A few years ago after quarantine ended I found myself in Flagstaff Arizona creeping into the empty Spanish style lobby of the Hotel Montevista. I was terrified, but not because it was supposedly the most haunted hotel in the West,

with a wailing baby spirit in the basement, ghostly flappers who

groped guests at night, and a mad pig-slaltering butcher who haunted room 220.

What had me panicking? Well, I'd just come face to face with the person who invited me there.

On a grand marble stairway stood the hotel's owner, a striking bohemian woman. Her name was Charlotte Monroe, but back in high

school I called her Lottie. Lottie used to be the love of my life, unrequited, that is.

A wild child who loved comics and slasher movies just like me.

She was the one, but I was too chicken to ever make a move.

By the end of school Lottie made hers.

She said, blow off college, Rodney.

Let's buy a junkie old car and get the hell out of Maryland.

She wanted to hit the road, find the most haunted

places, face the scariest ghosts, and laugh in their faces. I nearly said yes

until my grandma let me have it. She called Lottie a dishonest flake,

a flirt who'd abandoned me for another man or worse get me killed. I disagreed,

but I was afraid to give up college in my carefully planned future.

I asked Lottie to wait, but that girl barreled through life like a freight train.

She was sad I wasn't coming, but she was still going.

The only time we ever kissed was the night she kissed me goodbye.

I never heard from her again.

And the one became the one that got away.

Here we are, almost 40 years later.

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