You Never Know: A True Love Story

On a rainy, damp day in Japan, I strolled into an Internet cafe to check my email. I’d been expecting a message from my girlfriend in Ecuador. Anna was going to send travel information for a rendezvous we planned. You see, when Anna and I graduated college together the previous year we decided to take separate trips abroad, her to study Spanish and me to learn Japanese. We had been together for four years, and when we parted in a North Carolina airport, we promised to meet halfway through our study programs. We settled on me traveling to Ecuador to visit her. So when I went to check my email I was expecting to find details about airports and buses. Instead, this was her message: “Andrew, Don’t come. I have a new boyfriend.”

What! After all the talk about marriage and traveling the world together, she does this? What about the tough times we made it through, when we both feared it was over? Did she forget about the nights we spent together in my tiny apartment barely big enough for a bed? Did our long soft dreamlike conversations mean anything? Now this? Could she really end it like this, with two sentences? I was stunned. All I could reply was “OK.”

Dazed, I ended my email session without reading any other messages. I walked past the people typing away, no doubt to their girlfriends and boyfriends, I thought. Head down and still in shock, I stepped out of the doorway and into the street, when suddenly…BAM! It was only later that I remembered hearing the bicycle’s bell ringing. Lying on the wet ground with a bicycle on top of me I thought “what a day.” Then, as if scripted in a Hollywood love story, a beautiful Japanese girl leaned over and asked, in English, “are you alright?” (It really happened.) I didn’t know if it was the bad news, the collision or the girl, but I was speechless. Again, “are you OK?” she asked. This time I knew it was the girl.

Yoko was rushing to the train station to get home after a day at her job as an English/Japanese translator when I blindly stepped in her path. Trying to regain my composure, I offered to buy her a cup of coffee while she waited for the next train-as an apology of course. At first she declined but then a moment later said yes. Later Yoko told me she only agreed because I looked like a “sad wet kitten.” Well, we spent two hours talking and she missed three more trains. Finally, after we exchanged phone numbers, she caught the last train home.

About a year later, back in North Carolina, I bumped into Anna. She said she was sorry but “that’s just how it is.” All I could do was say “thank you” and introduce her to Yoko, my fiance.