Then I grab an outfit from the closet and hop into the shower.
My thoughts still linger on that night in the photo—to the girl I was nine years ago in Munich.
Nine Years Ago: Munich, Germany
Hallie
Ace and I skittered away from that annoyed German woman, giggling under our breath.
I’ve never felt the way I did that night, not before or since—buoyant and light as a feather, my pulse racing with the thrill of our connection. The world belonged solely to us. Everyone else barely existed on the blurry fringes.
My feelings for Ace were magical and instant. The moment I met him—saw him standing across the lawn, staring up at the cathedral with a look of awe in his eyes—I felt safe and curious. But it didn’t take long for his charm and looks to capture my attention.
Maybe it was the fact that we knew from the moment we started talking about ourselves that we only had that night. He was deploying. I was going home to start med school after I finished my year-long jaunt around Europe.
Our time together was a gift, something like a rare shell you pick up on the beach, admire, maybe even place in your pocket, but at the end of the walk, before you brush the sand off your feet, you toss it back out to sea where it belongs.
Ace was my rare shell. And I held him that night. Then Itossed him back and brushed the sand off to return to life as it had been before I found him.
We strolled down a street in Old Town Munich where the buildings pressed together shoulder-to-shoulder, a seamless wall of pastel façades with steep rooflines. Windows on the buildings were spaced evenly across the smooth stucco finish. Shops lined the street on the first floor of the buildings. Residences took up the upper two or three.
Our conversation was as light and warm as the streetlamps bathing the paved ground in their soft yellow glow. We wandered to the west crossing Stachus, the large square where the charming cobbled streets of Old Town emerge into a wide open plaza with a fountain. Tram lines embedded in the pavement brought the occasional night tram through with only a few straggling passengers.
We walked through the old city gate—a stone structure with three arches and towers. Then, among the more modern storefronts, we found a pub still open to college students and other locals.
“Do you play pool?” Ace asked, glancing inside the pub and back down at me.
“I’m grauenhaft,” I said, using one of the German words I mastered. I wasn’t joking. My pool skills were horrible.
He chuckled and his eyes sparkled with a kind of mischief that drew me closer. There was this kind of protectiveness about Ace. I sensed his careful strength the moment I spotted him at the cathedral. This man would never hurt me. I don’t know how I knew it. I just did.
“Well, let’s go play some pool then,” he said. “Maybe I can teach you a little.”
His smile was broad and free.
“Does that line usually work for you?” I asked him, with a flirty glance up into his eyes.
I followed him into the pub.
“I don’t know. I haven’t ever used it on anyone. Maybe you can tell me if it works later.”
It already was working, and I think he knew it. But Ace was a gentleman, and even though he was as caught up as I was in whatever was passing between us, he wasn’t going to cross any lines.
We played pool. Well, he did. I scrubbed the table with the tip of the cue and hit the wrong balls, barely making any into the pockets. We laughed a lot, and he pulled the move I hoped he would, positioning himself behind me to teach me good form, holding my arms just so. As if I could concentrate on playing pool when I turned my head and my nose met his neck, filling with his warm, slightly salty scent. Ace wrapped around me. I settled back into him and all thoughts of sinking the ball into the pocket evaporated.
After a while, we abandoned the pool table to a group of students and grabbed two chairs at a small wooden table in the middle of the room.
“I want something warm to drink,” I said. “Like heiße schokolade.” I used another German phrase, maybe to impress him.
“Hot chocolate?” Ace smiled and his eyes crinkled at the edges with amusement. “I thought your German was horrible. You said that perfectly.”
“I learned the most important words,” I told him, laughing at my own joke.
“And hot chocolate is one?”
“Definitely. A girl can survive just about anything with the right amount of chocolate.”
“Well, let’s go find you some heiße schokolade,” he said, a new determination taking over his body and face. Here was the soldier, going to battle, single-minded on the mission at hand.
