It was too good to be true. Here I was, walking with this woman, this absolutely beautiful woman, who cared for me with such a fiery resolve. It made me feel warm inside, despite the chilling night air. “So how did you like the show?” I asked, hands shoved bashfully in my pockets as we walked shoulder to shoulder, grinning shyly.

“It was really funny,” she responded, giving me a sincere smile of her.

“Yeah, I told you Monty Python was the best.” She laughed a little at my remark and nudged me playfully.

“And the country singing beforehand was good,” she mused. I rolled my eyes. “Why didn’t you just tell me you don’t like country?” she prodded, smiling.

I blushed, remembering how she had caught me in a lie about finding country okay when I truly despise it. The beginning of the dinner show had been filled with it. “I don’t know. I just act stupid around pretty women.”

It was her turn to blush. “You could have just said, ‘Courtney, I love you, but I don’t like country’ and everything would have been good.”

Immediately, I stopped and took her hands in mine, staring deep into her cyan eyes. “Courtney,” I said absolutely seriously. “I love you,” a pause, “but I hate country.” She laughed, and we continued on walking, hands in our pockets again, shoulder to shoulder. “But that guy was annoying, wasn’t he?” I asked, remembering how a man had barked at us to control ourselves when we had snuggled together, giggling with nervousness as his precious daughter sang off key.

A look of anger came over her face. I laughed. “He was a bastard,” she growled. “We weren’t doing anything! And his kid wasn’t even singing well either! I just wanted to tell him to shut the hell up!” I laughed more as she ranted on about people needing to relax, and to silence her, I took her into my arms, smiling down at her.

“You know, when I first met you, I would have never imagined you to be so talkative and angry at times,” I said, smiling uncontrollably.

She smiled, trying to toss a strand of blonde hair out of her face. I reached up cautiously and did it myself. She smiled. “When I first met you,” she remembered, “I never thought you could be so gentle and shy at times.” We both laughed, and I felt the air from her lungs release and wash over my face. It was like a perfume. She looked away from me, resting her head on my collarbone. I leaned down and kissed the top of her head affectionately. “Look,” she muttered, “It’s the middle school.” I turned the way she was looking, the sides of our faces pressing together cheek to cheek.

“Yeah,” I sighed, forgetting how to talk in full sentences. We looked away from it, our eyes meeting once again. I smiled nervously, noticing that if I tilted my head forward just a bit, we would kiss. I wanted to so badly, but something held me back. I wanted her to kiss me We laughed nervously once again, but the sound of a roaring car engine burst through the night, and we sprang apart.

Her uncle’s car zoomed past us, and we both laughed. “That would have been awkward to explain to him,” she said.

“Yeah,” I sighed, not thinking of what would have happened if her uncle had caught us, but rather the feelings coursing through my own veins at that moment. It was strange. No one had ever made me feel this way. Never. It was this deep, throbbing need that resonated through out my entire body, a feeling that transcended lust and desire to something pure, something indescribable, something holy. I knew right then and there that I truly, deeply loved this woman with every fiber of my being, and that she loved me back.

We walked for a long time, going down wrong roads, avoiding her house on purpose. Neither of us wanted the night to end, because when it did, I would be gone for four days on a school trip. Finally, we came back to the same place where I had taken her in my arms before, and I held her close once again, feeling bold. I leaned down and kissed her, barely a peck, barely a touch, but so many feelings were conveyed in it. We broke apart after that, still walking shoulder to shoulder in the dark night. Eventually, we wandered by a park, and I pulled her over to the grass where we could lay down. As we lay back and looked to the night sky, I sighed contentedly. “The stars look amazing tonight,” I noticed, tracing familiar constellations with my eyes.

“I know. The stars always show up so well in this town, because of the observatory banning lights… it’s so much better than the city,” she sighed.

“Yeah,” I agreed. Suddenly, I turned on my side to look at Courtney, and she rolled to face me. “You know… my father is serious about moving to Alaska.” This was it, the ugly issue that neither of us wanted to talk about, but had to.

“You’ll just move in with me,” she joked weakly. I saw tears in her eyes.

“I’ll come to college here,” I said, trying to be helpful. “And when we are away from each other, we’ll just have to visit in the summer and at Christmas.”

“It’ll work out.”

“It will work out,” I repeated for emphasis. In my heart, I knew we were never going to see each other again after next month. “I love you,” I whispered suddenly, unexpectedly. She smiled, a hand reaching out to cup my face. We both lay there in the grass staring at each other for the longest time. I felt the unnamable emotions well up inside me once more, and this time, I was going to act upon them.

I rolled on top of my love, and kissed her forehead delicately, and then I kissed her cheek, trying to engrain into my head forever how her skin felt against my lips… and then we were one.

I had never meant for our relationship to go that far, but it had. We talked about our future together in hushed voices as we lay huddled together in the grass. We talked of how we were going to spend our years on a ranch, living, loving. We were going to be together forever. We were going to be in love forever. It was inconceivable that we might grow apart, but we did. It was unfathomable that we might move on, but sadly we did. It was ludicrous that we may spend a measly four days apart, but now it has been a year, and my heart has healed. There is no regret, no more sadness, only the need to speak of the unspoken love I had harbored, of the dreadful guilt I had felt. What if I had told my parents sooner I was in love with a woman? What then?

But all those feelings have come to pass… almost. It still only seems logical that today, on the anniversary of that day long ago, that I feel all those feelings flood back to me, just as if it were yesterday. I cannot turn back the clock, but I do not think I ever would. I have lived, loved, and lost, and are perhaps a better person for it.