I was working as a night auditor at a fancy hotel when I met her. She was a night auditor at a competing hotel and we talked every night. It was part of our job to call the competing hotels and check their numbers. How many guest and how many rooms sold for the night. We talked about our jobs and laughed at some of the stories that we had been part of, the unruly guest, the drunk buffoons who got too drunk to get to their rooms. Savannah was a party city above everything else.

She and I agreed to meet for breakfast one morning, to finally see what she looked like and be in her presence. I waited patiently for my morning staff to come in and then I could ride my bike to the little restaurant on River street where we were served a huge breakfast. She was more beautiful than I could have imagined. I asked her how a woman of such beauty was single and she said she never met a man worth keeping around. I hoped I could change that.

Her name was Andrea and she had golden hair that glowed in the sunlight. We were both night workers and our days were our nights. Time to cut loose and be our selves with each other. I followed her back to her apartment where we made love in her bed. I never meant for it to be so casual, I thought I would need to work harder for it but she was lonely and so was I.

The nights I worked and she was off were my favorite times, she would come to my hotel and we would sneak off to make love in one of the hundred of rooms that filled the hotel. It was a physical relationship and I wanted more. I was slowly falling in love with her. She was falling for me but not for the reasons I wanted her too. I wanted her to see me differently, not just the lover she had on her days off. It was a weird time in my life, I was trying to escape my life and she was looking to start hers over. She said she never intended for us to get so close.

We made love every chance we had and before I knew it I was head over heels in love with her, but she was keeping a secret. She was pregnant from her last boyfriend and didn’t want to have anything to do with him, he was possessive and never wanted her to see anyone else. She broke off their relationship and never told him she was pregnant.

She toyed with the idea of keeping the child but she knew she couldn’t give it the home and life it deserved, so she planned on having an abortion. She cried on my lap as we sat in my apartment on the couch.

“I feel so evil thinking of it but how could I raise a child by myself?” She pondered as we snuggled on my couch. I offered to be there for her regardless of the choices she made. But that wasn’t enough to make her keep the baby, she said she was too young to have the child.

She decided to have the abortion and I drove her there for the procedure and sat in the waiting room while she had the procedure. When she was finished I drove her home to her apartment and sat with her as she cried. I comforted her the best I could but this was a horrible time for her. She told me she always fell for the jerks and she wondered when I was going to start treating her like the other men, but I was not them. I loved her… I loved being with her. I promised never to be the guy she grew to hate, that I would always be there for her.

I had moved to Savannah to clear my head after my divorce and never imagined falling in love with anyone. But she didn’t understand why I loved her like I did. Maybe it was the saint in me that wanted to care for her, maybe I was just so desperate to get away from my past that I found favor in her. Whatever reason I had it wasn’t enough to keep her happy.

After the abortion she became withdrawn and we saw each other less. I hated this and tried to prove to her that my love was real. We talked to each other every night that I worked and she told me that she had decided to go back to Charlotte to her family. I hated this, I wanted her to stay with me.

She told me that she was leaving to go home in a month as soon as she trained the new employee that would be replacing her. I thought maybe I could change her mind.

“You struggle like I do, but at least I have a car. I can drive anywhere in the country and try to find a new start.” She said as I begged for her to stay. But what did I have to offer her? I was broke from paying child support and all my monthly bills. I was an idiot for starting a new relationship before the stench of my marriage was over. I had three kids to care for and every dime I made half went back to my home and my ex-wife.

It was three weeks before she was set to leave and I tried everything I knew to get her to stay. She couldn’t understand why I loved her so much.

“I love you because you matter to me.” I love the talks we shared and I loved making love to her. But that wasn’t enough to keep her. She was set on going home and I began to examine my own life. What did I have to give her? Nothing, I had nothing.

I remember the day she left and I stood there in her driveway watching her leave. I was broken and took to drinking too much. I would stop off at the bar on my way to work and take down more than enough to get me nice and drunk. I rode my bicycle to work and thought about her, she had left her mark on me and I suppose I thought it was payback for cheating on my ex and leaving her. I felt like the gods were angry at me and that I would never truly find love.

She called me when she got home and told me that she would never forget me. She said if things had been different that maybe it could have worked out. But she knew I was recovering from a marriage gone wrong and I needed time to heal from that. But what I needed to heal from was the broken heart she left me. I had a picture of her that I had taken at the hotel, she was sitting in my chair with a big smile on her face. That picture tore at me, I would have done anything to keep her.

She kept up with me for the next few years and I sent her the first book I published. She had read all my short stories when we were dating and now I was a published author living in the islands of the Bahamas and having my own adventures. We emailed each other and she kept tabs on my work. When I moved back home three years later she emailed me and told me she wanted to come to one of my book signings. I would be in Charlotte in a few weeks at a little book store where I could sell my books and sign them for the customers.

I remember seeing her in the audience as I read one of my short stories. Little did she know that I wrote every love story to her. I wanted her to see the real me and she did.

We went out to eat after the book signing and she caught me up on everything that she had been up to. She told me that she had a few boyfriends after me but none of them treated her like I did.

“Did I make a mistake leaving you?” She asked.

“I know you did what you thought was best.” I said.

And she told me that she did what was best for her and that I was just the man she needed at the time, but nobody came close to treating her as well as I did. She said I set the limit of kindness she had experienced. No other man came close and she asked if we could go back to that time. I wanted to but I had moved back home to be with my kids and they were my focus now. It hurt like hell to tell her that chance had gone with the wind. We both had new lives that would never collide. I wanted her but it was the wrong time for me. Just like it had been the wrong time for her when I was begging to be part of her life. I watched her melt a little inside as I told her that there was no future for us.

I was busy working on my newest novel and I was pouring my entire life into it. All my free time was accounted for. That night we found a hotel room together and tried to rekindle the love that I had at one time for her, but it wasn’t the magic she expected. She left me with a broken heart and I left her with her own broken heart.

Its not the story I wanted but it was the reality of life that grabbed me and told me that it would be a mistake to try and get back to the life I had. Savannah was special for both of us and she would never forget the love I offered her. She said it was a once in a lifetime chance for her to have true love. She said she would one day settle for someone who was half the man I was and that just broke my heart even more.

Love comes when you least expect it, never when you want it. She had been in my heart for years and that ended when she and I left the hotel the next morning. I drove back home and she went back to her life. We had one night of magic but it just wasn’t enough to keep her in my heart.

I compared every woman to her until finally she left my mind and I found true love when I least expected it. That love was eternal and it cleansed me of all my memories of the women that came before her. My new love, my eternal.

I haven’t thought about Andrea in years and it was a short story in my book of life, a tale that ended in tragedy and tears.

She emailed me a few years later and showed me a picture of her daughter, she had met a decent man who made her happy, not as happy as she was when she was with me but a decent man. She told me that she had so many regrets but the one that she held onto was me. She said she had never felt love like she did with me. But she was happy and that was all that mattered.

She would always be the one that got away, like Hemingways Old Man and the Sea, I was the fish she had tried to bring back into port. It hurt like hell to hear that. But I was happy with my life and my new wife. Regret had no place in my life. She was the one who got away.

I can’t go to Savannah without thinking of her and how much she meant to me. But when I compared it to my new wife and my new life it paled in comparison.

I suppose love happens many times in your life but it doesn’t always work out the way we plan.

To the one who got away I raise my glass and wish her a happy life.

Copyright 2025 James Heaton All rights reserved