LOG NCTX001
When she departed on the aircraft, he didn't really know what to say. It might have been because he'd just woken up when she called. Or maybe something about being far from home had calloused him over in a way that made saying good bye easier. The way he wanted it I'm sure.
Still, he blurted out, "I'll always miss you...." Not a sound of a lie in his voice.
"I'll miss you too," she responded.
He wasn't sure if she was sad to be going or not. He knew she was leaving the loves of her life behind; but she was hard from her training. Not hard in the sense that most people think of the military. No...she had a deep soul, and a good heart. She just became better at hiding when it was broken.
He finished, "...I'll see you in June. Take care."
Why was he getting choked up, he wondered. Not like it would change his world; things keep moving just the same. Clocks keep ticking.
"Goodbye," she said before she hung up. The commotion in the background almost drowned it out.
"God I sound like an idiot." He told himself. "What the hell does she care that I'll miss her? She knows my life is going well here...she probably thinks I was lying. F-ing moron."
He sat up in his bed, half drowned in the hazy morning sunlight coming through his window. He swung his legs over the side of his bed, slouched over and just sat, staring at the floor.
A good 15 minutes later he wondered if she was even on the plane yet.
"I bet I wasn't even the last person she called," he said to himself, "not that it matters."
He'd been trying to convince himself not to call her right back since she hung up. The main thing keeping him from doing so was knowing he had no way to revoke his 'idiotic' comments.
On the other end of the line, she paid her last goodbyes for year she would spend across the world; her car, her mother, her closest friends.
She was sad. Not for the departure. she'd grown accustomed to that. But more that her 2 week vacation would be over in a matter of minutes; 14 days in as close to heaven as she'd be for along time to come.
Who wouldn't be depressed from that?
Self destructive as always, he was adamant at letting her know he really would miss her; he was always trying to make himself appear in the best light.
He wrote it. No, he declared it in a bulletin in public site; he was making a spectacle of his obvious insecurity. He felt smooth about it. "Perfect," he quipped.
She saw it when she arrived. She smiled. "Dork," she called him in the back of her head. She thought it was a rather cute move...of course she didn't know he was being mostly self-satisfying.
...That's how things worked with them. It's what they had in a friendship, in what made it best and what made it worse. It seemed like whenever he did something he thought was selfish, she was always a bit happier; she had a good heart (just kept it hidden), he had a good soul (just let it be misguided).
And so he would say, "...I'll see you in June," just to know she was smiling.
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