The first time she said she loved me the Hale Bopp comet was in the sky, casting off its mantle of icy crystals, which exploded high above us with the brilliance of Hiroshima's first millisecond.  We didn't notice as we strolled at midnight along the canal, where the inky water laps up to within an inch or two of the boardwalk's rough sawn planks, because I was holding her hand and there was an electric Tesla current being generated by that least ambiguous of all gestures.

Barely able to see her profile, I was focusing on how perfectly her hand fit mine, how her long slim fingers with their accurately French manicured nails automatically laced themselves together with my robust Bavarian Wehrmacht troops in a perfectly Casablanca embrace.  

I remembered how naturally my hand had found its harbor nestled in the small of her back when we were dancing, how precisely it accommodated the volume of her breast, how it seemed to have exactly the right proportions to wipe that drowsy tear from her cheek without seeming meek nor overbearing.  That was when, with a slightly raspy tinge of nervousness, she cleared her throat.