* * *
By the time Elaine Prise finished showing me M4-CH+M4-KR, assured me they would tell Jackson Sadler about the situation, and asked if I would agree to try out the match made for me despite its quirks, my brain had overflowed. So much information. So many ethical and philosophical ramifications. So many confusing emotions.
Even then, I didn’t hesitate to agree to try the match. I had no doubt at all. I’d never been with a man, physically or emotionally, but I yearned to embrace Jackson Sadler and learn what I’d been missing. When they handed me the complimentary wedding bands, the rings clinked against my palm like the chime of church bells.
The introductory materials on Jackson Sadler arrived in my email that night. I almost threw my favorite essay-grading pen across the room as I scrambled to open the message. My heart melted into a puddle at the image that accompanied the initial text.
A grin. That tiny smile on Jackson Sadler’s face had become a full-on, sunshine-bright grin. They’d placed the reaction picture, the one snapped when one person opens their “you’ve got a match!” mail, in the body of the message, and it ended me in a way I did not expect it to.
God, he lookedhappy.His face had excitement and gentle nervousness written all over it. In the background of the picture I could see plain, steel-colored walls in what could have passed for a spacefaring sardine can, as well as a few excited faces peeking over Jackson’s shoulder. Friends or teammates, perhaps, all of them rubbernecking on his good news. They looked excited, too, and that warmed my puddle of a heart.
I took my laptop from my tiny dining table over to my shabby couch and curled up in the corner to absorb the rest. His awkward, stilted introductory video looked like he’d recorded it in an industrial closet somewhere. A bunk on Mars? A janitor’s closet in the transport ship? Wherever he’d done it, he looked as nervous as I probably had in mine. I haven’t yet found a way to make that sort of video seem suave.
“Um, hi. I’m, ah, I’m Jackson Sadler. I’m a Sergeant in the United States Army, serving on Mars.”He had an unbelievable voice. Smooth, deep, and firm. Probably used to giving commands. He could give me commands! I’d drop and give him twenty of whatever he wanted.
Don’t shame my thirst. You can’t hear his voice.
On the screen, he looked down at his hands. I could see the corner of a paper dip up into frame. So he’d made notes for what he wanted to say. Smart man.“I joined Mail Call Mates because, well, I’m not so good at picking my own boyfriends.”A wry drawl colored the statement.“My last one decided he’d cheat on me while I was deployed, and I’m about done with the dating scene. Mail Call’s got a good track record. They promise they can find the right person for you. And-”
He looked down, then back up again. The vulnerability, hurt, and loneliness in his eyes gutted me.“And I’m tired of coming home from deployments to an empty house and an empty heart. I’m done with being lonely. If you’re watching this, you’re the one to help me fix that. Thank you. For taking the same leap of faith I did, and accepting the match. I’m sorry up front for how hard it will be for me to trust you. I’m not real good at opening up, so sorry for that, too. But I’ll always do my best for you as your husband, and even when I can’t say the words, I hope you’ll always hear what I’m not saying. I- I can’t wait to meet you.”
I sat on my couch, consumed with some damned big feelings as I stared at the video’s final frame. He seemed so gruff on the outside, but once you stripped away the rind of war and military culture and hurt, you found a sweet, vulnerable soul who wanted what everyone did. Love. Contentment. Partnership. Affection.
And if I’d thought his tiny-smile profile picture was handsome, seeing him in motion, alive and lit by his personality magnified “handsome” into “stop-my-heart gorgeous”. The shitty lighting in his closet could not disguise the muscle mass under his fatigues. Speaking showed off his strong jaw and arresting eyes. When I could see one of his hands, it looked strong, and it took no effort at all to imagine it wrapping around the small of my back while we kissed. He was everything I could have dreamed about in a man, and I blessed M4-KR aloud and loudly.
There were other materials included. Pictures of when he’d had his Sergeant’s stripes pinned, pictures of him in jeans and a T-shirt standing with what I assumed were parents and siblings. The Grand Tetons stood tall in the background, and then, I knew where he’d gotten his name.
Jackson, Wyoming. Right by the Grand Tetons. His dossier said his parents, whom he listed along with his siblings as “the most important people in his life”, lived in Wyoming, so that stood to reason. Better than naming him Yellowstone.
The biography said he led a fireteam in one of the Mars force’s pre-eminent platoons, one that had accomplished more than all the rest. Taken emplacements, defended contractors, driven back ambushes, fearlessly faced whatever that war had thrown at them. His career would take him as far as he wanted to go, as long as he could stay alive.
Mail Call Mates included their own biography with their observations as well. It used words like “dedicated” and “loyal” and “family man”. The sheet said he wanted children, and would prefer to be the paternal donor for them if his husband didn’t mind. A note named him “wary” but “open to love and eager for connection”.
I read it all, but I came back to that video again and again. It played while I fixed food, while I tried to grade papers, and while I laid in bed, one arm behind my head as I watched Jackson Sadler tell me he couldn’t wait to meet me. It might have played while I engaged in another activity I will not enumerate, but I’ll bet you can guess at. His voice sounded in my head as I closed my eyes, laptop on the spare pillow beside me, and drifted off to sleep.
I’d signed up to pretend to fall in love with a stranger, one a computer swore was my perfect match and who would spend most of our early relationship on another planet. Looking back on that night, I think that was when I failed at my duty. Tanked that promise to pretend to fall in love with my soldier from far away.
You can’t pretend to fall in love with someone you’ve already fallen for.
5THE ACCIDENTAL HUSBAND COMES HOME
You’re all caught up,now. We’re back where we started on that tarmac, with that clueless guy and his bent sign. That clueless guy who was me, pretty sure my gut was going to betray me because the butterflies in my stomach felt like they’d gotten into a case of energy drinks.
The weather in Colorado Springs had stopped drunk-dialing winter at last and committed itself to the start of summer. Warm mountain sunshine beamed down on all of us as we gathered at the end of the landing strip at Schriever Air Force Base. Colorado Springs had been the home of the United States Space Force for a couple of decades, and many of the Mars missions began and ended here despite the odd weather and quantity of mountains.
They made it work, and that worked out for me, too. When I struck up a conversation with another Mail Call Mate waiting for his new spouse, I discovered he’d flown in from Maine to meet his new husband. Call me mean, but I felt a load of relief to see he had as many stomach butterflies as I did.
Me, I’d just had to get up, take another obsessive lap through my house to ensure everything looked just right, then choose and discard three outfits before I settled on one I didn’t hate. It was, shamefully, the first outfit I’d picked out and discarded the night before when I set out my clothes.
Jackson seemed like a salt-of-the-Earth man who would prefer a casual, genuine partner. I opted for a pair of new jeans, but I couldn’t talk myself out of a pair of leather shoes for a dressy touch. Polo shirts are not my jam, so I grabbed a blue button shirt in a soft, touchable fabric. It set off my eyes and looked laid-back enough if I rolled up the sleeves and left the top button undone.
We’d take our wedding picture in this outfit, but more importantly, he’d see me for the first time in it. He’d carry this outfit with him in his memory for all his life. No sartorial pressure.
I managed not to forget the free wedding bands they’d given me. True romantics keep their wedding rings in their jeans pocket. It’s classy.
It is not classy.
Mister Maine also had a sign. His had not ended up bent in the back of my Subaru (it would have been strange if it had, since it had never been in my Subaru). It said, “Proud Future Husband of PFC Scott Climes,” which I found sweet and a little daunting. I’d gone with, “Welcome Home Jackson” and now I wondered if I should have opted for a cleverer phrase.