Our first date lasted three days. Before leaving my apartment to meet you, I looked at myself in the mirror and saw that my hands were visibly shaking. It was 11pm on a Monday night and I had class the next morning at 9am. “What am I doing? This is so out of character for me,” I told my roommate while smoking a cigarette by the living room window. There was a diagram taped to my bedroom door. It looked like this:
Weeks later, you would recount to me what it felt like when I walked through the door. “Your hair was glowing, and you looked way too young to be in a bar. I didn’t understand what a girl as beautiful as you could see in a guy like me.” We didn’t stop kissing for three days.
Our second date was during a blizzard. The snow and ice were so bad that they canceled school. You traveled 170 blocks against the winds, carrying flowers. At my door, your shoulders were caked in ice, snowflakes melting in your eyebrows. Your cheeks were so red! When I kissed you, your lips froze mine. I peeled off your clothes one item at a time, your skin wet through the lining of your coat. I took the roses, soggy and wilting, from your hand and placed them in a vase on top of my bookshelf.
The vase stayed there, with the flowers growing increasingly brown and brittle, until the day you left. It was Spring–they didn’t belong there anymore.
