That first sunny day in the lake Tahoe mountains it was enough just to bask in his presence, to lope behind him like a golden retriever, beaming. 

The ground was covered in a thin blanket of snow but he hiked in shorts and sandals, an orange and black Maasai bracelet dangling from his wrist. 

His eyes sparkled and seemed to change with the wind from gray, to green, to cornflower blue. Later he would refer to them as his hazel eyes, which to him meant changeable. 

When I mentioned that hazel was really more of a brown he shot me a contemptuous glare and laughed under his breath. 

I decided then, for the first time, that sometimes with this man it was better to be quiet, to let him believe he was right. Even when he lost in the smallest of ways something inside of him died. 

In the beginning we had fun, for the most part. We would giggle and drink bottles of almond tequila and stay up until four in the morning giving each other massages with syrupy oils. 

My main issue at this point was the fact that he was still in love with his ex girlfriend--I wanted, no I needed, to win him over. It was a game we played for nearly a year.  

He loves me, he loves me not.  

In an effort to feign understanding, I lent a sympathetic ear to his endless tales of  heartbreak. Her naked-in-Hawaii images still littered the bottom of his sock drawer like tarnished icons. She still carried his bleeding heart in her pocket like a pet rock even though she was newly engaged to one of his best clients. 

"Maybe she'll come back," I'd say, stirring the ice cubes in my maragarita.

"Maybe," he'd reply, staring straight ahead in the darkness with a reptilian look in his eyes. 

Later he'd light vanilla candles and roll on top of me. We'd slip and slide and sweat and make promises that we'd never be able to keep. When I'd look up at him to meet his gaze in the cool blue shades of midnight, his eyes would be tightly shut, lifeless. 

It was still too early then to know how destiny would unfold for us. It was too soon to know that with him there would always be trouble, and I would follow the trouble as if he were Jim Jones offering me the Kool Aid.

Picture this: 

We are riding around the backroads of Mexico in a dusty truck with two men that we don't know.  I am drunk and silly and brown in my flowered sundress wandering around aimlessly looking for a place to pee. A stray dogs nips at my ankles. After what must have been an extended absence, he walks after me, grabs my arm and says: 

"I'm not here to babysit, Eden. Get back in the truck."

His new best friends, two dust covered amigos, snicker as they slug shots of Cuervo Gold from the bottle. They make me nervous but we are on a lonely back road in the middle of nowhere and they are my only way home.

This makes me angry.   

Later, infused with rage, I leave our $25 hotel to go for a walk.  I end up falling asleep drunk, and alone on the dirty Rosarita beach. I curl into myself like a potato bug and wait in the darkness for him to rescue me.  

It's a stupid move but I don't care.

Several hours pass yet he never comes to find me. I lay shivering and silent on the beach watching the sky turn from light blue, to azure then finally black. There was no moon that night, the darkness was complete. 

Eventually I skulked back to the safety of our deck, wrapped myself in the hotel bedspread, and attempted to fall asleep on the dilapidated plastic lawn chair as I listened to him snoring in the room. 

I wanted him to wake in a fit of terror, to search for me frantically, to promise never to take me for granted again. I wanted him to think me drowned or murdered or captured by pirates. 

I wanted anything but his indifference. 

He did none of this. He lay there sleeping comfortably, like a rock, smelling faintly or stale tequila and smoke. He was completely unaware of my extended and potentially life threatening absence. 

His indifference enraged me, but I was tired. 

When I finally shoved his sleeping shoulders still standing there naked and pathetic and wrapped in the hotel bedspread, he opened his eyes and whispered "Baby, what are you doing? Come over here and warm me up."

He smiled and somehow my anger faded. I crawled under the covers and wrapped myself around his hot body like a piece of licorice. 

I was strong but in the end he always wore me down.

As he fell promptly back to sleep I thought: 

If he were a card in the deck he'd be the joker. If he were a character in a book he'd be the Pied Piper. If he were a Christmas present he'd be adorned in shiny wrapping only to distract from the lump of coal that lay inside the box.

Still, I willingly offered my young heart up in sacrifice - served it right up on a silver platter, because at that time the darkness was more inviting than the light.

 ~~~~For those of you who have wondered and expressed concern I am no longer with this  man.  This story took place 15 years ago~~~~~~