Mike hated flying, so the confusing thoughts in his head are, at last, a welcome diversion. For the past month, the thoughts had kept him up nights, in thought and in conversation, trying to comprehend what was going on and how it had happened. So far he was at a loss to really understand anything other than he was pretty sure he had fallen in love and that this was possibly, already, the most genuine relationship in his life. How the hell had that happened? If he had any doubt about how overwhelming this was, the simple fact that he was flying into Seattle to meet Debbie erased them.

Debbie. Wow. Debbie Olsen. Of all the people on earth, he and Debbie Olsen had fallen in love and now he was on his way to spend a long weekend with her. With her. They both knew clearly what was going to happen this weekend; they had talked extensively about what they wanted, what they expected, what they hoped for. He had never made arrangements ahead of time for sex, not like this. But then again, he had never dived deep into a relationship via the Internet. Welcome to the new millenium, Mikey. All bets are off.

Had he known that the first email he had received from Debbie would lead to this, would he have responded? Damn straight I would have answered! That was an easy one to answer. Falling in love via email and phone calls might be crazy, might be new wave and terribly en vogue, but falling in love was always a good thing. And in this case, it felt like it might be the best thing he had done in his life.

In the thirty-plus years since he had last seen Debbie — they were unable to fix an actual date when that had been, but quite like about June 1975 — they had both changed dramatically. He remembered a prim, quiet girl, skinny and pretty and, for some reason, always angry with him. She had laughed at that last description; her recollection was that he frightened her! They both agreed they had been clueless about the other back then. They had not been friends; acquaintances through Youth Fellowship and little more. Their own friends had been friends, but the crossover had not brought them together as friends. Mike had had to confess to Debbie that he doubted he had given her a single thought since high school ended.

She, on the other hand, had simply forgotten how to spell his name.

"Why in the world did you think my name was spelled that way? 90 percent of the Stewarts are my Stewarts. Almost no one is a U-Stuart."

That's just how it goes in this goofy world, he concluded. For no reason whatsoever, his name got spelled wrong for years and then, when it finally got spelled right, he ended up with a near-stranger to whom he was flying to become a lover.