Free Besiege by June Gray

 
     
     
     
    1  |  TENDING THE HOME FIRES
     
     
     
    Henry Logan was gone. Just like that, the bus turned the corner and he was gone from my sight.
    Not going to lie, that was one of the hardest things I’ve endured.
    I drove his Mustang home from base with tears streaming down my face. I didn’t care. I’d just said goodbye to my best friend, my roommate, and the love of my life. If that doesn’t make me deserving of a moment of blubbering weakness then I don’t know what does.
    Even the cop who pulled me over for speeding on I-45 took one look at the hot mess and knew. “Coming from base?” he asked.
    I nodded, wiping at my face, not wanting him to think that I was turning on the waterworks to get out of a ticket. “Yeah.”
    “Deployment?”
    I nodded again. I was going to get my very first speeding ticket on the same day I lost the first love of my life. And thus, I brought balance back to the Force.
    “My step-son left today as well,” the cop said.
    “Sucks, doesn’t it?” I asked, sniffling.
    He laughed. “Not for me.” He looked at my license and Henry’s insurance card and handed them back. “I’ll let you go with just a warning.”
    Really? “Really?”
    “Deployments are tough,” he said. “Just keep it under sixty-five, alright?”
    I gave him a smile, his mercy the bright spot in my otherwise bleary day. “Thank you, officer. I will.”
     
    I dreaded walking into our apartment, and justifiably so, because as soon as I walked inside, the loneliness almost suffocated me, as if Henry’s absence sucked all the oxygen out of the building.
    “I can do this,” I said out loud.
    Immediately I wished I hadn’t taken the entire day off from work. It was a Friday so the whole weekend stretched out for miles in front of me, with wallowing and crying as my unwanted passengers.
    Determined not to go down that road, I changed into my running gear and went to Earlywine Park, hoping the running endorphins would do something to lift my mood.
    After an hour of running, I didn’t feel the high that often comes after a great workout. Instead I’d successfully exhausted my body so that I could barely stand straight as I took a shower, which only added to the general feeling of gloom that I wore like a second skin. That night I crawled into Henry’s bed, afraid of waking up alone from a nightmare.
    I slept on the center of the mattress, hugging his pillow to my chest and inhaling his scent. With my eyes closed, I could almost convince myself that he was sleeping beside me but almost, in this case, just wasn’t good enough.
    The next six months were going to be hell.
     
    Beth Belnap invited me out to dinner that Saturday night. Her boyfriend Sam had also deployed so we were in the same shitty boat with a six-month long horizon ahead of us. This was the second deployment Beth had endured and had all sorts of nuggets of wisdom to impart.
    “It’ll get easier, promise,” she said as we sipped our drinks and waited for our dinner.
    I nodded, glad to know that someone had been through it before and come out sane. “I hope sooner than later. I’m tired of crying.”
    She gave me a sympathetic look. “The first time is always the worst.”
    “Does it get easier at night? Do you miss having him in bed with you?”
    Beth raised her eyebrows. “I thought you and Henry were roommates?”
    “Oh. I guess you might not know yet,” I said, putting down my margarita glass. “But a few days after that night at Tapwerks, Henry told me he loved me and things… just kind of happened.”
    Beth laughed. “Oh my God, I totally called it. When you guys were on the dance floor I told Sam that there was definitely something going on there. You two were looking at each other with all this sexual tension. It looked like Henry was about to maul you right there.”
    I blushed, remembering when I saw Henry as more than just a brother figure once more, when he’d pressed himself into me on the dance floor and had