No. She scratches that out. Too much. What would his wife think if she saw this?

"To My First Love"

Again, no. Much too intense.

"To You"

Fine. No poetry. But her soul was poetry as was his.

"No Salutation."

Yes. That would do. Quirky. Her. Him. Funny. She didn't want to dredge up old feelings she had put to sleep, what she had walked away from that night when she barely closed the door behind him as he left, when the quote "Kiss me in your dreams; and perhaps my heart will feel it" ran through her head.

"I miss you as I always have. But you know that. You said as much yourself. Have our mindreading skills travelled with us throughout the years? Across the seas and desert stars? Aye, of course they have. Of course. We should've known and yet we never ceased to be surprised when we knew each other's thoughts and emotions so fully.

"I am glad to hear from you. It has been nearly a month since our last correspondence."

With that sentence, she picks up her pen and puts the already bitten end into her mouth, thinking about her words, if this letter would begin like all the others. Wondering if she still sounded...well...in love with her memory of him.

She pauses her thoughts, amazingly, and closes her eyes. Her head rests against the back of the couch and she sinks into its memories. She fingers the pages of Shakespeare's Sonnets; her favorites, dog-eared and covered in fingerprints, opens and fans the others to the sides. Her hand moves instinctively to 116. She remembers the first time the Sonnet became real.

"You've already spent too much money on me. Drinks on me this time."

"Ok. You sure?"

"Of course I'm sure. Do I lie to you?" She asked him with her eyebrow quizzically raised. That look always brought a smile to his face. She did it unknowingly and wondered how she was ever accused of flirting. 'It's just something in your eyes,' they all said.

"Can I help who's next?"

She stepped forward to remind him she was serious about paying. His generous heart could be his downfall...financially, at least.

"Iced cafe' mocha, please."

"I'll have a regular cafe' mocha."

"Two percent or skim milk?" The thirty-something cashier asked the simple and yet dreaded question.

She looked at him, briefly. They looked back at the cashier and said "two percent" in the same melody.

"Do you want whipped cream?" She appeared to only ask one person, but looked from him back to her, uncertain who was going to answer.

"Yes, please." Again, in unison, they answered.

She looked at the two in front of her, wondering if they really were two or if they were one and merely sharing two different bodies. A half smile crossed her face. All three tried not to laugh. The cashier had the benefit of concentrating on her register, ringing up the nearly identical coffees. One hot. The other on ice.

They walked with their drinks throughout the bookstore. She had a specific goal in mind, a new thesaurus, new words, new poetry and plots. They had planned to be at the store long enough to exchange what she needed before going to her house. She still laughed about the coffees, not realizing the parallel. Perhaps realizing but not admitting she was on ice and he was not. They laughed over nuances in words, spellings, minor details in gargantuan books. Neither wanted to call the clerk over to help. He, the gallant prince, rescued her from speaking to an employee and volunteered to find one.

He returned with a helpful assistant who easily answered their questions and opened the book, the book they settled on.

She didn't dare look down to her wrist, to the blue watch that couldn't tell time within five hundred feet of his own watch. She spoke of books she wanted to read, books that he actually had in his home several states away.

"I can get those for you at Thanksgiving, if you like. They're on my shelves back home, collecting dust."

"Or I could just go with you. We'd have that long car ride, it'd be great." She didn't realize she invited herself to his home, to his family. She was merely ecstatic at the prospect of spending hours on end, uninterrupted, talking with him in the car. Nothing seemed better. His words began to intoxicate her and she nearly slipped her arm between his elbow and torso. She stopped herself, surprised. Wondering.

They walked toward the cash registers. She was ready to make her purchase. They stood back at the bargain table.

"This is where I bought that Faulkner book. On this shelf."

Her eyes caught a familiar picture. A picture that had actually reddened her cheeks several nights before when he brought it to her attention. The spine of a book held an enlarged version of the maid and Robin Hood-esque man embracing in a passionate kiss. It was the same picture that borrowed the space in the top corner of her newest journal cover.

He saw the book at the same time as she walked to point to it with her finger. He laughed when she removed it from the bottom shelf, showing him the front of the book, the enlarged vision of her diary.

"Oh my goodness. That's too funny!"

"No kidding," she said.

"I think it's time to show you where I usually find solace in this place."

He walked through the maze of shelves, toward her usual hiding place amidst the science fiction and fantasy books. The brown leather couch softly beckoned her.

"What are you talking about, your place. This is where I usually hide."

"I should have known. Of course we would find the same places to hide and think."

She sat next to the arm of the couch, he sat next to her left arm. She opened the Book of Love, as it was tactlessly called, and they began perusing the words on the pages. Each stanza, each line was breathtaking. Such love. Such devotion.

They eventually stood from the soft leather couch and walked to the literature and poetry shelves, searching for Shakespeare. An entire shelf was devoted to the Bard, but of course neither thought his works would be separate from the rest of the literature. Finally spying his section, she looked for the book of Sonnets.

So many choices.

"Choices, decisions, bah" she laughed, squeezing his knee after he sat on the small wooden stool. He nearly kicked the shelf over. "I didn't realize you were so ticklish!"

He looked back at her, sheepishly. "Mhmm," he said, matter-of-factly.

That look made her laugh everytime she saw it, so she averted her eyes and chose the book of sonnets at her fingertips. The pages opened to familiar lines she remembered from the movie "Emma". She read the first three lines to herself, then softly spoke them aloud:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Neither spoke for several seconds. She caught her breath as he let his out.

"Wow." For once, eloquence failed him. But she knew. She knew the words that were not, could not be spoken. His eyes said them all. His eyes, the curves in his face, the small lines across his brow. They spoke to her the words he did not. And she looked at him with her own words in her eyes.

Ah, the serenity of silent communication.