We weren't always like this. I faintly hated him the first time I saw him. He was there, in the back row of a gossip-filled neighborhood meeting I thought only I knew about, whispering with residents and taking pages of notes. He never looked at me, never saw the barbs in my eyes.

My scorn only grew as he managed to dig up just as many exclusive stories for his newspaper as I did for mine. His name and byline were the reason I swore under my breath each morning and worked late each night, trying to beat him in the next day's edition.

We were thrust together -- literally -- during a standing-room-only press conference at the international airport. Dozens of reporters crowded around the talking heads as they brought hurricane victims' pets in by plane and took them to local animal shelters. He was standing just behind me -- towering over me, more precisely, since he is nearly a foot taller than I am.

I'd never been so close to him; one tends to keep a safe distance from one's imagined nemesis. We were both scribbling frantically in our notebooks when the network-news cameraman in front of me stepped back, bumping me directly into the man I'd strained to avoid. I started to mumble an apology, but when I felt his erection pressing against me I lost all powers of language.