'Miss it.'

It was the summer when I was seventeen. We could have been a few years older or younger, but definitely seventeen - the age when summers last forever and anything is possible. I was a clown with uncontrollable hair and a delicate frame, but Denisa was a Goddess in human form. I can still picture the pearls that fell around the shoulder of her long navy blue polka-dot dress and the cute cloche hat that she wore. I would catch myself gazing open mouthed at her beautiful face as she talked to the customers in that little shop. She looked for all the world like a china doll brought to life. How my heart hadn't stopped beating when she looked at me with those beautiful pale blue eyes I will never know. She had an electricity about her that made me feel so alive - I would push the broom around and try not to make it obvious that I was watching her as she teased her black ringlets in the mirror. What kind of man could possibly possess her? He would have to be older than seventeen. Perhaps he would have a house of his own, or even a motor car.

She loved my jokes. It must have been the reason why she asked me to help her with some heavy shopping that day after the store closed. I made her do that amazing and infectious giggle all the way up the street. What a pair we must have looked! Denisa the Goddess, sashaying in and out of the shops and followed by her amusing little lap dog. We had become quite good friends - I had not dared to show her my true feelings. She would greet me in the mornings by holding her hands over my eyes and asking me to guess who they belonged to. Of course, I could never guess right! How I longed to take those hands and hold them, but then I was just seventeen. I was the one who would spend hours joking with her about how silly I was. My wild hair. My squeaky shoes. My unsophisticated tastes in music and clothing. After she had filled me to capacity and arrived at her stop, Denisa thanked me for my humour and generosity with a a hug. A hug that lasted a little too long.

A hug that became a kiss.

The summer lasted forever as they tended to do back then, and we had had another deliriously happy but exhausting day out. Little cracks had lately begun to show in our romance that were becoming hard to paper over. It's a thin line between the person who tells the joke and the joke itself, and the distinctions were becoming blurred. My work was suffering a little bit because Denisa required a lot of attention was was quite the jealous type. I had to watch who I spoke to, but it was a small price to pay for being the man who was allowed to call himself the partner of the most wonderful woman in the world. As we were making our way to the station where I would catch my last bus home, another little disagreement was threatening to spoil  the end of our day. The funny thing is that I can't remember what it was even about - perhaps Denisa had become annoyed that I didn't understand one of her clever cultural references, or that my dissatisfaction at the humiliation of being mistaken for her funny little friend as she was asked on another date was all too visible. As the bus arrived, I moved to peck her cheek but she turned away - but then she held me closer than ever before, fixed me with that stare and spoke two words that I will never forget.

'Miss it'.

Imagine if you will, a wildly romantic movie in glorious Cinemascope and Technicolor. In that movie, an awkward young man and an experienced, older woman of the same age are entwined in a kiss that lasts for hours, set to a roaring symphony by Rachmaninov and punctuated by the sound of a bus pulling away from a small town that no-one really cares about, and you would have one-tenth of the feelings that  those simple words and the ensuing tender kiss aroused in me. I can't remember how I eventually got home - perhaps those feelings and a little shoe leather carried me there. Denisa outgrew me, married a soldier and moved far away. I stayed in that little town and pushed the broom around a little more until I realised that there were far more interesting things to do with my life. That was many, many years ago.

But sometimes, I will lean back in my old chair to close my eyes and see that china-doll face.

Thank you, Denisa. You helped me to get where I am today, a grown man with tamer hair and shops of my own. You showed the the difference between love and romance, and I have loved you for that since I was seventeen - when summers lasted forever and anything was possible.