Lying next to Dalibor, who fell asleep tonight as easily as men do, thoughts of Eric fill my head. I was kissing him only two days ago, at the end of a vacation fantasy come to life. When I went home to New York for a few weeks this summer, Eric and I picked up a ten-year-old friendship, and for the first time let the chemistry always present between us take form. It grew in the space we allowed, with the comfort and ease I had always suspected it could. Eric felt like coming home.

I returned to Tucson's torturous heat with the scent of Eric's cologne clinging to my tank top. When he drove me to the airport in New York, I told him I wasn't sure when I'd be back. It could be two weeks. It could be four months. Confusion has plagued me all summer, whether or not I should stick out my time in Tucson for a full year or acknowledge that I might be ready to move on before then. Sticking things out has never been my forte but when I came to Tucson to recuperate from the burn out that New York City had become for me, I fell in love. Cactus - paddle-shaped prickly pear, waving ocotillo, pincushions and porcupines in small clusters close to the ground or rising taller than houses. Fat, skinny, round, crooked, climbing, arching, snaking. Stars - filling the night sky in a way that New York's constant illumination and pollution would never allow me to know. Stars shooting. Mountains - highs and lows like rock-solid chocolate cake batter softened by the ins and outs of shadows and light. Distance blurring the edges of their deep, delicious beauty.

But as temperatures rose from a bearable 90 degrees to 100 degrees to 110 degrees for five days in a row, I was burning out again. Being back in New York had felt good, and I'd spent some time (when not kissing Eric and catching up with friends and family) trying to figure out what exactly had been preventing me from planting two feet down in the Southwest.

I hadn't come up with anything concrete. I usually don't. Maybe I will never plant two feet anywhere. As my mother said when I first told her I was going to try out the desert, "I'm afraid you're always going to be a bit of a nomad." Or, as had been my M.O. before, maybe I cut and run when I realize something isn't perfect (though I know logically that nothing is, though I would hate desperately if anything was). Then again, maybe I am just ready to go home. My desire to end an indefinite stay turned from something I had been toying with into something I was starting to seriously consider.

When I landed back in Tucson, the desert mountains stole my heart as they had been doing every day since I arrived. They surround the city on every side , and I am forever mesmerized. So in a way this felt like coming home. But I'd just left home, the place that was home always, that I referred to innately as such whenever I talked about her. "Crap," I thought, as a friend drove me from the airport to my guesthouse rental. "If I feel good wherever I am, how will I decide where I should be?"

Not knowing what else to do with myself after unpacking the suitcase I'd been living out of for three weeks, I drove to the bookstore to see if Dalibor was working. I would sometimes find him there and wait for his break, when we could catch up over coffee (for him) and a mocha chocolate freeze (for me). We met in a writing class when I first arrived eight months earlier. I'd been drawn to him immediately, a fellow outsider who chose Tucson. More of an outsider than me, he'd come to America from Bosnia, had lived in a war I will never know. He had sharp intelligence and a biting sense of humor. He loved the outdoors in the same ways I did. And while he retained the worldview of someone who had known more than this desert, he understood that Tucson offered me things that New York City could not.

I told him I was thinking about leaving, that New York felt good for me on this last visit, that I wanted to be closer to the people I love.

"Stay!" he said, with a half smile that made me remember he'd broken up with his girlfriend a few months earlier. Was I seeing in his eyes the things I had wanted to see there when we first met? I had never known if the twinkle was for me or if the smile would have been mine in other circumstances.

"You never came camping with me," he said. "We were supposed to make that happen. And you have to read the story I'm still working on."

With my eyes on my frozen drink, I moved the straw around and took small sips. I was avoiding brain freeze, and keeping my excitement under control. Dalibor and I might finally have our chance now. And I could have the lifestyle that the Southwest offered. Here I had opened to nature, meeting the environment with respect and awe rather than annoyance and allergy pills. My headaches went away. I stopped wearing a watch and started wearing sun-block. Knowing that Tucson had been medicine for me, I was considerably afraid that I would wilt again back on the east coast.

Like me, Dalibor loved travel. He wanted to try out a new city or country every few years. We could hike and camp and explore and have each other for security.

Ok, so I was getting carried away. I knew this. But the energy between Dalibor and me was real. At the end of his hour-long break, we made plans to see each other the following day, a noticeable change from our usual weekly or bi-monthly frequency. When we said goodbye, he held my gaze long enough to make me look away first.

We spent the next night talking under the stars, lying on our backs at the highest point on campus until a security car shooed us away because it was off-hours. The night after that, Dalibor kissed me before I got in the car.

And now I lie beside him, skins satisfied after all this time not knowing. I was uninhibited at first but became shy when his head moved down my shirtless torso. "I feel like we just met," I said, even though it had been eight months. After that, his eyes remained locked on mine.

I have never been promiscuous. I have never before shared a bed with two different men in the span of two months, let alone two days. When Dalibor's lips moved to my neck, I was not sure if my hands were in his hair or running through Eric's. When our lips fought each other's for breath, I was dizzy and disoriented. I was with Dalibor. Dalibor was here. But Eric was with me, too.

My mind will not shut down tonight. Dalibor's arm is across my shoulders. The sides of our bodies fit together at the bed's center. And I feel Eric's warmth. I hear him whisper goodnight.

Neither of these men might end up in my life but they embody the choices that wrestle within me. I am no longer on this mattress with a sheet on my back, my left foot uncovered. I am the sun rising on opposite coasts, illuminating two distinct lives that I can live. Each is rich in detail, filled with passion comfort love oxygen light. They both deserve telling. But only one will ever be.