We had a relationship like you couldn�t believe. I know that everyone says that when they first fall in love. But with us it was different. It was like a mutual agreement, we never even had to say the words.
I love you.
Those words sounded so pathetic for the feelings we had. It was almost an insult to say. We knew that we had stronger feelings than just love for each other. We didn�t tell each other our feelings through words. That would have been pointless, like trying to cook a steak with a single match. It just wasn�t possible. It was through looks and touching that we expressed ourselves.
Man, the look in her eye when she wanted sex, nothing like it. When she gave me that look, I could feel my temperature rise. I swear, some nights she�d looked at me like that while I was sleeping, and I�d jump up wide awake.
Her eyes. They were something else. Clear, perfect. I called them silver with flecks of emerald. If I were an artist, her eyes would be the first things I�d ever paint. Not only were they beautiful, but I could also read her mind by looking at her eyes. Like, if she was angry and was trying to hide it. It was no use; I could tell she was angry in a glance. And that sex look. Man, I still dream of that look.
Man, I loved her.
We had these routines we�d go through. Like when we were apart for a few days. First thing we�d do when we were together again was pick on each other. Like she�d say, �you�ve gotten a little chubby since last week.� You know, stuff like that. So we�d do that and get into a little fight. But it wasn�t a real fight. No. The whole time we�d both know that the other was just kidding around.
I�m not sure why we did it, maybe to make sure that we still loved each other. You know. I�d say something hurtful and if it didn�t get to her then she still loved me. I guess we were just testing the water. But when I think about it now, I think I know why we did it. After being apart for a while, sex is the greatest remedy for a lonely heart. And on top of that, make-up sex is even better. Mix �em up and you get a winning match.
But it wasn�t about sex, the relationship that is. It was never about that. It was just a bonus, like the toy or sticker inside a box of cereal. You don�t buy the cereal for the plastic toy, but it�s still fun when that toy pops out of the box and lands in the bowl.
The sex was great though. And I know she would say the same if you had asked her. Just the right looks from her got my legs wobbling; imagine what the sex did to me. Actually, you probably don�t want to, but you get my point.
Yeah, I loved her.
You should have seen her the day we met, in church, of all places. I�m not crazy about church or the whole religion thing. Don�t get me wrong, I pay my respects to the big man upstairs, but I think he hears you even if you aren�t in church. You know what I�m saying? It�s not like he only has ears for people in church. As a matter of fact, I think he listens better if you aren�t in church. What�s it been, two thousand years of listening to the same prayers and hymns? I don�t know about you, but I can�t play the same CD twice in a row. So when I say, �God, how you doing today? I�m pretty good. Do you think you can help me out a little?� I think that sticks out over the repeated stuff.
Anyway. This isn�t about God; it�s about the love of my life. Well, I guess it has some relevancy. It was our one difference. She said a prayer every night before climbing in bed, and went to church every Sunday morning. Me, I couldn�t wait for her to jump into bed, and I hated that alarm clock on the weekend.
Where was I? Oh yeah, the day we met. It was the middle of July, in one of the hottest summers I can remember. My little cousin was having his first communion or something like that, so I went to church. It was a beautiful day, one of those ones that stick out in your mind on rainy days. There was a bright blue sky, not a cloud to be seen. The sun was hot, the breeze cool. Man, it makes me feel alive just thinking about.
Anyway, I was heading up the steps of the church and I looked up at the person in head of me. Even from behind I knew she was a beautiful creature. Beautiful, it�s another one of those words like love. It comes nowhere close to it�s meaning. She wasn�t beautiful. She was angelic. If the inside of the church started to glow bright white, I would have known that I was in heaven.
But like I said, even from behind she was a sight for my eyes. Long brown hair, strong broad shoulders. She was wearing a thin light-blue dress. It was so thin that the slightest breeze made it dance around her. I could even see her underwear line. I don�t know, I guess it�s just one of my things. Seeing underwear lines makes me hot. She had a pair of those sandals on that wrap around the ankle a little. I don�t know. She just looked perfect.
All through church I watched the back of her head. To this day, I still can�t tell you what happens at a communion. My eyes didn�t leave her for a moment. When it was all over I made sure that we made it to the exit at the same time. I prepared to say hi to her, but my nerves got up and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.
�Hello,� she said, and then she said my name. She knew my name, she knew of me. All I could manage to say was �hi,� but it came out sounding like �hut,� like I wanted her to hike me a football. I couldn�t help it. I was nervous and somewhat shocked that she knew my name.
I guess it�s not all that strange that she knew my name. I mean, it�s not that big of a town and I�m sure that we�d seen each other before. But, all I could think was that she liked me too. Well, at least that she liked me, I already knew that I loved her.
Anyway, time went by and we �accidentally� ran into each other now and then. We got to talking and finally went out on a date. I guess you could call it the date, because after that we were a thing and we went out, we didn�t date.
It was dinner at the local restaurant. I was sitting at the table for almost an hour before she finally showed up. She wasn�t late or anything, I was so excited that I showed up an hour early. I remember because the waitress seemed to get annoyed at me. She kept on coming back to the table and I keep ordering just a soda. I was pretty wired by the time she showed up.
It was a nice dinner. Candle-lit, there was a band playing. She ordered chicken Alfredo and I had the fried hake. When we finished we stayed a while longer and listened to the band play. They were covering that John Lennon song, �Imagine.� And that�s when it happened. Like a divine force pushing us together, we both turned at the same time and kissed. It was absolutely astonishing. My nerves seemed to rattle through out my body, and my spinal cord tingled. I had never felt that way before from just a kiss.
Needless to say, �Imagine� became our song. You know, the song that whenever you hear it, it makes you think of your girlfriend and all the good times you�ve had together. The song that you always request at a dance, or over the radio and you always dedicate it to her. The song you blast over a stereo outside her window when she�s pissed at you. I think you get what I mean.
Well, after dinner we went down to the beach and walked along it watching the sunset. Yeah, I know it sounds like something out of a book, that�s how it felt too. It felt too good to be true. She was too perfect, how did I ever get the chance to be with someone like her? And that�s what I was thinking too. It wasn�t the usual; I wonder if she likes me, I wonder if we�re going to have sex tonight. I was thinking, how did I get so lucky? I knew that I loved her, and I knew that she loved me too.
After we were a long way down the beach and out of the sight of the street, we sat down on a big log. It sat up away from the water in the softer sand. We watched the sun drop out of the sky. And when the stars began to shine, she tackled me. It was so sudden that that�s what it felt like. But believe me, I didn�t mind.
That, I would have to say, is the most memorable night in my life. We got naked and made love in the sand. The air was cool, but the sand was still warm from the day. Crickets and her heavy breathing filled my ears. Oh, it was unbelievable. It�s strange that it all happened, now that I look back on it. Considering she was so religious. But I guess she felt so strongly for me that it overcame her fear of sin. Hey, what can I say, I guess I�m irresistible.
When we were done, we just lay next to each other and looked up at the stars. Man, they were beautiful. And you know how on summer nights there are lots of shooting stars? Well, I wished the same thing over and over again, at least twenty times. �Please let me marry this woman,� I thought. I had never thought about marriage before, but at that moment I knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.
Before we got dressed, we ran down to the water together and jumped in. It was very cold, but we held each other close. And I experienced something for the first time, the feeling of a wet woman up against my body. Tell you what; it beats the hell out of just seeing the underwear line.
Well, we were �a thing� after that. We spent as much time together as we could. All summer long we were by each other�s side. We went to the beach, and out to dinner. It was the summer and neither of us was working, still living at home and all, and we could get away with spending all our time together.
That was definitely the highlight of our relationship. It�s not like it all went down hill from there. Just for some reason it seemed like that summer was special. Even now, I hardly remember much of it. All the days blended together, and I was truly happy. It wasn�t a summer of long days, but one continuous emotion that lasted the length of the summer.
After the summer things changed a bit. I was going to school locally, but she went to a private school out of state. Being apart from each other really hit me hard. I was feeling depressed all the time, and we hardly got to talk. The weekends that she was home, I had to fight with her parents in order to spend time with her. They were a pretty close family, and they wanted to spend time with her too.
But we got by. Time went by awfully slow, but the summer came again before too long.
It was a nice summer to say the least. We got time together again, finally. We frequented the beaches and had picnics in fields flocked with butterflies. Again it was dreamlike. But before too long we both felt the burden of bills that would come with college. Although both of us were enjoying our break before our senior year, I guess you could say we were looking toward the future. We both wanted to go to college, and we�d even decided on one that we could both go to. But we knew what we had to do. Get jobs.
So, I went to work cooking at the restaurant where we had our first date. And she got a job at a daycare center. We saw less of each other than the summer before, but we got used to it. We still saw each other at the end of the day and on the weekend, and at the same time we were securing our future. I guess that the wishes I made on all those shooting stars had paid off. We were both looking at a future together.
Well, time went by and we found ourselves packing to go to college.
It was another great time of our lives. We were practically living together. I slept in her room, or she in mine almost every night. We did homework together, and we even managed to have one class together, College Composition.
Over Thanksgiving Break, we went home. One night we went back to that restaurant and I popped the question. I had planned on doing it later that night, while we sat on the same log at the beach. But it had gotten cold and windy and neither of us was in the mood for walking down the beach. So I popped it right there in the restaurant.
I can�t say that she was shocked. As a matter of fact she had been hinting toward a diamond for some time. But she sure was happy. She jumped up and knocked over her chair. She yelled, �Yes, yes, yes. Yes, I will!� It was really quite exciting.
But that is when things really began to change.
Suddenly all she talked about was the wedding. I�d try to snuggle up against her at night, but she would be too busy looking at wedding magazines. Picking out bride�s maid dresses, bouquets, centerpieces, and cakes. It was like I didn�t even matter anymore. Like she no longer loved me for me, but for the wedding I was giving her.
I know, it was silly of me; she was just really excited about the wedding. And I should have been happy for her. For us.
But I was getting down. I no longer had all the attention that I was used to. Suddenly, I didn�t feel like I was nineteen anymore, I felt thirty-five. And I didn�t want to be old yet. So, I kept quiet while my morale sank.
And what was I going to do? Tell her that I was depressed because we were getting married. How stupid would that sound? It�s what both of us had wanted, and we were completely in love with each other.
So, I went on and lived with it. I was constantly falling asleep at night, with her looking through magazines, while I thought about our first summer. And I guess that over time I grew a little bitter toward the wedding.
But I still loved her. I loved her like crazy, more than ever.
Well, this is where it all gets complicated. It was a year later, well, just about.
The wedding was going to be over spring break.
It was Thanksgiving Break. But this year a bunch of her friends from her private school got a hold of her. So, I went home for break, and she went out of state, to hang with some friends.
I guess I was a little angry. It was going to be a year since I had proposed to her, and I kind of wanted to spend some time with her. Greedy me, huh?
But we worked something out. She would come home early, so we could rent a hotel room for our one-year anniversary of the proposal. Kind of corny, I know, but we liked to find excuses to go out.
So, the time came around, and I met her at the hotel. I should have seen that something was wrong, but I was too excited to see her. I had missed her like crazy; it was the longest amount of time that we had spent apart in years.
I hugged her, picked her up, and spun her around. I guess that that cheered her up a bit. Making her forget what it was on her mind. We checked in and went up to the room.
Yeah, it was fall, but they had the heat turned up way too high in the room. I guess I should be angry at the hotel for that. But, it�s not really their fault.
I had to take a piss, so I rushed into the bathroom. What I missed while I was in there would have changed a lot of things. I came out and she was standing by the window. And she was crying.
I went to her and asked what was wrong. I tried to hug her but she pushed me away. And then she told me about it.
While she was gone, they had thrown a little bachelorette party for her. After the party, she had happened to run into an old friend of hers. Before she had met me, they had been real close and had kind of been a couple.
At that point of the story I froze up. Crazy things ran through my head, images of her screwing another guy. And all of this anger rose up in me. It might have been pent-up anger about the wedding and not getting attention, but it was mostly driven from these images of her getting pounded by some other guy. I could feel my fingers digging into the palms of my hands, and I was biting my tongue so hard that it had bleed for days.
Then she made excuses that she was really drunk and didn�t know what she was doing, that this guy had taken advantage of her inebriated state. That it wasn�t her fault, and she never meant to do it. That she felt really, really bad, and that she loved me so much and hoped that I would understand, and other such crap.
I was so pissed that my vision went black for a second. I know that my eyes weren�t closed, I�m sure that they were bugging out. I just couldn�t see anything. The anger in me was that strong.
I must have shoved her. Not too hard, I hadn�t meant to hurt her.
But when I opened my eyes, she wasn�t there. She was not in the room.
What I had missed while I was in the bathroom was that she had opened the window to let in some cool air.
In front of me was a screen with a big hole torn in the middle of it. I leaned forward and cautiously looked down. I saw her little body lying on the ground, six stories down. Her leg was bent in a funny direction, and it looked like blood was coming out of her head. But she was still beautiful.
I don�t remember what happened after that. I guess that I had blacked out for a couple of minutes sitting on the floor. But when I came to, I looked out the window again and saw a couple of police cars, and an ambulance. I couldn�t hear anything though, that was the funny thing.
I ran down the stairs and got stopped by a cop. He was hollering something at me but I still couldn�t hear anything. He threw me up against the wall and put cuffs on me. I still don�t know how they knew it was me. I guess maybe the guy in the lobby had recognized her and told the cops where I was. Of course, it could have been that I had a really crazy look on my face.
A couple of minutes later, as they threw me into the police car, a real depressing thing occurred to me. In any tragic movie there was always someone holding the head of the dying person. I started to cry because I didn�t get to hold her head. That I would never be able to touch her again, and because the last time I touched her it was in anger, and it had caused her death.
But, I still love her.
I have always loved her.