Eleven.

That's her name.

My heart is at peace right now.

I'm not one of those guys who brags about everything he's done with a girl. Guys like that are assholes, but I want to blog about our first meeting.

Sorry El, I will NOT be blogging about our relationship, but I need to get this out there because I want others to know that when you find that someone. You will KNOW.

When I heard the knock on the door I thought my legs would give out. I was nervous and desperate and most of all, terrified. I was a mess. I was sure I was going to pass out.

It took me eons to walk to the door, and when I opened it… time stopped.

I will remember that moment forever.

She stood there in a blue floral print dress that went to her knees, a bag over her shoulder, a suitcase beside her. Her head was lowered a bit but she looked up at me and smiled through her eyelashes.

OMG. She wasn't just pretty. She was… REALLY pretty.

I could see her starting to sway. I went over to her quickly and put my hands on her hips to steady her. I put my forehead against hers. Her arms went around my neck.

I swear at the EXACT same time we both said, "You found me."

I'd like to say that I didn't start crying. My life has been good, I haven't had a lot of reasons to cry, not since I was 10 or 12 anyway. The emotion I felt can't really be described in words. If you've ever been in love with someone, the first time you realized it… well… THAT'S the way I felt. Giddy. Happy. Relieved. Wanted. Loved. All that and a thousand more synonyms.

I didn't even say "Hi", or "I Love you." It wasn't enough, but I was ok with what I did mumble through.

"My heart is yours Eleven… if you want it."

I heard a big sigh. "I do… and I will never let it go, I will never let you go. I will always be true, I promise. You didn't know it, but you've always had my heart.. I am totally yours Mike. Totally."

"For fuck's sake Mike, bring your girlfriend in out of the rain."

I cleared my throat and said to El, "Um, Eleven? I'd like you to meet my potty mouth little sister Holly. She's 15 but has the mouth of a 40 year old trucker.

I moved aside to let El in first.

"Mrs. Ives?"

My sister was looking at El and the shock on my face must have been really obvious.

"Mrs.?" I managed to croak out. I'll admit my heart sank. Not only did my sister already know who she was, but she knew her as a Mrs.

I got a reassuring smile from El. "It's an alias Mike… I use it so I'm not… bothered in class."

"Class?"

"Mrs. Ives is my programming teacher. At Hawkins High."

It was El's turn to look shocked. "YOU are THAT Mike Wheeler?"

"Uh…." My response was brilliant.

"Uh, am I famous?"

Here is where the English language fails. El smiled at me. Those are four simple words. But El's smile conveyed love, admiration (however undeserved), and love. Did I mention that already? I hadn't even mentioned that I loved her yet. I know I wrote that in an earlier blog, but my heart and mind were leap frogging each other.

"You wrote 'Zinc' AND you released the code… back when nobody was doing that."

"What's so special about that program?" My sister said.

El talked to her like a teacher would explain to a student. "Zinc was a TSR program written in C."

"In C?" Holly said.

"In C. Remember I had you write TSR's in assembly, which is relatively easy to do, but your brother wrote an entire TSR editor in C. At the time I didn't think it could be done. I have ALWAYS wanted to meet the programmer who wrote that. But he wrote other things too. He wrote one of the first blogging apps I've ever used, TKBlog. He wrote it in TCL/Tk which nobody uses. He wrote Galactic Empire Builder, which was a Palmpilot port of a Commodore 64 game originally written in BASIC. "

At that point El laughed. "Your brother is kind of my programming hero."

Holly rolled her eyes. "I'm outta here, you guys can snog all night… or whatever."

She left El and I standing there looking at each other.

At first we didn't have anything to say to each other. I think we were both just in the moment.

I told her that I already blogged that the first thing I would say to her was ' I love you'. But it seemed completely inadequate now.

"Did you feel it? On the bus?" She said.

"Yeah…"

"That's not love Mike." She had a very shy demeanor which was throwing me off a little bit. You wouldn't expect a teacher to be anything but a type A.

"It's not?" I was confused… and feeling a little unsure of myself.

"No. We are soulmates. That's what I'm feeling." I nodded. That was the last thing she said to me for a few minutes. I thought I'd said something wrong. Or didn't say enough. I didn't know. I sort of ran off at the mouth.

"Yeah. Soulmate. I think that's the word I've been looking for. Fair warning Eleven… uh… can I call you El? For short?"

She smiled. It would be ok.

"Obviously. I've never had a soulmate. Um. I've never had a girlfriend… so I've never kissed a girl before."

At that she came over to me. And we kissed. Simple kiss. No tonsil hockey. I'm sure that would come later :)

Is it cliche to say that her lips were soft? Well, they were. I just hope she enjoyed it as much as I did.

It was my first kiss. Yup. I'm 25 years old, and that was the first time I had ever kissed a girl. I don't feel bad though. As a matter of fact I was in very good company. I told her it was my first kiss, she blushed and her nod let me know it was hers too.

I have always wanted a pretty, shy girl for a girlfriend.

I mean she was very shy. She kept her eyes down a lot of the time. She was maybe even a little hunched over as if she was trying to be… I don't know… NOT noticed. Like she didn't know how pretty she was.

I bought her suitcase inside and sat it just inside the door. She looked at it briefly and then at me.

"You are staying with me tonight."

She blushed and smiled, and nodded.

"Let's get this work contract talk out of the way first, ok?"

"I complained about someone fixing my code." She said not quite looking at me. "I was coming over here to rip you a new one."

Yeah. She said that. This really shy girl. Obviously she's proud and defensive of her coding skills.

"Fixing? No… I'm not really fixing your code, you are writing it in C++ right?"

"You are asking like you weren't quite sure? How can you fix my code if you don't even know the language?"

"I recognize the assembly output of a commercial compiler. Your code is fine, it's the output of the compiler… I uh, hand optimize it, it's not the same thing as fixing it. Compilers even with optimization switches for size and speed are not as good as hand optimization. Computers are plenty fast enough nowadays so, I'm guessing they are embedding this into small electronics. Um… I hate to break it to you but you know the code is being weaponized don't you?"

She nodded again. "I can't build in a back door, it's too obvious in a mid level language."

I tried to give her a sly smile, "But not so obvious in hand optimized assembly."

"You are playing a dangerous game Mike."

"I told them I was doing it. They approved, it was on their radar for a feature upgrade. I gave them the hash key pairs. They just don't know there are two sets of them. Just in case."

"Ok."

"Are we good? More importantly. Are we done with shop talk?"

Another smile and nod.

I was not expecting her reaction to the sound of sirens outside. She looked worried and scared, maybe a little paranoid.

I was definitely not expecting her to cringe at the sound of a large crack of lightning.

"You ok?"

She shook her head. He eyes very wide… and pretty.

"It's ok. We are safe in here."

I showed her around my little basement apartment. I explained to her why I lived in my mom's basement and that got a big smile from her. She understood.

When we go to the area I have closed off with heavy drapes, almost like an adult version of a blanket fort. She frowned and looked a little disappointed. She looked up the basement stairs as if wondering if the room she would be staying in was up there.

"I know what you're thinking. Yes, we are sleeping beside each other tonight. The bed is big enough for that. We can go shopping for a bigger one tomorrow if you want. And I'm beat, we can fall asleep in each other's arms..."

A bigger smile and a nod this time. "Do you have somewhere I can change for bed?"

I pointed to the bathroom.

I'm not quite sure what I thought she would wear for night clothes, I had kind of an idea. It wasn't what she eventually came out wearing though. Long johns, wool socks, and a sweatshirt.

She looked at me, turning red, and said, "I get cold at night. Always been that way."

I'd like to think I'm not a sexist guy. I don't wolf whistle at girls, I don't say nasty things about them behind their backs to my friends. None of that.

Ok, so after just typing that, I have to say she had the nicest bum I've seen, nice hips… um… I couldn't see them very well, but I did catch the swell of her breasts.

And here comes the main reason I don't ogle girls.

She caught me.

There's a bright red throw pillow sitting on the sofa I have down there, but I'm sure my face was a lot redder than that.

"I wish I had more of them." She looked down at them.

"More of what? I was being a wasteoid.

"Boobs."

"Uh, you have nothing to worry about. At all."

I didn't realize boob size was that big a deal for girls. I blame that on society. I don't particularly care. No way I'd tell her that though, especially if she was already feeling self-conscious about her body.

I changed the subject.

"Oh, hey, my friend Lucas said you have a blog. Address off mine is , what's yours?"

Again that panicked look. Her eyes went wide and instead of the nod, it was a quick shake of the head.

Looking down she said, "I'll tell you if you really want to know. I don't want to keep any secrets from you. But Mike... I have some big secrets, and I need to tell you all of them. But my blog…"

She hesitated. I asked, "Too personal… or private?"

"No, It's not that… I'm… different online. It's one of the ways I protect myself. I… I'd prefer you didn't read it."

"If you don't want me to read it El. I won't. Simple as that."

"Really?"

"Really, El. You can continue to write it if you want, but I won't read it. I promise."

"You aren't tempted? Not even a little curious."

I laughed. "Yup, both. But you asked me not to read it. I won't. "

"Mike. I'm going to know if you have. Don't make that promise if you can't keep it. Don't make me ANY promise if you can't keep it."

"A promise is something you can't break."

Nod.

"Not only will I keep that promise, but ALL the promises I make to you. Besides, I know you have to the skills to track me." I chuckled.

She wasn't laughing.

"Yes, but that's not how I will know. I will see it on your face."

We looked into each other's eyes.

"El. I promise."

That got me a pretty smile. "Let's get some sleep. It's been an emotional day for both of us."

She crawled into the bed with me and snuggled up close.

"...It's ok to cry Mike… I can't help it either..."

- El's blog will be much different :)