Written for my gf for our 3rd anniversary.

This is a work of fiction.

Have I ever told you about the day I met the most important person in my life?

She’s kind and beautiful and most of all. She’s unlike any other person I have ever met before.

It was a rainy summer day and I was going home from work when I saw this black haired woman getting soaked in the rain. She was waiting for the bus like me, but I had never seen her standing there before. I was usually the only one who got out of the studio at this hour.

My shift ends at 6 PM every evening, while other people usually work in stores till 7 or 8 PM. There’s usually no one taking the early bus home. The bus stop I get on doesn’t have any roof, not even a bench to sit on. You just have to stand there and wait for the bus. If you’re lucky you don’t have to wait more than 10 minutes. If you’re not so lucky. Like I was that day. I had just missed my bus and had to wait 40 minutes for the next.

The studio I work at is in the middle of nowhere, really. It’s in a small town with little means of public transport. If you don’t have a car, you’re pretty much busted.

The woman was wearing a black hoodie which didn’t give much protection from the rain. I knew how the weather could be here during summer. I always took an umbrella with me.

I went up to her and said, a smile on my face, “Don’t get soaked in the rain like that!” I held my umbrella so that we both were sheltered from the summer downpour.

The woman smiled back at me and removed her hoodie. “Thank you,” she said.

Her hair was shoulder long and full and she was wearing pretty make-up that was similar to what I was wearing that day. Black liner, mascara and a dark blue eye shadow.

“You just missed the bus,” the black haired woman told me. “It went by just as I arrived here a few minutes ago. It’s too bad, now we have to wait here for half an hour. I hope the rain dies down at least.”

I laughed, “Well I wouldn’t count on the rain dying down. It doesn’t stop for hours once it started here.” I looked at her closer and said, “I like your hair and makeup.”

I compliment people. I always do. I don’t even know why that is. Maybe because of my job, but I can’t help it.

“Thanks,” the woman kept smiling at me. Then she pointed at my camera bag and asked, “You’re a photographer?”

“Yes. What do you do?”

“How funny! I’m a model!”

“Well it’s hard to miss. You have the looks,” I said. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Trish,” she answered. “You?”

“My name’s Leila.”

“Pleased to meet you, Leila,” Trish said.

“Pleased to meet you too, Trish!”

The bus stop was located near a field and there was nothing to see but crops and the highway running straight to our right and left for miles. There were cars passing and we started commenting on them. Every time Trish saw a car she liked she went, “I’d love to have one like that!!”

As an old run down truck passed I exclaimed, “Oh my god! I’d love to have that!!”

“Me too!!”

I turned to her in shock, “What?!”

We both laughed. We had the same sense of humor on the most part.

She was funny and the moment we had met it felt like we had known each other all our lives. I couldn’t have asked for a better friend and girlfriend, as she later turned out to be as gay as I was. The only difference, that she knew that I was gay before I did. But at that time. She was the friend I had met at the bus station on my way home.

We ended up going home together every single day. I had invited her to my studio to take pictures of her and in return she took me out to dinner.

My first anniversary gift to her was a picture of me with the umbrella I had offered her to stand under the day we met. Hers was a drawn picture of a girl sitting in a room playing the piano.

We kept giving each other something little every year to remind us of the day we met. A year after our first anniversary, we became girlfriends and 3 years after that we married and went on vacations together. Years after that we finally found a nice house to live in and every evening when we come home to each other, I feel happier than I could ever be, knowing that the day I met the woman with her hoodie standing in the rain, was the day I met who I am living for.