She calls her bedroom the “Pretty Pretty Princess Room.” The walls are a pale purple and there is a canopy over the bed. It is the room she wanted as a child and now by god she has it. The shades of purple and green work well together, along with her red hair and (usually) green eyes.

There is a door in that room that is always closed. In the mornings light comes through the crack under the door, so there must be a window or a skylight in the space beyond. I don’t know anything else about it, however. It is a mystery.

It took me a day or five to articulate just what it was that I most liked about That Girl. She has a sexy brain. It’s a brian that puts things together in unexpected ways and never forgets to have fun doing it. When we were together hardly an hour went by when between us we didn’t come up with a new get-poor-quick scheme, complete with catchy marketing name. Oh, yes, we are a dangerous pair when it comes to inventions and words. Sure, anyone might come up with Laundermatic, but Albino Formula Laundermatic? I think not. We are quite the team. (There is another idea, mostly hers, for a book. I’m mentally building the table of contents now, but I might be soliciting input from the blogosphere. It’s gold, baby. Pure gold.)

For the record, it’s not just her brain that’s sexy.

We talk about a lot of stuff, That Girl and I, crazy and serious. Stories from our pasts, introductions to the people around us. There was one big, giant topic that we danced around most of the time, however. The future.

The future is a sneaky bastard, hiding in the most innocent of pet names and endearments, lurking in the way we refer to each other to friends, waiting for words that imply a promise neither party has the right to make.

The future did peek out occasionally, of course — rarely overtly — but when That Girl said, “who knew this would happen?” she let her emphasis of the word carry the future into the conversation, if only for a moment. This was something big enough to make space for, sometime, somehow. I sure as hell didn’t know this would happen, but I had known that I could like That Girl, and, well, isn’t that this? Wasn’t that in the back of my head when I decided not to set my return date to Prague before I left?

Today we said goodbye, at least for a little while. The future tromps along, with or without us, no matter how hard we work to ignore it.

In her bedroom is a door. I could have opened the door, and seen what lay beyond. I could simply have asked. But as long as I don’t know what’s in there, there is an incompleteness to my visit, an unknown that will not allow closure. Sometime in the future I will open that door. Until I do, there will always be a future with That Girl and Me together.

Sweet!

Thanks!