At Last, We Meet

We met online in early 2005.  At the urging of a mutual friend, I emailed him on a whim, in December of 2004.  Nothing fancy, just a short note from me, telling him about "Mel" -the mutual friend, and how she told me that we shared a love for writing and that we should get to know each other.  I hit send and went on with my life.  It took him a month and a half to reply, but he did.  And that's how it all started, our budding "online" relationship.  We called each other email buddies.  That's what we were.  It was through our email exchanges, that we began to get to know each other.  One of the (many) things I found the most attractive about him was that he actually took the time to write back.  I'm not talking about one liners or a few sentences here and there.  No, this guy, took the time to write very enticing emails.  He was well versed and I found that so sexy!  In the beginning it was the usual, trivial questions.  You know, like "Where did you grow up?", "Where did you go to school?",  "When was your last relationship?" -stuff like that.  But then, we'd take turns asking off the wall questions to each other.  Telling each other about our crazy weekends, our crazy friends, sharing, as if we were long lost friends, trying to find out about each other all over again.  He was very witty, and charming with his words, he was intelligent and sarcastic and I couldn't believe we had not made any effort to meet or even speak on the phone.  While at first I found it a bit odd, I grew to like the veil of anonymity that surrounded us.  Three months into our little email relationship, we exchanged pictures.  At this point, I could care less what he looked like.  I was already one smitten kitten.  But then I saw his picture.  My heart leaped and that was it for me.  I was done.  The guy was hot!  He was standing with some friends, in front of Reliant Stadium, wearing at Texans football jersey, jeans, and a crooked grin.  He had a goatee (the bad-boyish kind), intense, sexy eyes and hair the kind that made you (or me anyway) want to run your fingers through.  Of my picture, he told me I was pretty and some other stuff, but all I heard was pretty.  Neither one of us made a move to meet.  And so our cyber friendship continued.  About a month after the picture exchange, I threw all caution to the wind and gave him my number.  He called me almost immediately.  We were both kind of nervous,  but not really.  Finally, I could put a voice to the face.  And vice versa.  And so a new chapter in our relationship ensued.  We progressed from emails, to phone calls.  Lots of phone calls.  We talked about each others lives, dates, relationships or lack of, all kinds of things really.  He introduced me to late late LATE night phone calls, and other stuff that went along with that, too.  Nine months after we "met" online, we finally met in person.

It was a hot and humid, June summer night.  I'd never been so nervous and excited to meet someone in my entire life!  Here was this guy that I had been emailing and talking to almost daily for months and finally, we were going to be face to face, in person, and not online.  He told me not to be nervous.  Yeah, like that was going even possible.  We'd often talk about what it was going to be like, when we finally met.  But of course, nothing ever happens the way you think it will happen.  I met him outside of my house.  It was after we had both been out with our own friends.  I again, pressed him about finally meeting.  And he started the usual teasing banter that we usually played whenever one of us broached the subject.  Except this time, instead of playing along, he agreed to meet me and as he said, " to put you out of your misery"  My retort to him was:. he was the one suffering and it was "I" who needed to do him the favor of letting him meet me.  We laughed and agreed to meet that night.

He was leaning against his car, and I remember my heart pounding loudly, I even wondered if he could hear it.  He saw me walking up to him, and flashed a big grin.  I smiled back, and then we hugged.  He was a great hugger.  You know how some people just don't know how to hug?  Well, he had no problem in that area.  We stood there, in front of his car, talking nervously, laughing nervously.  I remember wondering if he was going to kiss me.  I really, really, wanted him to kiss me.  It started misting as we stood out there.  But we didn't even flinch.  And then, he leaned down, carressed my face, kissed my cheek, before finally brushing his lips softly over mine.  I think I sighed out loud.  I remember he smiled and then kissed me again. This time, cupping my face in his hands.  It was the best kiss I had ever had.  To this day, it still remains so.
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For the Red Writing Hood prompt this week: write about a face to face meeting which, for better or for worse, doesn’t go as planned. Fiction or memoir. -----Write On Edge

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