Sam ends up falling asleep on her couch. She should have unpacked, but she didn't. That comes as no surprise since she has been avoiding unpacking all night. She managed to look through boxes long enough to locate a blanket. The search for a pillow went on long enough that she just abandoned it though. The arm rest of the couch worked well enough.
At least until she woke up in the middle of the night with an unreal kind of kink in her neck. At first she thinks that she has been woke up by the pain in her neck, but then she hears the ringing of the phone.
She scrambles to locate the phone, but fails miserably, mostly because she is crawling across the floor for most of her search. She is about to crawl back onto her bed couch when the phone starts ringing again.
Of course, anyone desperate enough to call her in the middle of the night would be desperate enough to call her more than once. This time she is awake enough to remember her phone is on the counter.
"Hello," she croaks with a voice still cloaked in sleep.
"Sorry to wake you," the smooth voice replies in the phone. She only met him today, how can she already recognize his voice?
"It's okay," she assures him surprised at the smile that is forming on the edges of her lip. This man has an influence on her more than she would like to admit.
"So is it too creepy if I tell you that I missed you?"
"Probably, but sadly I seem to have a thing for stockers," Sam confesses.
"You want to come over?" he asks sounding as nervous as a teenager talking to a girl for the first time in his life.
"I don't really do booty calls," she responds. This man has a really bad influence on her judgment, but she is not going to let him completely take over her mind. Mostly because she wants something with this man that is going to last longer than a single night.
"I don't even know what that means," he says.
"It's when you call up someone in the middle of the night just so you can have sex with them," she says blushing at her own words. She can remember her mother's advice during a really detailed sex talk when she was fifteen, "If you can't talk about it, then you are certainly not ready to do it."
"Oh, well then this isn't that," Jack says.
Sam glances at the clock on her oven, only to discover that she hasn't set it yet. She glances at her watch which she can barely see in the dim light of her kitchen, "It's one o'clock in the morning."
"I wasn't really arguing with the part where it was late at night," he says.
"I'm sorry, but we…" she clears her throat, "We were pretty close to doing something today. If I went over there right now I'm sure we would."
"That's probably true," he admits, "We could just talk on the phone, that should be safe."
"Something is wrong," she guesses.
"I'm getting recalled to active duty," he admits.
"I take it that you got pretty used to retirement," she hints. She is kind of glad that he isn't going to stay retired. I mean, military retirees are way younger than other retirees, but she still thinks of herself as way too young to date someone who is retired.
"There was a time when I loved the Air Force. I was just getting used to the idea that that part of my life was over," Jack says surprising himself with how easily he is sharing all of this with someone who is pretty much a stranger. If he had been this open with his wife, he might still be married.
"What changed?" Sam asks.
The emotional door slam shut, "I went through a pretty tough time."
"With your divorce?" she guesses.
"Sure," he replies adding in his head that it had a lot more to do with the what lead to the divorce than with the divorce itself. "Was your dad Air Force?" he asks, because he is desperate for a subject change.
"Yeah, he still is. How did you guess?" she asks suddenly getting a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach with the idea that this man might have gone to a military base to research her.
"It was the way you stand. I could tell that you had played soldier with an actual soldier at some point in your life. Of course it could have been an uncle or something a bit more distant, but you knew a dog tag by touch. It was like you had leaned your little toddler head against one."
"Yes, that's true, but my ability to know a dog tag has more to do with my ex-boyfriend," she admits.
"Ah, so your relationship with the armed forces an even more complicated than I thought," he prompts.
She sighs, "Yeah, it is a bit of a love hate relationship. I mean I totally loved getting to see the world when I was a kid. Then there is the Air Force community which is the tightest knit community you will ever find. There is a lot of safety in that. Which is ironic, because I spent most of my life not knowing if someone I love was going to come home that day or not."
Jack sighs, the last comment dove tailing with his own thoughts far more than he would like to admit. "Yes, and I am going back to that danger now. I used to…prefer it, but that part of my life is over now."
Sam senses that he just shared more than he wanted to, and decides to help him cover it up with a funny story, "We lived in France for six months. My mom kept swearing in French by accident. My brother and I were teenagers at the time, so we just let her. Then there was this big dinner party, and my mother was saying the most vial things to my dad's boss," she giggles.
When the sun reaches through the window in the morning to wake Sam she finds herself sitting on the floor of the kitchen with the phone still in her ear.
"Jack?" she asks softly.
"Mmmm?" he says waking up slowly.
"I think we just slept together," she tells him.
He giggles, "Should we have breakfast together then?"
Sam's stomach revolts against the suggestion, "I don't really feel like eating."
"Come on, it's the most important meal of the day."
"How about we meet up after work?" she suggests.
Jack pauses making sure he doesn't cross that bold classified line that he often dances right up to, "I don't exactly know when work is going to be over for me today."
Sam ponders, "You know that's probably true for me too."
Jack isn't quite sure why she thinks that is funny, "I'll call you as soon as I can."
"I'll see you soon Jack," Sam says with way more confidence than he has.