As I said before, I had given Bill the URL of my homepage at the end of our very first talk, so I could get his email addy. Well, as he told me weeks later, he went to my homepage, but unfortunately, the guest book server was down at that point, so he could not sign it. But some days later, I found a message in there from a girl who said she was Bill's sister, and that he had given her the URL. So I knew that he at least had not forgotten me after our first chat. We did not meet that often in the very beginning, as - we found that out later - we were usually online at different times. I had seen him online once during the following week, but was very involved in a talk with a friend then, so I did not change rooms, and when I finally did, he was gone.

Well, the following Saturday, he was not there when I went online, but his sister was, so I went to her room and talked to her. She said that he was just there at their house. I could not resist to ask her to tell him I said hi. She said to him "Bine says hi" and he just said "Oh, tell her I said hi too". I wondered if he still remembered me, so I asked her to tell him that I was the girl from Germany he had met under the handle "Little Redhead" one week ago - which worked pretty well, he made his sister give him the computer for a few writes. Which gave us the chance to a time for meeting later when he was back home. Which we did. He still was a Cadet, but hoped to be promoted the next day. Needless to say that I enjoyed our talk very much again.

As he had said that he would be promoted the next day, I decided to go online then and leave him a lobby message with my email address - as an Agent, he should be able to get lobby messages. Well, I never left him that message, as he came online at the same moment I did, so we could talk. I gave him my email addy in a private message. Which was even better. This was during the day, and it is very expensive for me to be online, so we set a time to meet later, when the phone fees would be lower for me. We talked for quite some time again then.

During the following week, we talked from time to time, but not too long, as we did not have that much time. Our next long talk was at the weekend, and on Sunday, Bill told me that he would work nightshift that night, so he would be home earlier on Monday. This meant that the computer room of the university would still be open when we wanted to meet, and that meant chatting for free for me. At the very time when we wanted to set a date, CP went down, and we could not get on again, but we set a time by email. We met at 6 pm my time the next day. So far, I had not told anyone about meeting him, but I decided it was about time he met some of my friends, so I wrote some emails, and they came promptly to talk with us. That was when the teasing started. I had not thought about any feelings for him so far, I just knew that he was a nice guy and that I liked talking to him. Anyhow, my friends started asking me about my "new man" and so on. I honestly did not feel like getting involved with someone at that point, I guess this is why I always pretended (to my friends, but also to myself) that is was nothing more but friendship what I felt then. But well.. *s* Life has wonderful ways. The teasing of my friends got me thinking a little bit.

That day, while we were talking, Bill's computer went down several times, but he got back every time, and we set a date to meet next day at midnight. I met another friend in Chatphiles at 9:30 my time, and he said he would talk to me till Bill was there. Well, it got midnight, it got half past midnight, it got 1 am and Bill did not show up. My friend could not stay any longer, so we said goodbye. I decided to wait another half an hour, checking the Who's on list all the time. Bill did not show up. Just when I was about to leave, his sister came online. I went to her room and asked her if she had heard from Bill. She said "yeah, mom just told me that Bill called. He wanted me to look for you to tell you that his computer is down, and he can't get on. He tried to call you, but he could not get through".

I asked "He tried to call me?". I could not believe it. This guy whom I had met not even three weeks before that tried to call me all the way from America to Germany? I had no idea where he had gotten my number - I knew I had given him my address, but never my phone number, as I never would have thought that he would want to call me.

Anyhow, I told his sister that it was no wonder that he could not get through as I had been online all the time, and asked her to call him again to tell him that I would go offline now and he could go ahead. Which she did. Five minutes later the phone was ringing, and it was him. The nervous feeling in the very beginning was gone pretty fast, and we talked and talked. It was very hard to break it off after one hour, but well…. Talking for one hour was expensive enough.

When I had hang up, I was feeling pretty antsy. My roomies had been out on a party, they came home shortly afterwards and saw me running through the apartment with that silly grin on my face. I still was in disbelieve that he really had called. All I could think was "Wow, there is a man who really cares, who calls you all the way from America to tell you that his comp is down". I mean, it would have been so easy just to ask his sister to tell me that his comp was down. But he obviously wanted to talk to me as much as I wanted to talk to him.

The next day, Bill had his computer back up and running, so we could talk over the web again… On Thursday, we knew that we would not be able to talk on Friday and Saturday night as I was working in hospital at that time, and that nightshift, and it would be my turn that weekend. So we did not want to leave at all then. Well, we ended up talking for five hours, from midnight my time when Bill came home from work, to 5 am my time when I had to leave because the phone got more expensive then. We did not talk directly about feelings, but Bill made these hints all the time… That he thought about me all the time, that he had loved to hear my voice and talking on the phone, that he would like to come to Germany to meet me as soon as possible, etc. Well, in the end I could not stand this any longer and just burst out by simply saying "I love you, you know that?"

I was pretty sure that he felt the same, but not entirely, so I was anxious to get his response. When he finally told me that he loved me too, I felt happier than I had ever felt before. And well... Ever since that day (December 19th, 1997), there has been next to no day that we did not meet online. And though it is hard at times, it is definitely worth it.