The truest test - seeing my first love

This morning I woke up to a text that was a shocker. It was from someone I've known since high school. The one I wrote about the other day as my something borrowed. My storybook first love.

He's going to be in town on business next week.

We met in a pub in England when I was celebrating my 17th birthday with my friends. He was very cute, and at the time he was 21. He and I, along with my sister and his friend, hung out as good friends the rest of the eight months we were there. Over the next two years, he visited the U.S. twice and our relationship grew to a romance. I was young and inexperienced and he was gorgeous and English. Why wouldn't I fall for him?

I still have the vivid memory of us standing in the hallway outside the bathroom in my parents' house. He wrapped his arms around me and we kissed. Then he said, "I love you." That wasn't the last time he said it. I hung onto those words even though the Atlantic Ocean and marriages kept us apart. I even wrote him as the love interest in my first novel.

I told my friend about it this morning. She suggested I should be on the other side of the United States. "You don't need that drama!!" she said.

To add to the drama, he arrives at the end of my new guy's first weekend visit - the one I really like. The whole scenario makes me want to stay inside the safe walls of my little loft with Lucy until then. I'm not sure I can handle what will happen over the next week, so any new drama and I'll be an emotional basket case.

My English friend and I are still friends and keep in touch by text, email and phone calls a few times a year. We've seen each other twice since my teens. Once I visited him and his wife alone. The next time was my honeymoon more than a decade ago. His wife is much nicer to me when I'm married. Actually, I think she despises me when I'm single.

My friend also said, "This has heartbreak written all over it!!!" She's right. I can't wait to see him, but avoiding the broken heart will be one of the hardest things I've ever done.

Love to the single girls,
Addison