Lost And Found 1

As I lay beside you in the night, the moonlight penetrates the window curtains enough to throw your silhouette into relief. I watch your breasts rise and fall with the slow, gentle rhythm of your breathing. Your face is turned away from me slightly, and the moon glow highlights your high cheeks, your slightly turned up nose. I'm filled with warmth, contentment. If I were a cat, I think I would purr. I feel giddy, almost like a 13 year old. Just three months ago, I didn't think I could ever feel this way. I didn't think I could ever be in love again.

You were the first person I had ever fallen in love with. You were the first person who made me understand the meaning of those three words. We met almost three years ago, both of us nurses, both of us volunteering a couple of times a week at one of the free clinics. I liked you, admired you, right from the start. You were open and friendly, smart and compassionate - a good nurse, but more. In your care, hostile patients lost their belligerence, the frightened patient felt secure, and the children always wanted to play with you, to touch you. You had that way with people, you still do.

We were friends, good friends, before we ever became lovers. It didn't take us long to understand that we were attracted to each other. But we each had had enough of college romances that lasted a couple of months, or encounters that lasted a couple of hours. We had time, we wanted to be cautious, so we went slowly and we became good friends.

Several months passed, then, after one particularly tough Saturday at the clinic, you said that all you wanted was a shower, a glass of wine and a back rub. I said my place was an easy walk...We picked up Chinese on the way, but we never got around to eating it. We made love that night for hours. My tongue all over your breast and nipples; your tongue between my legs; we explored each other in ways I had dreamed about since we had met. My fingers, deep inside you, I felt your spasms and thrilled to your orgasms, as if they were my own. Your fingers inside me, your tongue and lips caressing my clitoris, lifted me up on seemingly endless waves of passion and pleasure. I loved the scent of you, the feel of you on me, in me, next to me. You took me to new and wonderful places, but remained my link to reality. Intertwined limbs became intertwined hearts. We had sex that night, but we made love. For me, you had changed everything, forever.

After that, we were inseparable. I don't remember who suggested moving in together, but within the month we had. These were the giddy days, days when work seemed to drag until the time I could rush home to you, to your arms. When I came through the door, panties wet and nipples hard with desire, I'd die a little if you weren't already there. Often we made love before we even took time to eat our supper. I loved to undress you, to peel the clothing from your body, saving your panties until last, while I feasted on your lips and then your breasts. I loved your breasts, smaller than mine, but firm and little upturned like your nose. Your nipples were long and grew longer when I aroused you, and I loved to circle them with my tongue. And when this caused you to start to moan, I knew you were ready. My mouth would start its greedy trip down the valley of your tummy, towards the center of you. My hand, already caressing your thighs, would move up to find your warm, moist folds. My fingers would slip between them, sliding back and forth, occasionally moving up to circle and just touch your clitoris, swollen and straining out of its hood. And when my lips found the wiry patch of your pubic hair, they dropped immediately down to your clitoris. Gentling running my teeth across back and forth over it, I would penetrate you with my fingers, feeling your hips rise from the bed to draw them ever deeper. Swinging my body between your legs, my tongue would travel down through the folds and back up to your clitoris, while my fingers did their magic inside you. And I would feel my own orgasm building as I watched your face reflect the pleasure I was giving to you. And when I had made you cum until you couldn't cum anymore, you would start on me.....

The giddiness of our first weeks together gave way to months of deep contentment. These were the days of quiet evenings spent together, passion mixed with laughter, food shopping together, sex and housework. For eighteen months, I was happier than I had ever been in my life. I didn't even realize it when things started to change. But, then, one day I noticed that your eyes no longer seemed to quite meet mine when we talked; the words "I love you" seemed to fall less frequently from your lips, the nights spent lying together, holding each other grew fewer. At first I suspected, then I feared, and then I knew that there was someone else. We never could keep secrets from each other, and one beautiful Saturday morning I asked you. Your lovely green eyes started to fill and you turned away from me, your lower lip beginning to tremble. You said it had started as a friendship at work. You had not wanted it to be more, you had fought to keep it from becoming more, but in the end you couldn't help it. The pull, the attraction between you was too strong. You had fallen in love with Him.

Him. The word exploded in my brain. I had not expected, not even suspected it. Him. Stunned, I asked if you had, if the two of you had......I couldn't find the words to finish asking. But the look on your face, in your eyes, told me, before your words, that you were lovers. That's when the shock gave way to the hurt, to the sharp, physical pain in my chest and in my heart, that made me think I might be sick. The pain that would dull during the days to come, but continue to ache for the weeks and months that followed. And I felt tears, rolling down my face, falling on my blouse. I couldn't look at you. I knew that you loved children; I had seen the wistful looks when we encountered laughing families in the market, at the park. I knew that your parents' disapproval of our life together weighed heavily on you, but I never suspected. If it had been another woman, I would know what to say, how to win you back, but Him.....how do I even begin to understand losing you to Him?

You wanted to tell me about Him, to tell me He was kind and good and gentle, but I couldn't listen. I didn't want to know. Instead, I asked when you were leaving. You said that He was going to help you tomorrow, Sunday. I said I had to be at the clinic very early. You see, I couldn't hate you. And if I met Him, knowing that you loved Him, I couldn't hate Him either. And that was just too much. I left you sitting there, tears on your cheeks.

I went for a walk in the warm spring weather, averting my eyes, avoiding stares from strangers. When I came home, you were gone and I was by myself.

Hours became days and days became weeks. I learned to take my love for you and my ache for you and lock it away in a seldom-used part of my heart. Every day I would take it out for a while and I would let myself feel it and I would cry for the loss of you. I would hug the sweater you had left behind, hungry for the smell, the odor, of you. But, as the days became weeks, I took the ache and the longing out less and less; my tears became fewer and fewer. Sleep returned, and though the memory of the love and of the hurt lingered, the ache subsided and I learned, slowly, to smile again.

Then today, when I came home, the door was unlocked. I opened it and there you were, sitting in my grandmother's old wooden rocker, a suitcase next to you. I stepped inside and you stood. I felt that locked part of my heart starting to open and I pushed against its door to stop it. The sudden, unexpected need to slam it shut made me momentarily cruel, and I asked why you were here, if He had thrown you out. I saw you wince as my words struck home and felt tears begin to sting my eyes, as you said, no, you had left Him. My heart was suddenly chilled and I asked if He had hurt you. To my relief, you shook your head no. I felt confusion, I started to ask why, but you walked to me and put a finger over my lips, silencing me, and you said

"I left Him because He wasn't you."

I felt the lock on that place in my heart break and all the love and all the longing that I had stored there, that I had tried to forget, came tumbling out. I felt tears welling up and rolling down my cheeks. As I wrapped my arms around you and pressed my lips to yours, I tasted the saltiness of your tears mingling with my own

I don't know how long we stood together like that, holding each other and kissing. I don't know how we found our way to my, to our bed, to make love. I remember your hands and your lips gliding over every part of me. I remember the sweetness of your scent, and your moans as my tongue circled the nipples I so loved, and my fingers penetrated the moist folds of flesh I had so longed to touch again. I remember that, our passion momentarily spent, we went to the kitchen to eat ice cream and that we returned to our bed with a bottle of wine and glasses and renewed desire for each other. And I remember that this time we made slow, languorous love until late into the night.

And now, I am laying here beside you, content. Too content, even for sleep. Tomorrow, there will be questions and probably some awkwardness. But love, and answers too. And we will sort things out. So, for now, I think I'll just lay here and watch you sleep and continue to be content that you are here, with me, again.