last love.

The end of the beginning was was where i was standing. My relationship with Adrian was suppose to go to the next stage, we were engaged . Our puppy Mylo was almost a year old and we lived such a domestic life. We sincerely enjoyed our more than frequent nights at home, cooking, watching a movie, talking, and being in love. He was the one, the one i'd been looking for all my youthful 21 years. But who's to say at 21 you'll find the love of your life? I thought i had, and I knew I had! But as my mother  said "Carmei, you're just in the moment". And she was right, again.

We met on vacation back in our home town of Penang. An Island in South East Asia where we both grew up. We'd met once through a friend when I was 14, and he was 19 and never saw each other again till the New Year season in early 2007. By then I was soon to turn 19 and he 24. The attraction was instantaneous and started dating straight off the bat, or in this case, the bed. I was living in Melbourne and had just finished the first year of my degree while he was in San Jose working as an engineer in Silicon Valley. We dated long distance for a few months before he decided to apply for graduate school in Melbourne to be closer to me. So close that we went to the same University and lived together from the moment he arrived. It was perfect. It was the kind of relationship every girl dreams about. An intelligent man, who is ambitious, polite, responsible, loyal, kind and always puts his family first. Not to mention he was tall, handsome, well built and had an attractive smile. Which woman would say no to a man like that? A man who only had eyes for you, would go out of his way to do anything for you? You can imagine what my friends said to me when I told them I was cheating on him.

First off, let me begin by saying that no one ever intends to cheat. It's not like I woke up one morning and decided that today's the day I'm going to cheat on my fiance. Like every cheater out there my defense is, it just happened! Well technically that's not true, because I do remember making a conscious and irrational decision just before it happened. Perhaps I was just horny? And taking into consideration all the trashy television I'd been watching during my oh-so domestic life, I felt I just needed some drama of my own. And to make things worse, the man, let me rephrase, the jerk I was committing adultery with was my ex. An ex that never wanted to be with me I might add, an ex that doesn't deserve a name at this point but for the record his name was Drew.

We dated for a couple of months before I met Adrian. Back then he had a girlfriend that he'd complain to me about and tell me how I made him feel special. Of course I believed him but when he didn't break up with his girlfriend, I was crushed. I was living a Hollywood reality show and I was the infamous other woman who was stupid enough to be talked into a secret "relationship" and the inverted commas are because I too am rolling my eyes. I got caught up in a whirlwind of drugs and parties just to forget how much pain, mainly rejection, I was feeling. I was still at that age when I believed the world should evolve around me and that I was queen of the world. After all, high school was like that. I was popular, everyone wanted to be my friend and I believed that anyone who talked trash about me was just jealous. So when Drew reappeared after 2 years, I needed to know if this time it'd be different and how else to find out but to rekindle the lustful flame we'd dimmed?

I'd graduated on time, 3 years without one hiccup, on track and happily engaged. My family came to Melbourne for my graduation and since I hadn't been home for a year, I flew back with them for a long awaited holiday. Adrian was in the final semester of his MBA and there was just no way he could have come with me. So he stayed to look after the dog.

My bags were packed and I wheeled it to the door in a hurry as my family were already walking down the hall to the lift, the taxi was waiting. We hugged each other just how we always do, with a comforting love that made you warm inside, knowing that there were many more to come. And as we stood there, he kissed my forehead as he always did and looked me in the eye and said "Make sure you come back" with a soft yet serious smile. Without a doubt in my mind I replied "Of course I'm coming back silly, where else would I go?" But Adrian was a smart man and perhaps slightly foresighted, either that or he jinxed it and he repeated himself "Make sure you come back, make sure you come home to me." I brushed it off as him just being funny, I kissed his lips, gave him a broad smile of excitement and dashed out the door. That was the last time we were in love.