The Story of Us, Part 2

(Part 1 can be found here.)

We spent the next two weeks hanging out as much as possible, but we both knew the inevitable was just around the corner.  Derek was leaving for college, and it loomed over me like a thundercloud.  I didn’t want to admit just how fast I was falling for him when the practical side of me knew he was leaving and there was no way he would keep on dating a high school girl who lived two hours away.  The night before he left town, we went to one of our favorite parks to hang out and talk one last time (and by talk I definitely mean make out.  I know you were all thinking it and assuming it!)  He slipped a tape into tapedeck and played me a song called Special by The Cranberries.  “I remember all the things we once shared.  Watching tv movies on the living room armchair.  But the thing that makes me sad…it’s the one thing that I had.  I knew, I knew.  I would lose you.  You’ll always be special to me…” I had to fight back the tears.  It was crazy how much I liked him after just a month of knowing him and a handful of dates.  He dropped me off at home, promised to write me, kissed me one last time, and that was it.  I figured I might see him here and there, but I knew that the whole thing was probably over.  A little summer romance.  My first summer romance, and I knew I would remember it always.

But then the first letter arrived.  And then the next, and the next, and the next.  We wrote each other several letters a week, talked on the phone as much as possible, and we both looked forward to the weekends he would come home for a visit.  By the time Christmas break rolled around, we were still very much together, and although neither of us had spoken it, I knew I loved him.

That Christmas was magical.  He gave me a small, wrapped box that rattled as I gently shook it.  I read the card, which had poem inside about the meaning of the gift.  It wasn’t a gift for me to open, the poem said, for it was filled with love inside.  I looked at him questioningly,  “It’s the key to my heart.” he said.

We spent New Year’s Eve together, watching movies, soaking up as much time together as possible before he headed back to school.  We had talked about love, and I knew that I felt it.  Judging by the gift he gave me, he felt it too.  But still neither of us said those three words out loud.  But that night, right in the middle of The Fox and the Hound, he whispered it softly in my ear.  I turned to him, and looked into his beautiful blue eyes.  “I love you, too.”  I said.  I wasn’t even 16 years old yet, but I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I loved him.