Memory of her is blurred. We met as teens. She, two years older. Her deep brown hair, her narrow brown eyes. Her full mouth, her narrow nose, her high cheeks, her angular chin, her smooth olive skin. Her features strikingly Asian and native. I rarely saw her after that.

Serendipitous, our parents got close. She arrived at a family party. I had not seen her in two years. She was intimidating. Her youthful mousy beauty turned mature and seductive. Her face defined and confident. Her lithe curved body tightly wound in a revealing black dress.

I hesitated. But she approached me. She asked how I was. She was funny and flirtatious. Why was she here? Why did she seek me out? I had older friends because I competed with them in a sport. They treated me as a younger brother. She knew them. From that, possibly a big sister dynamic? But that intrigued me. She suggested we meet again over summer. Then she left.

I cannot remember that far back. Maybe we went to a movie with a group of older friends, in a town where she took college summer classes. That evening she treated me as her date. I hadn’t experienced that adrenaline surge. The electricity. She sat next to me in the dark theater. She rested her hand on my inner thigh.

Truly my best night in eighteen years on earth. She sat on the hood of my car and dented it. She apologized. I almost told her I’d preserve it and make her sign it to prove the night was real.

By luck that summer we worked and attended school near each other. I built a house in the mountains with a contractor who nearly put out my eye. She attended classes at the university. My best friend lived nearby. The trip to her was 30 minutes full gas on the interstate. My mom expected me home at night and I had to work early. Our land speed records meant drifting at 80 on the rural roads and over 100 on the interstate. One evening we nearly died. We both wanted to be with her.

She returned to her parents’ mountain home on the weekends. Her parents’ house was under construction and I knew the builders. They said she would lay by the newly finished pool and distract the brick masons, wearing a thin bikini.

Our physical connection edged slowly. Her every word, her every touch, aroused. I didn’t know what a woman was. She showed me. Every moment elating.

For months we bonded in semi-platonic tension. One night she pulled glass out of my skin after a minor car crash. She wiped blood off my back with a wet towel. We slept together like girl friends. Her breasts shown through the sides of her loose cotton crop top. She sat on my lap in bed and stroked my hair. She cooked and fed me. She praised me.

One evening, before I raced home, she took the next step. I was too nervous and inexperienced. Her hand traced down my chest and stomach. She unbuttoned my pants. She kissed me, biting my lips and tongue. Like an animal. It shocked me. Like a different human. I hadn’t experienced that. I might as well have been dropped into a tribe. She yanked down my pants. She slid off my underwear. She stroked me while driving her tongue deep into my mouth, panting. I roared. I covered her hand and arm. She wrapped her other arm around me and then hugged me tight.

I needed to pay this wildness back. I pulled down her pants and rubbed her as best I could. I opened her shirt and fumbled with the bra holding her breasts. I rubbed those too. It seemed to work. Her breath turned rapid and halting. She tensed. She let out sounds I’d never heard. She dug her nails in my back and twitched violently. I had slid one hand behind her ass and I could feel it spasm. I had never seen a woman climax. She apologized for making me bleed. I told her I hoped she left scars.

That night broke the dam. Our physical relationship turned fantasy. Every night, late, she pulled down my pants and played with me until I came all over her. I returned the favor. She got bolder night by night, her legs spread wider apart. She was loud. I was concerned about waking her mom. She started to take me deep in her mouth. I thought I might die from the release.

Those evenings formed a bond. I could have proposed had I not been so young. I thought about her every moment.

A couple weeks later she took my virginity, if that’s a thing. It was late, into one of our pleasure sessions. She pulled me to the floor. She removed her clothes and removed mine. We had to be careful with her parents upstairs. I cannot forget entering her. Tight, warm, deep. She pulled my hand over her mouth to muffle her scream. She writhed. Her sculpted feet curled in tension. It was too much. I exploded inside her.

That night we changed. We made love daily. We didn’t obsess about it but it was consuming. She’d pull me into a bedroom at a party, pull me aside in the afternoon, tell me to tell our families we needed to go to the store so we could have sex in the car. We had sex on a rock cliff in a national park, in a cold rain, in a field. We fucked beside a remote rural church in the mountains, by a stream. I picked ticks off her legs when we explored an overgrown grassy field in a mountain hollow. She stroked me in the back of a car driving with friends.

I knew her body like my own. From her hair to her toes. I cupped her breasts, which she said she might reduce when old. Her narrow waist, sometimes wrapped in a gold chain. Her taut ass, muscles forming a gap at her tail bone, and her strong legs, down to her braceleted ankles. I bought her sensual jewelry. She told me about the eroticism of pearl necklaces. She said she loved how my sharp hips hit hers. How she felt me hitting her cervix deep inside.

For years I had no desire to see another woman. When we were apart at school, I thrilled at her visits. She met me at airports with flowers. We had sex in dozens of hostels in Europe. We got drunk on bad wine in Rome. We recovered together in a dank hotel room.

We lived together the year before I went back to graduate school. That’s when talk about marriage started. And that’s when self-sabotage began. Thoughts of her turned distracting. Was this bliss a ruse? She offered sexual fantasies like a porn actress. What did she want? Why so eager to please? If we were to marry, would this all be revealed as a lie? A trap?

Life changed rapidly. I’d been soulmates to her since I was eighteen. It was four years later. Too quickly, we drifted. It ended after I did not ask her to accompany me to school.

She is seared in my cortex. I erotically dream about her. I feel guilty about that. I think about the missed opportunities. She was a pleasure seeker. I was naive. I resisted. What if I had allowed her to pull us in deeper? Pushed the limits, as she wanted? Would that have served as a truth serum? A bond?