I fell in love almost immediately. It came out of nowhere. They say when you aren’t looking, it happens. It happened. We “re-connected” while I was planning our thirty-year reunion. I was reaching out to people from our class and found his name on Facebook. It wasn’t a common name and there was no picture—but I gave it a shot. He responded.
He was one of the hottest guys in our high school class. Smart, popular, athletic—so cute. Our paths never crossed back then. It wasn’t that our class was big—we just ran in different circles.
Not expecting anything more than “Hi, good to hear from you” I was surprised when our initial, brief exchange turned into a daily routine. My stomach would flip every time an email from him would pop into my mailbox. About two weeks into our correspondence, he invited me to spend a week with him. It took me about a half a second to respond with a very happy and excited “YES.” He was hilarious. Being hot as ever didn’t hurt. I loved his messages. We clicked. We were perfect for each other. Our humor, wit, politics, our hometown. He said all the right things and I made the huge mistake of believing every word. Our emails became more intense, more intimate. Surely if he wanted to get laid, he wouldn’t need to drive eleven hours to do it.
I was making plans to get wild and crazy with him and he was telling me about all the damage he was going to do. My toes curled with every call, every email, every text. The hot convos were great fun, but that’s not what I fell in love with.
He adored his children and spoke of them often. They were his world. He took care of his mom. She still lived in our hometown—far away from him—but he made sure she wanted for nothing. He loved his country and a good cigar. We chatted about his life there, his career, our little town, my girls, our mutual friends, my ex, his ex. All the hours and hours of conversations we had about our lives since high school. His many adventures of moving around the country and traveling the world—and my whole life spent in our little town. So, we would laugh and plan and in the middle of all this, I fell in love for the last time in my life. Or so I had hoped.
An unexpected series of events prohibited me from going to our much anticipated week of unbridled and wanton behavior. It was all me. I had to cancel—and he stepped back. Not so much in the quantity of emails or messages - but in the context. I understood. Our reunion was fast approaching and I would see him then. I couldn’t wait. He said he wanted to take me out to dinner the first night in town - before the weekend festivities. When I saw him walk up my steps my toes curled again. He was the most handsome man I’ve ever had on my front porch. Or had dinner with. Oh, we had exchanged pictures (and then some) but his didn’t do him justice. The dinner was wonderful. We talked and laughed. After all these months of communicating with him, here I was, face to face. I was in heaven. We spent the next four days together. Still talking, seeing each other, laughing. The weekend flew by and before I knew it, he was on his way home —we were on the phone almost his whole drive back. I took this as a good sign. I assumed that what he saw during his trip north was still exciting to him. I was smitten. He was enamored. I missed him terribly. We picked up right back where we were before his visit - emails, calls, texts. After a few months, he let it slip that he’d gone out on a date. I wasn’t prepared. I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. I was devastated. He didn’t know, of course, but since it was all I could think about, I had to ask the question: did he ever see us together?
