9.28

[I'm glad you all read the first thought first. When I published it I still wanted to keep going but it didn't feel right to do it]

She and I fell in love. Sure, I know what you're saying to yourself, that fourteen-year olds don't really fall in love. Sure. Sure. Go huff yourself. I was in love, sure as I'm standing here.

I can't remember much of the first of our relationship other than the smell of her. You know I walked past a woman the other day who smelled like her and it took me back to that first smell every day when we saw each other for the first time and her hair was still damp from the shower and I would lean in and smell her and she would whisper "Thomas" in my ear with breath that fluttered like it was afraid of itself. she was the only person who ever called me Thomas and knew me. Even teachers called me Tom, not that I would mind exactly but when she called me Thomas I felt more like a man. But of course I didn't stop that woman on the street to ask who she was because well that wouldn't make much sense would it?

I remember - I wish I could forget - how clumsy I was as a lover. We hadn't really gone out yet and I looked straight at her and leaned in like they do in the movies and stopped to see if she would lean in (it was a tense moment made worse by the fact that I felt like I hadn't breathed in years and the old air was scratching at the back of my brain and the pain of it was enough to keep me alive) and of course she did and so I leaned a bit more and she stopped and said "not yet, Thomas" like a promise of something more. I think I would have died if there hadn't been that promise. And then, of course, I breathed like an air mortician letting the old decrepit breath die away and be lost to history.
Two weeks later we were sitting on a bench talking and I stopped and said "Look, do you really like me?" and she said "Yes" of course and I stopped a bit and she stopped more and we just looked at the ground and I said "I wish I could be more decisive" and she said "what's that mean" and I said "well" and I reached out and I recognized my hand was cupping her cheekbone (perfectly like a matched set now tell me that isn't weird. I mean, I haven't been around the block but I've never fit my hand so well as to her cheek). She kind of stopped and neither of us blinked but I reached into my soul and found the last dregs of courage and leaned in and kissed her. I pulled away a bit to see what would happen but she followed and I didn't stop kissing her until I was sitting all the way up again and I said "hang on what happened to that?" She called me stupid and threw her arms around my neck.

I know we were in love because I hurt like hell for years after. I think sometimes that's how you learn what love is: by losing it once. If you've never had it before, you'll think every time is love like a girl who isn't quite sure that she's really climaxed and some promiscuous experienced friend (usually easy but neither says it though everyone thinks it) tells her that it's not something that you guess you've had I mean once it happens you'll never be confused again about what it is and I suppose that's what happened to me and love. I would be married to that girl if fate had a different sense of humor. I don't suppose it's fair to fate, but when I think of her, she's always a woman and she's always beautiful because she knows everyone wants her but nobody can have her unless she says so. Fate is a bit of a prissy little fff--well. Words like that aren't why I'm here.

I'm here because I thought you should know that I fell in love at fourteen and three quarters to a girl who shared a birthday with two famous people and a relatively unknown classical pianist from Rome. I fell in love with a girl who hated math but always told me it was her favorite class and I knew she wanted me to think it was because of me and it was wonderful because it was because of me. I fell in love with a girl who didn't have a middle name because her parents didn't want to insult a grandmother so they insulted both. I fell in love with a girl, and she loved me back, and if anyone says we didn't, well. I'm not a violent man but I can make exceptions.

Love. Silly, isn't it? Rhetorical. Don't answer that.