Maybe, maybe, it was just me that couldn’t move past the “What if?” I mean how do you measure regret? Opportunities missed? Children who might have been or parents that weren’t.
So, I ate, absentmindedly, channeling pain and regret and whatever else into the motion of eating, and trying to ignore the fact that the woman I had loved all my life, regardless of the pain, regardless of the anger, the love remained, and she sat across the table from me once again.
I turn to the waiter as he brought out the third entree, some sort of fancy steak with mushroom sauce, and as he was leaving the room, her laugh rings out, sparkling with the energy I remembered.
She pours two glasses of wine, and I watch her sip. She watches me equally as intently, holding the glass 
in her hand. The tension grows….and then, one word shatters the room. One name, really.
“Dryse,” she said. “Let’s talk about how that happened.” And I watch her drain the glass, and fill it again.
Just the name was enough to make me crumple a fork into a little ball.
Then she began to speak, and I….my head felt like paper shredding as memory revealed itself.
August 12th, 2005
The letter had arrived the day before, but he had been on patrol. She never wrote letters, wasn’t really our style, but, well, how else do you break off an engagement to the one you supposedly loved while he was away.
He read it over and over, and…..crumpled it. He tried to call, but it rang busy, then no answer. He called every five minutes for twenty four hours before going to find the sergeant, and volunteering for Iraq…..
I feel like my eyes are bulging out of my head, that I’m having a stroke. The pain is unlike almost anything I have ever suffered. I feel like blood must be gushing out of my ears, I couldn’t move, I’m not even sure if I’m breathing.
Yet, I can hear her talking about the letter. A letter that she had shown me a few days ago, from the Army, delivered to her, not me, I had never seen it, not ever.
August 12th, 2005
A fucking email. How dare she send such a fucking message over email. He was due home in less than sixty days, with the wedding two weeks after that, shortly before Christmas. She sends him a fucking email that she couldn’t marry him? That she didn’t love him anymore? That this was fucking hard for her? How fucking hard could it be to send a goddamned fucking email? The rumors must be true then. Yea, he’d heard them, that she’d taken up with some new guy, fucking pansy just brought into her unit.
He’d typed a hundred replies and never sent one. He tried to call, once, and it was busy…..and, then he walked to the sergeant’s office and volunteered. Then he got drunk with his buddies.
He could hear her. The pain in her voice, not remembered pain, but pain, now, pain current, tears. Then the waves come crashing down and as if, ripped from him, bloody chunks of pain rise to the surface and he remembers. Really remembers.
August 12th, 2005
“I’m sorry.” She says quietly, weakly. “But I can’t marry you.”
I’m shocked, I have no idea what to say. I thought we would be discussing the dinner plans. The wedding is less than ninety days away.
I hear myself say. “There’s a supply flight this weekend, I know I can trade duty for a short leave. Can I see you? Let’s talk about this.”
“No, you can’t see me. I’m not at home…”
“Where are you?” Perhaps the rumors had been true……
“You don’t need to know….it doesn’t matter.”
“Then why? I haven’t been gone that long.”
“Because I’ve been thinking…it’s just not going to work….it can’t work.“
“Why can’t it work…..I love you. Isn’t that enough? This doesn’t make sense.”
“It makes total sense….“
“There’s someone else isn’t there….who the fuck is it. I’ll kill him.”
“Don’t say that.”
“You’re lying.”
“You know I didn’t lie….no fuck you!”
“I can’t do this. I just need you to understand….
“How am I supposed to understand? You haven’t told me anything.”
“no, I need you to. I don’t care…I just need you to.”
“Then why do this, I can hear you crying. Don’t you love me still?”
“Of course I’m cryin’. This ain’t easy, ya know…”
“Then why?”
“Because it has to be done!”
“No it doesn’t, Amelia!” and now I am yelling.
“Yes it does! Ah fuck, Brett, get stuffed ya bloody derro!”
When she hung up after derro, he’d cried jagged tears. She was the only one he’d ever told about his fears about addiction because of his Dad, which is why he so rarely drank. To end it in that way, he didn’t understand. He’d called back for the next hour until the battery died. At first, it was busy but then, it just rang and rang and rang.
Leon found him, still with him then, one of his oldest friends, stuck at the same rank forever due to lack of ambition. Of course, later he’d heard the rank had become permanent due to a sniper’s bullet in Afghanistan.
That night he went out and drank until he passed out. He called every day for the next month when he wasn’t on patrol, and it just rang and rang.
Last Dreams 