Page 8 of Wrong Number, Right Soldier (Wrong Number, Right Guy #11)

Saylis

If you can help it, try not to ever fall in love with a soldier. It’s a hard life, but what else am I supposed to do— not be with the love of my life? That’s out of the question. Unthinkable .

Even now, pregnant while my husband is on his third deployment since I’ve known him.

At least this one is only for six months, and he gets to take a few weeks of his caregiver leave starting a week before my due date, so as long as baby Evelyn doesn’t try for an early departure—or a late one, for that matter—he’ll get to see our daughter be born and hold her for those precious first two weeks.

I vow every day not to expect perfection from our child, but just this once, baby girl, I need you to be exactly on time .

Trey once told me he’d retire from the Army because he didn’t think he was “smart enough” for anything else, but that was either bullshit or ignorance. The man is brilliant, in his own, wonderful, inspiring way. He’s still in the Army because he freaking loves it, that’s why.

To be honest? I’ve learned to love it, too.

We move a lot, but I make friends wherever we go, I teach on base, and when I’m off-the-clock I go exploring around the local city.

Not necessarily the towns right off-base—A nice way to put it?

Those places don’t usually have a whole lot to offer—I mean the nearest larger cities, like Austin, Savannah, Raleigh.

My friends keep in touch: they’ll come visit, I’ll go visit; it’s not the same, but it’s not impossible, either.

Nothing is impossible, if you think about it.

Not even falling in love with a virtual stranger while he’s literally deployed .

As a Language Arts teacher, I can promise you that wilder stories have been lived to be told.

I get to be the keeper of those stories, until someday some of my impressionable eleven-year-olds grow up to be the new keepers.

We all do our service . If mine isn’t the most fulfilling work in the whole wide world, I have no clue what is. I’m certain Trey would be of another mind, but his fulfillment and mine? A tad bit different, I’d say.

As a mom-to-be, I am not sure which is stronger, my love for Evelyn already, or my curiosity. What will she be like? Look like? Sound like? What will she dream of, wish for, want more than anything ?

Will she be obsessed with reading, like her mommy, or will she be wild and fierce, goofy and maybe…a bit of a maverick—or is that just a nice way of describing someone utterly strong-willed?—like the man who set my heart on fire more than anything or anyone ever had?

… try not to ever fall in love with a soldier .

Oh, my sweet girl. She’s going to be so in love with our soldier before she can even think to form the word, ‘ love .’ Her first love.

Sorry, Evelyn.

Not sorry, though.

Time is doing that thing again: expanding and collapsing. It goes so, so slow, and then everything happens all at once.

“Are you ready, honey?” I ask gently, but so that I know she can hear me. “It’s almost time. Everyone will be here. I can’t wait to meet you, to really meet you, Evelyn-girl… I already know: it’s going to be the greatest joy of my life, to watch you start yours.”

#

Trey

4 More Years Later

And that’s how I became the luckiest and happiest man on Earth.

Since the day we found out Saylis was pregnant, I vowed to always be a better father than my own dad had been, which isn’t a tall order.

Sometimes, I pretend I had a really great dad, and it’s him I try to make proud every day.

It’s the same in the Army: I haven’t had the best leaders or mentors.

To be honest, they’ve all kind of been dicks.

So it’s on me: I’ve got to be the exception.

I’ve got to be good. A light in dark spaces.

I don’t always succeed at that, I just do the best I can.

It’s what we can all be . Circumstances and past traumas be damned.

Right now, with our closest friends, family, and our young daughter Evelyn, who is as beautiful as her mom with electric blue eyes rimmed in black, I can’t help thinking: How did I ever get blessed with this?

It wasn’t in the cards for me to have an abundant life like this.

I have the women in my life to thank. Saylis, and Mom. Girl energy .

I’m so here for it. Evelyn will have the best examples to grow up to be a kind, capable woman. And I will show her how a real man takes care of his girls. Sometimes with tender love. Sometimes by batting away all the baddies.

All that to say: you can’t blame me for wanting another girl. Evelyn is the most excited, but I’m not sure if it’s because of the cake, or what we’re about to find out once we cut into it. She is bouncing on her toes, bursting at the seams.

“Team Blue!” one of Saylis’s best friends, Stasia, yells out.

“Pink, all the way!” Kim yells.

“It’s kind of pink and blue, both at once until y’all cut into it, like Schrodinger’s cat…” Cleo muses.

“What?” my buddy Sergio asks, completely confused.

“Maybe if it’s boy-and-girl twins…” Stasia considers.

“ NO !” Saylis and I both shout in unison.

Then Kim starts to explain to Sergio what Cleo meant about the cat, but my mom interrupts her. “Y’all, go ahead and do the honors, before little one over here keels over from excitement, yeah?”

“You ready?” I murmur to Saylis. She slides me a smile.

“Ready.”

I wrap my hand around Saylis’s around the knife, and we drive it down into the soft cake.

Blue .

So blue.

My heart doubles, no, triples in size in my chest. I wanted another girl, prayed for a girl, threw every intention out into the universe hoping for a girl. So now, why am I so fucking over the moon to find out it’s a boy?

Evelyn’s face is immediately smeared in blue cake.

“Evie, sweetie, are you excited?” Saylis asks our daughter in her singsong voice, her eyes brimming with unshed tears of joy. She said she’d be happy no matter what, but I knew it’s what Saylis wanted, deep down. “You’re gonna have a baby brother !”

Evie mad-dogs her face at her mom, and then the loudest sound I’ve ever heard out of her mouth: “WHAT?!”

“That’s what that means”—Saylis points—“it’s blue.”

And promptly, Evelyn bursts into tears.

“She’ll be fine,” my mom tells us, completely unbothered. “I cried, too, when I found out I was having a boy.”

“You did not,” Saylis says, a scandalized look on her face.

“Oh yeah. Had a hell of a time trying to think of a name, too.”

“Well, I think you did good with Trey.”

“Yeah.” Mom smiles. “I know I did.”

Saylis spins toward me, her smile big and bright. Not at all affected by the anxiousness I’m sure is written all over my face.

“I have zero ideas for names for boys,” I admit. I was too sure we were having another girl.

“I have dozens!” Saylis declares.

“All stolen from literature, no doubt,” Stasia chimes in.

“Maaaaybe,” Saylis replies, all sassy.

“You pick, sweetheart,” I tell Saylis.

“ Anything I want?”

I suddenly wince. “Oh God, you’re going to name our kid Darcy or something, aren’t you?”

“Well now I am!”

I chuckle at that. “Seriously, whatever you want. You’ll make a good choice.”

“Yeah? You really trust me?”

“Say, you teach middle-schoolers,” Kim sagely tosses in. “Just think of your kid’s name when they’re that age.”

“ Oh ,” Saylis says, considering, “that really changes things.”

“Aslan,” a little voice murmurs from around the corner, wiping the sniffles and cake off her face with the back of her hand. “Let’s name him Aslan.”

For a moment, a stunned silence settles over the room.

And then Stasia declares loudly, “I love Aslan!”

“Pretty cool name,” Sergio agrees.

“Aslan,” Saylis repeats softly, testing it out.

“Amazing,” Cleo says. Kim nods her head rapidly.

“Dude…it’s perfect.”

“It is,” my mom chimes in, visibly holding back her tears.

I kneel down to Evelyn’s height and spread out my arms, and she comes bounding right into them, coating my shoulder in frosting and snot. “You’re the best big sister already,” I whisper.

It does me in, when she whispers back, “You’re the best daddy ever .”

And that’s how this one boy—met this girl.

And they lived happily, busily, messily, going through all kinds of shit together, ever after.

~ * ~