The hardest thing was looking into his eyes. Seeing everything there that I wanted to see more than a year ago. Seeing love and hope and happiness. Seeing tears.

He came up here to deal with something else, or so he said, but decided to stretch it into a visit. To hear about my trip, to hang out. Or so he said. We chatted for three hours, mindlessly, aimlessly, just casual friends catching up on each others' lives. He was so happy we'd stayed friends. It meant the world to him. So he said.

Then, half an hour before I had to leave for a party, he blurted it out.

"See, the thing is, I'm crazy about you," he said, shrugging and smiling, his gaze unable to meet mine for more than three seconds.

"I just am. I want to be with you," he continued. "And I guess there's three things you could do right now: Tell me to go fuck myself, take me back, or think about it. You can take an hour, a week, three months, I don't care. I'll wait. But I know what I want. I finally know what I want."

I thought I'd cried for him for the last time, thought I'd squeezed every drop of our relationship through my tear ducts back before we broke up. A lifetime ago. But the memory of his face, in that moment, invites a flood. every time I picture it.

For him, for six-plus years, for everything we ever were to each other, I wanted so desperately to throw my arms around him and tell him I love him, too. But out of respect for him, out of respect for our six-plus years, and for everything we ever were to each other, I couldn't tell him something that wasn't absolutely true.

It hurts. I never expected words like that, emotion like that, love like that, to hurt me. But it did. It does. And the worst pain was looking into his eyes, moist with nerves but gleaming with love, and not being able to tell him what he wanted to hear.

He's been in living in a bizarre limbo this whole time, tucked away on a ship floating around the Gulf, unsure of what he felt or why he felt it and triply uncertain about what any of it meant. He explained to me why he acted the way he did, apologized profusely for it with a touching catch in his voice, told me he's changed and gained focus and learned to communicate in ways he never could before. He swears he's a different Doug � back to the way he used to be when we were happy, but with improvements. And he said he admires the more confident person I've become since we broke up � someone who is slowly letting go of the crippling self-worth questions that plagued her and kept her from spreading her wings.

But he hasn't considered, or so it seems, how I got there.

He hasn't considered, at least not out loud, the fact that while his life's been on hold mine has trucked forward. I've been out and about, dating, falling for another guy, getting my heart broken, putting it back together through tears. I've looked around, and while I haven't found another relationship that's worked, I've let myself get lost in someone else and carried away by chemistry and the vast potential of our potential.

Of course he sees me when he sees the picket fence, the house, the children. Who else is he going to see? He hasn't been out there. Hasn't seen what the world has to offer him outside the Navy. And ten days before he moves to Wisconsin to do just that, he decides he wants to rekindle our relationship. He swears his feelings are real. How can he know? And how can his timing be so terrible?

"The way I see it, what's one or three years apart when you're talking about fifty years together?" he said.

"But I'm not worried about the time apart. We're good at that part," I replied. "It's the togetherness part where we failed last time. It's the day-to-day stuff we couldn't handle."

He stared at his hands. Rubbed his thumbnail. Sucked in his cheeks briefly and then looked up at me with a faint smile.

"Well," he repeated, "I know what I want. And I don't expect you to have an answer for me right now. I just couldn't go to Wisconsin without telling you how I feel."

And I met his gaze, the brown eyes I once stared into and searched for any trace of warmth. It was absent then; it was there now, as was slow-building liquid proof of how hard it was for him to say this to me, to put his heart in my hands and beg me to keep it.

I can't. But I haven't broken it, either. Because now it's completely my decision to slam the door permanently, no turning back, and no matter how sure I was � am? � that Doug and I are over and have necessarily moved past each other, I do feel I owe it to us, to me, to him, to talk this through with him. Pick a few scabs. Be brutally honest. Figure out how real this is.

I had felt so sure about where his place was in my life, but now I'm being asked to make absolutely certain, beyond any doubt, that those feelings are rock-solid and unchangeable and that rejecting his request would not engender any regrets.

Really, I think I know what I want. Yet I'm going to end up going through this anyway, and it has me tied up in a thousand knots. My brow is always furrowed, my heart's always in my throat, I'm constantly twittery and stressed about it. It's an emotional punch my gut didn't expect to take, and passion or no passion, it's beautiful and awful and amazing and confusing, and I have no idea how to deal with it right now beyond careful talk and consideration. I can't glibly bury this forever without being thorough and sure and respectful of him and of what we had. He deserves better. Our history deserves better.

Maybe it was his embryonic tears that gave me pause. Maybe it was the way his hands shook, squeezing and releasing the couch cushion with tense apprehension. Maybe it was the way I wanted so badly to hug him and promise that it would all be fine and perfect, even if that's not what I believed.

How do you stare at someone that once personified love and life and endless possibility, whose eyes are scared and loving all at once, and turn him away?

I couldn't tell him yes. But I couldn't say no.

Someone got here by searching for: Heather boobs Reading: The pile of Vanity Fair issues on the coffee table Flipping through: The twelve rolls of pictures from my trip. Yes, twelve. Yikes.