Ashe didn't talk. Well, he did, if you could call saying a sentence that had less than ten words in it every five minutes talking. His face was shadowed because I was facing the late June brightness coming through the open sliding door and the back living room is always a little dark.

We met six weeks earlier in the Star Wars Cantina on WBS, a web-based chat room that no longer exists. It had been early May of 1996. At first I had been interested, but I had also been very involved with someone from South Dakota. South Dakota was over now; he had left the net and left me cold like a brief, intensely frosty winter. I didn't think I'd ever get the chill out of my soul. There had been others who had attempted to make a play for me, to help thaw me out, but nothing "tripped my trigger" as a friend of mine used to say. I began to thaw when the messages came from this breath of fresh air sitting on my sofa, a breath of fresh air that seemed unable to hold a conversation now that we were finally face-to-face. I knew he was capable; we had long conversations online all the time.

"Why are you so nervous?" I asked for what seemed the twelfth time.

"Because I'm a young man coming to an older woman." He explained, his voice quiet, sounding with a hint of a British accent and a small tremble.

"And you don't want to "blow it"." I stated. He nodded in reply. This was the third time we had been round with that exchange.

Twenty years. What was I doing? Twenty years! I was nineteen years old and just taking my first steps into the world of living on my own when he was born. . I remember the funeral for John F. Kennedy being on TV all day. He didn't even remember the first release of Star Wars in the movie theatres, not to mention seeing it on its first release. I saw men walk on the moon when it happened. He has only seen it from tapes or read about it in history class. When I was ten years old his parents weren't even married yet.

This was my own fault. As far back as I can remember it seemed I was searching for this one person. This person would fit with me like hand and glove in my Special Space, my secret heart-of-hearts reserved for the perfect love of my life. I always thought I would find a specific person. I always knew I'd have this passionate romantic "without you I'd die" relationship. I had started looking as early as pre-school. Some came close, but in the end no one was that perfect match, no matter how hard I had tried to make it work. If I didn't have this Special Space I felt driven to fill, I wouldn't be sitting on my sofa with a nervous man twenty years my junior wondering why my sanity had zigged when the rest of me had zagged! Why had I let him come over?

Oh, yeah. My roommate told me I should. Too bad she made sense at the time. He had been asking me for four days what my address and phone number were. He had a ride out here; he wanted to come see me. This wasn't how Net Romances were supposed to go! First you exchange messages in chat. Second, you trade pictures. If no one runs screaming at the look of the other, then you exchange phone numbers and call each other and talk for hours running up your phone bill to the size of the budget for the space program. I had said no at all turns but he wasn't giving up. He had just asked me a fourth time as my roommate passed by my computer on her way to the kitchen.

"The kid wants to meet me!" I said in exasperation.

"Then let him," she replied calmly.

"Huh?" I replied, an unintelligent look on my face, "Why?"

"Because you won't be what he is expecting to see, and you'll probably see a kid," she reasoned. Seeing the disappointed look that statement got from me, she added, "So the romance may go away. You'll still have a good friend."

True, dang it! So now I have this guy sitting on my sofa who is really cute and really nervous and a really good kisser. He has these full, soft lips that … ACK! WHAT was I THINKING?

Did I mention he kissed me? He kissed me when we said our first hellos by the gate. I went to give him a hug and a kiss on the cheek as a friendly gesture to put him at ease and he turned his head. Instead of his cheek, I felt his wonderful soft and full lips kiss me back. This was in front of his ride that turned out to be his older sister. I remember thinking this was going to be an interesting afternoon. I also noted he had the perfect, most kissable lips I had ever met.

That had been three hours ago. He hadn't said much of anything since then. Well, he did call me beautiful, which was certainly something. He even seemed sincere. I looked around the living room. I'm not an anal housekeeper, but I had picked up and swept the floor this morning. I had had butterflies in my stomach, the first I could remember having in all of my adult life.

"How's your knee?" I asked, trying yet again to start a conversation.

"Mmmm…it hurts." He replied.

"Which hurts it more," I asked out of true curiosity, "lifting the refrigerator when you moved or showing the youth theatre class how to do stage falls? Probably the falls, I would think."

"Actually," he said suddenly dropping a bit of his nervousness, "the refrigerator was worse because there wasn't one of those thingies … you know, the thing on the back that goes up and down?" He motioned with his hand.

"You mean a lift?" I smiled, raising my eyebrow archly.

"That's it." He smiled, his brown eyes lighting up as he grinned a little, "I can never remember what they are called. The truck my father got for us when we moved didn't have a lift, so it was me and my friend Nightblade - you met him that one time online - and we had to lift it up ourselves."

"Sounds painful," I replied with a grimace, "but why wouldn't the fall effect your knee?"

"Well," he began with a stronger voice than he had possessed a moment ago, "if you know the mechanics of a stage fall, it's easy to see that the knees aren't involved at all."

He stood, animation in his face, his posture straighter than before. He gestured with his hands up near his shoulders.

"The idea is to fall, but catch yourself. You don't actually hit the stage hard if you do it right. You use your hands to make a loud noise so that it sounds like you really hit the floor."

He continued to show the different stances, explaining how each fall is done, talking about how he practiced them till he did them anywhere now. He explained all about stage falls for a couple of minutes.

I know I heard him. I know he said some things and that I added to the conversation. I cannot recall any part of that few moments now. I cannot remember it because something wonderful had just happened. What felt like a bolt of lightning had gone straight through me, from the top of my head to the tips of my painted toes. It illuminated inside me, inside my heart, my soul, my Special Place that I had held open for that Special Someone I hoped to find one day. The Special Place that I had thought had been filled several times before, most recently by South Dakota, and had, sadly, never found that "perfect fit". I had craved that "perfect fit" from the time I was a child. There, in that small special space where no one had ever truly fit just right was this young man. I could feel him, "looking" back out at me as I looked in during that lightning flash.

He finished his explanation and I mumbled some sound of understanding. I couldn't help gazing at him. He sat down and gazed back, a new light and confidence in his amber-brown eyes.

Soon his sister arrived, and she and I became acquainted. We liked each other instantly. The three of us sat talking for hours, not really wanting it to end. Before any of us realized it the time was nine o'clock and it was time for them to leave.

As I walked them out to the driveway, his sister graciously got into the car, giving us a moment to ourselves. Ashe stood close to me, smiling down with a light in his lovely eyes.

"So, what do you think?" he said.

"I think I'd like it." I replied, noticing he dimpled when he smiled.

"I'll be home in an hour. I'll be in the Cantina as soon as I can."

Then he kissed me. He was finally at ease. And I had finally found my match.

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