Love the one youre with

coffee and talked as we got ready for work. It came when his name popped into my inbox every few hours. It came at night as we shuffled through our delivery menus, contemplating what to have for dinner and proclaiming that one day soon we'd actually use our stove. It came with every foot massage, every kiss, every time we undressed together in the dark. I trained my mind on these details. All the details that comprised our first one hundred days together.

Yet by the time Annie brought my coffee, I was back in that intersection, my heart thudding again. I suddenly knew that in spite of how happy I was to be spending my life with Andy, I wouldn't soon forget that moment, that tightness in my throat as I saw his face again. Even though I desperately wanted to forget it. Especially because I wanted to.

I sheepishly glanced at my reflection in the mirrored wall beside my booth. I had no business worrying about my appearance, and even less business feeling triumphant upon the discovery that I was, against all odds on an afternoon of running errands in the rain, having an extraordinarily good hair day. I also had a rosy glow, but I told myself that it was only the cold that had flushed my cheeks. Nothing else.

And that's when my cell phone rang and I heard his voice. A voice I hadn't heard in eight years and sixteen days.

'Was that really you?' he asked me. His voice was even deeper than I remembered, but otherwise it was like stepping back in time. Like finishing a conversation only hours old.

'Yes,' I said.

'So,' he said. 'You still have the same cell number.'

Then, after a considerable silence, one I stubbornly refused to fill, he added, 'I guess some things don't change.'

'Yes,' I said again.

Because as much as I didn't want to admit it, he was sure right about that.

two

My favorite movie of all time is probably When Harry Met Sally. I love it for a lot of reasons-the good eighties feel to it, the quirky chemistry between Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan, the orgasm scene at Katz's Deli. But my favorite part is probably those little, old, twinkly-eyed couples, perched on the couch, telling their tales of how they met.

The very first time I saw the movie, I was fourteen years old, had never been kissed, and to use one of my sister Suzanne's favorite expressions, was in no hurry to get my panties in a wad over a boy. I had watched Suzanne fall hard for a number of boys, only to get her heart smashed in two, more often than I had my braces tightened, and there was nothing about the exercise that seemed like a particularly good time.

Still, I remember sitting in that over-air-conditioned theater, wondering where my future husband was at that moment in time-what he looked and sounded like. Was he on a first date, holding someone's hand with Jujubes and a large Sprite between them? Or was he much older, already in college and experienced in the ways of women and the world? Was he the star quarterback or the drummer in the marching band? Would I meet him on a flight to Paris? In a high-powered boardroom? Or the produce aisle in the grocery store in my own hometown? I imagined us telling our story, over and over, our fingers laced together, just like those adoring couples on the big screen.

What I had yet to learn, though, is that things are seldom as neat and tidy as that starry-eyed anecdote you share documentary-style on a couch. What I figured out over time is that almost always, when you hear those stories from married couples, there is a little poetic license going on, a romantic spin, polished to a high shine over time. And unless you marry your high school sweetheart (and even sometimes then), there is usually a not-so- glorious back story. There are people and places and events that lead you to your final relationship, people and places and events you'd prefer to forget or at least gloss over. In the end, you can slap a pretty label on it-like serendipity or fate. Or you can believe that it's just the random way life unfolds.

But no matter what you call it, it seems that every couple has two stories-the edited one to be shared from the couch and the unabridged version, best left alone. Andy and I were no different. Andy and I had both.

Both stories, though, started the same way. They both started with a letter that arrived in the mail one stiflingly humid afternoon the summer after I graduated from high school-and just a few short weeks before I'd leave my hometown of Pittsburgh for Wake Forest University, the beautiful, brick school in North Carolina I had discovered in a college catalog and then selected after they offered me a generous scholarship. The letter contained all sorts of important details about curriculum, dorm living, and orientation. But, most important, it included my much-anticipated roommate assignment, typed neatly on a line of its own: Margaret 'Margot' Elizabeth Hollinger Graham. I studied her name, along with her address and phone number in Atlanta, Georgia, feeling both intimidated and impressed. All the kids at my public high school had common names like Kim and Jen and Amy. I didn't know anyone with a name like Margot (that silent T got to me the most), and I definitely didn't know anyone with two middle names. I was sure that Margot from Atlanta would be one of the beautiful girls featured in Wake Forest's glossy brochures, the ones wearing pearl earrings and Laura Ashley floral print sundresses to football games. (I had only ever worn jeans and hooded sweatshirts to sporting events.) I was certain that she had a serious boyfriend, and imagined her ruthlessly dumping him by semester's end, moving on to one of the lanky, barefooted boys sporting Greek letters and tossing a Frisbee on the quad in those same brochures.

I remember running inside with that letter to tell Suzanne the news. Suzanne was a rising junior at Penn State and well-versed in the ways of roommates. I found her in our room, applying a thick layer of metallic blue eye liner while listening to Bon Jovi's 'Wanted Dead or Alive' on her boom box.

I read Margot's full name aloud, and then shared my predictions in an accent right out of Steel Magnolias, my best frame of reference for the South. I even cleverly worked in white pillars, Scarlett O'Hara, and servants aplenty. Mostly I was joking, but I also felt a surge of anxiety that I had picked the wrong school. I should have stuck to Pitt or Penn State like the rest of my friends. I was going to be a fish out of water, a Yankee misfit.

I watched Suzanne step away from her full-length mirror, propped at an angle to minimize the freshman- fifteen she hadn't been able to shed, and say, 'Your accents suck, Ellen. You sound like you're from England, not Atlanta… And jeez, how 'bout giving the girl a chance? What if she assumed that you were a steel-town girl with no fashion sense?' She laughed and said, 'Oh yeah… she'd actually be right about that!'

'Very funny,' I said, but couldn't help smiling. Ironically, my moody sister was at her most likable when she was ripping on me.

Suzanne kept laughing as she rewound her cassette and belted out, 'I walked these streets, a loaded six string on my back!' Then she stopped in mid-lyric and said, 'But, seriously, this girl could be, like, a farmer's daughter for all you know. And either way, you might really like her.'

'Do farmer's daughters typically have four names?' I quipped.

'You never know,' Suzanne said in her sage big-sister voice. 'You just never know.'

But my suspicions seemed confirmed when, a few days later, I received a letter from Margot written in perfect, adult handwriting on pale pink stationery. Her engraved silver monogram was the elaborate cursive kind, where the G of her last name was larger and flanked by the M and H. I wondered which rich relative she had slighted by overthrowing the E. The tone was effusive (eight exclamation points in all) yet also strangely businesslike. She said she couldn't wait to meet me. She had tried to call me several times but hadn't been able to reach me (we didn't have call-waiting or an answering machine, a fact that embarrassed me). She said she would bring a small refrigerator and her stereo (which played CDs; I still hadn't graduated from cassettes). She was hoping we could buy matching comforters. She had found some cute pink and sage green ones by Ralph Lauren, and offered to pick up two for us if I thought this sounded nice. But if I wasn't a pink person, we could always go with yellow and lavender, 'a fine combination.' Or turquoise and coral, 'equally pleasing.' She just wasn't wild about primary colors in interior designing, but was open to my suggestions. She told me she 'truly' hoped that I would enjoy the rest of