“Hold on a sec, I just bought this song and I really want to listen to it,” he said from his computer.

I sighed, “Okay.”

A soft guitar started playing from his speakers. I sat my purse down on the floor and took a seat on the arm of our couch. I couldn’t even explain why I was starting to get irritated. I just was. I wanted to go and I had felt like he was rushing me to finish getting ready and here I was waiting for him to listen to a song that definitely wasn’t going anywhere.

“A full moon shinin’ bright, edge of the water we were feelin’ alright,” a guy started signing. I should have known this would be a country song.

He walked over to me, pulling my arm and pulled me off of the couch.

“…The girls are always hot and the beer is ice cold,” he started singing along.

I was looking down at the floor. I knew he was looking at me while he was singing, singing to me. He pulled me in closer to him. I was practically hugging him. I put my arms on top of his shoulders and he pulled me so my body was against his.

“….Never gonna grow up,” he sang to me softly. He started to sway.

“Never gonna slow down. We were shinin’ like lighters in the middle of a rock show. We were doing it right. We were comin’ alive. Yeah, caught up in a southern summer, barefoot, blue jean night.”

I felt butterflies erupt in my stomach, flying through my veins to every part of my body. I felt giddy all over.

I put my head against his chest, swaying with him.

Two minutes and forty-nine seconds later, he was done singing. We were done dancing.

I took a small step back and looked into his eyes.

It was exactly like throwing my heart over the edge of a cliff praying that he was at the bottom ready to catch it. Except I had already done this, fourteen months ago, and he was still there to catch it.

Soldier.

I hated this feeling. That feeling of waiting for something to happen but time is moving way too slow. Well, that wasn’t all that I was feeling. It was a mix of that feeling with some of what you feel the night before the first day of school. I don’t know if anybody else has ever felt that feeling but if I’m the creator of it then I don’t want the rights to it. I’ll gladly hand it to somebody else.

What am I waiting for? My boyfriend. I actually have a day off which means that I get to see him. That is, if you consider seeing him through a video chat actually seeing him. I count it since it’s the only way I’ve been able to see him since he got deployed to Afghanistan over a year ago.

I reached over and grabbed Barry, the stuffed bear I made when he took me to a Build-A-Bear workshop right before he left. I squeeze him once, a habit I’ve developed every time I got anxious to talk to him.

I moved my eyes over to the clock and watched another minute pass by. It was getting late. He usually calls by now. I say this because our calls have always been before four in the afternoon. It was getting closer to four-thirty. I pulled the Harry Potter book I was reading closer to force myself into the book instead of letting my mind create scenarios that would make me paranoid.
I heard the front door close gently but I ignored it. It was probably my best friend/roommate, Ariel, leaving. Or coming home, I really didn’t care either way. At this moment I couldn’t make myself care about anything but time and when I’d finally get to see him.

Reading this book was starting to become impossible. I kept looking over at the clock after every sentence. I was watching time move by at in incredibly slow pace and it was nerve-racking. I hated it. It was almost like in school when you would watch the clock tick down the last few minutes before the bell rang on Friday, except this was a lot worse.

I started playing a game with myself. If I read an entire page, I could look at the clock. Then I’d up it, if I read five pages I could look at the clock. It was almost like a slow form of torture except this also prevented me from coming up with insane ideas that would make me stress out even more. I didn’t need thoughts like ‘what if they got bombed’ creeping into my head.

I heard somebody walking up the stairs. I debated for a split second whether or not I should say something to Ariel but decided not to. I didn’t need her asking if he called yet and then when I told her no her taking a seat on my bed and trying to help me figure out why he wouldn’t have called yet. I didn’t need my mind jumping to the worst possible situation right now. I was already having a hard time stopping it with just me.

I had one more page to read until I could look at the clock again. I started reading faster.

“Hey there darlin’,” I heard an unmistakable voice say.

My head shot up.

I bolted out of my bed and ran into his arms without even thinking or second guessing it.

He caught me, squeezing me tight.

He set me down on my feet but kept his arms around my waist.

“You’re home,” I said. Placing my hands on his face as if testing to make sure he wasn’t a robot or something. That he was the real thing, flesh and all.

“I’m home.”

“You didn’t tell me!” I said, slapping his arm.

He shrugged his shoulders, pulling me against his chest.
“I wanted to surprise you.”

I squeezed him as tight as my muscles would allow.

I felt tears coming on. I didn’t want to cry but I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t believe he was actually home.

“Now, now, don’t start that or you’ll get me-“ he stopped.

“What?” I asked, looking straight into his eyes.

“Your eyes, God, they still get me,” he said, leaning down closer to my face.

“It’s not the same seeing them through a computer screen,” he added.

I pulled him the half inch to my lips and finally kissed him.

He picked me up into his arms, walked to my bed and gently set me down, before pulling away.

“I’ve missed you,” he whispered before kissing me again.