....the next installment

At present I am on the border of Qld/ NSW -- I actually do not know exactly which side of the border I'm on the most as the hotel I'm in straddles the line..

This week is still going - i fear when I get back to work I will actually need a very long holiday from my holiday!!

Christmas eve the person I loved the most between the ages of 16 and 20 walked in my front door.. I was transported back in time - so much and so little has changed.. Knowing him now is not a surprise - hell that's what facebook does! Before the advent of social networking though we managed to have a tenuous hold on our 'friendship'. Over the years of living in different corners of the world, through many relationships and careers there was always the occasional postcard, email, phone call... It was a little surprising when a week or 2 before Christmas he phoned late one night and we talked for quite a while -- he was coming 'home' for Christmas and we hatched a plan that we would do 'home' together.. Both of us escaped the suburb we grew up in the very second we could.. as 17 yr olds we were both studying Drama at Uni - which had been our ambition at high school (and trust me that went against everything our school tried to teach us! We were never good at sport..) So we auditioned for Drama and brilliantly the both of us were accepted.. Out of a grade 12 class of a few hundred we were 2 of 4 that went to University.. We also lived together - and to do this he had to denounce his Jehovah Witness upbringing to live with a girl his mother referred to as 'worldly'. The irony of that is is that she is the one who bought us our first set of double bed linen!

As he wandered through my flat looking at the books in the bookcase, taking in the pictures on the walls, flicking through the music collection he turned to me and said "I don't know where you begin and I end and vice versa". He was romanticising our life as if there hadn't been a gap of many years.. I in turn was looking at this beautiful boy that in my eyes looked a lot like he did in our teenage years only slightly more manly but with the same air of youth.. time had been very kind.

I took him to Princess D's courtyard for afternoon wine. I've seen D smitten before - she's hilarious to watch when it happens! She has a particular repertoire that comes out that far out does the flicking of hair and batting eyelashes! Firstly there is a flashing smile, then it's sass and she can out sass anyone.. the pièce de résistance is when her conversation turns to her exotic childhood in Athens and Montreal resulting in stories being told in French.. To me it's a scene I've witnessed a number of times and taken in with quiet amusement.. to the smitten with subject they are reeled in as if they feel like the most important person in the world.. I'm not even sure anymore if her husband notices when she does it! In the kitchen when fetching a bottle of champagne she says to me "I thought you had pulled all your aces out over the years.... until today'.

After a few more hours of cat and mouse while telling stories of teenage follies and filling in on the missing years - my teenage love and I walked home to my house.. He wanted to make me dinner.. As I sat at the kitchen bench watching him whip up a pasta from whatever he could find I too started to romanticise what would of been..

Knowing that the next day being Christmas with families to surprise and a lot of driving to be done we called it an early one....

Waking up with him next to me the next morning was never the plan.. However when he kissed me good morning I was 18 all over again..