Just waiting at that fountain was probably one of the most stressful moments of my life. I was wearing my “Science of Rock and Roll” t-shirt I got at the science center a month ago. It made my figure look nice and I wanted to look not too formal or too casual, but the cool, relaxed person he grew to know. “Start filming, he’s gonna be here any second!” my dad started chanting at my brother, he is extremely clumsy with a camera.
“I’m approaching the doors now.”
“Okay, I’ll see you soon!” I hung up my phone.
I remember thinking, “Holy ----! Do I really want to meet him?” I was extremely fidgety and overanxious. We spent such a long time preparing for this occasion I hoped it to be the most passionate moment we would remember of each other. I would leap into his arms and we would kiss, and it would be like a scene from The Notebook, rain would start pouring and love would set in, it would be such an enchanting moment that the whole crowd would stop in their shoes to appreciate the blossoming young love.
My eyes curiously scanned the lobby looking for his light ocean blue eyes, jet black hair, pale complexion and 6’2 figure. I could feel my heart pounding like a hammer on a nail and my leg was shaking uncontrollably even though I was sitting in this awkward crossed legged position. I could feel the time getting increasingly longer, the time it took the clock to change to a seven from a six felt like a million hours even though it was only a minute apart. Then I see this smug little smirk out of the corner of my eye, finally the distance between us was an arm’s length away.
“We are totally going to cry when we see each other.” Is what we said the night before and many nights before that. I’ve been waiting six months to meet him, so many times we fantasized about what we were going to do when we saw each other, formulating possible outcomes once we make sincere eye contact for the first time. He told me he was 6’2 and I never realized how tall 6’2 was until I saw it from my 5’4 perspective. It’s odd to think that this moment would make me feel so uptight and tense.
I walked over to him, there was a small bounce in my step, and this was so exhilarating to finally converge between these restraints that kept us parallel for so long. I threw my arms around his shoulders and nestled myself in his comforting embrace. He hugged me so tight it lifted me up onto my tippy toes, the hug lasted longer than a normal hug, just those few milliseconds made that embrace the most memorable moment I’ll ever remember.
Now we claimed we were going to ball our eyes out, nope, instead we laughed uncontrollably. We both were so glad to finally meet, touch, make actual eye contact, I’ll never lose that connection with him, and those eyes are something to get lost in. I’ll never forget that weekend together, I spent ever second with him, standing as close to him as I could but not too close to where our hands met, we saw affectionate actions like that awkward back then. We acted like two little children with that middle school crush.
We took so many pictures, this weekend had to be remembered to every detail, to all the silly photos we took alongside the odd moose sculptures we found. Finally, a long distance relationship that worked out, so many people wanted us together for their own satisfaction. They wanted us together because we are perfect for each other, two best friends always there, side by side.
Eventually that weekend had to come to a sad unfortunate end. We all went down to the lake that day, and took a stroll through the town browsing gift shops with the funny little stereotypical Canadian snow globes. I found this funny piece of underwear and challenged him to a rock, paper, scissor dual. “You win, you don’t get them, you lose, you get them.” But I’m the rock, paper, scissor master and he still has that pair of silly underwear to this day.
It was a warm August day and I craved ice cream. We wandered into this little town famous shop with our Pittsburgh penguin matching t-shirts, a horrible wardrobe mishap that turned out to be cute. It felt so surreal doing couples things, having him beside me and being able to call him mine. Everyone looked at us like that one person wearing white at a funeral, I don’t blame them, we had those matching shirts and the height difference is nearly one foot apart. I really did not care, they had no clue what we went through to see each other.
After about two hours we walked back to our cars, I walked as slow as possible, I really didn’t want to say goodbye. Seeing the cars slowly getting bigger as we walked closer was distressing me, I wanted to cry and so did he, but we held the tears back from our parents seeing. Our parents talked once we got to the car, giving us sometime to say our goodbyes and reflect on all the things we finally got to do together, like take a walk down to the store and get a cozy little coffee with donuts, a.k.a. our first “date”.
It was time for them to go, they had a fourteen hour drive back home. I kept looking at him, admiring how handsome he was, I didn’t want to lose all the features I could see now that he was real. I stood there awkwardly because this goodbye was too hard to handle, I tried to take in as much as I could from this moment so I wouldn’t forget a single detail. “I’m really gonna miss you, I don’t want to say goodbye because I don’t know when the next hello is gonna be.” He hugged me so hard I felt my rib cage starting to collapse in itself and I buried my head into his neck, trying to memorize his natural spicy musk.
Our parents hopped into the cars and started them up, we both stood behind them and made that last connection, I remember standing there and could feel my body wanting to break down, it was too much to comprehend, this goodbye was happening too quickly. We waved and dragged ourselves back into our cars. Switch it in reverse. Back up. Throw it into drive. The closer we got to driving away the more my heart started racing. We set the car on the road, I flipped around in my seat and stuck my head out the window trying to say one last goodbye. My dad began to accelerate the car down the road, I couldn’t catch that one last glimpse of him, and I felt anxiety set in, I needed this closure before we left. His car started its way down the road, narrowing further and further, it seemed as though the miniature hedges on the sides of the road turned into this colossal tunnel. The distance between us grew stronger and I felt the restraints begin to set in, we were parallel lines once more and I just couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that our next hello would be over my computer screen.