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She glided, you know, like she didn't actually interact with the ground when she was walking on it. I always had to picture her running through a field of grass because otherwise she didn't make any sense walking the way she did. That is, until she played soccer. It was her favorite sport and I swear I could have said anything and gotten away with it, when she was playing soccer. She never ever heard anything but whistles and calls and never saw anything but jerseys, hexagons, and pentagons when she was playing soccer. And her playing soccer was my favorite sport because I got to sit on the bleacher and when she ran by I could see her jersey flow around her body's curves like a river through the holes it carved in a rock and you can tell that the curves took time and there has to be a creator because something that beautiful doesn't happen by chance.
I wasn't nearly so poetic when I was with her, of course. I sounded much more common and base. I said things like "you're so pretty" and "I'm the luckiest man in the world" and other stupidity. I looked at her breasts and I thought about sliding my hand up her thigh and watching the heat rise in her cheeks and feeling my own short breath as my chest rose and fell against her chest and fire and friction and light, but somehow whenever I tried to say it in words to her she just put her hand against my chest and grabbed my shirt and pulled me in for a kiss and said "not yet, Thomas" with the softest whisper the world has ever known. I couldn't argue with her. She effectively invalidated my rebuttals like a wall stops an egg.
That fire stayed with me all day and sometimes I had to try to forget so I could focus on school.

Once, she laughed at me when I kissed her goodbye. She said I did it funny. So I asked how because I don't want to do it wrong. "Not wrong, stupid. You. Funny." I was not convinced. She said "Here, I'll show you how you do it." She wrapped her arms around my back and kissed me so lightly I couldn't hardly feel it except for her breath hot on my lips and then she pulled back and closed her eyes and kissed me good and hard, and you know I swear it was the best kiss I'd ever had and when she pulled away she looked embarrassed (somehow I get the feeling like she had betrayed her emotion) and I laughed and I said if I got a goodbye like that, I'd never leave. She laughed and waved to me as I walked back to my room.

Two weeks later we got in a food fight in the cafeteria. I swear we won, but the principal showed up and pretty much determined that we lost. She and I had to go to the office and sit, food-crusted, outside the door until Carter was ready to see us. A great deal of nothing went through my head. Sure, I mean I guess I was afraid, but she held my hand, and the jelly between them made our hands slick and sticky and it was like we could forever move our hands but never apart. I whispered to her that we won and she laughed. Her laugh tinkled like bells being broken (I know people whose laugh sounds like bells and I know everyone says that, but hers sounded like bells being broken--I mean really split apart like they've given their last ring and it filled them up and they never did need to ring again after that because really once you've reached the zenith there's nowhere to go) and I loved it. Carter called us in and we tried to get up and her pants stuck to the chair a little and when she finally stood the chair fell away the four inches to the ground and fell down. We laughed so hard Carter had to call us back after classes and even then, we saw the food stain on her chair and couldn't keep our faces serious during the session. I gave her a present and all it had in it was one of those serving-size packages of jelly. She asked me what it was and I said that if she was ever afraid I would leave all she had to do was take out the jelly and smear it on me and I could move around forever but never away, so she laughed and kissed my cheek. She said it was the best present she'd ever had and I tried to kiss her again but she broke more bells with her laugh as she pushed me away. "I know you, Thomas. If I give you a goodbye you'll never leave."

Do you know what it's like to lose what you love? I mean really, damn it.
I guess I should ask before I start my story, instead of halfway through. Now you're in it, you're in it to finish. You're invested in us and you want to hear to the end, good or bad, and to hell with the consequences. That's the problem with all the best stories. You never know you didn't actually want to hear the story until the end. You never know that the story hurts until you've gotten to the end and been hurt by it.

But you're never hurt by the things you hate. It's only the things you love.