He had the most beautiful head of hair. Thick. Not blond, but not quite brown. With a specific lock that fell in the center of his face. Always. And he shoved it back with a roll of those impossibly bright and deeply set eyes. The pout of a kid trapped in the long, slender body of a man led by the thoughts of an insecure teenager annoyed at the oil and pimples trailed across his forehead. He pouted at having to push the runaway back in place, hoping the glare would distract from the skeleton-thin fingers attempting to put the stray lock back just so. Just so. Just so it would fall again and gave all of us who walked beneath his unreasonably tall frame a reason to look up and see him.
Shy him. Smart him. Him, with only one friend and dreams to leave sun and palms trees in his rearview with the depth and concrete of the far coast stretched ahead. Him, with shirts buttoned to his chin and cuffs of his pants never quite reaching his grown man shoes. His feet only touched tennis shoes when he, well, played tennis. Cleats for soccer. Otherwise just grown man shoes that scuffed the lineolum in the hallways. Had I not played soccer with sister, I would not have noticed him. Had he not had designs on my best friend, he would not have noticed me.
He stopped me in the halls to ask if she asked about Him. If she’d want to go to a concert with Him. When he scored an afternoon invitation to her house, he was not aware that he’d be a numbered suitor. Suitor #1 was the baseball star who transfer from a state of snow and cheese and scratchy accents with his single mother. The one you’d find doing spot-on Jim Carrey impressions one moment, crying in his hand-me-down car the next. Suitor #2 lived at the other end of my best friend’s street. He possessed a curly mop of red hair and a wildly uncontrolled issue with alcohol. That left Him as Suitor #3, stuck between the guy who squatted above dog poop a neighbor kid left in the median of the tree-lined suburban neighborhood and the other kid who kept offering us swings of booze from a paperbag. “She thinks this is fun?” I shrugged.
I don’t know how or when or why, but we had plans to go to the movies. It didn’t register that it was the discount movie theater, barely on this side of the line dividing our city from the next. All I knew was he drove to my mother’s condo, rang the bell for our apartment outside of the gates, and stood chest and head above his mother’s car with one hand shoved in his pockets and the other swiping that lock of hair from his forehead as I attempted to walk, not run, to meet him. He asked I liked “The Smiths”, if I had read a book by an author I’d never heard of, or if I knew where I wanted to go college. No, no, and absolutely not. “I think my best friend likes you.”
Shit.
“I like your best friend and mine likes yours. We should all hang out.”
Shit.
How the night went from that to us kissing throughout the movie has been locked in a far off place in my mind. All I know is that night began a consistent pattern of him questioning me about my best friend, giving me tips on how to woo his, and then going somewhere to make out. My mother was out on one of these evenings and he suggested we stay in. Absent any expectation or knowledge of entertaining a gentleman caller, I agreed and walked him past the condo community pool, rec center and fountain that rarely ever worked to our condo.
My mother was an addict and a smoker and we never had anyone outside of the addict community in our house. I was immediately self conscious about the stacks of unread newspapers on the stained dining room table, the trays overflowing with ash in every room, and I could not recall if I had actually cleaned out the cat box when told my mother I had. “There’s some kind of…cookie on the floor.” Probably. The general disarray and palpable sadness of where I lived had him shift his priority for the evening. “I have to go to Big Bear this weekend to housesit for a friend of my mom’s. It’s a really (my mind tells me he wiped his hands on his chest at this point) nice place with a hot tub and no one will be there. You should drive up.” I nodded so I wouldn’t squee while simultaneously trying to push an oddly discarded dishtowel under the loveseat. “OK. I’m going to go.” Another nod. “One more thing. Do you think I’m a good kisser?”. Another nod. “Make sure you tell your friend.”
He turned on his adult heel’d shoe and left.
In a moment of lucidity, my mother vehemently refused to let me take a 90-minute drive alone up a two-line mountain road to meet a boy that was not my boyfriend to spend time in a hot tub. (As I type this, it seems like the right call). I laid on my trundle bed and saw with abundant clarity I was not his first choice. Or his second choice. Or his last choice. I wasn’t a choice at all. I was just there. I was a convenience. A thought that was after, after.
Here I am, a whole 22 years later with a man that has chosen me first. Who continues to chose me first, even when my clouded, broken mind finds comfort in trying to be after last. There’s a strength, a responsibility and a power in being chosen. If you’re not there, get there.
