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(published in the november 1999 issue of ember)

It was summer in the Caribbean, two people from distant places brought together for two days. We hated each other at first, but she must have been as intrigued with me as I was with her.

We met at the pool, had dinner, drank, talked, she was English and 17. I was a sixteen year old American. The next night I pleased her in such a way that inspired her to call me when I arrived home the following night, only 48 hours after our meeting.

We wrote, God we wrote. A stack of letters two feet tall. I wrote every night, and my days were filled with thoughts of her.

I flew to visit three months later, with thoughts of lust on my adolescent mind, but I had no idea what to expect. Did she still feel the same way about me? Why was I doing this? Am I crazy? I was, and so was she. We talked and talked. We laughed, we kissed, we drank. And drank, and drank. The last night of my stay, long after saying our final goodnights (she had come over from her room to the guest room, and had stayed), I told her I loved her. She rolled over to face me, looked at me a long time, then held me and whispered the same.

So the writing and obsessing continued until she came to visit two and a half months later. Awkwardness. Drugs. Friends. Messes. She took my virginity, and at the airport, she cried and cried. My room seemed so empty when I came home, and I shed my own tears.

I went to visit her again, and we spent the whole time in her room, in her bed. Loving, talking, loving some more. I spoke of my grandfather who had died 5 years before, and cried for the first time. On our last departure from her room, at the chinese restaurant, she showed me a ring from a friend that looked "suspiciously like a wedding band". She took it off and handed it to me, that I might inspect it, then upon my handing it back she said "Isn't there something you're supposed to ask me first?". I was perplexed. Then I realized. I took her left hand, spoke her name, and said "Will you marry me?". Great big tears welled up in her eyes. She took the ring from me, bowed her head, and a moment later, she whispered... "yes"

Just under four years later, after waiting for three hours in the lobby of the building in London where she worked, I followed her out into the street. When I spoke her name she turned and replied as cool and as naturally as she had the day we met. We had dinner and drinks that night with some of her co-workers... I never could get her alone to talk. On the Eurostar back to Paris the next day, I couldn't stop thinking about what had changed. What had gone wrong. A drug habit, and rehabilitation. 4000 miles. Different cultures and attitudes. Time.

Even my last trip to London is two years gone, yet I can still hear her laugh in my ears. I can taste the perfume on her throat. I can see into her crying eyes across the crowd in customs at Heathrow, not ever wanting to lose sight of her, like it was happening right now.