YOU SAW MY FACE AND ASKED ME, AS YOU OFTEN DO whyare you smiling?

We got home from a night at the neighbors. The house was glowing with warm light as we hurried to escape the cold. The dog needed to go out, so I lingered as you went inside. New lights came on and you appeared in the kitchen window in full pajamas and favorite robe. I watched as you danced your funny little dance in the light of the open refrigerator. The dog and I soon returned inside to hear there was no music playing at all. You saw my face and asked me, as you often do, “Why are you smiling?”

— Anthony Parks

1971, London, Soho, lunchtime. I see a large rubber plant walking toward me with attractive, female undercarriage. As it got closer, I recognized its carrier – none other than the beautiful girl in the office I fancied from afar. I asked her if she had had lunch. Two minutes later we were sitting down in an Indian restaurant talking away over the poppadoms like we’d known each other all our lives. Three months, and quite a few curries later, we were engaged. We just got back from London celebrating our 50th. The Indian is still there. Rubber plant, not so much.

— Tony Rothwell

The curtain rises (if there is one). The stage is set for a love affair unlike any other. The performers rehearsed for this moment when they use their energy and passion to act their hearts out. Tonight’s audience doesn’t care how good you were last night! Something special happens: an electric connection between performer and audience. For well-trained and well-prepared actors, craft and technique disappear. We’re living the performance together. Our love affair transcends time and space. Thriving, flourishing, and changing every night, every matinee . . . everywhere there’s a stage and an audience. Surrender. Let love change us.

— Morgan Sills

You still sport that boyish grin, the same one you used when, after a lovely dinner and seemingly endless tour of Raleigh Christmas lights, you plucked up the courage to ask if I’d “bear your children.” High school, college, Greek parties, Crazy Zacks, and Jimmy V wins. We danced to beach music with sand between our toes, and “With This Ring” still means forever. Sometimes 44 years feels like a lifetime ago until that grin brings me back to our first kiss — stolen while gathering Spanish moss for a Christmas float, when I was 17 and you were 18.

— Kathryn Talton

He was leaning in for a kiss. Should I turn away? I had a boyfriend, after all. Sort of. Everything was happening in slow motion. I’d had a crush on Alan since the day we met, almost three years earlier. As friends, we’d watched each other bend for relationships that never seemed to fit. But love wasn’t supposed to be simple, was it? Being with Alan never seemed like an option. His lips were so close mine were buzzing. Now we were living 300 miles apart. This wasn’t exactly convenient. Yes, it’s what I wanted, but — contact.

— Ashley Walshe