Prologue

What is love? I asked myself a thousand times. I thought I found the answer many times. Today I think the answer varies. Either that or I couldn't find the one answer. The thing is I thought I'd loved before, but some time later I end up convincing myself it hadn't been "it". I still want to believe that truly loving someone is something that can happen just once in a lifetime. Because of that you never know when it's gonna happen, and you always wonder "Is this it?" when you realize you like someone.

She was just her cousin when we first met. She was actually just her cousin when we met again seven years later. She's not just her cousin now, and another seven years have gone by. She probably doesn't know I'm in a bus headed to her town now, and probably doesn't know how I still feel about her.

From the second time we met, we joked (or knew) it would take seven more years for us to meet again but since then, we had kept in touch. As far as people stay in touch nowadays, true, but still in touch. In the beginning there were letters. I would check the mailbox everyday, and answered her letters on the same day I'd got them. My mom realized was what going on. I guess moms always do. Anyway, this lasted for about six months. After that, occasional e-mails. Then ICQ and occasional e-mails. Nowadays, MSN and rare e-mails. One phone call in between these seven years. I had forgotten her accent.

Our second encounter lasted for about five or six days. I don't know exactly when it hit me but I know it was during our talk next to the barbecue. We talked for hours, totally unaware of what was going on around us. Even though I don't remember what we talked about, it was one my most pleasant conversations of my life.
When the time came to say good-bye, even though there was a lot going around us, there was that moment of silence in which none of us knew what to say or do except stare at each other. Silence slowly started to fade away and we snapped out of the trance we'd gotten in and just hugged ourselves good-bye. I wrote my first letter to her as soon as I got home. I would've started writing it on the bus but I didn't have anything to write on, but I knew exactly what I wanted to say.