Broken

His name was William, and our relationship started as a friendship, kind of. We met in training; both newly enlisted into the US Army. No, we did not start dating in training, we were never one of those “battle boos” you hear about. There was some flirting here and there, but honestly he wasn’t quite my type. I liked taller guys, much taller. I didn’t actually notice him right away, but when I did, I thought he was cute. He had this skin tag on his bottom eyelid, and I decided to use it as an excuse to talk to him. So, one day as were standing in formation, I turned to him and said:

“You have a booger on your eye”

He immediately turned red and said

“It’s not a booger, it’s a skin tag”

I already knew that though, and I don’t think I ever told him that. It was just something that I picked out to use as an excuse to start a conversation. It worked too, because we ended up talking most the day. Just asking questions about each other, and chatting about the training. We ended up getting pretty close after that, and at one point he even said I was one of his best friends in the class, behind Chris. Chris was another soldier in training with us; William had met Chris in Basic Training. They arrived to Advanced Individual Training together, already real good friends. The three of us would spend time together a lot, and I really considered us as a really close group of friends. We had a few others in the class that we also would hang out with, but not as much as just us three. After a while William and I started flirting over text messages. He used to say “dear” in his texts. I hated and loved it. I’m not exactly sure why I hated it; maybe because it was kind of cheesy, I sometimes felt like it was a mocking thing too, almost like calling me a child. Part of me liked it because no one ever used it, it felt almost old school, almost gentleman like. He loved to tell me this story after we started dating, and even after we got married. How he saw me on that first day of Advanced Individual Training, and he fell in love with me at first sight. He says that he told Chris, that first day that he was going to marry me. To be honest, I never asked Chris to confirm this story, but a part of me never believed William. Thought it was just a nice thing he made up to make me feel special. I still to this day don’t believe that he ever said that to Chris.

William, Chris and I would hang out a lot during our off time from training; it was nice to be in a little circle of friends. Sometimes we would even have Nicole, Gary and Mandy join us. We would either all hang out in the courtyard at the smoke shack, or go bowling. There wasn’t really much else to do, and as trainees, we weren’t really allowed to do much more. After training ended we all stayed in touch, we would often talk about getting back together and celebrating each other and catch up. Conversations started about locations and dates. We were pretty determined to do a little reunion and really party, since no one was monitoring us now, and we were no longer restricted trainees. Las Vegas came up as an option, everyone seemed to really like that idea. Sin City, where else could we really party, reconnect, and let loose.

My mother and I were really close and we talked on the phone often. One day I told her about the group conversations about a reunion and how we were planning a trip to Las Vegas. I told her what dates we have been considering. It was supposed to be a group of four or five of us total. The next morning after telling my mom about this possible trip, she called me back; she purchased round trip flights for me to Las Vegas, for the dates I told her about. I used to tell people that my mother was really the reason why we ended up together. She purchased those flights for me, and there I was, going to Las Vegas, no backing out now. Everyone else who was supposed to come though, they all did back out. Making plans to either go on a beach vacation with family, or just unforeseen reasons of why they no longer could make it. Just like that it ended up being just us two, William and me, in Las Vegas. That trip was when we first got romantic, and oh boy was he romantic. He knew exactly how to treat a girl to make her fall in love. I should have ran then, and never looked back, but love is blind, that is a fact. Just like that he fooled me, and I was hooked like a fish.