she’ll meet him during her off-year, when she flees to another city and lives with some crazy friends of hers in a mid-twenties attempt to recapture the wildness of youth. he’ll be dating someone else, someone completely wrong for him. she’ll know it the minute their eyes lock across the room, the two minutes he helps her with her bag. they will look into each other’s eyes and see a kindred spirit. her friends won’t believe this is possible, she who is so afraid of love. but when she says his name on the phone to them, they’ll know he’s the one.
“are you two together?” her friends will ask.
“no,” she answers, with a new depth in her voice, a new honeyed dimension to her quiet southern accent.
“so what is it?”
“we’re friends,” she’ll say. but she’ll hear his voice coming down the hall over any other din. he’ll seek her out at every party. he’ll stand next to her, dangerously close, just to smell the clean freshness in her curly hair or to see the way she fiddles with her collar, rubbing the point between her thumb and middle finger. they will not be able to divert the current of electricity between them.
she will be torn between her privacy, her natural reticence, and the lure of his companionship. he will be torn between the girl he’s dating who doesn’t understand him, and the girl he’s not dating who knows the words before he says them.
they will sit at a kitchen table together in the waning summer heat and drink countless beers. they will talk about their childhoods. they will offer to drive each other on errands, only to experience the forced intimacy of her tiny car. skin will brush against skin when they pass each other. the ticking clock in the dingy kitchen will mean more to both of them than the mere passage of time.
one night, at a concert, with the ever-distancing girlfriend a mere ten feet in front of them, he will turn to her. his hand will be on her small, firm shoulder.
“i have to tell you something,” he will say as his voice cracks under the strain of being both quiet and loud at the same time.
“no,” she will respond because she knows what he wants to tell her. she will move away because she’s afraid. but these fears can’t last long.
perhaps they will finally kiss in the parking lot. perhaps it will be at the grocery store on another contrived errand. perhaps, they will find themselves driving far away from the town they live in, distance themselves from their daily life to build up the courage to fall into each other. it will happen with the delicious clasping satisfaction of two magnets finally allowed to click. perhaps he will hold her small, porcelain face in his guitar-calloused hands and find it hard to breathe. perhaps her eyes will well up with the kind of tears she rarely allows herself to cry.
one thing is for certain in this future she does not yet know. that first kiss will be completely unavoidable. it is written the moment she walks into that room and sees the light in his eyes. the moment he saw her push her glasses up by touching the corner with the knuckle of her forefinger, a gesture which will reduce his heart to shreds in its delicacy and subtlety.
one thing is for certain in this future that none of us know. they will fall in love. it will be inconvenient. painful. complicated. emotional. but it will be the first kiss to end all first kisses and they will live happily ever after.
for beth and josh, my greatest inspiration