The Time of My Life by Patrick Swayze, Lisa Niemi Read Free Book Online Page B

wanted to make the Harkness company, too, of course, and I was incredibly focused on that goal. But my feelings for Lisa grew stronger and stronger the more time we spent together. After just a few weeks, I had no doubt that Lisa was the woman I wanted to be with. She was deep, talented, driven— and beautiful. As I played one of my favorite records of that summer—
The Best of Bread
—Lisa would catch sight of me gazing at her whenever the song “Baby I’m-a Want You” came on. She knew what I was feeling, and it frightened her.
    But the attraction between us was so strong, and the intensity of our emotions so high, that something eventually had to give. And boy, did it. When Lisa and I finally got together in the winter of 1974–75, a few months after she’d moved in with me, it was like the dam had broken and the flood came rushing in. With all the fooling around we’d done in Houston, we’d never had sex together, but once we did—well, suffice it to say I’d never felt such passion in my life, and I couldn’t get enough of it. We were intoxicated by each other, and when we weren’t dancing or working, we were most often at our apartment spending every hour we could together.
    We’d stay up all night, talking, laughing, and just enjoying each other. The intensity of it was thrilling—I never thought I could feel so strongly about another person. We were discovering so much about each other, and learning about ourselves, too, all in the excitement of first love.
    Lisa felt it, too, but she was also scared. She worried about giving in to her feelings for me when she wanted to be totally focused on dancing. And she wondered whether she was making a mistake by getting so deeply involved with me.
    Years later, Lisa dug up her diary pages from that time, and they show how deeply torn she was over what was happening between us.

I really don’t know what to do (concerning Buddy). I’m so frightened. I want to sit down and talk it over with him, but I’m afraid I might startle him too much or him think I’m jumping to conclusions….

Sometimes I wonder whether I’m being shallow and just getting carried off like so many girls I know always do. God, I’m so afraid. I’ve never done anything like this before and I feel danger in getting close to a person and caring more than I should….

I wonder if I should move out. I might have to. But I’d see him every day anyway [at Harkness] so there’s not much good for my head in that. What I should do is find a way to get out and away as often as possible. I can’t get my life too tied to his.
    I had no idea Lisa was considering moving out, which was no doubt a good thing, as it would have scared me to death. Looking back, these are the musings of a young woman who’s feeling torn in different directions and afraid to make a wrong step. But I wouldn’t have seen it that way. I’d have felt that she was rejecting me, which would have rocked my fragile self-esteem to the core. My feelings for her were now so strong, and I was so sure of them, that I felt paralyzed at the idea that I might lose her.
    I wanted to feel the way we were feeling forever, to lock in this relationship and this love. Lisa and I had talked a little bit about where our relationship was headed, but I never got thesense that she was anxious to commit to anything long-term. But I was. I wanted to marry Lisa. And one night in the spring of 1975, as we were playing around on the couch, I decided it was time to raise the subject.
    We were wrestling and tickling each other, just messing around, and all of a sudden I said, “Lisa, why don’t we get married? Why don’t we just go ahead and do it?”
    Of all the responses a man hopes to hear to this question, dead silence isn’t one of them. But Lisa was quiet for a moment before responding slowly. “Yeah, sure,” she said. “That could happen.”
    I sat up, every nerve ending on alert. “When do you want to do it?” I asked