Throughout it all, I loved her as much as I always had, and I found myself aching for those simpler times of the past. I knew what was happening, of course. As we were drifting apart, I was becoming more desperate to save what we once had shared; like a vicious circle, however, my desperation made us drift apart even further.

She squeezed my hand, and I drew a shaky breath, marveling at the fact that while on an ordinary leave in an ordinary place, I'd somehow fallen in love with an extraordinary girl named Savannaah Lynn Curtis.

Too far-fetched to believe, too obvious to ignore.

As I write, I am struggling with the ghost of someone I loved and lost. I now understand more fully the difficulties you were going through, and I realize how painful it must have been for you to move on.

Love, I've come to understand, is more than three words mumbled before bedtime.

and in that instant, nothing else mattered. Not the song, not the place, not the other couples around him. Only this, only her.

He leaned closer, their faces drawing near, and he could feel the heat of her breath mingling with his. He closed his eyes against the memory of a thousand other kisses and touched his lips to hers. He felt a kind of spark, and all at once he felt her slowly coming back to him. She was the arm that held him close in times of trouble, she was the whisper on the pillow beside him at night.