My year of love and light

Before

I distinctly remember, and will probably never forget, that my last text to him, mere minutes before meeting him for the first time, was a crass joke that he never replied to because he was busy coming out of the train station, looking for a stranger who wasn’t wholly a stranger, yet a stranger nonetheless. I will not repeat the joke now because it’s not pertinent to our story, but just know that I remember the joke, and he remembers the joke, and that’s all there is to that. I will say that the joke had witticism to it, though overlaid with crudeness, but that was just how our conversations naturally shifted between banter and more serious learnings about the other, a mystical entity on the other side of the phone, tethered by what was supposed to be romantic roots but rather transformed into an unassuming friendship. But, I digress. 

My joke is not necessarily ancillary to the beginnings of what we’ve become, but sometimes I laugh inwardly when I recall that this ridiculous quip was the last thing I said to him before we crossed the threshold from strangers into something more. 

So, I guess when I put it that way, there was us Before the joke, and there was us After the joke. And since then, I can not believe I ever lived in a world that was Before.

After

A couple of hours after we crossed into the After, I remember saying goodbye to him, saying goodbye to him for the first time ever, mind you, with mixed feelings of elation and confusion. We spent the past three or four hours walking around Cambridge, stopping into a few of my favorite secondhand shops, but I was never paying real mind to any of the merchandise because I was too aware of the stranger who wasn’t a stranger anymore beside me. We talked through all of it, musings from childhood stories to life in Boston to fashion favorites and best eats we’ve experienced, and I remember the soles of my feet beginning to ache somewhere during the second hour because I was only a week out from my marathon, and I was wearing my favorite yet most unsupportive pair of sneakers for our first date. 

And I left this date happy and confused, which, yes, is an odd concoction of emotions, but it’s like the nervous energy was still bouncing around in my system, restraining me from really clarifying any of my thoughts or feelings. I knew after, on the walk home, that I was relieved that it had gone well. The first date, that is. We were pen pals for three months, and the sort of pressure that timeline has on you can kind of bear this uncertain burden on your shoulders, like we were supposed to immediately fall in love after laying eyes on each other for the first time. But it wasn’t like that, I will admit. There wasn’t a spark or fireworks or time-slowing down as we maneuvered our way through the city streets and comfortable-uncomfortable silences. There was just a low hum, a warmth that spread, something that felt right, whether it was a friendship blossoming or the gateway to something more.

A friendship. How peculiar would that have been? In my head, at the time, it wouldn’t have been peculiar at all. In fact, that’s what I thought, or, at least, that’s what I thought he had wanted at the time. I left our first feeling content, but slightly dejected at no outward romantic indication, but surprisingly complacent with the fact that all he could have been was a friend. 

Oh, how silly of me. 

The hand on the ankle

I will try to keep this one shorter, but brevity has never really been my strong suit. All you need to know about the time leading up to the part of the story I want to share is that there was a lot of laughter. And of all the days in the year that we could have met, of all the time that could have passed after our first, we ended up having our second date on Halloween, which in itself is a pretty difficult date to forget, but it was compounded by the fact that we were at my favorite dive bar, one of only a couple of patrons sitting in the actual dining area of the place because a dance party was occurring one wall over. That, and also because the person at the table sitting next to us was Draco Malfoy.

We only had a couple of drinks here, sharing a basket of fries, which, in retrospect, were pretty bad, but every memory with him in it is embalmed in this hazy glow, so biases are to be admitted in the present day. We ended up back at my apartment, only a twenty-minute walk, but not back in my apartment the same way a movie’s end credits roll in or when the screen fades to black. No, not like that at all. We sat perched on the edge of my bed, legs not even touching each other, alternating showing each other funny videos and pictures on our phones. How badly I wanted to snatch that phone out of his hand and shake his shoulder, begging him, what do you think of me? Who am I to you? But with a shred of self-restraint and a great amount of fear for losing my dignity, I let myself just enjoy his company. 

Now, all of this context is to lead me to the end of this date, late into the night, way past my bedtime, because what’s a girl to do but jeopardize her sleep schedule for the boy she likes, leading us to the steps outside of my front door. He sat down two steps down from my front door, unlacing his right shoe. As he did, I couldn’t help but marvel at his left, the size of his sneaker, and not in an oh my god I’m so small, and you’re so big way, but genuinely in a holy crap I actually have never seen this shoe size up close way, because mind you, he was 6’4, a height unheard of for the males of Boston. Out of pure curiosity, I stuck my foot into his left shoe, and it felt like my foot was swallowed by a dark abyss, and I couldn’t help giggling. He looked over at me, grabbed my ankle, and playfully yanked the shoe off before slipping his own foot into it. 

It was barely anything. The most mundane points of contact, his left hand wrapping around my ankle, and if you can imagine my reaction to the size of his feet, you can also imagine the length of his fingers, fully able to reach around my ankle bone, the warm from his palm seeping through my socks into my skin, and though it was only my ankle he was touching, I could feel the warmth spread throughout my whole body. I felt like a teenage girl again, giddy because my crush basically intentionally touched me for the first time, and never mind that it was my ankle, it was still exciting nonetheless. I have been on many first dates. And I’m not saying this as a way to brag, but only to say that I have experienced lousy first kisses and handholding that became too sweaty and awkward hugs where my arms go up only for his to do the same. The hand on the ankle was more to me than anything else I have ever experienced on a first date. It was your modern-day Mr. Darcy moment. And up until that moment, I would have never guessed that one of the most romantic things to ever happen to me was a hand on my ankle. 

Epilogue

Against my better judgment, I originally wanted to document every date, every minor detail of every minute I have spent with him over the past year. However, unfortunately, I embarked on this project a little too late, so I have only captured less than a month of our shared time, memories I cherished during the beginning of what we’ve become, symbolic of our first year, which I believe is the first of many, many more to come. Hopefully, over time, I will be able to consolidate all of our moments, both special and mundane, into a tangible souvenir, something we can look back on as we continue to grow together, hopefully forever. 

Hopefully, forever. Two words with the weight of infinity. There is not much that I have wished for forever. My parents’ health, my sister’s happiness, my own prosperity. My friendships with my closest friends, tripling my cat’s nine lives, and now this. It’s a vulnerability that I used to forbid myself to even think, never even let the thought graze the outer edges of my consciousness, but now it is like a mantra, a prayer I repeat every day, speaking it into the universe for even the sliver of a possibility of it coming true. 

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.