I bought myself a brand new laptop two weeks back.  There were a couple of reasons. Yes we have the odd one or two lying about in the man-cave, but I wanted to use this one to write fresh, kinda like a new writing pad? I also wanted to venture out beyond this screen.

I may have mentioned that we live in an area inundated with cafes. Dozens of them. Yet I hardly leave the house, depending instead on my trusty old desktop and my large screen; things familiar to me, comfortable. I also have my routine, a few hours of sleep between eight and midnight, up all night and if I'm lucky, a couple more hours snuck in sometime during the day. It is between midnight and dawn when I mostly write, everyone asleep, the house quiet and apart from checking on dad periodically, no one needing me.

Yesterday I did it. I grabbed the new laptop, my reading glasses and yeah, dressed as inconspicuously as possible, I sat at one of the smaller cafes, away from the hordes. No sooner had I settled however, when I heard my name called out. You know the voice; someone hasn't seen you in a long time and they're a little unsure? Is it really you? It was me, and the owner of the voice - I too had to pause for a moment and dredge up a face from the past, a face changed perhaps as much as mine over time?

Let's call her Sue. Now Sue and I had met when I was in my mid-twenties. We hung out for a few years and for those of you who have read my memoir, you'll know those were tumultuous times. I'd married, left the marriage behind, taken up with a very married  man, I'd been swept off my feet by the veritable Prince (also married) then some bad stuff happened and I ended up living on my own for the first time, in an apartment right in the middle of the Jewish part of town. I felt protected there; quiet leafy street, a balcony and lots of elderly people in the building who over time adopted me and monitored my coming and going, making sure I was home safe.

Sue had gained some weight in the meantime; the stubborn weight that settles between waist and thighs? Her hair was still bottle blonde however, only shorter now. She wore the usual designer label get-up common here and was perfectly made up. Last I heard, she'd married that already married guy she'd been having an affair with and had a couple of kids... but a quick glance down at her left hand showed no rings. Hmm...

We ordered coffee and then entered that awkward phase where you try and bridge the years by going back - only your memory is a little fuzzy and has tended to retain... well mostly the juicy stuff? So you toss some of that around, laugh a little and then desperately try and think of how to ask THE question: "What happened to us?"

Her phone vibrated. Suddenly she paused mid-sentence and glanced down. She had one of the largish iPhones so I saw a Facebook bubble but without my glasses on, I couldn't make out the words. I did notice her face though. Her eyes softened, a small smile appeared at the corner of her lips, and her hand, I swear it almost caressed the screen?

"It's okay, answer whoever," I said. Hell, everyone was attached to some device these days, who was I to pass judgment?

"Do you mind? I don't get to talk to him often. Won't be a minute."

I busied myself with the laptop. I put on my glasses and yeah, I snooped. I still couldn't make out many of the words, but I did see some endearments and a few bright red love hearts as messages flew back and forth. The waitress bought our coffees out and Sue just waived her hand, gesturing for it to be set down to her right. She was openly smiling now and there was conflict in my mind; she reminded me of that Sue, the one in love with a married guy who was back then the "love of her life"?

I watched her send one final heart and then she looked up. The transformation was instantaneous. Her energy was gone, as was the softness in her eyes and that beatific smile; she appeared again as I'd first seen her: a middle-aged woman who'd had her share of pain. Huh.

"I guess I better explain," she said - perhaps noticing the not-so-veiled interest in my eyes?

She explained. Her husband had suffered a heart attack and passed away some ten years back. The usual period of loss and insecurity and stress followed and she became convinced she'd never meet anyone again. He had been the love of her life. Yet at fifty four, here she was now in love with a married man, in England?

"You're what?" I couldn't help myself. Not only in the history repeating itself, but also that she'd now added distance to the mix? My own misadventures in that department coming back, ones she'd known about intimately.

"I met him online."

"You what?" I was now on Wattpad in my head, thinking back on a piece I'd written, dealing with this very issue. What had I called it? Something about "Yes, but is it love?"

"Yeah, I know it sounds crazy but he is a friend of a friend - long story. One day I made a comment and then he uh... he sent me a message."

"How long?"

"From that first message... ummm... about eight months now?"

I just stared, my mouth talking of its own volition. "And you're in love."

"That's the weirdest part. We haven't met, but yeah, I love him. Maybe more than..." Her gaze drifted away.

"Maybe more than Steve?" That was what she was implying - referring to her husband - making this then the 'real' love of her life? I was full of words. My mind needing to unleash any amount of verbal insistence that she was not in bloody love, that it was an illusion, that she was foolish at best, that love was a chemical reaction - huh? Wait a minute. We were both post-menopausal I was sure of it. That theory I'd expounded on, about brain secretions and attraction being merely a process whereby humanity was ensured continuance... Had I neglected to factor in love at a later stage in life? Was love possible outside of those touted assumptions?

Then she said something which for want of a better term, floored me.

"I cry every day."

"But I saw you just now! You livened up; you were like the Sue-"

"It's a finite love."

A big please explain screamed from my head. Finite love? Was this some new term I'd not caught up on? Love with a deadline? Or was Sue... slightly unhinged, maybe after losing her one true love and all...

"Please explain?" Yes, I said this out loud too.

"It's going to end Elise. One day, I will probably face the biggest pain... you know?"

"Wait a minute. It's the same with every relationship. Everything's a gamble - at least these days? I mean you assume longevity but more often than not, it ends right?"

"Yeah, but those relationships, there's hope and you know, expectation, in the beginning at least? This... I fell in love knowing it would not be a forever thing?"

"You're losing me Sue." She was. How can you possibly predict the outcome of anything? Scenarios raced through my brain, most of them unsavoury: He was dying, she was dying, he was some celebrity or one of those snooty Royal Lineage dudes; he was married to a disabled wife, he had a sick child, he...

"He's over there, not happily married or at least not that happy but happy enough, and I'm over here? He's settled, and I guess I am too?"

"But nothing is stopping you two from-"

"Elise, he's not going to just abandon his life and come here and I'm certainly not moving to bloody England!"

"Then why on God's earth did you - I mean why not meet someone here, even in the same country at least? You know someone real?"

"You think I wanted this?" Her eyes looked a little angry. "It happened. Words and words and words and before I knew it, we were in a relationship."

"It's not a relationship Sue! So you two talk. You found someone you can talk to. How is this love?" Yep, the writer me. Words, she had me at "words".Knowing full well how they could be used, manipulated, distorted... any amount of foul play.

"Sounds crazy, I know. Hell I haven't even discussed this in detail with anyone. Don't even know how I'm talking about it now."

I knew how. The bane of my existence or rather the gift I had, making people want to share things with me. I'd often wondered if there was a visible to all but me sign above my head, saying "Discuss emotional problems freely here." Only I was finding this happening online too, so...

"What you're saying, (I was fixated on this finite word) is that you are both aware this whatever it is, will end. But you're living it anyway."

"I knew it was too late from the get-go. Within hours Elise! So whether we continued or whether we stopped even back then... same thing. I'd be devastated. Why I said I cry?"

"But surely you could have walked away, either of you? Before it got... well before too many words or emoticons or whatever?"

She touched the phone! An unconscious act, since her eyes were focussed on me? Again, the feeling it was more a caress, as though she was physically touching him?

"He's real Elise. And there's no such thing as too many words. I told you, I felt emotionally connected to him from the beginning! We both felt it!"

"So you're riding it out. Knowing it's going nowhere outside of this phone. And you say he's real, but you've never met, you've never touched-"

"I live for those few minutes each day..." There was that beatific look again! "Some days are better than others. Some days, I feel like the luckiest woman alive, knowing I am with him."

"But you're not with him! He has a wife, family!" What I really wanted to say was you're his bloody escape from the mundane, his fucking fantasy, his bit on the side helping to keep his marriage going? And what I really, really, wanted to say was, Sue, you're insane.

I sat through the next hour however, hearing her out. Damn it, she wasn't justifying, she was calmly and what I'd call lucidly, explaining the emotions exchanged, the conversations leading to not only discovery of each other but also self-discovery? For one so entrenched in the belief that online was 'not real', I found myself caught up, I found my own emotions roused by what I was hearing. This was the world then? The now world? Connectivity producing another kind of love, a finite love? Entered into willingly and with full awareness that there'd be no progression, no natural escalation?

She left; her number scribbled on a napkin since I had no phone with me and couldn't even remember mine - she'd waited with fingers expectantly hovering over digits on hers until I finally fessed up.   

I ordered another coffee. Then I opened up a Word doc on the laptop and began writing this. Only I found myself pausing time and time again, focussed on this one thing she'd said: "Love finds you, you don't find it. And you embrace it because there's so damn little love in this world, however long it lasts, it's a blessing?"

Hmmm.... Plenty of fodder in those words. Yet for the life of me, I couldn't dispute them. See what I'm writing? I couldn't - I can't still - deny what I witnessed. If someone - never mind they were across the other side of the world and belonging to another - elicited the joy I saw and yes, I'll call it the happiness, then... it was a blessing?

I could have introduced the whole "what about the wife" thing and the selfishness and the arrogance of it all, never mind the sordidness? The cheating?

Was it cheating though? Or was it enhancing the other relationship? Filling in the gaps, supplying missing elements, providing vital enhancements? A different kind of love, a complementary rather than a destructive one? And a finite one to boot, one that would end without disrupting the status quo, without breaking apart a marriage and creating bitterness and angst... Oh boy.

I can write forever. I can offer up any amount of quotes - even some content - since she'd scrolled at certain points during the conversation to particular 'bubbles' and handed the phone over so I could read: "You complete me," and "How did I ever deserve you?"

Finite love is all I've got. Two people connecting for a period of time and discovering their greatest love, possibly their last love - since finding it once is a wonder and... finding it twice and this time late in life? That's what Sue called it really, a blessing.

That there's tragedy involved? This being the 'finite' aspect? Perhaps as one ages, one understands everything is finite - no matter the initial intentions - and on this premise, one grabs this love and holds it close till it ends?

Of course I reflected on my own life. Particularly what I'd do, under similar circumstances. My greatest love behind me decades ago, what if... what if somewhere in the vast online world, I encountered a new greatest love, a new connection via these words I was scattering everywhere?

This pause lasted quite some time as I let my eyes drift away from the laptop. I had to face a certain... certainty? That I'd be Sue. No doubt about it, I'd be her in a heartbeat. The writer in me relishing the wordy by-products but the woman, the flesh and blood person - hell, I'd be swept along and probably crying every day also.  

Love finds you. Rarely is it perfect, more often than not it ends in disaster or settles into a comfortable mutual apathy. But hell; to hold that beatific look, the smile, the instant transformation from a middle-aged and largely resigned to an 'emotionless life' woman... to that other one! Oh I'd surrender everything, surely. I'd give it all, even if all was just bubble encased words peppered with emoticons on a screen. Finite words.

Call me crazy.