Away From You (Back To You Book 2) (7 page)

The first
two things weren’t really lies as much as they were the silver lining of a
shitty situation. I know I signed up for this, but I wasn’t as “gung ho” as Spencer
was about it. I knew that deploying was part of being a Marine. I just viewed
it as more of a necessary evil than an adventure like my best friend did. Maybe
it was because I’d never done much travelling growing up. In fact, until boot
camp I actually hadn’t spent more than a week away from Olivia since we started
dating in freshman year of high school. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her or
thought something bad would happen while I was gone. It was more that I was
used to her always being there. Like she was a security blanket or something.
And I meant that in the least pathetic way possible.

I had a
large family, so holidays at my mom’s house were always full of screaming kids,
lots of laughs, and a dose of drama. I wouldn’t have it any other way. My two
older sisters were there with their husbands and kids, as well as my parents,
several aunts and uncles, and hoards of cousins. It had been a long day after
having brunch at Olivia’s family’s house that morning, but it was a good kind
of long. It was the kind of long that reminded you how many cool people you had
in your life that you probably took for granted. Christmas spirit was clearly
rubbing off on me. Either that or the eggnog was spiked.

“So,” Aunt
Sue interrupted my thoughts, “are you two going to try for kids when you get
back?”

“Oh, Susan,”
my mom chided her.

“No, it’s
okay, Mom,” Olivia waived her hand at my mother, “we’re used to that question
by now.”

Susan raised
a brow. “Are you? And what do you say?”

Olivia
looked at me and I rolled my eyes. This conversation was another one that I
didn’t feel like having right then. Apparently, no matter how young you are
when you get married, everyone still wanted to know when you’d be popping out a
kid. Was I crazy or was judging someone for getting married too young and then
harassing them about having kids a little hypocritical?

“We usually
say that we’ll have them when we’re ready.” I stiffly answered for Olivia. She
was always so sweet about it, but the topic annoyed me for some reason. Whether
we wanted to have kids now or when we’re thirty was no one’s business but our
own.

My mom hid a
smile from Aunt Sue. She knew my feelings on this conversation and was probably
annoyed with her sister for bringing it up.

Katie, my
oldest sister, brought her hands together as if she were praying. “Please have
them soon, Liv! You guys are going to have the cutest babies! I need more
babies in my life.”

“Clearly.” I
snickered at Katie.

Erica, my
other sister, had a mild-mannered infant, if there was such a thing. Katie, on
the other hand, had three kids of her own. The youngest one was two and a huge
handful. If anything, watching all three of her kids grow up and teach me the
meaning of the phrase ‘terrible-twos’ was enough birth control for anyone. But
then I looked at Olivia and saw the gleam in her eye as she watched my nieces
and nephew play by the tree. She was coming down with baby fever and fast.

“Okay,” I
feigned a yawn and stretched my arms over my head. “I think we’re gonna head
out.”

“So soon?”
My mom asked, her brow crinkling. She had a pleading look behind her eyes that
I knew was because of the deployment. I was going to miss my mom a lot, too. I
was the youngest and she never let me forget that I would always be her baby.
No matter how much it embarrassed me. But right then I had the sudden urge to
hug her. These next several months would probably be just as hard for her as
for Olivia.

“C’mere,
Ma.” I wrapped my arms around her small frame, her curly brown hair tickling my
nose as I breathed in the scent of home.

“Don’t
worry, babe. I’ll take good care of your mama while you’re gone.” Olivia rubbed
my back and my mom pulled her into a group hug with us.

My nieces
and nephew ran up and wormed their way through our legs and joined in, making
everyone laugh. Thankfully, it also distracted my mom before she could cry or
something. Goodbyes always sucked. I wasn’t leaving for another few days, so I
figured I’d be seeing my parents again before then. I definitely wouldn’t see
my sisters or the rest of the family before then, so those goodbyes were long
and full of tears on my sisters’ parts. Erica blamed it on her hormones after
just having her son, but I knew better. She’d be crying anyway.
Women.

“Seriously,”
I reassured Katie as she told me for the tenth time to ‘be safe,’ “the most
danger I’ll be in is if I fall off the flight deck and into the ocean. But
that’s why we practice the man overboard drills so often.”

Erica
swatted me on the arm. “Shut up! That’s not funny, Matt.”

I laughed.
“It’s kind of funny.”

Katie shook
her head. “It’s not as funny as you think it is. Look at mom’s face. She’s
terrified.”

My mom
rolled her eyes. “I taught my boy how to watch where he’s walking. He won’t
fall off the boat.”

“Thanks, Ma.
And you won’t have to worry about me getting sucked into a jet intake, either.
That only happens to people to who
don’t
watch
where they’re walking.”

Both of my
sisters and my mom scowled at me and Olivia grabbed my arm. “Are you trying to
freak them out?”

“Yes.”

“That’s it,”
my dad piped up for the first time in a while. He’d been engrossed in shoptalk
with my uncle about the carpentry business they shared. “Get out of here before
you drive these women nuts. They might cripple you just to keep you from
going.”

“Good
point.” I shook hands with my dad and helped Olivia with all of our presents to
the door. Another round of “be
safes
” and “I love
yous” were called after us as we left. As the door closed behind us, I sighed.

“You okay?”
Olivia asked.

I shrugged.
“I’m fine. But that’s what’s weird. I mean, why am I so ready for this when
everyone else is so clearly not?”

Olivia gave
me a sad smile. “Because you’re going off on some big adventure and we’re all
here just waiting for you to come home.”

“Does that
upset you? That I’m ready for it?”

She shook
her head. “It would upset me if you felt the same way about it as I do. That
would mean you were miserable.”

My shoulders
sagged under the weight of her confession. The last thing I wanted was for her
to be miserable. I knew she was strong and she had things like family, friends,
and nursing school to keep her from truly being miserable, though. We would
both get through this first deployment without incident, and every deployment
after this one would be a piece of cake.

I put my arm
around her. “Let’s go home.”

Olivia

“I still can’t believe it,” Ellie
smiled as she gazed wistfully at her engagement ring. She tilted her hand from
side to side, watching it sparkle in the sun. “If you had asked me last year if
I thought Spencer would ever get married I would have laughed at you. Especially
if you said he’d be marrying me, of all people. This is so surreal.”

We were
relaxing by the pool at my complex enjoying the San Diego sun. We’d been out
here too many times to count in the six weeks since our guys had shipped out.
“I’m so happy for you guys, Ells. You know what I just realized? You never told
me exactly what he said when he proposed!”

Ellie gaped
at me from the lounge chair next to mine. “Are you serious?”

“Yes! I
guess with the holidays and them leaving for deployment we just never had a chance
to talk about the details. So, what did he say?” I nudged her with my elbow.

Ellie
blushed. “Well, when we first walked out onto the patio, I said that I was
cold, and he made some dumb joke about how he would offer me his coat but he
couldn’t take it off since it was part of the uniform, and then he laughed
really awkwardly. That was my first clue that something was up. Just the way he
said it. He’s normally a lot smoother than that, ya know?”

I chuckled.
“Yeah, I can see that.”

“So, then we
walked over to the railing and he just kind of looked at me for the longest
time, and started to get kind of choked up.”

“Really?
That’s so cute!”

Ellie
giggled. “We’re such girls.”

“Whatever.
We’re not girly enough if we’re just now talking about this. Go on.”

She reached
for her tanning oil and starting reapplying it to her legs. She seemed like she
needed something to do with her hands. I knew how she felt. Talking about Matt
with him being gone was hard because it only made me miss him more. I was
always trying to fill my time to keep from missing him, and I never had idle
hands.

“He started
talking about how much I meant to him,” she continued, “not only as his best
friend, but also as his girlfriend. He brought up his mom, her strength and loyalty,
and then said that those are qualities he sees in me, too. He promised that
even though he would be gone a lot, he would make the times he was home
special. He said he would do his best not to take me for granted and to put me
first whenever he could.”

I hadn’t
realized that I was tearing up until a single tear dropped from my cheek. “That
is so sweet. I had no idea Spencer was so poetic!”

“He gets
pretty wordy when he has something important to say.” Ellie laughed. “The most
surprising part was when he said that if there ever came a time that he needed
to choose being with me or staying in the Marines, he would always choose me.”

“Wow.” I
took a sip of my homemade smoothie and shook my head. My respect for Spencer
grew by a mile. He’d always talked about how his dream had been a life in the
Marines ever since he was a child. Nothing and no one could get in the way of
that goal. That was part of the reason he’d held back his feelings for Ellie.
Spencer had been a military brat growing up just like I had. His dad was a
career Marine, and his mom had died of cancer when he was younger. Spencer had
a lot of misplaced resentment towards his dad for having a family while also
being a Marine. He didn’t think the two things meshed well, whereas my experience
with a parent in the military was extremely positive. He’d come a long way in
his relationship with his dad since then, though, and that was evidenced by him
telling Ellie that he would choose her over the Marines if he had to.

“Right? Of
course I don’t see myself doing that to him, because I know this is his dream.
But I’m not
gonna
lie – hearing him say that
made me feel… important? I’m not sure if that’s the right word, but you get the
point. Then he got down on one knee and asked if I would stand by his side and
be his wife.”

“I’m
impressed.”

Ellie handed
me the bottle of oil and I started reapplying my own coat of it. “Come to think
of it, I don’t know how Matt proposed, either. I was too far away to hear
anything.”

I instantly
got butterflies thinking about that beautiful day by the water. I’d been so
nervous to see him after the three months of boot camp that any signs that he
was about to propose were completely lost on me until he’d actually dropped to
one knee. I remembered how panicky he looked as he spoke, and at the time I
thought that was crazy because I couldn’t wait for him to shut up so I could
say ‘yes.’

I smirked.
“It was much less sappy.”

She swatted
me on the arm. “Hey!”

“I’m
kidding! But really, Matt just told me how much he loved me and promised to
love me forever. He was so nervous I’m not sure he could have said more than
that! Then he dropped to a knee and asked me. It was really sweet. At the time
I thought he was going on and on because I was so excited to say ‘yes,’ but it
was really short and simple. To be honest, I don’t remember the exact words,
just the way they made me feel.”

“So sweet.”
Ellie sighed. “I think it’s pretty cool that we both got to watch each other’s
engagements from afar.”

“Me too.”

Ellie
flopped back on her chair. “Man, I can’t believe we’re not even two months in
yet. This sucks.”

I nodded.
“Yeah, it really does. But it helps that I’ve been so busy with my nursing
classes. And I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have you! My friends at
school all think I’m crazy.”

“What do you
mean?”

“None of
them know what it’s like to be with someone in the military, so the separation
seems really weird to them. They keep asking me stupid questions like if I
bought a vibrator or if I give him stripteases on Skype.”

Ellie rolled
her eyes. “Seriously?”

“Yep. I
mean, don’t get me wrong, I know they just don’t know what it’s like to have
half your heart on the other side of the world, but give me a break. It’s not
all about sex and even if it was, it’s none of their business.”

“Yeah. Well,
you’re not really into that kind of humor anyway. Sounds like they just don’t
know you very well.”