Anticipation

Prologue:
Anticipation. It had been building and had now reached a fever pitch.  In a couple of hours, they would finally meet...after months of chatting online, exchanging pictures, and talking on the phone.  Atlanta was the midway point between Miami, where she lived, and the Metropolitan DC area, where he lived.  The good natured joking and thinly veiled sexual inuendo had brought them to this point.  Each had a healthy amount of fear mixed in with anticipation.  They had both had their share of relationship experiences and were uncertain about where this encounter would lead.  But he had long ago admitted that there was a certain connection and he liked it.  This connection came out of the many stimulating conversations they'd had.  Call it mental lovemaking, if you will.  Whatever it was, they were both willing to explore it.  For her, meeting him was like finding intellectual water after a long drought.  His mindset, his thought process, his conversation was as stimulating to her as his tall, dark, well-kept physique.  The man had a mind and a body to match.

On the two and a half hour plane ride, she reviewed all of the conversations they'd had, both real time and cyber space.  She could remember in great detail the joy she'd feel anytime she would log on at work and find an instant message from him waiting for her.  She also recalled the telphone conversations they would have about the things that were really important to the both of them.

She smiled when she recalled how she felt the first time he'd typed the words "my love" to her.  It amazed her that this man could feel such strong feelings for her.  She laughed when she remembered an early conversation they had  when she'd described herself and he'd remarked he could get to like her.  She responded that if he liked her, that was a good thing.  But more important was that she liked herself.

There was a week when they seemed to play phone and IM tag.  They just seemed to keep missing each other and merely traded messages all week.  He seemed to pick up on her frustration, causing him to call her one night to explain how busy he'd been.  He described in great detail what his job entails and when he said he just had to call his "baby", she was speechless.

Now, they would finally meet.