The boat we are on continues to slip along in the night. If I closed my eyes and imagined the scene, I can picture the bow waves being made as the boat moves through the water tonight. The water is black, pitiless. The bow waves are white foam, cresting over the black but never illuminating it. They are but an illusion and soon they become one with the black sea again.

And I can picture Terry's face. He is behind me, holding me after pulling me away from the railing. His eyes are bottomless, serious. His brows are no doubt drawn down, his mouth is stern. He is surely regretting that he kissed me but he is regretting it more that he let me see this regret.

Between us, there are years-old regrets and now there is this new one for him.

I let him hold me. He is leaning back into the bulkhead. His arms are wrapped around me. His chin is tucked over my shoulder. We are both facing out, looking behind the ship, seeing where it's been as if it's where we're heading. Looking into the past, I suddenly think to myself.

This is what must make me turn in his arms. The past must be why he lets me turn until I am facing him. It must be why we stay like this, me leaning on him, him leaning back against the ship. His arms loosely draped around me. My hands on his face, looking into his eyes.

Into pain I saw the beginning of and somehow never thought he'd still be in.

"I don't want to go back to that time, no. Because then I'd have to go through the years since and that's not too appealing," I say to him, finally.

"What would be appealing then ... for the time we have left tonight? It may be all we have. What would you do with me?"

I hear it in his voice ... interest ... in me seeing beyond his pain. To just pretend it was never there. To imagine what he'd be like now without it. To remember what he was like back then, back when I met him and fell headlong in love with him.

"You're the first man who's made me feel desirable in a long time ... I remember how you used to be able to do that with only a sigh."

He looks shy suddenly. When did that happen? "I remember ... everything about you was pure desire to me."

I blush. I feel the heat in my cheeks. "What would be appealing to me? Tonight? You really want to chance me telling you the truth?"

He returns my coy smile with serious eyes. "Tell me, Bets. You used to be able to tell me your fantasies."

"And you'd make them come true," I say, my voice suddenly soaked in how that memory makes me feel.

"Did my best."

"You were the best man I ever had and I don't say that to make me sound pathetic but because it is the truth."

His eyes do a shift through complicated emotions. The years fade away. Including the last one with him, when we were falling apart and sometimes the fight to stay together was too desperate to ever succeed.

"So what fantasy can I make come true for you tonight? What are you thinking of, Elizabeth?"

He must read it in me. What I read in him is that his sexuality is being unleashed and that he is doing it on purpose ... challenging me to keep pace, to run ahead but don't run away! No more giving in to sadness or memories of angry last words between us ... strip it all away and beneath it must lurk the hunger for each other that never died and has been waiting to be bared again.

"My fantasy ... about you, Terrence?" I tease him, my fingers now stroking the light scruff on his face and neck, neat and sensual. I have liked him this way ... a feral change of pace to his normal primly shaved and militarily natty. "I am not sure you're brave enough to hear it."

"You tell me yours ... and then I'll tell you mine."

"Oh ... I see." I lean in further and put my mouth just under his ear. He cocks his head over to hear better ... words only for him. I should say the first thing on my mind. That's how I used to do this with him. Close my eyes. Feel myself being held by him.

Did I ever dream this? I'm sure I did. What was the context in that dream? Usually, he came looking for me, to rescue me. Oh, well then, I suppose I cannot say the first thing on my mind as I no longer need rescuing and I'd never admit it to him even though I do.

Instead ... instead: "In my fantasy, we meet at a convention in a city far from where either of us lives. We're strangers. You happen to sit next to me on the bus ride to the first night's reception. We talk. There is an unmistakable attraction."

"Do I ask you to dance?"

"Eventually. After seducing me from across the room. And only then do you ask me to dance."

"And then?"

"We have a drink and wander along the ship's outer deck."

"Do we now?"

"And then you kiss me ... finally. I've been hoping you'd do it all night."

"Like this?" He says and takes my breath away. Before I met him, I never knew men could kiss like that and make me lose control from just a kiss. I feel the urgency speed up inside me.

"That may be better than I'd imagined."

"That's as far as your fantasy goes? Love, I can remember a time when they would never have been that tame. You slowed down that much?"

"Let me finish." My lips go back to his ear. I blow softly on him and he comes closer. "Then you ask me if I have a fantasy that features a mysterious stranger. And I say, yes. And you say, tell me. So I do ... I tell you that the stranger and I cannot deny our attraction ... and that when we touch, just our fingers, it is like electricity between us. And he dares me to let him show me what he can make me feel about that electricity."

"And do you? Do you let him? Even not knowing him?"

"I say to him, I am yours for one hour."

"One hour? Is that enough time? Imagine what I could do for an entire night."

"Amazing, Terrence. That is exactly what the stranger tells me."

"But you're set on only one hour?"

"One hour. And then I will leave him, never to see him again."

"What does he do then? Does he say something or does he ..."

"Remember we are on a boat. A large one ... exactly like this one. He takes my hand and leads me to a deck where there are many cabins but since it's just a party cruise, no one is booked in the cabins. He breaks into one of them and takes me inside."

"You've given this some thought then. Thought on those niggly details. That's my girl. Go on ... finish the fantasy, love."

"I can't ... it's too ..."

"Too what?"

"Too revealing. Too intense. Too sexual."

He says nothing. He puts a hand on my hip and runs it down that thigh and up the back of that thigh. He squeezes that buttock; it is a long squeeze, a caress, a yearning. But he finishes it by yanking my groin in tighter to his, where I can feel him letting himself harden again ... and then he turns his head and kisses the side of my neck.

I put my free hand on the bulkhead; I cup the champagne flute in my other hand and brace the knuckles of that hand on the bulkhead on the other side of his shoulders. I am shivering but I am trying to push myself from his warmth. He won't let go ... I don't want him to. And now we are face to face, lips almost touching.

"You've told me yours ... I will tell you mine," he says to me. I look in his eyes. I get lost but voluntarily.

The boy I knew is in there somewhere but so is the man I am with. I don't try very hard to focus.

His voice is rough, husky ... soft somehow even so. I feel it thrum inside me, as if it's invading me, taking me prisoner. "I take you in that room. One hour. You think you're going to walk away after ... You try. But you cannot do it. I don't want you to ... and you don't really want to either after that hour passes."

"You'd be that good in your fantasy?"

"I'm that good in reality."

"Good thing it's just a fantasy then, isn't it?"

"Is that what you really want?"

"For it to be a fantasy? No ... but you'd never do that."

"Are you sure?"

He's asking two questions, really. On the surface, he's asking if I'm sure he'd not be up to that dare I've made implicitly by how I've told this 'fantasy.' But underneath, where he will always be a man worth loving deeply and staying in your memories forever, that is where he is asking if I really want to make love with him tonight ... if I am making a rational decision or not. And that's why I do nothing more than smile at him ... let him make of that what he will.

When he moves, it is laser sharp. He slides to the side and takes my hand in his and draws me smoothly along with him, keeping me close. He opens the bulky door to the interior hallway of the deck we're on. Other people are in there, walking, exploring, looking around. When he sees them, he drops my hand and keeps walking. He knows I'll follow and I do. He walks with a purpose and anyone seeing him probably thinks he is working security, overseeing what they are up to and making sure they are not doing something stupid and against the rules like breaking into a cabin.

Soon, these couples melt away and are gone. He looks behind him. Behind me. He takes my hand and pulls me to him for a kiss that is hot and needy and curious. We are near a cabin door. He lets me go and hands me his flute. I have one in each hand. I like how holding his flute makes me feel we're involved in some adventure together. He pulls a silver tool from his wallet. In seconds, the door opens, he pushes it wider, looks both ways down the hall before reaching for me.

I giggle at first, his hands on my waist shoving me into the wall of the narrow entryway as he lets the cabin door swing shut behind us.

The inebriation makes my head dizzy. I find it hilarious that he's taken my dare and done this. We are here! In a cabin! Alone! Oh my god! Who would picture me doing this? Just daring some man to do this and then doing it with him?

But he's not just any man ... and the idea of being here, with him, and him vulnerable to my charms again ... and me, drunk like this ... God, it's hilarious and insane and giddy and off the chart madness.

He doesn't want me giggling, though. He wants me moaning, serious, intense like he is. Hungry ... and the last we've eaten of each other is nine years ago. We are both starving. He drops his hands and cups my buttocks even as he presses my body into the wall. I am lifted to the tips of my toes and then inches higher.

I hold a champagne flute in each hand, awkward and off balance because I cannot hold on to him so I must trust him and let go, let him do as he wishes ... and I love the way that makes me feel ... wild with abandon and a woman this man would take with no hesitation.

All the while, he's sucking and nipping into my throat until I let out a moan and lodge my elbows under his lapels to try to nudge his jacket from his shoulders in a blind need for skin on skin.

Only then does he kiss me, pressing his groin in hard over mine, rubbing so I can feel his hardness growing more insistent, more needy. We suck on each other's tongue and our teeth knock in the frenzy of this kiss, wet and deep and wide open.

He dips and then shoves me up higher along the wall. My arms go around his neck, my wrists crossing over each other ... I feel sloshes of champagne on my hands as he jostles me, roughly, into where he wants me. I am now high enough to wrap my legs around his waist and so I do. My ankles twist over each other. I kick off my shoes. I wish I was not wearing slacks.

The kissing has reached the grunting stage. The insane wanting to be together ... inside each other. We've flown over that edge and we're beyond any chance we'll stop. Wild. Free. No consequences. Take it all and then some. No man ever made me feel that way but this one. I am hanging on around his neck but I want to feel him so I drop the flutes and hear them thud on the heavy carpeting. One of my hands shoves down to cup and knead him, now gentle at the first touch of his manhood. He grunts really loudly, inside my mouth.

The next moment, his teeth are pressed into the side of my bowed neck ... my hand is rubbing over his length, pressing in atop his expensive, soft pants. I say something quite unintelligible. He lifts me in his arms and stumbles over to the bed, plopping down heavily ... And then cursing tightly when I jounce into him too hard as a result.

"I'm sorry ... sorry," I pant out.

"No worries ..." he pants in reply. "Just be ... Just ... Fuck yeah."

He says this guttural release of a curse because my hands are loosening his belt ... now unzipping him as he groans against my neck, telling me to just do it. He always did overflow even two hands. I pull his penis toward me until I can rub its length along the crease of my own pants, gyrating to where I can stimulate myself on him. It's like I'm masturbating us both at the same time. I let my head drop back. His mouth closes over my jaw, teeth barely pressing in, like a male dog holding a bitch where he wants her.

"Stop ... stop ... ouchie ouchie ..." he says, the words hissed between gritted teeth. "Zipper, love, careful."

"We need to get you out of these," I say, scrambling off his knees to start taking off my own slacks and undies while he wiggles from his. I get my shirt off right before he lunges and grabs me, pulling me back against his naked lower body sitting on the edge of the bed.

"Wait!"

"What?" he pleads.

"Protection ... condom ... I'm not on anything ..."

"Hand me my jacket."

"Wallet?" I ask, because it's where he used to keep them.

He nods. I toss it to him. His fingers go inside and out comes a row of several condoms.

I watch him put one on. I like seeing him touch himself ... the nonchalance of how he does this followed by the way he strokes himself and looks up at me with invitation and promise in his proud eyes.

"You used to hate wearing them ..." I begin. "... With me."

"We've never been together ... remember?"

"Oh. Yeah. Oh." The fantasy ... I close my eyes and try to slip back into it ... the condom has broken my rhythm.

"Come to me. Come get to know me ... come let me get to know you."

My head is dizzy, but not as much, when I open my eyes to simply gaze at him, his hand out. He's licking his bottom lip. And it's not really the alcohol anymore that is making me dizzy ... it's déjà vu fighting the fact he looks different than my memory of him. He is different. In some ways, he could be a stranger, a zipless fuck. But he is no stranger ... just changed in ways I would love to understand.

He scoots back on the bed even as I am climbing in over him. I lick my lips and then bend to kiss him. Lips. Neck. Throat. His hands are on my hips, bringing my groin in over and then away from his hardness. Eventually, he gives in to where my kissing is leading ... he falls back onto the mattress, in control the entire way.

My hands run slowly over his chest. I remember the sprinkling of hair here. 

How fair it could be after days on the beach. How I loved to run fingertips through it after we'd made love and I'd be lying on his chest with a leg over his damp, sticky groin and I'd never known anyone who could make me feel better just by the way he'd hold me then. As if he was always going to be there to shelter me from anything.

He seems broader there. Less angular. My fingers ride the contours; my palms caress the rise and fall of supple curves.

I run hands over his shoulders. I have always loved their shape, size, the way the skin feels to the touch. His arms are broader, the muscles less defined but larger, less sinewy. I play with the hair on his forearms. His hands are resting on my hips now. He is watching me study his body.

My eyes look down his belly to the line of hair that leads to the patch at his groin. His cock twitches ever so as he anticipates attention, appraisal, approval. I wish the condom had not been necessary. I wish I'd waited to have him put it on but I thought we were just going to dive into an instant fuck.

We smile at each other; I bet we look giddy with anticipation and excitement. I hold his eyes with mine as I slide further up his body until I am poised over him. All he has to do is point his cock perpendicular to his body and we are away. My hips swing; his hands follow the movement without checking me. I reach to kiss him.

His fingers surprise me; I'd been too into the kiss to feel them move to cup and hold my breasts through my bra. Take it off, he mutters, husky. My pleasure, I mutter, throaty. He kneads, holds, hefts them in his hands. I make a crude jest about his big hands and fingers ... not that he doesn't have big hands and wide fingers, just that what I said about them was meant to be witty. He nips at my bottom lip in reply, tugging on it until my mouth opens over his again.

One of his hands rubs and explores between my legs. I moan and shift until my stance is wider. Soon, I am twisting around where his fingers are playing me. Only then does he use my natural lubricant to coat the condom he wears.

I am biting my lip and watching his hand between us. He runs the blunt rounded tip of his penis along me before nudging in. Another nudge to sit himself more firmly. I tense, let out a tiny grunt of surprise at the intrusion I was expecting but not completely remembering in terms of impact on my body.

In that one fraction of a moment, I become intense. Adult. All-knowing. Aware of where I am, who I am with. Serious. Deadly in need, pyrrhic in lust.

His hands are now both on my thighs. One is damp. I press my body down, over him, working my self down. Up. Down a bit further. Up. A little. Down more.

His hands are on my hips, holding me tightly, pulling me down each time. He is deft and sure. Smooth and understanding. Only his face betrays his impatience to be buried in me to the hilt. Sweat. Concentration. Mouth open just a bit, tongue peeking out. Eyes half sharp.

Together, we work our bodies. When he hilts, when I feel my pubic bone grind against him ... I give a long, wobbly moan and my body shakes just a bit. It feels ... so good. Worth-the-insanity good. Brain-out-of-focus good.

He grunts and then hisses as he raises his hips to assure he's really speared me fully. A sly smile, feather light, darts across his lips ... satisfied now that he's got himself where he's been dying to be.

We used to talk when we made love. But when it was sex after he'd be gone for months, that first time back together after each mission, it would be like this: no words, only guttural noises and sighs and hisses ... like now ... like this ... and I would always feel ... like now ... oh ... like this ... close at last. Missing him. Reveling in being close with him like a pig sinks into his muck.

I close my eyes as this thought jumps into my brain.

Tears come from one of my eyes. I turn that side of my face from him, in case he'd notice. Which he will, even if he won't say anything right now. But he will.

It was only a passing moment ... and just after, I am caught in the force field that is him, Terrence Thorne, deep in passion. I am now leaning fully over his prone body, working mine over his. His hands are on my hips, forcing my movements to be quicker, firmer. His hips gyrate under me. His eyes flutter shut ... what a fucking turn on that is, that reaction of his. That lust to come inside me. That revel in the pleasure he feels.

I grab his face. I pant. Pant. Pant. And then my mouth opens to meet his. Tongue licks, rimming around the inside of his lips as he pants one last time before sucking my tongue deep inside his mouth.

When I come, my back bows and I leave his mouth. I try to say something. Frantic sigh, moan. Oh, I want to keep coming! And then I just shiver. And after, I sit up so I can look down on him through the hair that falls before my face. Copperish curls. I'd had them up when the night started. He must have freed them.

He liked doing that, once upon a time. I can remember him saying, in that rich voice of his padded by predatory desire, that he liked making my hair curl. I don't know why we both thought that was so clever but then again, he usually said it when we were soaked completely in sweat and spent sex.

He is breathing hard and still pumping into me, but lazy now, waiting to see what he will think of next. What he will think I need next. He is a generous lover. He always was. But I sense something more in him. Something that searches me and is remembering who I am. Who I was to him. Searching inside himself for how he once felt for me. Wanting to experience it again. Wanting to share it with me again.

I smile down at him and move over him more gently. He raises himself up. First to his elbows. I reach down to kiss him. Lightly.

And then raise back up. Run a finger down his cheek. Whisper, "I shouldn't say this ... I know I shouldn't ... but I never ..."

"Shhh ..." His silencing sigh is husky. He rises up more, until he is sitting. He gathers me in, adjusts me so I am sitting over him and he can pump up, which he is doing in very light strokes.

"Okay," I whisper, my eyes dropping from his. Emotion! Dammit. Why did I let emotion enter into it? My hands stroke down his chest, then back up. Then around his neck. Until we are sitting facing each other, chest against chest. Groins slowly moving against the other. My arms are draped over his shoulders now. I put my face against the side of his neck.

I remember this smell of him ... testosterone, sex, musk.

His hands gather around me. I rise and fall, a bit more intense again. His hands press in on my lower back, guiding me. I hear him hiss, a release of tension. He won't be much longer. I wonder if I will come again before he does or if I will come after, an aftershock of his coming?

"I never forgot you, Bets. Never."

My breath catches.

"Never."

My lip trembles. I know he must feel it. My eyes tear up.

"There were dark nights ..."

"Terry ..."

"And I would remember when you used to care about me."

"Oh ..."

"So many things shoulda turned out different."

"Me, too. Oh, me, too."

We find each other's mouth ... I wonder if his eyes are as blind as mine? If it's some special sense we have of the other or just dumb luck to be able to dive into that kiss in this darkness when I am unable to will my eyes to focus?

His arms tighten. And it is only moments later, after he begins thrusting and I am reacting to his rhythms and force ... and he is coming now. His head falls back as he gives that last bit of himself to the orgasm. I come, too.

He plops back onto the mattress, taking me with him, after we are both spent and the moments have slid by until our breathing is soft and we are holding each other gently. I land softly on his chest and there I stay for maybe five heartbeats. Then I slide off, to the side, as he pulls himself out of me. I am looking at his face. He winces. I do as well. I am out of practice; I wonder what his excuse is.

For a while, we just lay there, looking at each other. I close my eyes when his hand cups and kneads my breast. He rolls away from me suddenly, and I watch him walk into the bathroom. I hear the toilet open, shut, flush. I know he's disposed of the condom and had himself a little wee. I watch him walk back. He is nude. His body has solidified, aged well, gotten that adult male filling out that makes him seem more powerful. But he is still him, somewhere in there.

The mattress shifts as he slides back down next to me. We are facing each other. He has a serious look on his face. I think, 'uh oh.'

"What is it?" I ask him, imagining he's discovered something ... that he's with a woman he would rather not be ... that he's remembered he chased me off once because he felt his life would be better without me in it.

Wasn't that what he said to me then? All those years ago? You don't really forget that kind of rejection. 

He licks his lips before saying anything. He holds my hand in his. He plays his thumb across my knuckles. Back, forth. A sign of nerves. A sign he is about to say something I won't like and he knows it.

I wait him out. I used to get so exasperated at him when he'd do this.

"Betsy, I need to tell you something."

"Was I that bad after all this time?" I say, teasing him ... maybe.

"Bets ..." he says as he looks around inside my eyes. "I'm involved."

"Involved?" I say, sounding like a disappointed idiot though I never thought about anything, never expected anything that happened so I never gave any thought to ...

"Involved with a woman. In a relationship."

"Ah." 

He closes his eyes and falls over onto his back. He is still holding my hand. "Dunno what you'll think of me ... knowing that ..."

"Is that why you acted so repulsed when we first kissed?"

His face turns toward me. "I should not have put us in the position to be alone like that."

So. So whoever she is, she is serious to him. 

He always took everything to heart. He could beat himself up so royally. I remember a time when it would pass, though. Once he confessed or dealt with it, he didn't worry it over. But I also remember when he couldn't anymore. When he changed. And I remember my part in it. Even all these years later, I can't think of the words to say to him to apologize for that but to also rail at him for wounding me. It's never one person's fault, a break up, don't you find?

"It's okay. No one will ever know. I'll never say anything. You know I won't," I say, patting him on the chest as I pull my hand from his grip.

"I'll know."

"But she won't. And besides, this was ... it was just a ... Just an old feeling. You can bury it down."

"I cannot believe I found you again. And that I got to hold you ... that you don't hate me anymore."

"I never hated you. Not ever. I don't why you would think that."

His hand cups my cheek as I rise onto an elbow and look around the room. I am scouting for where my clothes have landed. 

"Because of how it ended for us," he says.

I will not wince. I will not. I will debase myself. I will not show how this makes me feel ... that I am still wet with him and still high on what he can do to me with nothing more than his voice and a look ... and he is talking about regrets. And his woman ... and I am suddenly the other woman. The other woman. The one he used a condom with. The one he will forget the moment he is with the woman he loves.

All of this flashes through my heart in a zip. And I say to him, terse though I am striving for light: "Perhaps you should just hold on to how it started for us."

I glance at him before I rise from the bed and begin gathering my clothes into my arms. When I reach the bathroom, I look back to where he lies on the mattress, staring up at he ceiling, his hands behind his head. The light from the bathroom spills across his body, putting it into relief from where I stand. God. I have not forgotten how I felt about his body. I like it even better now; I wonder briefly if this is because I, too, have grown up and what turns me on in men is a man old enough to be older than my equal?

Inside the bathroom, I close the door and try not to look in the mirror. I freshen myself up. Wash between my thighs and feel the ache there. I wet the washcloth again and wipe the sweat where I can reach it on my body. And then I dress. Only then do I look in the mirror and that's only because I have pulled a hairbrush and make up from my purse. I try not to make any value judgments as I neaten my hair and touch up my make up. Raccoon eyes and the loss of lipstick would be noted by my women friends, who will no doubt be waiting on me for the bus ride back to the hotel.

He is leaning up against the bed's headboard when I emerge.

"You don't want to leave," he says. He sounds grim but I don't think he is.

I make a show of looking at my watch. Tap the dial face. "Well ... we said one hour."

"But I said you wouldn't be able to walk away from me after an hour."

"Well, if it's any consolation, I won't be walking well ... I'm going to be hobbling, I think."

He frowns and his eyes sharpen. "Don't get funny on me, Elizabeth."

"Terrence." I say his name. Our eyes are locked. "Go back to your life. Go back to your woman."

"Do not leave."

"I have to." I turn and head for the door before I stop myself. I turn the knob. "I really do have to. It's really the only thing I can do now."

Is that for him ... or for me?

Either way, it's my final words. And then I'm out in the hallway where it is brightly lit and deserted. There is a loudspeaker message that starts just as I get out to the deck. We will dock in thirty minutes, the message says. Everyone is asked to gather their belongings in preparation. The buses will be waiting for us.

I stand on the back deck for a minute and let the wind wash over me, with its salt spray that makes me feel sticky again. I walk down the side of the boat, my hand trailing on the wooden railing, feeling the spots of seawater along the way. I go down some stairs, gripping the railing and going slowly. I really am having a hard time walking; I wasn't joking with Terry. I probably look like I was riding a horse. Maybe people will think these are my sea legs.

As the boat nudges against the dock, I am standing at the railing, watching the activity below. I have chosen this spot on purpose. It is where a great group of people are gathered to watch the same thing I'm watching. I am trying to blend in and when they leave, I will walk with them as if this is where I've been all this time. And my companions will know I've been off exploring but they will not think anything of it since I will be with a group but not with a specific, particular man.

Is it his reputation I protect by doing this? Or mine? Both, I suppose. 

He obviously doesn't need anyone to know about us being together. Someone could tell his girlfriend. And I don't want anyone to realize I did something this insane with a man who has a whole other life while I am going to be going home to live alone and lonely. It still surprises me even after all these months.

On the bus, I sit with the woman who invited me. We five are now gathered close together. Seats all in rows. The odd woman out sits across from the woman next to me. I am at the window. I am looking out, at the boat. At the party lights. At the gangway. At the people leaving and getting on other buses. At the now-empty gangway. At the now-departing buses.

I have not seen him leave the boat.

The other ladies, the ones in my group, they have had a great night. Turns out my erstwhile escort pined for me the whole night. They think I ditched him on purpose. I suppose I did. They think I was right. Thankfully, there were other men there who danced and brought them drinks and made the evening fly for them.

Where was I all that time, one woman asks, leaning over her seat to look back at us. Exploring, I say. Find anything good, she asks me. The lost treasure of the Sierra Madre, I say. At sea, she cackles the question out. That's why it's lost, I say back. We all think that's funny. What's really funny is that no one cares anymore where I was. It is just that simple.

At the hotel, we say our good nights at each floor that one of us must exit the elevator. I am dying to sink into a hot bath. I cannot walk straight. I have been gritting my teeth at the pleasant ache down there, between my thighs. I can still feel him there. As I open my door, I press my legs together as some form of masochistic torture of my own ability to come at just the reminder of what he felt like.

I get the unexpected visual of his legs. Of the hair on his legs. Of how his legs looked, sprawled on the bed. Of him there, just before I closed the bathroom door.

He has hairy legs. Dark hair. Soft. It feels good to rub against. To run your own shaved leg over his legs. To feel it under your bottom when you are drawn down onto his lap when you are not wearing anything on your cheeks.

It makes me smile to see the blush on my cheeks as I stand before the sink in the bathroom. I catch my eye on the way to the tub, to begin filling it with hot water. I see my cheeks flushed. I wink at myself.

Oo. La. Lah!

Elizabeth did the nasty tonight!

Elizabeth did it with the sexiest man on the boat tonight!

Elizabeth ... Elizabeth ... Elizabeth.

God, I wish I wasn't so pathetic as to feel so much like calling up Fucktwad Ben and telling him what and who I did tonight.

I am in the tub when there is a knock on the door. I hold my breath. Silence.

Later, I am dry and snuggled in a terrycloth robe that had been in the closet. Under the robe, I am wearing a forest green chemise that I bought for this trip so if I had to flee a fire, I'd have something to wear that a fireman might decide made me worth saving if he had to choose between me and someone else.

I sit staring at the phone on the side table by the bed. My fingers have brushed it several times. Finally I pick it up and ask to be connected to his room. There is no answer. When it goes to voicemail, I leave him a message that I hope he made it back safely tonight. And that's all I say.

To say more, would require too many other things said.

It's never easy. Meeting up with the man who left you once and who you treated crummy even if you understand now you're allowed to forgive yourself for that.

For the first time in so long, I sleep soundly. Nothing rattles me. No dream is bad. No feeling upon waking is evil. I am even smiling a secret satisfaction. I don't want to lose this feeling.

But I do.

It happens when I open the door for room service in the morning. And this is when I notice the slip of paper that he slid under my door last night.

I wait until the server leaves and I sit in the middle of the bed to read his note. It says simply, "You proved me wrong. Guess even I am fallible."

Fallible.

Why that word? He never does anything uncalculated unless it's in the heat of some fury and even then there's a part of him calculating his next move. At least ... at least, that's how he used to be.

And I used to say to him, "Even you are wrong sometimes, Terrence. Even the great Terrence Thorne is fallible."

It seems to me that was always the point where he'd exit stage left for a while.

So what does it mean that this was his message to me, his final message last night, apparently as he came to see me only to find me not answering his polite taps at my door? Would he believe me that I was soaking in the tub and afraid it was him out there?

Was I afraid it was him out there last night?

Of course I was, I think as I close my eyes. And he will have known this. Will he have been disappointed? Why does that bother me, that he would have yet another negative thought of me?

And why fear? Why fear where he's involved? To be involved? But he's already involved - with another woman. And even if he wasn't, it was only one night at a convention in a city where no one knew either of us and we had laid our swords down.

If I'd been sober then it would not have happened. But it did. And I'm not unhappy it did ... but I know if he knew how pathetic my life has been this last year, then he'd know I'd done it mainly because it felt so damned good to be wanted by him.

And if I'd opened the door last night?

I would have been almost sober by then, by that time he was tapping on my door. I would have been scared to see him if I was newly sober after having such mad sex with him only hours earlier when I'd been sailing high on booze and his testosterone. To then see him, and on top of that, after finding out he's involved with someone. After realizing he will torture himself over cheating on her with me.

When I open my eyes, I look back down at the note. I trace the letters with my little finger. I envision him writing this. The look on his face. Pursed lips, no doubt. Sad eyes? I doubt it. More like predatory eyes after seeing his best shot at a fresh kill evade. But some sadness ... over the fact he was on the prowl, after all, don't you think?

He should never be tortured over anything to do with me. But I bet he still is, I think suddenly.

I don't hate him anymore.

Maybe I never really did.

I do hate the way he made me feel at the end.

The way it felt to be rejected with those particular words by a man I still loved.

Years went by before I began to think on how I'd deserved them but I still wished he'd left me some self-respect at the end.

Of course, more than that, I've since come to feel deep guilt over what I know I did to him ... how I made him feel about himself. And none of it was ever true. None of it. It's crazy the things grief makes you do when you're fighting it and losing the battle. Crazy how you strike out at the people you should be clinging to.

Before I leave the room, I glance once more at his note. I smile to think how he is no doubt hoping I will be wasting precious energy trying to figure it out, figure him out. He wants me to be thinking about him. He wants me to be intrigued.

Riding the elevator down, I try to identify why this makes me tingle inside ... small, fluttery tingles, but I still feel them and still wonder about them. Why's that feeling seem somehow familiar? I am looking at the day's schedule in the packet when it comes to me ... it's a ghost of how I felt early on with him, before I knew him, when he pursued me after meeting me at Walt's party.

Wow.

I can remember that feeling so well, all of a sudden. He sent me flowers. I refused to read into them. Walt said it meant only that he wanted to ask me out. I said he'd have to ask me, not Walt, but I knew if he ever did, my voice would squeak when I said 'yes.' And it did.

He didn't even try to kiss me on the lips on the first date. I kept wanting him to. He did everything but ... he took me out for dinner and flirted shamelessly; he took me out dancing and danced close shamefully; he dropped me off at my apartment and bussed my cheek as a good night gesture. What I'd been hoping for was that he'd come up and we'd have a night in the sack.

When I didn't hear from him the next day, I wrote it off as him figuring out during the date that I wasn't quite as much fun as he was looking for. Two days later, I came home from work to find a note slipped under my door ... he'd been called off on a mission and now he was back and did I have a favorite flavor of ice cream for he'd heard Yanks were very partial to such matters.

I wrote a short note back ... it said nothing more than "Rocky Road" and then I got his address from Walt so I could go slip the note under his door.

The next morning, I woke up and found another note under my door. It said, "Done."

On the way to work, I drove by his condo and slipped a note under his door. It said, "Deliver."

When I got home, another note was under my door and it read, "Pick up."

I drove right over with my own note to slide under his door. It read, "My mother raised me better than that."

All night, I sat near my window and watched for him to come over to bring another note. He never did. Yet when I got ready for bed, I walked past my door and there was a new note. I opened it to read, "Meanwhile, it's melting."

Instead of getting ready for bed, I drove over to his place. His lights were out so I slid another note under his door. It read, "How did you sneak in while I was watching?"

I raced home. No new note. I sat at the window, all lights off. Watching for him. I listened so intently to every noise. Nothing. Sometime hours later, I finally rose from my perch to admit I was going to have to call this the craziest thing I'd done in way too long. I dressed for bed this time, refusing to check the hallway for a new note ... only to rise in frustration less than two minutes after crawling under my sheets to go check ... and to see the faint whiteness of the note that he'd slid into my apartment despite all my endeavors to catch him in the act. "What would you give to find out?" the note read.

It was while I stood there, pondering on what this meant that I heard a noise I could not identify. It was like a feather drawn across the outside of my door. And I heard the question from the card in my head ... only differently ... this time, I heard, "what would you give to find out what's beyond the door you're afraid to open?"

So I opened the door. He was only a dark outline. The hall light over my door was out. He was dressed all in black. He did not move, not even breathe. But I felt a wave of something emanating from him and only later did I come to identify it as the echo of my desire for him, as if he was a sonar picking up on my desire and pinging it back to me in an echo that was louder than the original.

"I don't know what I'd give," I said to the shadow before me.

"You have to give something," the shadow said, a whisper, soft burr, deep water.

I swallowed hard enough that he told me later he could hear when my throat went dry.

What was I afraid of, I thought. Was I really afraid of what he might show me beyond the door? Because here he was, this man I'd met at a party given by a friend I'd known since high school ... and I'd not even let myself feel it possible he'd be interested. But I'd been thrilled, deep inside, to feel pursued. By him. In the way he did it. To have danger intersect desire. To be standing in the dark, with him as an outline ... and me with no experience with a man like this as a lover. And knowing only one thing: I wanted him.

Now, of course, I know what I feared: that I would not 'perform' up to his standards.

I told him that, a while later. He had been curled around me on the couch, just after a soccer match on TV, while he was in town for what would end up being three months. It just slipped out of me, something I'd been thinking about as I'd watched the game with him and realized how incredibly 'normal' we could be together and how much I liked that. And then the game was over and I was going to clean up the snacks and beer on the coffee table only he'd slipped his hand down the back of my shorts and dragged me back to where he could run his hand under and around so his fingers could go inside me and he'd muttered something crude in my ear about what a good fuck I was ... And I had giggled so long that he'd ended up just holding on to me and glaring at me anytime I met his eyes. I finally told him, while I held his hardness and he kissed my neck and curled his body around mine ... I'd told him how that first time, I'd been afraid I'd never measure up, that I'd fail in the sack with him.

And his chin had jerked up and his eyes looked into mine. And he said, "You kidding, right? Men don't think like that."

"No? How do they think?" I'd asked him, sure he'd tell me something crude about how a woman would never fail a man if she climbed in the sack with him ... that just spreading her legs earned her at least a passing grade.

But he had surprised me. He had the most charming way of doing that at the most unusual moments between us.

"I wanted to make it as good as you had ever had it," he said to me. His eyes were darker.

"This is what a man thinks?"

"This is what this man thought."

"But why?"

"You opened the door. I'd been standing there for an hour. I heard you curse when you came in the hall. Then I heard nothing else after you opened the note."

"So?"

"So I knew you thought about it ... before you opened the door. I knew that meant you were facing a fear. I liked that you opened the door, that you wouldn't let fear stop you."

Maybe this is a lesson I should learn in this morning, this new morning, now all these years later. Was he still wondering if I could face a fear? That I could open a door and face what was beyond?

But what I really feel is this ... the way he made me feel that day, after the soccer match ... his hands down my shorts, his body surrounding mine, his physical strength being used gracefully, and that he took the time to make me feel so desirable to him on a mental level, not just physical. I remember looking into him in that moment and thinking I must be worth so much for a man like this to be involved with me when he could just come to me for sex and I'd have been okay with that.

It's in that moment that I started really falling in love with him.

So this is what I'm feeling ... the echo of the feeling of falling in love with him ... when the elevator doors open, others get on, we head further down to where the convention sessions will be.

And as the elevator fills up on its descent, I feel that feeling, that headlong drop into his arms, to where he made it safe to love him even amidst the danger he represented to my orderly life.

In the first seminar session I attend, I take notes and concentrate on the presentation. I even ask a few questions, to which I nod seriously as the speaker gives his answers. In the second session, I doodle on the paper copies of the slide presentation and look at my watch every so often. I make a last minute change in which third session I will attend and enter the room unprepared for how crowded it will be. Almost every seat is taken. One is open next to someone I recognize but am embarrassed for how I blush when I see him. Just then, he looks around, his eyes circling the room, studying his surroundings. He sees me. He does not smile. He pulls the seat out, the empty one next to him. His head tilts, as an indication that I should come over there and take this seat for the session.

One deep breath later, one brief smile later, one tough walk forward and down the row of seats to where he sits watching me ... and I am settling in next to him. My purse goes here, my convention tote goes there, my notepad just here, my pen poised just there.

"G'morning," I mumble at last, glancing at him.

"Your name again, love?"

"Oh, hush."

"Got your message. You were worried about me?"

"Got your note. I was taking a bath."

Just then, a man clears his throat from the front, signaling the start of the session. As he introduces the speaker for this seminar session, Terry shifts next to me. To everyone else, it will appear he is simply taking off his jacket. He leans toward me. "Lunch."

I write, "No thanks" on my notepad.

"Networking opp," he writes on his.

"??" I write on mine.

He sighs next to me. I turn just enough to look in eyes that are tortured enough to make me uneasy. I nod. He smiles, tightly, briefly, and blinks before turning to watch the speaker.

It isn't until the session is over that I learn what this lunch, this 'networking opp' is. He's invited me to join him at the table he will sit at for the day's luncheon. I usually skip the luncheon sessions because they are so often tedious banquets that hold little interest to me. But his firm, I find out, is one of two sponsors of the luncheon. His firm, as it turns out, recruited the speaker and flew him in. Good marketing, he tells me when I ask what firm he's with and he tells me he's one of the owners and it's brand new.

And for you, he says as if he's suddenly become my mentor, this is a chance to network.

He introduces me as an 'old friend' to the first person we meet, someone from his firm, an employee. I begin to appreciate that for Terry, this counts as reckless behavior. He is bringing me into the active part of his life, introducing me to colleagues who surely could know his private life includes a relationship with another woman. Will they wonder about whether or not I am a convention romance for Terry rather than this bland 'old friend' designation? Would they cover for him, if so? Or is Terry subconsciously hoping they will let word slip to the woman, his woman, about this other woman Terry brought to the luncheon that day? And then, what will he do ... will he tell her about our hour together last night? Will he say how he and I seduced each other, for our own reasons? What would possess him to bring me along to this luncheon, to introduce me to these other people, to run this risk of discovery?

Or is this more, really, about him making sure I know he really does have a full life already? That his life has gone on and he is doing well. Is this about making me see that there is no place for me with him?

I try not to be too friendly with him during lunch. He is in some business mode. So to observers, surely nothing seems off, nothing seems tantalizing? Is it my imagination that a few of them study me and him, looking for hints, intrigued to find none, convinced that means something all on its own?

We chat during lunch, but not in lowered tones, nothing to indicate we have some secret between us. He is funny, witty. I always did love the unexpected charm of this side of his personality.

It isn't until the end, though, until the speaker has finished and everyone is pushing their seats from the tables and rising ... this is when I think I do actually understand why he invited me to join him.

I am near him; he looks at me as if he finds it important to make me stay nearby, as if he may want to say something to me if only I'll hang about until he is finished talking with those who come to greet him.

As I watch him I understand.

This is a new side to Terry than I ever knew. This is a Terry who is older, more mature, with a higher level of responsibility and authority.

He has come into his own.

Different in a way I hadn't recognized the night before but should have.

That burden I placed in him has not left. I think he wants me to understand what he did about it. And I wonder about the years in between, and what it took to get here for him.

When he gets buttonholed and drawn over to a corner of the large ballroom where the luncheon has been held, I stand awkwardly, waiting on him. The first man he introduced me to tries to chat with me. As soon as possible, I get away from the encounter when I realize that Terry has more important things to do than give me double and triple signals.

I am embarrassed by my own reaction to having gotten this glimpse into the Terry who interacts with his world. Honestly, I don't belong in his life. We ended badly. Neither of us have been the same since. Whatever foolish thoughts I'm already having, I need to file them under S for Stupid.