Every convention is so conventional. There is always a trade show. And one simply must go. It is always fascinating ... the new products, the old services, the whiz bang oddities. I usually enjoy them, I must admit. But concentrating on the trade show offerings when my mind is still trying to pick apart what has happened to me in this convention ... well, it's difficult.

I could never have anticipated that it would be here, in this conventional convention, that I'd meet the one man in my life who'd been unconventional. Terrence Thorne had been wild and adventurous and pushy and giving and strong and so capable of tenderness. He had been so unsafe, had such an unpredictable life.

They use the term 'love of your life' as if you always know who that is when you are together. When he tossed me out, I was desperate to find the love of my life. The safe, conventional, stalwart man who'd come home every day from his job, be there with me throughout all the years and work with me for a future that was solid and comfortable.

How was I to know that a safe man can end up being treacherous? How was I to know a safe man isn't always the one who'll protect you?

When I was with Terry, he protected me as much as he pushed me into dangerous waters. I have never forgotten that. It still makes my heart race when I think on it. The problem in the end was that I started wanting guarantees ... and there were never any with Terry. Not with what he did for a living being so unsafe.

An hour after I've slipped from the convention's luncheon session where Terry gave me a glimpse into his new life, I am still wandering the trade show floor. There are people I know, products I want to check out, literature I will never read. There's a bunch of gadgets people give me, trinkets that are fun to tuck in the conference bag I carry.

Luthan Risk has a booth. Not just one booth but at least four strung together for an ostentatious display that they try to temper with their stolid respectable colors and muted graphics. I recognize not a single person manning their booth but that is understandable. I've seen them at other trade shows I've attended over the years and normally give their big booths a wide berth. This time, I take a brochure. It is slick and filled with arty shots from all over the world. There is an entire page on the coverage they can provide to protect a company's top execs in various hot spots around the globe. I take a flashlight they are giving out with the company's logo on it. I give them a business card of mine in exchange and know some sales person will call me within two weeks. Will I still be at the company to accept the call?

I doubt it.

Maybe that's why it's so easy to give them a card. It's all a big game.

When I'm leaving, I see Terry, two aisles over, coming to the end of his aisle as I'm coming to the end of mine. He does not see me. I stand still and watch him as he turns away from my direction and begins to walk down the next aisle. I follow behind him. Just watching. Curious about what else I don't know about him anymore. More curious about what will be so familiar I could stake my life on it.

He does not take the little token inducements, the giveaways. If he stops at a booth, it is to study what is there, to look at products, to ask questions, to interview the person at the booth, to learn. Most people at a trade show are there in some respect to be courted, to enjoy this. For Terry, it is work.

I think about how I never knew the work side of Terry for a long time. I only knew the side of him that he showed a woman he pursued. I only knew the friend of Walt. The guy who talked to me for a few minutes at Walt's party and got the hots for me enough to chase me. The boy who made me laugh and the man who made me cry. The man who stood by me in a time of grief and the boy I wounded in return. The guy who told me I was never woman enough for a man like him.

No, wait. By that time, I had seen his work persona. I had witnessed him drop into the warrior preparing to go off to battle. 

First time I saw Terry like that, I had dropped in on Walt, at his condo. He had promised to teach me to drive a stick. I'd been dating Terry for three months by then.

That meant about eight dates. Eight real dates. Eight times when we could get out of bed, get dressed and go somewhere. We always planned a date but a lot of times, we just couldn't stop touching and then we'd be kissing and the next thing you knew, he'd make some suggestion and my eyes would go round and he'd smile in that way he had ... and there went the date.

I recognized Terry's car the moment I pulled in the garage. So I knew he was with Walt. Walt who by this time thought the idea of me dating his mentor was both unnerving and meant to be.

Walt answered the door carrying his duffle bag. Terry was pacing in the living room. He said something to Walt about his ready bag and I knew from Walt's tight face that he was in some sort of trouble with Terry. It took a few minutes to figure out that Walt's bag he was to have packed at all times for those occasions when they'd have to leave with no notice was not fully packed.

I made a crack, something about how maybe Walt had needed to wash his underwear after the last mission so maybe he just had to repack it. Terry had just looked at me, his jaw working. When Walt came back out into the living room, his duffel slung over his shoulder, he was nervous but I think only I would have recognized that. I knew Walt that well. Walt who never got flustered. Walt who was too glib when he was nervous. Walt who asked me to feed his goldfish while he was gone. Walt who left the condo first to give Terry a chance to tell me goodbye.

Terry who almost never told me goodbye in the normal way. He usually told me goodbye when he was on his way back. Or, in later times, by sending me a new dress or piece of jewelry, delivered invariably in the days before he'd return. I always wondered if this was because to say goodbye was acknowledging something he avoided.

His goodbye on this occasion was brusque. Just a look at his watch and a peck on my lips as he moved toward the front door. 

I am more forgiving of that now. Time changes you. You learn lessons that others learned first. It's hard to know what to do with emotions when you're in the process of shutting them down so you can deal with what you are about to do and see.

That was his work mode then. Shutting out this side of his life as if it were a curtain. And yet Walt told me once that Terry cried over the loss of a hostage. That if something happened to someone in his care, he would get drunk, go off somewhere and do something explosive to work it out. And end up crying when he thought no one noticed by then. Because they all took it hard and they all took it personal. They were human; of course they felt these things.

Imagine how much worse they took it to lose a member of their team?

Terry has paused for a long time before a booth. It is some kind of surveillance gadgetry. He is holding a small black box and saying something to the sales rep. They are both grinning. Just then, the sales rep looks up, straight at me. I look away but feel caught doing something I should not. I glance back a few minutes later when it feels safe again and Terry is no longer at the booth. I glance around but he's been swallowed up by the crowded aisle.

What am I doing?

Shadowing this man as if I'm desperate to see him again when I've seen him again and nothing has happened that we can acknowledge?

"You know what this means, love," a voice says to my right not that much later, after I've made it back the way I'd come down that aisle.

"Oh Good God." I sigh. I imagine my shoulders sag.

"That's right. You're taking me to dinner."

"I don't think that's a good idea. So ... no."

"Keep it up and you'll be buying me breakfast as well."

I walk away from him, knowing he won't follow just then. Certain he's joking around with me because being serious would be too ... well ... serious.

In the first afternoon session I attend, I settle in near the front, determined to devote my body and mind to whatever I can learn from this session. But then my abandoned, scorned escort of the night before sits at the end of the row and I spend the rest of that 90 minutes covertly watching him hunched over his notebook, elbows on the table. He takes notes with a fury. In between, he swivels his whole head up, watching the speaker punctuate his points with jabs in the air to his left or right. He nods when he agrees, or perhaps when he recognizes something as being perfectly phrased.

Most of this, I am sure, is a nervous reaction to wanting to prove to me that he is a great man, smart, involved and much too good for the likes of me.

In between the two afternoon sessions, there is a coffee break. I spy two of my gal friends of the night before. They stand clutching sweating glasses of ice-filled soft drinks. They greet me with smiles and whispers of how dull their last session was. They look over the offerings for the next one. They agree it is largely dismal except one that is going to allow us to walk away with a plan of action for the next time our CEO either dies or is arrested. My eyebrows rise at their enthusiasm over the idea of planning for this contingency within their own companies. I contemplate throwing mine in jail but figure this plan we are to develop in the session is about how to keep the company going if the "worst" happens. Frankly, I can think of many worst things that could happen at my company.

For some reason, Fucktwad Ben's face swims into my brain, doing a backstroke. I see the arrogant look on his face when he told me about the indictment. I wonder if someone at his company had a plan in place to recover from that. I know I never had a plan for how I'd recover. When had I started being content to be a victim? Am I always going to be defined by someone else's actions?

That's when I know for sure that I am really going to do it. I am going to make my plans to escape the company. I will give myself a time limit. Two months. And then, new job or not, I'm putting in a letter of resignation and escaping to something else. Anything else. My soul is dying. It's not just the job that's killing it, of course I know this, but the job is what ties me to the city where I live. And the city where I live ties me to a past I must escape.

I am walking with the women toward the day's final seminar for us. This is one that will span two sessions. I like these kinds of seminars - where you have to get in and do something rather than just sitting and listening to someone talk.

He appears as if from nowhere, a mirage in the desert of people scurrying to get to their final sessions in the midst of others who form knots in the hallway and talk about products and plans and challenges and what restaurant they will go to that night. Conventions are so conventional.

Except for this one, where he steps out of a group or around a group ... and says my name ... Elizabeth ... in a professional voice. And gives me that patronizing smile that I have come to learn today is him being professional. And hands me a brochure. His company. The new one. The one he now is a part owner. The one that takes the place of Luthan Risk, where he worked when I met him.

The one where Walt worked. Where Walt worked on Terry's team. For Terry. His team leader. His mentor.

"Based in London," I say ... finally ... having looked over his brochure with proper deference to the headlines and images. It is matte finished; and I think how appropriate that is for this man. In a sea of slick brochures for slick companies, his brochure is honest and not necessarily polished for show. Substantial. Solid. And cutting edge in this button down, insurance-driven world he moves within. I doubt he designed it but I would bet my life that if given the choice between slick and matte, he chose matte without a second thought.

"We have an office in New York as well," he says, louder than necessary if it's meant only for me. He takes my elbow and draws me out of the traffic stream.

"I'm heading for the crisis planning session ..." I say, unsure because something is dawning on me about meeting him here, about the way I still feel about him, about how he isn't clear about how he feels about me. And that makes me sad because he's committed to someone else and I'm entertaining confusing yearnings for him.

"By Fogelman?"

"Yes. Exactly. I'm meeting colleagues there ... and ... you know?"

"You could write a plan in your sleep, love. Thousand times better than anything Fogelman could ever dream up."

My mouth opens to disagree but, actually, he's right. So I laugh instead. At least he respects me.

"You don't want to spend the afternoon in there, learning nothing, do you?" he asks, his voice now so soft it would be lost in the cacophony to anyone but me, whose ear he has bent near, subtly.

"None of the other sessions appeal to me."

"Come to the hospitality room ... ours ... my company's, I mean. I'd like to show you what I've done ... what I've made of myself."

"You don't owe me that, Terry."

He blinks. He blushes. He stutters as he tries to say something, the right thing, the thing that can come out after all this time. The thing that will not be defensive or offend me in some way. The thing that will not make it seem he's showing off or apologizing.

"It seems I may."

People rush around us. Some of the knots break up. Some get smaller. Some move to other, more out of the way places to carry on more intimate conversations. And there we stand, as if I am a potential customer and he is marketing his company's good name.

"Then I'd like to see," I say.

"Good then." His head jerks up; he looks toward the elevators, around the floor, observing who is observing. His hand is still on my elbow. He gestures with the other hand, toward the elevators.

Inside, when we walk in, others are there. Three men. One woman. We all ride in an absolute void of voices; the silence broken only by a man's squeaking shoes as he fidgets on the trip up. At the 12th floor, Terry escorts me off the elevator.

His firm's hospitality room is several doors down. Soft jazz circulates from hidden speakers. A bartender stands waiting to serve. Food trays are set out on several tables. Chairs are grouped in five different arrangements. There is a beautiful woman just inside the door, neatening one of the groupings. At the sound of our footfalls entering, she whirls around. She smiles brightly at Terry, calls him Mr. Thorne.

He introduces her as Melanie. She has an upper class, delightful British accent. She is dark haired, well-mannered and crisp. Melanie takes drink orders; Terry ushers me to the seating area near the window that overlooks the pool many floors below and beyond that, the sea. Melanie brings our drinks just as Terry has opened a large folder and begun dragging out various brochures, a prospectus, fact sheets, projections, case studies.

Melanie prepares a plate of snacks, places them discreetly on the table before us just as Terry places a DVD in my hands and tells me it has a risk assessment survey on it that many of their clients find revealing.

When there is no more Melanie hovering, I put a hand on Terry's as he begins talking about one more chart he has to show me.

"He would be thrilled you left Luthan. He would be ecstatic you have your own shop. As for me, Terry, I am blown away."

"I didn't bring you here to blow you away," he says. His voice is a low growl.

"It doesn't matter ... I just am. I like what you've done with your life professionally. And your personal life includes a good woman you care for. I'm happy for you. He would be as well."

"He is not part of this. He is not why ..."

"No. I didn't mean ..."

We look at each other. He is angry. I am awkward. I've missed something. Something important to him.

Clearing my throat, I try again: "I only meant that Walt thought the world of you. And if he were alive, he'd have been the first operative through the door applying for a position with you. It's just being here and seeing this, it brings that to mind for me."

"Is he all you still see when you see me?"

"No. But he hangs around, I suppose."

"What do you see, first and foremost, when you see me?"

"My mistakes."

He swallows and looks down, at his hands. I see him shake his head, swift short staccato shakes ... as if it is an unbidden reaction. I should never have been that honest but he should never have asked that question. Not with that aggressive tone in his voice. Not with that hot tinge of anger that tells me he would have picked apart anything less totally, brutally honest.

"I was a mistake, then?" he asks, his voice now wounded. His eyes are downcast.

"Never. Never ever."

He reaches out with one hand. He puts it on my wrist. His thumb rubs the back of my hand. I wonder if he is taking my pulse with his fingers. He clears his throat. His eyes study minute details of my wrist. "Last night ..."

"Please just do not fucking say that was a mistake."

His eyes dart up in surprise. "Wasn't what I was going to say."

"Then what?" My voice is angry, tight.

"Last night has made me look back. And I ... I have this need for you to know that life never really got better. Not for me. It got worse. For a really long time, Bets. But something happened, recently ... about two years ago, actually."

Everything inside me wants to run from this room. Instead, I fake it ... my pride will not allow me to be anything but vacuous and graciously happy for him.

So I say, "Something good. I can tell. This business. Your woman. Life is getting better now."

"Yes." He hesitates. "No."

"You never were that good at this heart to heart stuff. Why would you want to do this here, in front of Melanie?"

"Have dinner with me tonight. Let's just go now. I want time with you, Bets."

"I'm happy for you, Terry. I truly am. Maybe we should leave it at that? Wasn't that really why you brought me up here? To see you in your element, where you are in charge? Maybe we shouldn't rehash things. I don't know about you, but that whole time is still quite painful to me. I never really got over losing you."

"That's not ..."

"The point? Maybe it should be."

"Maybe there's something else ... something we should do about how we obviously still feel about each other."

"Do you know what I think? I've wanted say this to you all this time ... well, I guess I've wanted to say it for the last few years, when things for me have been ... rough ... and I've reflected on the past and where I took a different path."

"Let's talk about this over dinner."

"No. I want to say this before I lose my nerve ... It's just that, see, I think Walt's up there somewhere finding it ironic and sad that he was the reason we first got together and he ended up being the reason we fell apart."

"Bets. Stop."

"That's all I wanted to say. I don't want to go over that, I don't. Except ... it was never your fault and I know I made you feel some huge responsibility. I didn't mean to ... I just needed to blame someone and somehow you thought I blamed you. I never did. Not really. And not now, for sure."

"Feel better now?" His eyes are laser sharp; his tongue is also. 

"Yeah. I do. Thanks."

"Well, I don't. But did that ever matter?"

"Yeah. It did. It does. It always has. It's why I've hated myself for so long."

"Stop hating yourself. It wasn't about that."

"You kicked me out. You told me ..."

He glances over his shoulder, toward where he knows by instinct that Melanie is hovering in the near distance. "Not here."

"Fine. I need to go anyway. I have ... things to do."

"No, you don't."

"Well, then I should. Because I'm about to cry and I don't want to do it in front of Melanie ... or you."

I try rise from the couch, feeling angry frustration ... at myself and at him. His hand on my wrist never relaxes; he pulls me back down. Our eyes flash at each other.

"This much heat, love, means you still got it bad for me," he hisses out. "But I'm not that boy anymore, Elizabeth. I'm a man now. And I know what to do with how you make me feel. I am not playing games with you. You need to talk about Walt? About what happened? Then we also talk about why you blamed me ... about why I let you. And about what we've both learned."

"I do not still have it bad for you."

"That all you heard me say just now? Think that proves the point."

"It is not all I heard ... it's just the biggest lie."

"When he died, Elizabeth, I needed you to believe in me."

My voice catches. "I know."

"That's all I want to say."

"I treated you so badly."

"You were in grief."

"So were you."

He licks his bottom lip, slowly. "And look what we did to each other."

I wipe at a tear that wants to run down my face. I look around for a napkin, dab away the moisture threatening to spill over. I catch Melanie's eye; she is trying so hard not to notice the urgent whispers and the emotion on my face.

"Not here, Terry. Let's go somewhere ... anywhere ... Come on. You don't need witnesses to this."

As I watch him, as his eyes look into mine, a veil drops down over his face. He is now the tough guy. The professional. The stalwart. The man who is in control. The man who checked his feelings at the plane terminal on his way to his next mission. The man who started forgetting to pick them up again when he returned. The man who must have left them there, on purpose, where someone who trusted in him died and left him with guilt I made worse.

I still remember the first time I ever saw him do that ... but the difference is, this time, it is almost instant, less of a struggle. My entire body aches for him ... that he had to perfect this. That he is still needing this ability to be totally detached and only have his razor sharp tactical mind engaged.

He was a boy once. We played many games. We had thought we had been so grown up. And then life slammed into us both. And now he's a man. Where did that boy go?

I let him take the lead. We don't say anything on the ride down the elevator and the walk through the lobby to the city street beyond. I hesitate, unsure in the day's sun. He puts his arm out for me to take it, to be escorted. We walk along the street, not talking, but closer. The street ends at a beach that is separated from the traffic by a high concrete block wall dyed in peach hues. We sit on the wall and gaze out over the sand.

My arm is still linked with his since he helped me to this perch. I lean my head against his shoulder. He leans his head against the top of mine.

"He was the first person close to me who died. He was like my brother."

"I remember."

"I wish you hadn't had to be the one to tell me. I was so angry at you and it was because I didn't understand I was angry over his death. Not at you. Not really."

"Never would have let anyone else tell you something like that, Bets."

"I've learned about grief since then. I've had to. My parents both died a few years ago."

"Damn. I'm sorry, love."

"So I've been alone since then."

"You were married ..."

"Like I said ... alone ... for a while. And now divorced."

He slides his arm from where I've got my hands wrapped over it. He puts it around my shoulders and squeezes me into him.

"I came to see you. About six months after I ... after we split."

"Did you?"

"You were already engaged."

"Oh."

"I never really thought you'd marry someone else."

"No, you just didn't think I'd ever find some loser who'd want to marry me. Besides, you didn't want to get married, remember?"

"Maybe I didn't. It was a bad time."

"You came to see me?"

"Yeah. I was ... was going it rough."

"You had lots of women by then. That's what everyone said. All our friends. Terry's always got a girl, one prettier than the next."

"None like you."

"None you thought were pressuring you to get married."

"I never meant that. What I said about ..."

"It doesn't matter."

"Obviously it still does to you, Bets. You brought it up."

I sit there on rough cement with this man who has been rough to me in the past. But also tender and sweet. And it still hurts, what he said to me once. The last thing he said to me, in fact. The last night. He was packing. Getting ready to go away for what could have been a week or a month or a year. There was nothing but tension between us.

"I knew you were cheating on me," I say to him, my fingers now touching the rough cement block of the wall.

He stiffens next to me. "It was a bad time. For both of us."

"Do you know how I knew?"

He knows he was careful. He never came home smelling of another woman. Whatever vibes I picked up, he easily put them down to the tension between us. I never even thought of him cheating ... not until I accidentally figured it out.

"Remember how we'd order Chinese delivery from the Pasha's? One night, I was short on cash when they came to deliver. I got money out of your wallet. Like you always had me do. And I found a row of condoms, tucked in that place you kept your emergency cash."

He eases his body from mine. Pulls a cigarette from his jacket pocket. Searches for his lighter.

"After that, after I realized what that meant, I used to count them at night when you'd be asleep. See how many you'd used up. See when you'd start a new line. Kind of like keeping score."

"I'm sorry, Bets."

"It hurt pretty bad at first. But then I got to realizing how I had withdrawn from you after Walt's death. How I kept beating you up over the details and that you'd not brought his shoes back. I never have figured out why that mattered so damned much to me."

"It's just one of those things. Grief. You fixate on one aspect."

"Then I started trying too hard with you. I thought if I only change, if I act happy and light. If I make the house cleaner, cook your favorites, have sex whenever you want, however you want."

"I never did want a doormat. That's why you did that? I thought ... I thought you were twisting the knife somehow. Dunno. Just that by then, any kindness on your part, I thought was you putting more guilt and blame on me."

"I knew I was losing you. I knew I'd treated you badly. I knew I'd let grief twist me. But it was too late by then. You were already so different. So hollow. So withdrawn from me and life. We picked fights over everything and nothing. I was scared. And then I made the cardinal sin." I laugh here. It's a dry, forlorn laugh. "That's when I mentioned the 'M' word."

"Marriage."

"Yeah. Marriage. You should have seen your face."

"I should have married you."

My heart skips and stutters. I look at him as he lights up. He draws in a deep breath from the cigarette, then slowly releases the smoke. He's looking away from me.

"You know that's not what you wanted. Besides ... if you had, I would have not been the woman. I was a bit too American and bit too 'not Penny,' wasn't I?"

"I loved you. I did want to marry you. Eventually."

My breath is like a gasp. He turns to look at me. Now I do have tears in my eyes. "You said ... that last night ... when you told me you wanted me to move out ... you said and I can hear it like it was just now ... you said that I was not the kind of girl a man marries, I was just the kind he fucks."

His eyes shut. His face grows tight. "I was angry. Drinking. Tired. Hated you hanging on to me when I was not the man I had thought I was. You had made me feel ... made me eat every morsel of the guilt over Walt's death."

"You had a right to feel that way about me. After what I did to you ... what I made you feel. How I made you feel I blamed you for Walt's death."

"I'm sorry for what I said, Bets. How I treated you. If it's any consolation, I've lived with the guilt of that and the guilt of his death. I never really moved beyond it until recently."

"I am more sorry than you can ever know for how I unraveled and how I abused your strength of character and the way you loved me. I wish you hadn't been the one to tell me. I realize now, after having lost my parents, that I just lashed out without ever once considering you, Terry. I should have done so many things differently."

We look into each other. It's funny how we are sitting here, in the open, on a cement wall, saying words we should have said so many years ago. He is crying. I am, too. I reach over to rub his tears away. He takes another puff on his cigarette.

Long moments pass with us just 'being' together.

Suddenly, I feel myself take a huge breath and blow the air out like I'm cleansing my insides.

"God. I feel lighter," I say, smiling through misted over eyes.

"Can't believe this is all it took." He looks at me and I can see his face has eased; his smile is soft, wistful, genuine. He was never really a man for too much talk; this has taken a lot out of him. I admire him for that.

"This and many years of growing up. And suffering other losses. Gives perspective."

"I spent a lot of years seeing myself as I figured you did. And knowing I'd lost the one chance I had with you."

"I hate thinking of how lonely you must have been, Terry. Though not lacking for female companionship, I suppose."

"None of them ever meant that much. I never saw them as permanent. But I did lose my heart once, after you."

He wipes his eyes. Glances at me.

"Is she this one you're with? I'm happy for you, if so."

"Nope. She was a mirage."

Before I can ask what he means, he is slipping off the wall and down to the beach. He tells me to take off my shoes as he's unlacing his and toeing them off. When we are both barefoot, he lifts me, his hands at my waist, pulling me off the wall and setting me gingerly down on the sand. Shoes in one hand, he tosses his cigarette away and then takes my free hand in his.

We walk down to where the water comes in over the sand. He rolls up his pants legs. I do the same. I take his hand this time. We just stroll. It is warm but not hot. The breeze smells good and clean. I remind him of a trip he took me on, to an island in the Aegean. To how we spent most of our time in the nude, getting tanned and being lazy. How we grumbled about having to put on clothes if we wanted to go to the tiny restaurant at the edge of the town for a late dinner by the sea.

"You were always so uninhibited in that way," I tell him. "You just walked around, bold as you please, swinging in the breeze ... and I never knew anyone like you before."

He chuckles. "You blushed so hard when I drug you out there that first day."

"Well, I'd never done anything like that!"

"You made up for lost time, though, is how I recall it."

"To your eternal amusement."

"To my eternal lusty hard on."

"Terrence!"

"You're the one walking down memory lane, love, you can't control the bits I choose to remember."

"You did yourself proud ... that's my memory. God, how many times did you get it up those first three days before you finally took mercy on my poor little body?"

"Don't pretend you didn't enjoy it."

"Look at you! You're strutting just to remember that! Men! You are such boys underneath it all."

He laughs out loud then, swinging my arm around to make me spin in the sand. We've gone from the dregs of bitter memories that changed us and our lives ... to the catharsis of forgiveness of ourselves and each other for the wounds we sliced into the other. And now on the other side, we must figure out what lies beyond.

Who are we if what we've become is built on something that gets washed away in a moment when we find ourselves forgiven for our sins that are what we built self concepts upon? What if you start living your life to atone for a sin and then it's forgiven? What do you do with a clean slate?

"C'mon ... I'm starved. Time for food," he says. He nods toward a palm frond-roofed joint near the road. It does not look that promising. It looks perfect.

We enter in bare feet, our shoes in our hands. No one even glances our way. Terry leads me to a table next to the open side of the restaurant. We can see the beach, the waves, the sun that will set soon. The sky is slowly blooming into magenta, orange, blue. His short hair is windblown.

The waitress flirts; he flirts back. It is harmless and I can remember how I used to get turned on by how easily he could turn it on with women. My elbows are on the table; my chin is propped in my hands. I just watch him.

When I knew him, he was a book I read and every time, I found new things I'd missed because he could be so complicated just when I thought he was simple.

Now I have to wonder ... what is the sequel to this boy I knew who has become a man?

He looks at me with an open face and an easy smile as the sharp slant of the falling sun details his fine lines upon a face that I have always imagined would grow only more handsome as the man evolved from the coltish boy. Though, honestly, he never did seem a boy back when I knew him. Terry always had the air of adult and gravitas about him, sometimes even when at play. It's just now, seeing him, having spent a short time with him, I can see that back then, he was not yet a full man.

"Did you know I stole your favorite tie when I left?" I say to him, feeling the need to burst this glowing moment like I've taken a bat to his piñata ... and I wait for the candy and other treats that will fall.

He sighs and scowls at me. "My regimental. Always suspected it. That was a bitchy thing to do, Bets. You know I was mental trying to find it?"

"That was the point," I retort. My finger makes a check mark in the air between us.

We both laugh.

He leans in over the table to sip his beer. As he puts the glass back atop the table, his eyes dart to mine. "Remember when I taught you how to tie a proper knotted tie using just that aforementioned scrap of material?"

I blush.

He grins proudly.

"Stop. No fair."

"Oh, now, you brought it up, love. You knew I wouldn't let it lie. So ... truth time. Is that why you took that particular tie?"

I am still blushing. I blush harder. I gulp down water before answering with wide eyes of pretend innocence. "I'm sure that was not it. I'm sure it had not a thing to do with it."

"You sure?"

"Would I lie about something like that?"

"You still blush. It still turns me on."

I am so hot that I think I will soon turn to hot coals. It flits through my mind that coals burn hotter, harder, longer than the blaze that starts them. I am looking in his eyes, at the sensual suggestion in there ... and I remember a time when that look and a low, husky whisper uttered this close could make me come without him even touching me.

These memories ... they are dangerous.

They are also good.

"You remember that party ..."

"At Ian's ..."

"How is old Ian?"

"You were wearing that green frock ..."

"He still with Luthan?"

"And that slit ..."

"You put your hand ... I thought I'd die."

"You hid it. No one ever noticed."

"I spilled the wine."

"I thought I'd have to carry you out of there."

"It was because you licked your fingers after. I mean, I was just sitting there, minding my own business when ..."

"You were not just sitting there. You kept rubbing my leg."

"That must have been the woman across from you."

"No, we established this long ago. You thought I would stop you ... you didn't think I'd push you further."

"Is it hot in here?"

"You ever dress like that anymore?"

"At my age?"

"I was not disappointed. Quite the opposite."

My water is gone. I gulp my wine for at least it is chilled. He is not smiling. He is staring at me. He means my body pleased him when we made love on the boat. And, knowing him, he means my mind pleased him, too. He means the other night ... that mad night when my libido and alcohol took over. Though I do believe, as I sit here squirming under his gaze, that I would have taken him that night even if I'd been stone cold sober. At least, I do know I would have wanted him.

"I was not disappointed either, Terrence. As I believe I demonstrated."

"So ... answer the question? You ever dress like that anymore?"

I picture my closet. I know I have dresses in there designed to show off my attributes in a way that is tasteful yet provocative. So the answer would be yes. But he'll never know that. "Do you remember Irvin Ganong and his wife Trish?"

He catalogs that I've rudely changed the subject. He smiles that superior smile that he employs to such effect. "Sure. From Accounting. Only bloke down there with an ounce of sense."

"You say that only because he always approved your expense account stuff. Even with the most ridiculous of receipts."

"Now, now, Bets. You know how careful I was to keep receipts. Can't fault me on that."

"You were very anal that way, yes. But you had the gall to claim some items that were just outrageous."

"I needed that Jag. Essential to the part I was playing in the negotiation. Had to prove we had the resources, right?"

I roll my eyes. He smirks. 

He'd rented the Jag only to prove to Walt that he had the balls to put it on an expense report. The two of them had the most fun doing things like that. It was something I used to think Terry did to bond the team to him as their leader ... they'd be out in the field, Terry would do something he knew Luthan HQ would have a cow over ... and they'd all be in it up to their necks together. It was them against the suits, Walt used to say, and with Terry in the lead, the suits never even knew what hit them. He was so cocky.

They loved Terry. His team, I mean. There were five of them. And then there were four. Terry didn't want new people on his team; he was trying to pick the right one when a new mission blew up out of nowhere, like always. And then Walt was killed and there were three left on that team. It was during this time period, in the year after Walt died, that things between Terry and me crashed and burned as he grew stubborn and insular at work and at home. And I relentlessly blamed him without even realizing it for a long time. It was never Terry's fault. It was just that bad things will happen despite everything professionals like that team might do. There was always a danger. Always.

I heard later that Terry arranged for better paying positions for the other two. I heard he became a man without a team at that point. That he went where sent, worked with who was assigned, but never wanted to be part of a regular team. Irvin told me all that. Irvin was how I kept track of Terry's descent after we split up. But I stopped wanting to hear about Terry ... and my husband got furious every time his name was mentioned because I would mope around for weeks after I heard from Irvin.

"I had lost track of them a few years back. Then I got an invitation to his retirement party about six months ago. Can you imagine?" I ask him, suddenly feeling this old connection link us over the years in between.

"Retired? He was only ... what ... a few years older than me."

"Investments. You know Irvin. He was always planning ahead that way."

"They got grandkids, do they?"

"Five. I bet they plan to pay their kids back by visiting often and bringing extravagant gifts for the grandchildren every time they go."

Terry chuckles. Seems to be remembering Trish and Irvin ... and their three kids who were all older than his son.

He used to bring Harry over to their house when Harry would come for long visits. I always suspected that where Trish blamed her kids for teaching Harry bad things that it was really Harry teaching her kids new ways to torment their parents. It was not malicious but it was rebellious.

Harry had a wide streak of Terry in him.

So that makes me ask about Harry. About how he is. Much taller. Filling out. No longer a boy. Blonde has darkened only slightly from when I knew him; gift from Penny's genes. Still playing Rugby. Sees him more than he used to. Realized he had to make it more of a priority. At university. They're not that close anymore.

Harry would look at Terry and every word he uttered was gold. I remember moving out when Harry would visit, early in our relationship. Terry felt odd about it. I thought it was fine. I'd stay with Walt.

And then one time, Terry said he wanted me to stay. That Harry needed to see I was part of his life. 

Up 'til that point, I suppose, I hadn't really been. Not in a permanent way. It took Terry three months to make me feel loved. It took him more than six months to say he might be falling in love. It took him almost a year to say he loved me and that was after an argument over me going out with friends where Terry had happened to see me getting hit on when I had no idea he was still not over at Walt's watching some sports show.

I always thought of Harry as the constant in Terry's life. When Terry kicked me out, I didn't want Harry to think badly of me. I don't know why that was important except I did eventually figure it out. I was still in love with Terry then; I still had hope that we'd get back together, that Terry still loved me despite the evidence to the contrary. I'd written Harry a note. Said I had enjoyed getting to know him. That I was sorry things hadn't worked out with his dad and me but I'd always value the friendship I had received from Harry. He wrote me back. Said he didn't know Terry and I were no longer together. Said he worried about his dad now.

Did Terry ever know that? That his son worried about him?

I see the pride in Terry's eyes when he speaks of his son. I also see the regret. I ask him why I see that in his eyes. He looks at me, open to my gaze. He says he wasted time and Harry lost out in the process.

That is a bit too honest, somehow. As if I should not have heard that. As if I am a confidante again and I do not deserve that. This is a day, it appears, for such brutal honesty between us, as if we've opened the gates. For trusting each other ... for feeling relief after all these years to remember what it felt like to trust each other that way. And I remember, in whole, what it felt like to once be trusted like that by him.

No other man ever made me feel that.

Maybe that's why it hurt to lose it. That it hurt so much I've never been able to really outrun the loss.

Since I am unsure what to say in response to this gift of trusting in me enough to tell me what he has about his sense of failure with his son, I reach across the table, now dense with plates and cups and silverware and a candle in an orange vial. I put my hand over his. I cup my fingers around his knuckles. I embrace his hand in mine. I squeeze. I am looking in his eyes the entire time I do this. He twines his fingers in mine; he swallows and squeezes back.

He does not let go even when the waitress comes to clear the table. She is wearing cut offs and a strappy tank top of orange and purple stripes. She may be all of 22 or so. That's about how old I was when I met Terry. I was 23. He was 30. We were together for four years. She looks a hell of a lot younger than I remember feeling when I got involved with him.

"It's going to be such a great sunset," I say when I finally wake back up and look around. Oh, yes, the world does exist.

"You always liked sunsets, if memory serves. Why don't we clear out of here and go have a look?"

I watch how he is as he calls for the check, settles the bill, smiles at the waitress. I see the way that smile, that last smile, so full of his testosterone, does her in. She hesitates after he smiles at her. And then blushes before turning to leave.

Some men have that ability to make you take in their uber man-ness. A woman responds to that. It's a weapon. We develop defenses for that. They don't always work.

The surface of the sand has cooled. I note this as I step from the rough wood of the restaurant. The wind is cooling, too.

We walk along, not touching. Not talking. Near the shore, we stop to observe the sun, hovering above the horizon. In our face. The sky confused, mixing cool blues with hot magentas and reds. I like sunsets. I am glad he remembers.

"Tell me about her," I say, not looking at him. My eyes are filled with the sunset. I have to get over any fantasy that Terry waited for me after all, against the odds.

It takes him a moment. "She lives in Madrid. I met her after I left Luthan. She never knew me then."

"Are you very different now?"

"You tell me."

"You are different. But I'd be lying if I said I really knew exactly how."

"What do you know is different?"

I am making circles in the sand with the big toe of my left foot. He's fishing. When he fishes, in my experience, he isn't so much sure what he wants to know, but he is curious about what he'll get.

"Let's walk a bit, shall we? It's nice out here." I turn to glance at him as I set off. He is looking at me, not yet moving to join me. "And I would rather not call the evening quits. I'm enjoying being with you too much."

His lips flip up, quickly, into a smile that vanishes too soon. He moves now. He catches up with me. Picks up a shell fragment from the beach. Skips it in the waves. He is framed in descending colors of magenta and red. It makes his skin glow.

I find my own shell fragment. I skip it through the waves. Before long, we are both skipping shells along the water. He is a master at this. I do it with enthusiasm but no skill. When he skips one so good I clap, he gives me that cocky strut of his. I run at him, not intending to do anything but run past, smack his butt on the way, let him chase me if he wants. But he sees it coming and steps in the way until I am either going to run right into his back or I am going to leap on him ... And this is what I do. He grabs my legs and just that quickly I am riding him, piggy back. And laughing. And my face is right next to his. And my arms are around his neck.

And I am 25 years old, on a beach in the south of France. And Walt is alive. And Terry and I are so in love that everything is golden and thrilling. Death stole that from us. Death and guilt and remorse and youth.

He twirls and gallops just a bit down the beach before suddenly falling, face first, into the sandy dune ... making exaggerated noises as if I've tackled him. I roll from him, sand flying everywhere, my eyes shutting against the grains on instinct. His arm goes around my waist and he pulls me in tight before rolling over me.

There is a split second when we are smiling like children. And then his eyes soften. His hand runs along my jaw. He looks into my eyes. He whispers my name; his voice is rough, hoarse. I feel his lower body pressing down on me. I spread my legs and he slips into place.

He kisses at my dimple. The one on the left. Then my upper lip. Then my right dimple. He smiles at me. Then slides his mouth atop mine. It is a kiss that has aged well. I feel it in the pit of my core. It is just a kiss but it takes me a long time to catch my breath.

"We have to stop, don't we?" I say softly. He is slowly, sensuously, rubbing himself over my groin. I remember the feel of this movement of his. From the look on his face, I am not sure he is even conscious of what he's doing ... that this may just be some Pavlovian reaction to the position of our bodies, even fully clothed.

"You asked about her. The woman I am involved with. Her name is Miranda. She is very nice."

"I'm sure she is."

"We have to stop. Yes."

"It's okay. We once meant a lot to each other. But we can like each other enough not to give in to this temptation. Last night was one thing ... tonight would be ... wrong. Because now I know her name is Miranda. And now I see in your eyes that you would never want to hurt her."

But he doesn't climb off of me. He slides a bit to the side but he is still holding me. Not as overtly sexual, perhaps, but with him, there is a heat that is so dangerous if we are to not be breaking some other woman's heart.

"Don't make me into the 'other woman,' Terry. Please," I whisper to him. "Because finding you again, all these years and all these oceans of regret later, I know only one thing. I never really stopped loving you. But I won't do this to another woman."

"Elizabeth ... I did not plan this to happen."

"I know that. I do. Neither of us did."

He closes his eyes and draws me into his body. "I never thought we'd ever have this chance."

I nod against his neck, where I am crying and smiling and scared and nauseous. "I am so glad we did. I have wanted to tell you all these things so often, especially the last few years. Aren't we lucky to have met again when we are capable of apologizing and forgiving each other? Not too many get that opportunity."

It is colder when we finally release each other. The sun is dipping under the horizon; the breeze has stiffened. He was so warm that to draw away from him is a shock to my skin.

I try not to respond when he holds his hand out as we walk back toward the hotel. I try. But then we are standing, waiting for the light to change at the corner where we will walk across the wide beachside boulevard and then down the block to our hotel's entrance.

And we are standing so close. And he looks down at me. 

I wish to God we had never had any reason to have regrets between us. I wish to God I'd not lost him. He truly was the love of my life. Now the memories of him and our time together will not hurt so much. Not now that we've forgiven each other.

When his knuckles graze mine, I slip my fingers into his palm. And we hold hands the rest of the way to the hotel. Until he walks me to my door. And I kiss his cheek before slipping inside, alone.