The Long Engagement

Excerpt - Chapter One

When I woke up that Saturday morning in mid August, I had no idea my life was about to change. The late morning sun streamed in through the curtains the same way it always did, and I knew from the sheer intensity of the light that it would be hot and humid outside. I was in no rush to do anything, having slept in considerably, and was just about to make my way downstairs to the kitchen when I heard the trill that let me know there was a message on my Blackberry. I went into the living room and retrieved it from the coffee table, plopping down on the sofa as I brought the little screen to life. It was a Facebook message. I scrolled down to the tiny Facebook icon at the bottom and clicked it. A message popped up:

"Did you attend ACS in the 80's?"

I didn't recognize the sender's name, but I had indeed attended ACS (aka the American College of Switzerland) from 1982 to 1984. I typed an answer.

"Yes, why?"

A few minutes later, another message came. The sender explained that she was the current Alumni Director of ACS and she was on a mission to track down former students in order to get them all to join her new alumni website. She wanted to help everyone reconnect with each other. I hadn't thought about the college in years, but there was one person who still lurked in the shadows of my memory.

"Have you found many people?" I asked. "I have been trying to find someone for a long time."

"Yes, I've tracked down quite a few. Who is it?"

"Garrett Kessler."

Just writing his name after all those years sent a little tingle down my spine.

"I just saw Garrett - he was at the reunion in Monte Carlo in April."

I couldn't believe it. Garrett. And how ironic that the last reunion had been held in Monte Carlo. We had had our school prom there in 1984, and Garrett and I had helped organize it. The two years I had spent at ACS seemed like a fairy tale now. I could barely remember people's names and the places were even a little fuzzy in my mind, too: ski trips to Gstaad and Zermatt, wine tasting weekends in France, driving down to Cannes for school breaks to stay at Garrett's parents' apartment in Montfleury. It seemed like something out of a movie now, not something I had actually done myself, at seventeen. It had been the experience of a lifetime, and I had done it all with Garrett.

I thought back to the last time I had seen him. I had paid him a visit in Germany when I was traveling back to my hometown of Dhahran, Saudi Arabia for Christmas, my junior year of college. That was in 1984. He had picked me up at the airport in Frankfurt. It had been five months since we had last seen each other, and I remembered the first few moments together had been awkward. I had felt shy and nervous as we drove in his little green Volkswagen Golf to the apartment in Bad Vilbel, a small town just outside of Frankfurt. As he showed me through the tiny place, I remembered thinking, Where am I going to sleep? There was hardly any furniture in the apartment, just the one bed and a narrow couch. I vaguely remembered going out to dinner that night, and I thought I remembered getting into an argument. The rest of the visit was lost in the cloud of time that had passed since then.

Nevertheless, I knew that the trip over to see him again had been an attempt to confirm that I had done the right thing in leaving Garrett and transferring to the University of Tennessee to finish my studies. He seemed so grown up there in Germany, so focused and responsible and mature, with his apartment and job. His life seemed to be all planned out. I had felt so young and naïve in contrast. And I believed at the time that my decision had been the right one. I was not ready for that life yet. I wanted to travel and have fun, and I still had no idea what I wanted to do when I graduated.