Today, a friend of my sister's called me out of the blue. She wanted to talk, asked about my girlfriend. "Do you think you're in love with her?" she asked.

I told her I don't know. I said, I didn't dream about being with someone like Emmy, and when I'm with her, I don't want to spend the rest of my life with her. I know that this relationship will end. But it has to be later. This is what I think all the time. Let the end come, but after I put my arms around her one more time. Let me see her wave at me across a crowded room again, let my lips rest on her neck one more time, let me kiss her again, give me one more night, give me another day, another week, because it cannot happen yet. Later.

So I said this. And her only response was, "So she's not 'the one', is she."

Am I supposed to find "the one" at nineteen? Spend the rest of my days with my first kiss? Is the success of my college career not my classes or the approval of my teachers or my sanity, but my finding of a woman? Should I only date "the one," leave no room for saying, "I will try," deny myself a few months' comfort?