Best night of the year. So far.

Yesterday I talked to the soldier and found out his plans for the weekend had changed, and that he'd be traveling to and spending the night in his hometown, where all of my relatives live, and where he grew up. Now that I've moved, I'm only 2.5 hours from that town, as opposed to 6, when I lived in the city.

I decided that there was no way I couldn't be part of his first night back in his hometown, back in the local bar where I manage to get stinking drunk most of the times that I'm within it's walls, so I popped my ass in my car yesterday afternoon and zipped south. He had no idea I was coming, so for the 2.5 hours there, I plotted ways to surprise him with my arrival.

Once I got where I was going, I headed to a cousin's house, and she shoved me in the back of her tinted window Mom Van, and we tore through town in an effort to locate him. After covering the entire town in less than two minutes, my cousin and I spotted the soldier's mom, and we tailed her back to her home, with hopes of finding out where her eldest was at. As we chatted with her, we discovered that the soldier was right behind her, in the house, barely back from an afternoon of hunting. As his mamasita and I discussed different ways of surprising him, the soldier popped his head out of the house and came walking towards the Mom Van, and I promptly ducked and covered. I waited for him to get closer, and when he was finally looking in the passenger side window to talk to my cousin, I popped my head out and surprised the hell out of him.

He had to look at me four times to make sure it was really me. He looked, he looked again, he looked CLOSER, and then he looked AGAIN, before he realized it was truly me. He gave me the longest and warmest hug that I've probably ever had, and in that moment, I knew he was finally home.

We spent the rest of the night just as we've spent so many over the years - laughing, singing, giggling, smiling, celebrating, and just LIVING. On one hand, it felt like he'd never been gone, like we'd just picked up where we'd left off; yet on the other, I had to keep reminding myself that I was finally living out a moment that I'd been dreaming of for months - I was finally IN that dream, and it was real. Today, 24 hours later, I'm thankful for using my camera last night, because I have photographic evidence that those new memories aren't just a figment of my imagination.

Today, as I left to come back home, I got yet another long, warm hug, and the words, "I'll see you soon" were spoken. After sixteen years, today was the first time we've ever been able to make those words come true, and wow, that feels pretty damn good.