story of Rye part 2

Part 2

When we came back from the mountain, we had two weeks left. In that time I met Rye’s family, aunts uncles, nephews and nieces. I was introduced to her friends, started learning more and more about her, and her history. I learned about Tim, her mentored and confidant through her teen years, an old American man who was a Vietnam vet, and now traveled the world teaching English. He was a published writer and sounded like an amazing person, a spiritual and accomplished man.
And in that time, out physical relationship felt like it was being rocket propelled. We would take every free moment to sneak a kiss, or hold hands behind Rye’s parents backs. And in longer periods of freedom we would indulge our passions as far as we dared. Experiencing everything we’d never done before. Our hearts and minds were opening so fast to each other, and out clothes seemed to only hinder the progress. Though we didn’t make love at the time. We were both virgins, both unsure.
As this was going on though, I was becoming sure of something. There was no way I could go back to school now. My heart was calling so strongly for Rye, I had no choice. And at the end of my 2 week visit. When I went back to Jinan. I began the process of moving out and packing my bags to move to Sichuan permanently. It took about 2 weeks back in Jinan to get my things together. To move out of what had been my home of 4 months. I threw away everything I couldn’t give away. I opened my door and let anyone that wanted to come and take anything they wanted from the pile of things on my desk. I kept a few things that I had bought there, and mailed them back home to the US. But my guitar, my Chinese chess set, books, water cooler, everything that I wouldn’t need was discarded. And when it was all done. I had only my bags filled with clothes, and a few books.
This whole time I talked with Rye every day, on the phone, on the internet, any time I was free I was talking with her. She told me about how she was planning to go to Holland, but she had learned about a new program called Au Pair America. A program where she could travel to America and work as an au pair for a year. This was something she had started looking into before she had met me. This would be the makings of our plan. This was what we hoped would lead us to hold on to each other, she could come to America and we could be together. I never expected it to be the sword through my heart that it would later become.

Finally when I had everything worked out I boarded my plane and headed for Sichuan once again. It was just one of the eventual 14 plains I would fly on through this year long adventure, but I think this one is when I was the happiest. I was so excited to be with the person that after only 2 weeks together, I already knew I loved. When She met me at the airport, I still didn’t know where I would sleep that night, I didn’t know if I would live near her, I didn’t know anything. But when I saw her I was so happy, my heart felt so at ease with her. We hailed a cab together and went towards her house.

I ended up living a few floors above one of her best friends. There was a food market, and the bus terminal near by, it was an hour or two bus ride to where Rye was but I had no other plans so it wasn’t so bad. In the beginning Rye came over almost every other day, taking the long bus ride to see me. It was only days after I arrived that we did finally make love. And from that, a dam broke, and it was all we could do. We would spend every waking moment together in bed. We laughed, kissed, told stories. We would engage in epic tickle wars that would reduce us both to uncontrolled laughter, and lay next to each other so tiered that we would fall asleep still breathing heavily.
There was no feeling in the world like being in her arms, it was the warmest feeling of “home” I could ever describe. And I could fall asleep in an instant if we were tangled up with each others limbs.

When we made love, I have to explain something. Though it was out first time, and we were awkward at first, flopping around you might say, as rookies in a new sport. Her eyes were key, because as passion would overcome us and caution would disappear, her eyes would lock with mine, and as the act took place, the intensity of those eyes, there was meaning there that could break your mind to try and understand. In simplest terms her eyes said to me that she would follow me anywhere. That she would give everything she had to me. That she would follow me into hell because she trusted me. And as we moved together I did everything in my power to live up to that promise, each kiss, caress, each whisper of love and devotion, everything I did I did to be worthy of the message she gave me with those eyes.

After a month things began to change, as they have to, relationships don’t stay the same they evolve. And for us the change came when I suddenly had to go to Hong Kong, for a new visa. I was gone for a week and when I cam back, I needed a place to stay again. We decided though before we found a place for me to stay, we should go on a trip together
After my trip to Hong Kong (another long, and horrifying tale) I found that I had to go back to jinan to withdraw my money from my bank account at the Bank of China there. So we decided to go on a trip to the near by city of Qing Dao, a beach town with plenty of tourism, most famous for Tsing Dao beer, which is shipped all over the world, including here in the US. On the way back we would swing through Jinan and get my money.
The trip was fine, but along the way for the first time we started to fight. Little arguments that would cause major problems. And much of the trip was spent rather darkly. In this time of restructuring, I feel like we were just learning how things were going to work together. We began to figure out how to deal with our problems together. But the fighting didn’t end soon.
I began to think that our relationship was simply at it’s end, that we had hit the natural end to what was an incredibly powerfully burning love. But of course that’s not what happened, after about a month of on and off fighting. We finally came to a place of peace, I can’t explain quite what happened. I just remember at some point. She came over to my hotel. She sat in my room with me, and we talked, we talked for a long time about us, about what we wanted, and by the end we were both crying quite a lot. And with tears rolling down our faces. We both agreed that we needed each other. That night we held each other for hours. And kept telling each other how much we were in love. And this new feeling washed over me. Not the same as the feverish love I had felt, this was matured, it was stronger, but more subtle. And again my heart filled, ever more full and more beautifuly than it had been filled before, with this new, and even more amazing feeling of pure love. That was the beginning of me wondering how much I didn’t know at all. I wondered what this love would feel like in a year, in a decade.

After this time, we began to talk much more about the future, something we hadn’t really discussed. We talked about getting married, about traveling all over the world together. We would go to Australia, Holland, new Zealand, Tib6et. We would go everywhere together and never stop. It was a dream that we just knew would come true. It almost seemed impossible that it wouldn’t. And as it had happened so many times in her presence up till now, I had never been so happy in all my life.