Page 23 of Paradigm

Eline laughed and said, “I’m confused.”

“We went out on a date after she dumped her now-ex. She told me that she kept thinking she was going to meet the right woman, but that she was pretty sure that she’d already found her, and we had our first kiss in years.”

“And?” Eline asked before taking a sip of the wine she had ordered.

“It was amazing, and I wanted more, but we both agreed that we should take things slow this time, so we haven’t done that yet… again.”

“That’s good, right? It means she wants you to get there.”

“It’s good, but it’s also been years of me wanting her. I had her for only so briefly, and now, we’re doing this, but I’m ready, you know? I’ve known what this was supposed to be all along. She didn’t even stay over after our first date, when we’ve done that a million times just as friends. But then, last night, she came over to watch a movie, and we made out for the longest time. I made her stay over.” Marti chuckled. “We fell asleep, and it was really nice. She held me, and I wanted to take things further, but she told me she still wanted to wait. How much longer is she going to make me wait here? It’s been years.”

Eline smiled over at her and said, “I’m sure it won’t be too much longer. And it’s a good thing that you’re taking it slow. It matters.”

“I can’t believe it’s happening at all. I’d given up on her, honestly. She brought the girlfriend that I couldn’t stand with us here the other night, so when I saw you, I just decided that I wasn’t going to spend my whole night wishing that she would dump her and tell me how she felt. Then, she did. I guess I owe you for that, huh?”

“I don’t think so. It seemed like they were heading toward a breakup already.”

“She said she only brought her along because she wanted me to give her some advice on how they were together. I hadn’t been spending a ton of time with Marissa because she was always with her now-ex, and I guess she wanted my opinion, but seeing me with you made her realize that she was being an idiot and that I’d been right all along. I plan on holding that over her forever.”

Eline laughed again.

“Anyway, your drink is on me tonight,” Marti told her. “Now, I know you didn’t ask if I wanted to come out just to talk about me and Marissa. How did it go with your ex? I’ve been thinking about you, hoping it all worked out.”

“I don’t know, actually.”

“About?”

“If it all worked out.”

“What happened?” Marti asked before she waved over the bartender and ordered herself a beer, telling him to put Eline’s drink on her tab as well.

“It’s hard to explain.”

“Well, Marissa is working late tonight, so I’ve got time. You can tell me the whole story, if you want.”

Eline played with the stem of her wineglass, using it to move the glass left and right for no reason, and said, “I first met Arlowe at the bookstore.” She smiled at the memory. “We were in the same program, but it was a semester abroad for her. I was a local student. We were reaching for the same book for one of our classes that we happened to have together, and that was it. I looked up at her, and I knew.”

“Yeah? That was it?”

“I couldn’t explain it then, and I still can’t explain it now. She has these deep, soulful gray eyes, and I’d never seen anything like them before. Then, she was telling me that I could take the book, even though it was the last copy on the shelf. I noticed that her hand was still on top of mine, and I felt like I wanted to hold her hand forever. We talked while they were getting another copy for her in the back, and then we walked from the store toward the dorms where she was staying, and we kept talking for hours inside her room until she finally asked me out on a date, and we just went. We had our first date that night – walking for hours around the canals, stopping at tourist shops sometimes, and holding hands the whole way.”

“That sounds pretty amazing,” Marti replied.

“It was. It’s like nothing I’d experienced before or since, and when she kissed me at my apartment door around four in the morning, I thought I might have met the love of my life. I invited her in and… Well, you can imagine what happened next.”

“Look at you. On a first date?”

“It felt like we’d had ten dates in one day, and I didn’t want to wait because part of what we’d talked about that day was the fact that she would be returning home in five months. That’s how long the semester was. She had one more semester at her college here in the US after that, and I still had one to finish there. Neither of us wanted to waste any time, and I suppose that made everything feel even more intense and wonderful.”

“So, what happened, exactly?” Marti asked.

“A few weeks in, I told her that I loved her. She said the same, and for a few months, we just continued pretending like there wasn’t an expiration date on our relationship. Then, we were getting closer to our final exams, autumn turned to winter, and we couldn’t pretend any longer. The pressure to figure out how we could be together took its toll, and eventually, we decided that it would be better for us to go our separate ways when Arlowe left.”

“You didn’t want to do long-distance?” Marti asked as her beer was placed in front of her on the bar.

“I think I would have, had she wanted to, but it would’ve been incredibly difficult. We’re both computer engineers with weird sleep habits. Hers are worse, but I’m only a little better. Well, I don’t know how true it still is for her today, actually, but there would’ve been school first, followed by work, time zone issues, and our weird sleep patterns. Money was a major problem as well. Neither of us had a lot of it, so we would’ve had to take out credit cards and get into massive debt just to be able to see one another a few times a year, with no end in sight because I never planned on leaving my home, and she never planned on leaving here. It all seemed insurmountable for two twenty-two-year-old girls in love.”

“And you really haven’t seen her since then?”