#100 | How I met Aliki

Every couple has its story.

And each of those stories is unique; an encounter exclusive to two particular lovers. This is post #100 and so I have decided to share with you something special: how I met Aliki. That very first night.

#1 | First sight

I didn’t know whether she liked me or not. All I knew was that I had liked her for quite some time. But she had always seemed distant to me; perhaps shy, perhaps disinterested. In any case, up until recently, unavailable.

Just the week before we had gone for dinner. For the first time ever, we had spent time talking to each other, alone. We had first met five years earlier. Back then she had her partner and I had mine. But since then, things had changed: a cosmic cocktail of tragedy and fate.

Dinner hadn’t been a date. It was just a polite rendezvous between two acquaintances who happened to be in the same town on the same evening. On my way to pick her up, I rehearsed my lines and wondered whether we would have enough commonalities to sustain a conversation. Six hours later, as I stood outside her hotel to bid her goodnight, something had shifted. Her shimmering eyes had lingered on mine just a bit longer than usual. Or was I imagining it?

The following day I received an SMS. Her first message ever to me. Something anodyne. But a message nonetheless. Now, a week later, I stood at her front door. We had agreed to meet for a glass of wine at hers to continue the conversation from the week before. Not that the conversation mattered. I just wanted to see her, again. My heart trembled in my chest.

 

#2 | First night

I rang the bell and waited nervously. The corridor lights switched on, the key turned in the lock and her smiling face peered from behind the door. Her full lips, perfectly painted in burgundy, her tanned skin, her dark soulful eyes lined with kohl, her whole being, beckoned.

I opened the bottle of wine I had brought with me as she fetched the glasses. We poured, we chin-chinned and we sat on the sofa. A dimmed lamp kept us company.

‘What kind of music would you like me to put on?’

‘The kind that you normally listen to.’ I replied.

She put on her favourite radio station and came to sit next to me. Not too close, I noticed.

‘Has he sent you another message?’

I was asking about a would-be suitor who I knew had been after her erratically.

‘Nope. Men are strange.’

Subject closed. I felt better for it.

‘All men?’

‘No. Some turn out to be a nice surprise.’

‘Do they?’

‘Yes, like you for example.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Don’t tell me that shocks you?’

It didn’t quite shock me as much as it short-circuited my brains and bowled me over: 1 million kilojoules of lighting ramming home and coursing through my veins. The woman of my dreams had just told me she liked me. Or had she?

‘It kind of does.’ I croaked.

 

 

#3 | First light

When our lips met that electricity flowed freely, building an energy that I had never experienced in my life before. Her skin tasted new but felt familiar. Her lips reached out with fresh vigour but played over mine with the knowledge of long-lost lovers.  And when her hands ran all over my body, it was with the deft naturalness of two well-acquainted beings.

You might think that I’m simply being romantic to embellish our blog. But I am not. This is how Aliki left her mark on me. I, who hardly believe in the afterlife – let alone reincarnation- left her house, at first morning light, firmly convinced that I had re-discovered a forgotten love – perhaps from another lifetime.

I had found the love of my life. But not only. The way she made love to me, the ease with which we played with each other’s bodies, and the boldness with which she did to me things I had previously only fantasised about, made me realise a profound truth. I had met my ideal sex partner. And I was lucky enough that it was the same as the person I loved.

And as we lay in each other’s arms, exhausted and sweaty, caressing each other to the wistful melody of Jeff Buckley’s ‘Hallelujah’, she turned to whisper into my ears.

‘I’m not in love with you.’

‘Me neither.’ I replied, kissing her deeply.

The rest is history.

 

Photo credit: Couple of Secrets – Cristina de la Madera