Just from the way we met I thought HE was Simon. It seemed close enough to be true. We always said we’d meet up in another life. HE showed up mere months after The One left. So many things seemed to fit. One door closes, another opens. Right?

But when a Sheba is in mourning, sometimes her brain fills in the missing pieces to find some comfort. The Real McCoy is easy to mis-indentify. I think it took me a few years to realize HE wasn’t Simon. Some of the wisdom just wasn’t there. The connection, while it was hotsy totsy, wasn’t as deep as it should have been. I just thought it was me knowing I’d never find The One again. So it was okay that things were different. Weren’t they supposed to be? After all, I was an old Dame in comparison, and HE was about the same age as Simon. You’re never exactly in the same circumstances you were before, after all.

It took me far too long for me to realize I’d known Simon since The One introduced us. I just couldn’t see Simon because he was too busy living the current life to realize he was Simon. Makes perfect sense, especially because I was also wrapped up in The One. Little did I know that I had an interlude that Simon didn’t. Makes sense now, but never would have guessed before.

It’s amusing that Simon and I didn’t first realize that we had a turn last century until recently. We knew of each other from way before—the distant memory of our first journey together on another continent. Most of that it still a mystery. But the last turn is starting to come into view more and more clearly.

But when Jane E.’s eyes met Simon’s after we starting remembering, it was glaringly apparent. Even sharing visions of The Last Time while holding each other. More things started to make sense. Why intimacy has a whole different meaning this time around. Sure, the dalliances of last century left impressions on our souls that made us recognize each other pop into mind. We know we’re not mean to repeat history just yet. Then it was all Jake!

That tour—quickies in train compartments late at night, that one time we were both a little late back from lunch and his shirt was untucked—is still coming back into memory, slowly. I doubt I’ll remember it all. I don’t think I’m meant to. The end was abrupt and sad—Simon picked up another tour and I wanted to try my shot on Broadway. I didn’t want to think we’d have some sort of sweet, lust-filled reunion after his tour. Simon and I wanted to live our own lives, even though it meant leaving the ducky necking behind.

I think we knew on that tour that we’d seen each other in a different century, in a different continent. The connection we had hit on all six. How he seemed to speak to me as I drifted off to sleep if we had to be segregated (which was most of the time, that wet blanket production manager!). Did I know it wasn’t love? I think so, even though it felt like the love I’d had before I left home.

Now that I have him back—things will change and they won’t. We still live our own lives, but technology makes it easier for us to nurture the connection this time around.