{continued from chapter four}
My first face-to-face introduction to the boy of my dreams was not a roaring success with trumpet fanfare and ticker tape, in fact I slunk away from the incident with my tail between my legs feeling black as black as black. He was busy, he had friends who were girls, and the last thing he probably wanted to do was talk to me. I stewed and brooded and grimaced dramatically through the rest of my weekend, you know, standard teenage girl things. It probably looked like I ate some bad meat off the floor, which totally sounds like something I would do anyway.
Come the other side of Monday morning things looked brighter. After all, I had stood next to him, I had talked to him, and more importantly, he knew who I was. Since my crippling shyness only applied to introductions it dawned on me that a whole new world of possibilities had opened up in the game of when can we make out yes please. The hard part was over. The flirting could begin. This I could handle.
I sat down that very morning and I wrote him a note. Today I probably would have just sent him a tweet but that wasn't how things worked before the magic friends in my pocket came to live with me. It was back when passing notes was still a thing, a gateway drug to bigger better highs. I pressed pen to paper and wrote down anything that came into my brain, which was not much.
I will paraphrase for you, as follows:
Hey,I'm so glad this note doesn't still exist, because I'm almost positive that's exactly what it said, word for word, except I probably said 'like' a few hundred more times.
I like, like like like, yeah totally, like like, and DONUTS! They're like, so like like yeah like. I think you're like, super like cute and like. Like, totally yeah like.
- Jamie
I passed my masterpiece flirtation creation off to a friend to courier during the next period. I held my breath from the second it left my fingertips to the moment she came back to confirm its delivery. Not really, because I would be dead. Maybe I am dead, it was a while. Would he date a zombie? It was a long painful pins and needles while where I binge-ate chocolate donettes and tried to picture his reaction as he read what I'd written.
Would he write back? Would he be pleased? When– now? How 'bout now? NOW?
He was pleased, or at least we can assume he was, because later that day he appeared out of nowhere and passed a folded slip of paper to me in the hall before he melted back through the crowd. I clutched it so tightly I thought my hand would break before I hastily unfolded it and read it three or four hundred times in a row. My eyes tried to burn a hole in the paper they were searching so furiously for hidden meaning.
Spoiler alert: there wasn't any. Oh how I wanted there to be, but there wasn't.
It marked the beginning of a lot of things, though. It was the beginning of many many notes, carefully scribbled and shuttled back and forth; it was the beginning of halting conversations in the hallway that never lasted long enough. Slowly but surely we developed a pattern of finding each other between classes, even if it was just to stand awkwardly and not talk. (Which it was, at first, and I cursed every minute of it that I wasn't more awesomely self-possessed, but it was a place to start.) More importantly my impromptu decision to volunteer for the school play began to pay off. I hung around evening rehearsals and was put to work assisting with costumes, with plenty of opportunities for cute-boy fraternization in between lonely nights painting the set.
At a painfully creeping rate we got to know one another. It turned out he had the charm to match the pants I had fallen head over heels for, and he was kind of a jerk which couldn't be more perfect because I am also kind of a jerk. The only down side was he was hopelessly impossible to read when it came to dating. My flirtiest tried and true techniques were met with lukewarm responses but he laughed at all my most terrible jokes. I hadn't the faintest idea if he was even interested or completely oblivious but he kept coming back.
I didn't quite know what to make of his odd behavior, was this some kind of elaborate scheme? Was he really this straightforward? I was completely unaccustomed to a boy who was interested but not traveling at top speed and for a girl who was notoriously love them and leave them this creeping sort of courtship was uncharted territory.
At times I was out of my mind with confusion but along the way an odd byproduct began to emerge. His sterling character tamed and tempered my impulsive urges, forging them into an unfamiliar feeling– it blossomed into trust. By the time a few weeks passed we had tentatively established an understanding of unspoken mutual interest. Nothing was ever decided or discussed, we just began to fill all the empty spaces in our schedules with each other. It felt as natural as if it had always been that way. I hadn't even known my arm was missing until it was back where it belonged.
One night after play practice I lingered behind, looking for any excuse to stay behind and talk. We walked slowly out to the parking lot, dragging our feet and cracking jokes.
"I can drive you to your car, if you want." (See my car, all of 20 yards across the parking lot.)
"Sure." It was dark, after all. And raining. And please don't make me go yet.
We got in his car, which promptly wouldn't start.
The car had our very best interests at heart, I'm sure of it.
Unfortunately he didn't see the car's good intentions and was terribly super pissed. I stood out in the misty rain while he found someone to give us a jump so that we could trek all the way to the other side of the parking lot. You know, for logic.
We drove through the empty lot in silence. When we pulled up next to my car I couldn't force myself to get out. I looked out at the rain on the windows, hyper-aware of my heart beating up against my collar bones. I glanced over at him in the rippling half light.
Before I even knew what was happening my hand had moved of it's own volition, my fingers slid around the back of his neck up into his hair. When our lips met my world exploded. I was on fire, I was fire. All the question marks in front of me suddenly disappeared. Whatever it was I had been looking for I had found it.
I married him, of course, there was never any other option.
