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you own the place where all my thoughts go hiding
-Underneath Your Clothes, Shakira
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I once tried to forget everything I knew about him, everything thing I loved about him. I had confessed my want for him one night while my best friend and I were lying on the floor wrapped in blankets talking in hushed words because it was late. The television played some endless movie that everyone else was enthralled with, but I remember us giggling so hard at the thought of him [I was still in the first stages of my crush; it hadn�t nearly developed to what it is now].

After I told Gloria how much I liked him, I spent many an evening daydreaming in the middle of my homework assignments. Telling someone made it so much more real. School all of a sudden seemed so unimportant, and since I sat with her in class, every time he would say something, she�d nudge me, and I�d giggle and hush her quickly. I never even considered the fact that he might like me too. He was just too cool for me.

I was the girl who stood in the back of the choir, sat off to the side in class, and laughed with the class, but never seemed to speak up. It seems he was always making jokes, and laughing, and I don�t even remember when it was that I finally realized that I was into him. He was the guy that everyone knew and talked about. The most popular guy in school with one difference from the stereotype: he talked to the little people too. He wasn�t a snob, he wasn�t mean to anyone, and he was just as smart as he was famed.

I tried to forget my schoolgirl crush when we graduated, because it seemed like the right thing to do. I was going to school away from home; away from the friends I had known most of my life. I was afraid to leave everything behind, but excited too. I was starting to be an adult. I never imagined that we would end up in the same place.

September brought a crisp warmth that smelled like pinecones and very different than my mothers� house. I missed my family immensely in those first few days of classes, but soon I forgot about missing them, and started to have a good time. There was no way I could have known he would be at the exact same party as me, or that he would be at the bar the same night as me.

That first time I saw him was in English class. I was just getting ready to leave, and he was running down the steps, attempting to talk to the professor before she left. I looked up and thought momentarily that I knew this person; I knew the profile. And then it dawned on me: it was him. Then all of a sudden he was everywhere I went, I saw him in English everyday, I saw him in the halls, at parties, in the library. I wondered if he had been there before and I just hadn�t noticed.

One night [after a few beers] I finally swallowed my nervousness and approached him. He had been standing in a group of people, but one by one they had left, and when I went up to him there was a vague look of recognition on his face. I smiled brightly and asked if he remembered me, �we graduated together�. He peered at me, and shook his head slightly. I laughed.

Of course he didn�t remember me. But it didn�t matter much, because after that we were making references to classes we had together, and high school was forgotten in our alcohol-induced haze. He eventually had to go back to his room, and I to mine, and so we parted ways. I hoped that we could talk again.

It didn�t take long after that. We were bonded by the fact that we went to school together, even if I could probably remember every word he had ever said to me, and he couldn�t remember even seeing me there. We started sitting together in English, studying together. I didn�t have any girlfriends as close as he was to me at that point.

The shift from being friends to being best friends and then being more than friends wasn�t the hugest leap. We were spending a lot of time together, and one night we were studying late in his room [the library was closed and his roommate had gone home for the weekend]. He was hunched over at the desk, making jokes about his calculus professor, and I was sitting on the floor, leaning against his bed, laughing so hard at him.

He looked at me and burst out laughing, saying my face was �so red Georgia, can you even breathe?� and that made me laugh even harder. He slipped out of his chair [laughing harder still] and sat next to me on the floor. We let our giggles die down in silence and when we had both sobered considerably, we sat quietly, not saying anything. I played with the pages of my notebook, which was resting in my lap, but it slid off my legs and hit the floor with a thud. We both looked at it blankly for a minute, before I looked over at him and saw him staring at me. I remember trying to decipher what was going on behind his eyes, and then all of a sudden his lips were on mine, soft and sweet and hard and strong all at the same time.

It was so different than the way I had imagined it, so much better than I could have ever expected. When we both pulled away breathless, his hand cupped my face and he looked at me with a faint smile.

�I remember now,� he said softly. �You were always writing in that notebook.�

�I was writing about you. Always, always about you.� I whispered, half hoping he wouldn�t hear me.

�I always wanted to ask you what you were writing.�

�Why didn�t you?� I looked up at him then.

�I was afraid you might ignore me.�

[end]