay and hazard pay. He sounded resigned as he spoke of it, as if Murphy would be sharing the enormous bed in the one-bedroom apartment right now if he had any say in it.

I looked at Alex as he finished sharing the memories of his relationship with Murphy. I was struck with an overwhelming desire to make it better for him in any way I could. Instinctively, without thinking, I reached over and placed my palm softly on his cheek. He turned toward me. I saw the wistful look on his face change to shock and surprise. As if jolted by an electric current of knowledge, I removed my hand from his cheek and sat quickly back in my seat. I tried to figure out what the hell had just happened. What was I thinking? It was with a sense of abject horror that I realized I was in love with him.

Suddenly it all made sense. Most days I slogged through the day just to get to the end of it to head back to Alex’s apartment for dinner. I thought of him nonstop, and he’d attained a near-mythical place in my mind. I listened to him; he listened to me. I cooked him wretched concoctions of hamburger helper that he smiled at and choked down. I shared with him each and every thing that happened in my life. I loved his spiky hair, loved his knobby knees and his junky apartment. I spent so much time with him because he made me feel alive in a way that no one else in my life ever had before.

When I said so, it took nothing more than a look at the shock on his face to realize that he didn’t feel the same way. The realization filled me with a deep sense of hurt, though I didn’t blame him. We both seemed frozen in place, unsure of where to go or what move to make next. “Look…I…. ” he began.

“I know,” I said, cutting him off.

I didn’t want to hear that he wasn’t in love with me. I certainly didn’t want to hear anymore about how in love with his boyfriend he was. I was still trying to process the whole thing myself.

“Just drop me off?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, and we pulled out of the area and drove off.

I arrived back on base for the first Saturday night in a very long time. I couldn’t get what happened between Alex and me out of my mind. There was a deep part of me that wished it had turned out differently. I walked into my building and ran into Lantos, who was carrying a bag of laundry that was almost bigger than he was.

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