This is pretty chaste. No sex or anything, sorry if that's boring. Let me know what you think, if you think anything about it…
I was 24 before I ever felt love. That's older than most. But some go their whole lives without it, so I won't complain. We were in grad school together, each pursuing a master's in the arts. That's another way of saying we had no idea what we were doing with our lives.
We met day 1 of first semester, I saw her walking down the stairs toward the auditorium where class was to be held and I felt something immediately. Love at first sight you'd call it now. Back then I just called it intense interest. I was sitting on the end of a bench in the hallway outside the classroom. The previous class was still using the room and we had to wait. She sat on the other end of the bench and a guy eating a bagel sat between us. He was loud, the bagel eater, and I sort of glanced sideways at him to make sure he was actually chewing it and not eating like a hungry coyote. I noticed she was doing the same thing and we sort of smiled at each other through the man's profile, her grin was toothy and genuine, mine was shy and nervous. The guy got up and wandered over to the food cart around the corner, he must have forgotten something.
I immediately slid my bag and myself into his place so she wouldn't have to sit next to him any more, even though I still would.
That act of courage on my part was all it took. We began speaking and sat net to each other that day and every day of class the rest of the semester.
We talked constantly. In class we'd use our computers to chat with one another, after class we'd get a coffee or a sandwich or something.
The facts, as I knew them: She was from Cleveland, several hours away, and in the opposite direction from where I was from. Back in Cleveland she worked as a bank teller and hated it, deciding to go back to school only a year after finishing her undergrad degree. She had fantastic taste in music, movies, fashion, and art. She didn't smile frequently or easily, she laughed even less easily. Making her do either felt like an accomplishment. She had blond hair, shoulder length, and complemented it with lots of blues and greens in her wardrobe. She was beautiful. She was my first love. She was married already.
I discovered this early. I was feeling things for her every day. When we we together I was happy, when we were apart I was thinking of her constantly. She was like the tint in a pair of sunglasses, no matter where I looked I could see the world filtered through her. The day I decided to ask her out for a real date I finally saw it on her hand. She didn't wear her ring before. Later I learned the band had cracked and she was having it repaired back home and had it sent back to her. It had taken a few weeks and she went without it. I had heard her husband's name a few times. To her, she must have assumed I understood who he was, I either didn't understand or chose not to understand who he was. My worst case scenario was that he was some boyfriend from Ohio that she was sad to leave behind, but that he wasn't serious. It didn't occur to me that she was married until the ring appeared.
We had classes together the second semester as well. Our friendship grew as we became closer and closer. She confided in me things that would normally require years of friendship to feel comfortable saying. I did the same for her. It became harder to reconcile the feelings of love with the crippling sense of having lost before the game ever began. She married at 20 years old, during college. Their families were religious and they insisted. I try not to judge, but a bride who can't even legally drink champagne at her wedding? That's a damn shame. I didn't know her then, I didn't have a chance.
I tried to distance myself to make it hurt less as the second semester wore on. She noticed and asked if I was alright. I lied and said it was just schoolwork, or that I was wondering if I was wasting my time and money even being here. We were still close as the summer approached but during the summer our communications trickled to a halt.
She didn't come back in the fall. I sent her an email asking why. She said that she had transferred to another school to be closer to her husband. He didn't want a second full year of being so far apart.
I didn't hear from her again until December. About a week before Christmas, I got a text from her. It was a picture of a foot. Her foot, I imagined. No explanation was given and I didn't respond right away, confused and unsure of how to respond. The next day another picture came. It was the right side of her neck. I knew it was her this time. The hair, the skin, that small freckle below her ear. I would never forget it. I was still confused but excited to hear from her, even cryptically. I didn't respond again, for I didn't know what to say.
Day 3 came and the picture was of her left thigh. The skin was smooth and creamy white, the way I had always imagined it was. The edge of the photo suggested that she had on some sort of pajama short but had pushed them up high to show her full thigh. A hint of the lime green fabric remained in view, though.
Every day around 10 PM a new picture came through. Left knee. Eyes and forehead. Red lips. Small of the back. Only pictures, never any description.
On New Year's Eve a picture came through of her right hip. The strap of fabric of her underwear was visible, wrapping from her front to the back, holding her the way I wanted to. This time the next picture came immediately. Her left hip. The same imagine, give or take, reversed. From the opposite angle I could see that she was in her bathroom, the first insight into her home I'd ever had. The next day I received the front view, her underwear was navy blue with a white stripe across the top. It was conservative and gave no impression of what was beneath, but her legs tilted in on one another slightly, a nervous pose, perhaps trying to minimize my imagination of what was covered.
The final photos were similarly arousing. Of course she had yet to show me her chest or her ass. I began to compulsively check my phone around 10 PM in these days, waiting for the latest installment.
The final piece of her to be revealed was her chest. Cradled in a white bra, I saw more skin than I ever had before. Her small but hearty B cups filling the fabric and squishing together just that little bit.
I collected all the photos and printed them out. I didn't know why then. It may have been fear of losing them to digital error. But as I scattered them across the floor I arranged them into a shape. Hand, wrist, elbow, shoulder. Arms became whole as I overlapped the images correctly to form her body. Legs grew from the bottom and came together. I couldn't use some of the photos, the ones of her backside, so I arranged them into a separate mosaic. Her whole body formed together, I saw her, lying on the ground before me, the woman I loved. My first love. Perhaps my only love. The images were from different days, different moments but they were all her. I recognized her instantly.
She had allowed me to build her, to have her nearby because we weren't going to see each other again. It left the hollow feeling inside me less cavernous. It wasn't the same, and it was a painful reminder of our distance, but seeing her was worth the pain.
We never did see each other again. Not yet, anyway. The texts stopped as soon as she finished photographing herself. I never responded to them. What could I say? I haven't found another love. I also haven't looked at the completed puzzle of my last love again. She sits, stacked neatly, inside a file cabinet in my closet, a reminder to me, and to everyone else, that love is real.
Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/2v8bxe/the_puzzle_piece_girl