When

WHEN

Andy Pearson 2023©

“When did you first fall for each other?” It’s the kind of question that gets asked with a tiny giggle. It gets asked at parties that guys don’t want to attend.   Parties where people are eating pretty food from real plates. I was thinking about how I might watch the baseball game on my phone at that kind of party without appearing like I was watching. Then it was quiet, and everyone was eyeing me.   

Our host, Jennifer, smiled and asked the question again. “When did you first fall for each other?”

 People wearing blazers, and sitting on well-cushioned couches, think this is a cute question. I’d heard it before and knew that the answer should elicit oohs and ahhs. If you say something like, I don’t know, you’re not a romantic. So a cute story is called for even if it’s not technically true.  

I stood there trying to come up with a cute story, running our past through my mind like movie clips. The film in my mind jumped around like the projectors in high school showing a movie that had been run too many times.  

Identifying the starting point of something is hard for me. Maybe my physics classes are the problem. Maybe that’s why I went into physics. Substance to atoms to protons to quarks and muons. It’s hard to know where to put a stop to it. I hemmed and hawed as the film clattered backward on the reel in my mind.

Was it that day we were hanging out at that out-of-town track meet in high school? Lying on the mats soaking up the spring mountain sunshine. It might have been 50 degrees, but everyone was wearing shorts. Everybody telling jokes and sometimes throwing candy. Only a high school student can run track and eat candy at the same time. I would have been in tenth grade and you would have been in ninth. It’s a small school. There were artificial divisions like varsity and junior varsity, but everybody traveled and hung out together. You were poking me and making jokes about my fifth-place finish in the 880. I am not the fastest runner or the fastest thinker, but I always finish. I remember noticing your shorts that day.  Maybe not your shorts, but your legs. I’m not certain I had seen them before. But today, I saw they were tanned. I remember looking at them without looking at them.  

Was this the moment? I don’t know.

However, now that I think about it, it might have been on the bus ride back to school after that meet. Long day. Much sun. You dropped into the seat next to me. The two-hour ride just started when you fell asleep on my shoulder. I remember the feeling of you snuggling in during the ride. You twisted and turned until my arm was around your shoulders. You didn’t wake up after that.  

Looking around that quiet dark bus, you weren’t the only one asleep.  Snores and drooping heads filled most of those green school bus seats. I was not asleep. Not a bit. I was wide awake trying to figure out this moment.  

The bus pulled into the school lot. You woke up. Grabbed your bag. Didn’t say a thing. In the time it took me to get my tingling right arm to work, you were gone.    

Was that the start? I don’t know.

 Or did it start on that late summer fishing trip? Living down the street from, you and your brothers, we were a loose pack in the neighborhood. We were always together. Your dad loved to fish and he infected me with trout fever. He always wanted to leave early. Zero-dark-thirty he said. It became a joke for all of us. Being at the lake before first light was his plan. Every time. In the dark of the morning, there we were, four kids, two adults, and all that fishing gear trying to get loaded into his old yellow International pickup truck. We learned to bring our sleeping bags for the ride out to whatever far-flung body of water he wanted to explore. Crammed into the bed of the truck with tackle boxes, rods, reels, and coolers of food, we squished down into our bags and stared up at clear, dark mornings. Our plan was always to sleep for the drive. Sometimes we did. Mostly we complained about the hour, the chill of the morning, or the bumps in the road. Stuffed down into my sleeping bag, I realized you were in the next bag. I realized it the way an eleventh-grade boy realizes there is a tenth-grade girl with startlingly dark hair and light-blue eyes lying next to him. I’d known you for so long that I hadn’t thought about you for some time. You were just part of the landscape of my life. This time, I thought about you. Lying there, I realized that your dark hair always smelled like strawberries and your light-blue eyes shined when you laughed.  

Was this the start?  I don’t know.

Maybe it was the thousand moments growing up together. Birthday parties, classes, and just wandering the neighborhood in our pack. The rubbing together of two lives until an ember forms. A glowing spot that held heat before a puff of air turned it into flame.

The film in my head spun loose from the reel and whipped in a frenzied chattering circle. I tried another tactic to solve this question while the party and you stared at me over politely sized drinks. 

I might not know when something started, but I do know when something happened. I knew the instant something concrete happened. The time when everything changed.  

The moment was the evening of Sept. 23. 1987. A hard data point. A random date when you think about it. After all, we’d known each other for years and then we ‘ran into’ each other at college. I’d gotten there a year ahead of you.   

 Up until Sept. 23, 1987, we’d see each other around campus. We had lunches and dinners mixing with our new groups. I missed taking Psych 101 my freshman year, so we found we both had the class at 9 am, Mon-Wed-Fri. The large lecture hall was a cavern of anonymity and loneliness. Having someone to sit with was bliss. Someone to make inside jokes with when the professor wasn’t looking. Nothing, but two childhood friends passing the time while trying to pass a class.

Then Sept. 23, 1987. In the study rooms at the big library. Not the first time we’d studied together. Why shouldn’t we study together? We had the same class.  We were friends. We needed to pass Psych 101. So we were studying on that data point of a day in September. I was laughing at a bad joke when you tousled my hair. Not the first time you’d done that, but this time was different. You noticed too. Your hand slowed and you patted my hair back down. I grinned uncertainly at the barometric bounce in the atmosphere of the cubical. Turning back to my text, I said, “Well… I think we’ve got this figured out huh?” and closed my book.   

Smiling, you shook your black hair back and leaned over me. I could smell strawberries. You opened my book up and said, “I think we’ve got a bit more work to do. There’s a whole section we still need to go through, so settle down.”  

Slouching in my chair, I grinned and turned the page in my book. “Ok.  Let’s see. Page 102. States of consciousness…”  And we started quizzing each other.

When we got to the end of the chapter, you stood up and started packing your backpack. I tilted my chair back on two legs and stretched out my arms and shoulders. That’s when it happened.

You were standing with your backpack slung across one shoulder. I was tilted back in my chair. You leaned down and kissed me. Not a pressed, passionate, hot-blooded moment. Not that at all. A relaxed kiss. A first kiss that was familiar in its newness. What should have been a surprise was a reminder.

In a comedic movie, I would have tipped over in my chair. In a romantic film, I would have pulled you in for a longer, more passionate moment. In this cinema verité, I simply smiled. I was still smiling when I lowered the chair legs down and gathered my books. You were waiting for me at the door of the study room.

Walking back to the dorms was just like any other walk we’d been on and unlike any other walk, we’d been on.  We just talked about… stuff.  No moments of deep looks into each other’s eyes while waiting on the light at the crosswalk. Just chit-chat. Maybe we were walking a bit closer than normal. Maybe. I know I could feel you next to me even when we weren’t touching 

We reached dorm row. The door to my dorm was on the right and yours at a right angle just a few feet away on the sidewalk. We were stopping and staring at each other. This was new. Normally, it was a quick ‘see ya’ and then through our doors. How to part now? How is parting done the first time?

Then another kiss. This one had both of us in slow motion. New and already broken in. Comfortable.

“I’ll see you tomorrow at breakfast.” You said and turned for your dorm.  

“Breakfast….  Yeah…. I’ll see you then.” I stuttered as you walked into your building.   

The question at the party still had me stymied as I tried to figure out the cute answer. Everyone was quietly uncomfortably staring at me when you took my arm and whispered loud enough for everyone to hear, “I think it was before we both knew it.”