Shouldn't have let him go

He'll always be the one that got away. The one that gets all the "What if?" scenarios. It may have got terribly astray but he'll always be a gentleman in my mind.

It all started because a friend needed a place to meet her boyfriend that wasn't too far from base and I was lonely. Bring a friend and the other room in the apartment was theirs. Such a romantic beginning. As romantic as rabbits. What it was like to be young. We both didn’t have any illusions on what we were doing. We had needs and desires.

He started to come down to see me on his own. We were good together and couldn’t get enough of each other. It became a challenge and game to see how many times we could in a night.

I decided to start trying fun new things, he didn’t seem the type to scare easily. Remote controlled vibrator in my undies during a movie and handjobs in the back of the CTA train. Finding any dark corner for a quickie before the Metra train came to take him away. Things were fun, things were sexy and hot.

He was going to be shipped out. Date was set. Shame on me for falling for him. We knew there was an ending to this. I had to say it before it was too late. I was falling for him and thought I loved him.

"Should I wait for you?"

"No" he told me. Does he regret that answer?

He came back engaged to a woman. Broke it off.

Married a different woman and was stationed back in my city.

What if he never reached back out to me? It started with talking, innocent enough, but then we started to meet up. We would have a drink or go on a walk. Once we came upon a clearing of cattails. I sat down to rest and he joined me. We kissed. It had been so long and the intimacy that we shared so many years ago came rushing back. We both wanted more but we both knew we shouldn’t. What if we didn’t stop when we did?

Things continued that way, the tension between us growing. We both wanted to be more physical, but with our situation, I needed more emotional commitment from him. Why wouldn’t he tell me how he felt about me? Why couldn’t he share his thoughts and feelings. One time at a bar we made a bet and I won. I wagered something shiny. I was expecting to go through the mall and have him get a cheap trinket. We ended up at a jewelry store. To this day I can’t get him to tell me why he chose to get something nice and not cheap. I would like to believe this is how he really is deep down. A gentleman, not just wanting to get laid, but does have feelings that run deep. What if he loved me and didn’t know how to tell me?

Weeks would pass, months would pass, sometimes years would pass between conversations and meetings. Then we finally agreed to meet in a hotel. The anticipation was the worst. Thinking and fantasizing about what would happen, how things would play out. Would it fall through like so many previous occasions? What if we got caught?

The hotel room was a typical downtown room, nice and cozy. He had a bottle of wine that we shared. It didn’t take long before we started to reconnect physically. Touches started gentle and then turned more eager. It left us breathless, sweaty and exhausted.

I would like to leave this as my last interaction with him. It fit. We talked and connected. It felt right. Things degraded after. Perhaps I became too needy, perhaps he got busy with his own life. We met once more after that, but it wasn’t the same. It felt more rushed, forced and cold. It is a shame that it was our last time, I would have preferred to have a better experience to end things on.

Now he has disappeared. No longer responding, dropped off of social media. He has been lost to me for good, and I am left with the memories.