A Romance Grows

How to describe what happened next?


Was their next meeting every bit as magical as their first?


It was. And more.


Every time she thought of him, she smiled. And she thought of him often.


Her days took on a new routine. Previously, she had been staying after school for about four hours every night to work on her lesson plans and correct papers. Now, she would only stay for two and take papers home with her- that might or might not get corrected that night, to give her enough time to be home when he would get off work.


Well, when he would usually get off work. He was a marine, after all, and he didn't have normal hours. But, in the event that he actually was able to finish work at the expected time, she wanted to be home when he called. And he always called the second that he got off work. When he was running late, he called her from work if he could. She could hear the guys from his shop in the background, making fun of him.


It was the only time they could get away with it. Since no one, no one, messed with him.


They spent as much time together as they could. They went out almost every weeknight. And, when her apartment was repaired from the hurricane damage about two weeks later, he stayed with her every weekend.


They shared their dreams and their pasts. He shared how, where he came from, no one expected any of those kids to become anything. The only reason he got out was because he earned a baseball scholarship to a private high school. That if he had stayed in the inner city school he was in, he might never have even graduated.  He confided in her how he had tried out for a few professional baseball teams. And then his eventual decision to join the Marine Corps.  And how he couldn't wait to get out the next summer.


She shared how she'd always dreamed of starting over somewhere where no one knew her. Of making a difference in her students' lives. 


They could talk about the important and the mundane. They never ran out of words.


And they couldn't stop touching each other. They held hands while he drove. While they ate. He walked with his arm around her.  And then there were their nights together....


In a town with a crazy ratio of males-to-females, she couldn't even see anyone one else.  No one existed except for him. And if anyone else should dare to try to flirt with her or ask her out, she would glare and shoot them down. Couldn't they see that she was taken? That no one could ever measure up to him?


They had to spend their first weekend apart when her mother and brother came to visit.  Though they could still spend their days together, they had to separate at night.


She cried the first night. It had been a week since she'd been able to fall asleep in his arms and would be another week until she could do so again. It felt like too much. She needed him. She felt a physical pain in her heart, being away from him.


Though he spent the next day with her family, when it was time for them to separate, she wanted to cry.  She'd not had any doubts about him since he came back from being out in the field two months before. Because they were always together. There was no way that he could possibly be seeing anyone else. There wasn't any time.


But, they had never officially said that they wouldn't date anyone else. She felt like it was implied. But, was it really? It was too soon to talk about that, wasn't it? She didn't know. She didn't have much experience with these sorts of things.


What had he done the night before? What would he do that night? Maybe he would realize that there are other girls out there. Maybe he had gone out with one of them the previous night. Maybe he would go out with her again that night. Or maybe it would be a different girl.


But then, he pulled her close. As close as he could. Those arms of his wrapped around her, as if he were leaving for a deployment, instead of just for the night.


She felt reassured. But, wanted him to stay. Or wanted to go with him. Instead, her brother went with him. Much more fun for him to go hang out with the guys at the barracks than to stay at her place with her and her mom.


Her mother didn't help that night. She told her daughter that while he seemed nice, intelligent, and obviously very good-looking, why was he with her? She shouldn't count on him sticking around for very long. Someone else would come along, some girl who was better looking than she was would catch his eye and he would be gone.


She was crushed. Wasn't that her fear?


Her mother went to sleep and she stayed up, mindlessly watching tv. And thinking that at least her brother was with him, so there wouldn't be another girl that night.


It was past midnight when her phone rang.


"Come stay with me tonight. I hate not getting to fall asleep with you in my arms."


She debated.


But, not for very long.


She drove on base and practically ran to his room. She literally ran into him on the steps, as he was coming down to meet her.


As he pulled her into his arms, he professed for the first time, "I love you. I love you so much."


And she knew. Right then. This was real.

If you want to read more of my story, you can start with when I decided to move somewhere where I knew no one,  when the hurricanes came, and then the love story starts with a first meeting, and then wondering if it was all a mistake. Yes, I realize that it's obnoxious to talk about myself in third person, but this all happened so long ago that it seems like it happened to a different person.