Simple Story

A long time ago I told the story about meeting the girl. So what happened next?

Any fool would have been excited by meeting someone beautiful, intriguing and that I could hold a conversation with. Most of us have experienced some sort of friendship that has taken place over years. Do you recall meeting? I sadly, with my poor overall memory, have many friends who I don't remember meeting for the first time. Somehow, between that meeting and the present, we became friends.

However, sometimes you can remember meeting that person and you wonder how your life was before you met them.

I was still working at a restaurant at this point, I was also quite involved in a local music school. Why is this important... I'll get to that, you, being the patient reader shall have to wait a bit longer.

We were both very busy, her a senior in high school, myself working and working and studying.

However, we talked a few times on the phone, always briefly and we made a date. Her family was protective, as I recall and so I was fine with the idea of coming up to her house to watch some movies.

I stopped for ice cream, seemed like an appropriate gift, flowers too easy. Ice cream is a bit more personal and definitely unique. Or maybe it was just dorky but it seemed like a great idea at the time...

at least till I was standing on the porch of her house and realized that, if she didn't like it I'd be a total loser, ah well.

We hung out and then she commandeered her brother's room (where the TV was located with DVD player). We watched two movies I had not seen, Don Juan and Entrapment. Two perfectly miserable movies for causing any sort of nonromantic encounter.

I was completely entrapped, we sat there on the lower bunk of her brother's bunk beds, cuddling in the blankets and watching movies. We were both obviously very attracted to each other. Though I couldn't imagine how she could be attracted to me considering how unattractive I found myself. Alas, I digress.

I met her mother, father, brother and sister. All very unique and though I didn't know it at the time, all I would grow to love in some way or another. They seemed quite typical and polite. We all chatted on some superficial level, I'm sure but I was probably not paying as much attention to that as I should.

The movies eventually faded to black, the credits rolled and Lo's brother had a strange desire to go to bed... imagine that, so we left his room and went to her little sister's room. Apparently her little sister (she was 4 or 5) still slept with her parents and this left her room open.

We talked, we had just seen these great movies which opened a line of dialogue that was very interesting, especially between intelligent kids such as us. We talked and I had already put my shoes on and such and was getting ready to go.

This moment is important so I shall pause briefly to say that this was really the 2nd date for us, we had chatted, I'm sure before this but our schedule was busy and it couldn't have been much.

She lay in her sisters bed and I was sitting on a poofy like chair nearby, with foot stool. I knew I needed to go, we had to be up very early the next morning for a show both of us were in. She asked me to stay a while longer.

She asked me to stay a while longer.

This would be the first of many hundreds of such requests by this girl. This devilish girl gained this power early on to influence me to stay 'a little longer', eventually to stay for the whole night and even longer. And this moment I made the decision, I recall distinctly sitting there, she had somehow invited me onto the bed since I was so far away and I knew if I took off my shoes I was going to stay for a while.

It was if my shoes suddenly became this division between two different worlds, two different paths, and two different outcomes. Sitting there contemplating the implications... The choice is obvious and would be obvious to you if you had seen her lying there. I took off my shoes, emptied my pockets and laid down with her.

We were both so very innocent, I was completely taken by this girl, entranced. She was taken by me as well. Our first kiss in her little sister's bed. We talked, we kissed, we fell... we fell as rocks from a cliff, quite a weight falling from quite a height.

It gets better.

After kissing, flirting, discovering and relaxing it was closer to 3am than to 2 and it was surely time to go. Her parents were asleep downstairs and her brother down the hall and I definitely did not have permission to be there.

I put on my shoes and grabbed my phone. She laid there. I said goodnight and that I'd let myself out, being sure to lock the door behind me. This was the first night and definitely not the last that I crept down the stairs quite carefully and past her parents' door and down the hallway to her front door.

I opened it, locked the handle and entered the cool night air, pulling it shut.

"My keys?"

It hit me quite quickly. I immediately checked my pockets, I had left my keys inside, I checked the handle. No! OH NO!

I was panicked and acted as such. Instead of immediately calling her cell phone I proceeded to engage in the most illogical course of action I could have developed. I checked all my car doors. Locked.

I definitely couldn't knock nor ring the doorbell, no way to explain that too the parents. Even calling her on the cell phone may have awoken her parents and if they woke up and saw my vehicle still outside! Many problems. So, I had to sneak back into her house, I decided.

Her front door was locked, what about her garage? The side door was manual and it was open! I opened it quietly, hoping no one was watching at 3am in the morning and called the police. Her garage was very dark though and like most garages, it had stuff in it. I also was exceptionally quiet! To be so quiet when surrounded by trash cans, tools, and various other potentially loud elements it meant moving very, very slow.

Just to get open the garage door probably took me 5 minutes, I wanted to be quiet so I didn't wake anyone up but I wanted to be quick so I wasn't seen as some sort of burglar. It took a while but eventually I was inside, navigated over the objects of doom and made it to her kitchen door. Locked.

It was locked! Now I really began to panic.

I slowly made my way over the junk, tools, trash cans (ONE WAS METAL!) I made more noise than I should but eventually made it out of the garage. Next the basement door. This basement door was situated very near her parents' window, they were up a level but it was still close and, of course, could they have quiet grass? No, my friends, rocks... Rocks.

So I had to quietly navigate under her parents' window and onto the concrete slab that was part of the back patio area, above me was the deck with sliding glass doors that lead into the other side of the kitchen.

I reached the basement doors and... Locked.

I was out of options. There was one door I hadn't checked, the sliding doors but that meant going up the deck steps and trying to get in there. A very exposed position.

So after this 30 minutes (maybe 45) of sneaking around I finally decided to just call her cell phone. It took a while but she answered, I explained simply that my keys were in her sister's room and she knew immediately, she told me to meet her at the sliding doors.

I hung up, went up the steps and she came to the doors. She pulled them open (no, they weren't locked and yes, they were the ONLY doors I hadn't checked).

She was wearing nothing but a bath robe. A short one that covered her completely but still showered her knees. She was an angel, standing in the dim moonlight of the night in nothing but a bathrobe. I had no choice, I grabbed her tightly and I kissed her and thanked her. She was smiling. It was a perfect moment.

A perfect beautiful moment. I didn't want to go but I had to. I left, it was around 4 am by now, I had to be back at her house at 6am to pick her up and take her to our morning show, call 7am.

Sleep was clearly impossible. I picked up some coffee from 7-11 and drove to Palmer Park, the overlook and watched the sunrise. Perhaps catching 5 or 10 minutes of sleep. I had to go home to change but only for a few minutes before heading up to her house to pick this amazing girl up, who I had just met, just kissed.

I was walking on a cloud ten miles high. I was tingling as I watched the sunrise, a beautiful sunrise with just myself.

We had our performance, it was short but I had work at 10am so it didn't matter. I told one of my best friend's for life, Rebecca, what had happened, I could hardly contain myself. I cleaning the lounge of the music school trying desperately to explain to her how truly amazing it was. I'm not sure she understood fully the magic I had experienced but she was excited nevertheless. Not only did I have work, but it was a double.

I didn't sleep for 30 some hours, save those few minutes (literally). That night, after work, I was completely giddy and silly (Sleep deprivation) but so happy it didn't matter.

That night not only set up a very funny story (especially live with facial expressions and whatnot) it setup what would be the style of our relationship for so long.

Over the next few months we would come to spend all our time together, talking every night, falling asleep on the phone sometimes, we were typical, it could take us hours just to say goodnight over the phone. We got around this obstacle by just spending the night with each other. We hated saying goodbye and so we didn't.

It became this wonderful game of figuring out how we could be together as much as possible. We became partners in this game, overcoming any obstacle put in our way. I also became a slave to her voice's desire that I stay. I always (and by always, I mean EVERY SINGLE TIME, BABY!) wanted to stay with her but reason would intrude on my heart's desire and I'd feel obligated to leave but then that voice... she'd plead ever so slightly that I stay and I could not reject her.

To this day I have trouble rejecting her, this past January when she lay in the other room and I was on the couch and she called out, "Will?" -- and I resisted and resisted, "No, I'm fine on the couch." "What, my bed isn't good enough for you?" "Of course it is, just a better if I sleep on the couch." And finally she simply asked me... and try as I had, I couldn't resist her. I just couldn't resist her!

I think in the years we've been together I've said, "No" to her maybe... twice. She had a saying, "No is just a starting place for negotiation." -- She was right, of course, and yet I did have a way of sometimes convincing her to say no herself. So it wasn't completely one-sided. It was equal and when she said, "I need you." Any objection I had melted immediately and I was there for her, as she was for me. No questions asked.

This was our love and this was our beginning.

Yum