Airport 10

I watched Katie as she pulled into a local restaurant. She smiled.

"This is it. Okay with you?"

"Yeah, fine. I could probably eat anywhere right now, to tell you the truth."

"Great! Let's go."

I followed her inside, and we sat a booth near the window, looking out onto the parking lot. The hostess took our orders, and then we sat, staring at each other across the table. She laughed first.

"What? Why are you looking at me like that?"

I figured it had been obvious. But even if it wasn't, I wasn't about to tell her.

"I was about to ask you the same thing," I replied, playfully attempting to mock her question, "in fact, I think you should know you're making me a bit uncomfortable. You've got quite the glare, you know."

She narrowed her eyes, and attempted to play along.

"I've been told I'm actually quite cute when I stare someone down. I guess I haven't lost my touch."

Whew. She was starting to enjoy herself, and to be honest, I couldn't have asked for a better response.

"I can say, for certain, that you are in fact quite lovely when you analyze another person."

She smiled, her eyes opening wider, yet maintaining her stare. She couldn't have been more clear if she had opened her mouth and asked me for it. To ask her to give back what I had stolen from her.

Her phone rang, breaking the silence. She immediately fumbled in her purse for the device, and silenced the ringer. She excused herself, she needed to take the call outside.

Dom.

I smiled politely as she left the table, apparently being careful not to take the call until she was out of earshot. I shouldn't be surprised, really, because I had been given more than I deserved. I never figured on the return flight back to the states that I would be sitting in a diner with Katie, flirting and carrying on as if nothing had happened.

It hadn't felt like a mistake when he had made the decision, or written the words. It was an email he had written her during his first month in Kuwait, just weeks after leaving the states. They had held each perhaps only a month before, and had exchanged careful goodbyes and the best possible intentions. But now that he was in country, it there was suddenly a measure of what it was he had been forced apart from.

It was different from his relationship with Rose, they had known each other for years, and there was an underlying definition of love for her. In his eyes, Rose could do no wrong, or be gone too long, for his love for her to fail. But Katie, Katie was different. She was something he needed, and needed right then. She was something he felt he would lose, unless she could love him in kind.

Unfortunately, he had not given her an honest chance. Sitting in a bombed out barracks that had been rewired for internet and electricity, he slowly typed an email to Katie that asked her to move on. He had not heard from her in days, and in their past, Katie had on more than one occasion felt an overwhelming pull for her ex-boyfriends who had been kept close. Her birthday had been one example, and as if being in Texas had been any better, Baghdad allowed him no chance to step in, to protect her, to be there for her when she wanted him to be. 

The message was short, and simple. Rather than put her through an entire year, or more, of questions and difficulty, they should just be friends. They should just stay in touch. He had asked her why she wasn't returning his emails, and offered a bit of what it was like to get so hopeful for something, only to be let down. We were not just sitting in the desert. We were actively patrolling, we were taking enemy fire, we were seeing things firsthand that most of the western world only sees through a news report.

I wanted her to know that it was romantic, in my eyes, to keep a long-distance relationship, to have something worth coming home for, worth waiting for. But also that there was nothing more difficult, or immobilizing, than the feeling of being ignored, or abandoned.

"Okay, I'm sorry about that. Dom wanted to know how things were going," she offered, sliding back into the opposite booth.

"No problem at all. I understand."