Deployment and Cheating, Part 3

May/June 2005 -

Ronnie: So who is he?
Me: Who is who? What are you talking about?
Ronnie: I know you've been talking to someone online. What the F*^% are you doing with Kevin?
Me: Kevin? The only Kevin I know is the one I went to high school with... and I definitely haven't been talking to him. And what do you mean I'm talking to people online? Who told you that??! I haven't been talking to anyone online. I want to know who told you this because they're lying to you!
Ronnie: Don't worry about who told me. Just know that I know and S**t needs to stop NOW.

That was the conversation we had one day before I started work. I don't know where in the world Ronnie was at the time. Probably Greece or maybe Dubai... His deployment was more than half over and he was supposed to be returning in July. Most of our conversations sounded like this... Him accusing me of something and me either defending myself or just getting angry with him. A lot of the time I laughed at the accusations because they were so far off. Who was telling him I was talking to people online??

I was definitely seeing someone, but I never once talked to him online and his name was Kyle, not Kevin.

Kyle spent the night at my apartment that first night and pretty much never left. Our relationship started off pretty innocently despite how it sounds. He slept on the couch for awhile... Kyle and I just really, truly enjoyed hanging out with each other. He allowed me to be myself around him... Something I hadn't felt with someone in a few years. I was having fun. I was laughing and enjoying my life again. It felt good.

Kyle knew a lot of people. A LOT of people. Slowly, but surely his friends were becoming my friends. I loved hanging out with them and they all thought I was a cool chick. I was made even cooler because I was 21 and they were all 19 and 20... I could buy us alcohol... and I did. I spent so much money on alcohol it was pretty ridiculous looking back on it now. I never used Ronnie's money for it though. (He was doing a good job of that himself... spending hundreds and thousands of dollars on alcohol and food while in port.) No, I had my own money during this time. I was working part time as a front end supervisor at Michaels. I didn't make tons of money, but it was enough for me. (Thinking back I can't even remember how we managed to pay bills during this time.)

We were partying every weekend... I supplied the drinks. We were smoking weed everyday... Kyle had lots of hook-ups. Kyle moved from the couch to my bed after one night of partying. We were falling for each other fast. I knew in my head that nothing would ever come of this relationship... I didn't care though. I wasn't thinking of the future. I was living in the present for once and it was addicting. Each day was different and fun. We were making things up as we went along. My hours at work were slowing down so we had plenty of free time. We went to parties. We hung out at the beach. We were just having fun... living for the moment.

One night we decided to have a party at my apartment. There weren't a ton of people that came, but there were enough. We had a fun night. Everyone spent the night in my living room.  In the morning one of the guys that I didn't care for too much decided to whistle at and say vulgar things to one of my apartment managers that walked by. She took offense to it... Later that day I got a notice that I had to either voluntarily move out or they would be forced to evict me. They claimed to have 3 strikes against me and the whistling was the last strike. The first two were bogus claims. She said that some neighbors complained of drug deals going on outside of my apartment. I don't think so! We were smoking weed, but we never had anyone come to the apartment to drop it off! We were always the ones to go pick it up... Second strike? She claims that someone from my apartment broke a water pipe near the swimming pool. Um, seriously? The pool was on the other side of the complex. We never went swimming. We never had a reason to walk past it unless I was walking over there to pay rent. She said she had witnesses to both claims. I had to move.


By this time Ronnie was calling me less and less. We were just going through the motions now. He didn't WANT to call me. As the deployment was coming closer and closer to the end he started talking about divorce....