N and I had a turbulent start to our relationship, most of that due to my own actions, but the result was the same.  Maybe its the weird mood that’s found me of late that has killed my writing ability, with current exception, but I’m living a lot in my head and not in the usual way of blocking out everyone else… just distracted.

Thinking….when I was first starting to notice N….when I had that first itch to touch her….

The hair was the first thing I noticed.  It hid her face, and I was distracted by other things, so didn’t pay attention to the details - something that was common for me in that time.  I knew we spoke, but didn’t process the conversation.  The next few encounters were like that, rushed, hurried, the speed always fueled by my distraction and inability to focus in any direction that didn’t involve my job or getting laid.

Eventually, encounter by encounter, we became familiar with each other.  I knew her hair before I knew her face and could pick it out easier than I could her, never having touched either.  It was simply what stuck in my head.  When I knew her face as well, her voice accompanied it.  We spoke, but her quiet always fueled me to speak more.

I would talk and she would inch in until our heads were close like we were sharing a secret.  She could make me laugh, was the first one to bother to try.  She didn’t mind being silly - just as long as she didn’t have to do it in public, which at the time, my life was.  Very public.  Sex, my job, my life was out there, food for anyone who wanted to know the details.

And she was my secret, my calm in the storm that my life was quickly becoming.  Still it was just that, conversation, company and all of it with someone who felt, more than seemed, genuine.  When your life is public, nothing can be trusted as the truth.  Here was N who felt like balm, like a salve to my skin.

I sought her company, something I’d never had to do in my life.  Women were always after me, so much that my ego was (and to some degree still is) monstrous.  I chased her, but never had to go far because she met me half way.  It didn’t seem important at the time, that detail, but later it became important because she wanted me as much as I wanted her.

I remember the first time I touched her hair.  I remember because it’s the first time I kissed her.  She was sitting next to me and had looked at me with that serious face she got from time to time when she was processing something I’d said, or not said.  She was trying to process it, think of the intelligent response, or question and had made the mistake of looking at me.

My fingers brushed her hair away from her face.  I meant to move my hand back to the sofa, but it didn’t move.  When it did, it inched into her hair, buried itself into the soft, black silk of her hair.  Fisted.  Her head tipped back and she stared at me with her beautiful dark eyes.

And I kissed her.

There was no thought to all the reasons we shouldn’t, couldn’t… it was just us then.  I kissed her until I felt drunk on adrenaline and hormones, lust and what I’d later identify as love.

N would many years later, break my heart.  It was nothing more than payback for the many times I’d crushed hers.  We’ve been apart, two years at one point, we’ve been together much more.  We’ve had some really good times, when luck and fortune have blessed us, and times when we’d both just rather give up.

But.  She’s N.  She’s it.  She’s mine just as I’m hers.  Whatever it means, I’m there for the ride.

I’m there.