Stacy could have been anywhere from Alaska to Egypt. I had no idea where she had been deployed to and when I found out she left without saying goodbye, I made a distinct separation between what I probably meant to her and what she meant to me. To her, I figured, I was that person who could carry on a conversation and help her pass the time during those long nights on the flightline. She would probably return from her deployment a different person than she was when left, on a shift opposite mine, and the extent of our friendship would settle into small talk during shift turnover. To her, the best of our relationship was behind us. To me, she was the memory of a person who no one else could live up to. The experience of getting to know Stacy had shaped my expectations of every woman I would have dated from the time she left until I found someone just like her. Geographically and emotionally, it felt like we couldn’t have been any farther apart…until I saw her email in my inbox.
Just looking at the email sitting there unopened brought back a connection that had been lost in a departure too sudden for goodbyes and seemed too distant to overcome. Even the subject line: “I thought you might be interested” read like the beginning of hundreds of late night conversations we’d enjoyed while riding in the blue bread truck traveling from plane to plane. The simple fact that it was from her to me told me that somewhere in the busyness of the deployment and mission demands she had a thought of me. A thought that opened lines of communication and gave life to a friendship that had nearly withered away. When I opened the email it read as follows:
Steve,
I thought you’d be interested to know that Chris has been cheating on me! It turns out he wasn’t so smart. What intelligent person would use the family phone plan to use $500 worth of minutes to call their girlfriends? Yep! That’s right…more than one girl. So on that note, I’m pretty much done with men. I thought you would be most interested because Chris told me a few months ago what Melissa had done to you. Looking forward to the single life, throwing bbq’s at my new house, and not being miserable. Maybe when I get back you, Kevin, Will, Smitty and some of my other friends could come over to my house for a summer get together??
Hope you have a good week!
Stacy
I read the email again…then again just to be sure I got it right…then again for good measure…Ok, I think I got it, in summary: STACY WAS SINGLE! I knew I had precious moments to craft an email response. First, I was two minutes away from being late for roll call. Second, the window of opportunity is insanely small for a woman of this stature. Deployed or not, Stacy had climbed the charts to the most incredible woman I’d ever met and I wasn’t going to take the chance of putting off this email and letting another Bollard come along and charm her into his arms. My response had to tell her I was interested in hanging out, wanted to hear more about her break up, and didn’t let on how excited I was to hear that she was single…and I had about one minute to write it.
Stacy,
What???? That’s crazy! I don’t know what your phone situation is like, but if you can call, I would love to trade full stories of Chris and Melissa’s final acts of ignorance. BBQ sounds cool. Are you planning on throwing like a “welcome home/house warming” party for yourself? When do you get back any way? I’ll talk to Kevin, Will, and Smitty, but there shouldn’t be any reason why we wouldn’t be there.
Take care and hope to hear from you soon!
Steve
302-555-4689
It was close, but after sending the email I made it to roll call on time. I checked in, got my aircraft assignment, and headed toward the flightline. Then, for the rest of the night, while my body was at Dover Air Force Base; my mind was on that email.
The entire time I’d known Stacy, this was the first time that there was even the smallest of possibilities that I could ask her out on a date or even realistically pursue her as a dating prospect. I knew with the length of time Stacy and I had been friends that I ran an all too real risk of being caught in the “friend zone”. That is, because Stacy and I had been friends for such a long time, we may have gotten to the point where she saw me as too close of a friend to risk ruining our great friendship by stepping into a relationship that might not workout. At first glance, I thought the email itself could have been taken as a message sent to a friend who might understand what she was going through. I knew this was a good possibility, but for some reason it felt like something more.
That night, when I found myself alone on an airplane waiting for the truck to bring by a replacement part, I sat down in the pilot’s seat and tried to put myself back into a time when Stacy was still there. I went back to when I first I saw her and remembered being completely mesmerized by her beauty. I remembered our first conversation and how nervous I was to approach her and Airman York. I thought back to when she told me that she had told Bollard that she thought I was “intellectually attractive” and how I tried for hours to decipher if there was anything revealing I could get from that compliment. I reflected on our endless conversations that made twelve hour shifts fly by in mere minutes. I remembered the emotional rush of finding out she was going to be working on my shift and the betrayal I felt when I found out she was gone. When the truck finally pulled up with the part I had been waiting for, I got out of the seat, stepped off of the plane and wondered if Stacy had been remembering me when she wrote me that email.
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