Thinking about the first time I fell in love…

From Sex, Life, & Hannah::Volume 1, Winter Season (CHAPTER 8: FALLING IN LOVE)

I fold my arms behind my head and tilt my chair back.
     
I have fallen in love twice in my life.
     
During my first semester at USC, I walked down into the lone, underground campus bar with the intention of doing homework. That’s until Warner, the bartender, introduced himself to me. I ended up with sweaty palms, watering eyes, a babbling tongue, and my heart threatening to pop out of my chest. It was love at first sight.
     
Warner was the perfect man: tousled hair, bronze skin, athletic; and more eloquently versed, thoroughly traveled, and mature than all the über-horny boys in my freshman classes put together. We started dating and I fell madly in love.
     
Warner took me on my first camping trip. I would have never dreamed that hiking up a mountain until the sweat seeped through my bra; sleeping on a foam mat in a thirty-six-square-foot tent for three nights; and peeing outdoors could turn me on to a man so much. Warner taught me how to surf, snowboard, skateboard, and give what he considered the perfect blowjob in the backseat of his Volvo. I couldn’t imagine my life without him.
     
“Hannah, I’m moving to Japan to teach English.” He sprung this on me one night after we’d picked up burgers and fries from a drive-through.
     
My take-out bag dropped to the floor. “I’ll go with you,” I offered immediately. I felt like I was about to die.
     
“You can’t throw your future away like that,” he said.
     
“But you are my future,” I pleaded. “I love you.”
     
Warner paused as though reconsidering. “You’re young. You’ll fall in love again.” And then he broke up with me.
     
I remember feeling that heart surgery without anesthesia was surely less painful.
     
It was different with The Ex. I was older and more focused. We were in the same place in our lives: recent grads climbing the corporate ladder for that six-figure salary before we embarked on marriage and babies. We looked good, like we belonged together, and everybody said so. And we had insane chemistry in the sack. He was the first man to give me a full-penetration orgasm.
     
Naturally we fell in love. And naturally everybody assumed we would get married and live happily ever after. I’m not forgetting that things were turbulent and heart-wrenching at times. But we had fabulous moments of refinement too. Like our excursion to the Bahamas for his brother’s wedding, where he proposed.
     
The Ex surprised me one morning with a private chartered tour around Nassau. Our boat docked on a sand bar near a reef so that we could snorkel around the local fish. When we finally heaved ourselves onto the warm sand and flipped our gear off he ran to the boat to get a basket of fresh fruit and wine. The sun beat down on our wet bodies as we ate, drank, and lounged in our private utopia.
     
“Hannah, I love you,” he said, stroking the water droplets and dried salt residue off my body. “I believe in our love. I want you to be my wife.”
     
“Yes!” I screamed, wrapping my arms around him and pinching his skin to make sure it was real.
     
Then we made love on the sand. I was so in love with him.
     
I sit upright and look around. My gaze fixes on the cell phone sitting on my desk. I grab it and run a finger over each of The Ex’s familiar digits. I run a finger over all the other digits trying to forget his. I breathe deeply hoping for strength.
     
I lift the phone to my ear and listen to the ringing on the other end.

To Be Continued…

COPYRIGHT
Sex, Life, & Hannah::Volume 1, Winter Season by Dorota Skrzypek.
Copyright 2007 by Dorota Skrzypek.
ISBN 0-9768869-3-8
All Rights Reserved.

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