sp; What really opened my eyes to what I was feeling towards Luke was what he sent me only one month after he had landed in Afghanistan.
I was at work and I had just performed CPR on an older man in the ICU. I was still out of breath from bringing the poor soul back to life, so I walked into the break room to take a chill pill, and of course, I wandered over to my locker. I pulled out my phone to see if I had an email from Luke. It had been a few days since I’d heard from him and although our e-mails were few and far-between, I still checked my inbox incessantly like a mad-woman.
I almost fainted with relief when I saw his name in my inbox, but was quickly taken back with confusion when I saw the little paperclip icon denoting an attachment. My mind instantly went to the gutter: it was probably a naked picture, because he had been sending me some very inappropriate (okay, I totally loved them) emails lately. I kept joking with JoJo that we were having email sex, literally.
Looking around the break room to make sure no one was behind me, I sneakily opened the email, and then I froze in my spot.
It wasn’t a dick pic.
It was something so much better, and was what inevitably sealed the “I love Luke” deal.
The picture was as small as a thumb-nail and it was super blurry. I took my two fingers and stretched it to the capacity of my phone screen, and tears filled my eyes. There was Luke, tan, or maybe just covered in dirt, but I could still see his bright, white smile filling up his face. At first, I couldn’t really see what he was standing in front of, but I could tell he was pointing at something. I squinted my eyes, ignoring my co-worker, Emily, who was gibbering about her microwave dinner, and focused on what he was pointing at. I gasped out loud when I saw the words carved into the cave wall. The words that had been carved there over a year ago: Cammie is lame.
Don’t ask me how the hell it was still there and don’t ask me how he had found it, but, in that moment, with him standing in front of the very cave wall that my brother had carved my name into, pointing and smiling back at the camera, I was done-for. My heart leapt straight out of my chest, and it climbed into that email, and traveled all the way to the hot desert of Afghanistan.
I loved him.
I loved Lucas Wells, the United States Marine.
“JoJo, I’m not going out,” I said, through the phone.
Ryan was off training in the field for the next week, and JoJo was bored out of her freaking mind. She even pulled the “this can be my bachelorette party” card. Not working. I already had her party planned, even if it was several months away.
“Why don’t you just come over here and hang out? We’ll have a girls’ night!” Bribery always worked with JoJo.
I heard her pout, “I wanted to wear my new dress, though.”
“You can still wear it! We’ll even dance around my living room.”
I didn’t want to spill the real reason I wasn’t in tune with going out. I was waiting for Luke to reply to an awfully dirty picture I had sent to his email. I liked teasing him like that. It made things more fun.
With JoJo still rambling on the phone, spouting out all the things I needed to get for the “girls’ night,” I heard a car door slam outside.
I wasn’t expecting anyone and our street was fairly quiet now that Luke was gone. I pattered over to my living room window that overlooked our street, and my gaze zeroed in on a fancy red jeep…that was parked behind Luke’s Camaro.
I didn’t see the driver, and wonder combined with confusion had my legs moving in the direction of my front door.
I knew no one would be going to his place to check on it because I had taken over that job. I started his car engine every week and drove it around the block a few times. I made sure things in his house were okay, and that was basically the extent of it.
(Okay, I’m lying. I may or may not have taken very scandalous pictures in his bed and sent them to his email.)
Like I said, email sex. It was kind of our thing.
JoJo was still rambling, but I cut her off. “JoJo, let me call you back really quick.”
I hung up through her protests, and threw on a jacket and some boots before letting the cool, late winter air hit my face.
I peeked around the bare tree limbs in between Luke’s and my porches and got a small glimpse of the person standing at his front door, pounding on it every few seconds.
My heart dropped, just slightly, when I saw extremely shiny, salon-fixed hair cascading down the back of a very stylishly-dressed woman. I swallowed my curiosity and walked down my steps and over to Luke’s porch. I could only see the back of the woman standing there, but I could already tell that she was pretty. She was tall and slender, except for her hips. She had an hourglass body, evident even through her jeans and huge, fur-trimmed winter coat.
It’s not that cold, lady.
“Hi, can I help you?” I asked, standing below the porch.
The woman swiveled on her feet and my gaze went directly to the giant billboard she was sporting.
Her belly was as round as a beach ball, peeking out from below her puffy coat. I had been around enough pregnant women in the hospital to know that she was about to burst. I mean, she had to be at least eight months pregnant. And damn her, she still looked fly as hell.