“Please don’t cry, mi amor. Don’t be upset,” she tried to calm him with.

“But, my love, you’ll be going away. I love you so much, and this will be pure h*** for me. I wish you didn’t have to go so soon to C-O-L-L-E-G-E.”

“It’s only until June, then I’ll rush back here to see you—and I’ll be sure to come back here for every break I get: Winter break, Spring break; I’ll be sure to come down and visit you on your birthday; and on our four-year anniversary, I’ll take off a few days and come see you. …I promise. And I’ll text you every single day, and Skype you every night until one of us will fall asleep. And I’ll think of you every morning when I wake up…… And I’ll cry when it’s thundering outside and I’m not with you to cuddle with. When Senior Year gets miserable, I’ll feel terrible that I’m not here to try and make you happy.” Soon enough, she began to cry as well. “A-And on Valentine’s Day, I’ll—I’ll make sure to…to…”

He grabbed her and held her even tighter than he already was. “You don’t cry too, babe. One of us has to be the strong one.” He gave her a light kiss on the neck, on the cheek, and then gently brushed her lips with his. Her tears, which had come on strong, began to fade with little ease. “I love you so much…so godd*** much! I hate to see you go, while I still have another year left before…” His words trailed off, and came back in the form of salty tears.

Now, she held him a little tighter. “I will always love you,” she sang softly.

“You’re sweet singing voice has always been so comforting, and the loveliness and nurturing feeling of your arms have always been able to calm me. So how am I supposed to live without you now that I’ve loved you so much, and for so long. I’ve become completely addicted to you, your kisses, your embrace…”

She cut him off. “Stop crying,” she said. “Please calm yourself.” And she held him as tightly as she could. She pushed him down on the bed. Kneeling on top of him, she slid herself down somewhat, so that she could kiss him with ease. “Make me remember this night forever; so that every time I close my eyes, the memories of right now flash in my mind. Take off your shirt.” At that moment, she peeled out of her tee shirt, and had him take off his. She drew his hand to her bra strap. “You’ve done this part so many times that by now it should be as easy as snapping your fingers.” She gave a light-hearted laugh, and a faint half-smirk—as if the semi-colon and the parenthesis mark in a text message. He unhooked her bra for the two-hundred-seventeenth time in the past two years. (Young curiosity…) Her breasts hung, and she guided his hands to them, saying, “I hope I don’t seem obsessive over you touching my boobs.” A smile stretched across both of their faces, remembering an old quote she had said several years ago. “You can touch all you want,” she said, as if reading off a list of things she said to him when she was sixteen. “They’re not too small, are they?”

“They were never too small…always perfect.” He gave them a squeeze.

“I love you.”

“I love you too. O, you haven’t done this in so long, it feels so good.”

“I love pleasuring you.” He rolled over and had her lay on the bed, and he kneeled atop her, as to get at a good angle to massage her chest from. She closed her eyes and smiled. Both of their tears faded for now. “I’ll never forget they first time we kissed and I took your shirt off; the first time I undressed you; the first time I—”

She cut him off by reaching up for him, as to pull him down and French kiss him. His lips eventually tailed off and wandered down her neck, her chest, her stomach, and were then blocked by her jeans, still hiding everything underneath. They came off as well. “It’s okay,” she said, when he showed hesitation to removing her panties, “you can. It’s not like you haven’t done it a million times before. But it’s gonna be different this time, honey,” she continued; “because this time, I want you to finger me.”

This thought crossed over his mind, kicking up dusty memories of when he first asked if he could, and she said, ‘Not now, I’m not ready yet. But I promise you someday…’

“And lemme touch you There?” she asked; “so that you can know what it feels like when my soft fingers run the length of It. Rawr.”

On any other day, the nostalgia of these quotes would make him laugh, but now, they only made the tears come back. (One day, you’ll be able to sleep with me, and you can rest your head on my chest, cuddle with me, and I can find you in my arms still when I wake up.)

Their lips met up again. His hand on her, the other under her, holding her. He sat her up, and had her sit as close to him—facing him—as possible, so close, that their bellies touched. Once again, they fell to the bed,

(time has passed since our first sleep; and even still we, our virginities, keep)

and kept as close to each other as they were, only moved closer.

“How am I supposed to go without you and your sexy ways of seducing me?”
A French kiss.

“Every Friday, I’ll strip for you on Skype.” A provocative smile ran across her face.

“Promise?”

She whispered, “And I’ll do anything you ask for. You should even record it, so that, if you, during the week, get bored, you have something worth watching again and again.” These words, in between powerful kisses, that smirk never leaving her face. It felt good when they started to touch each other’s.

They slept together, and were still found virgins in the morning, though she had allowed him much in the dark.


She only came to visit him over Winter break, and they spent the day after her birthday together. After that, the texts diminished, Skype was rarely used, and eventually, he could barely even remember the tone of her sweet voice. He still thought about her every night before he went to sleep, and when he walked around the school and sat at the lunch table they sat at, and when he walked in the classrooms they shared. And he remembered when they had gone lingerie shopping; she pulled him into her dressing room and did more than ask for his opinion on whether those bras made her boobs look too fake. He remembered when she said he was the reason she smiled so much. He remembered when she had him come to a small party hosted by a small circle of their friends. He remembered when she told him how much she really liked him. He remembered when she told him, the first time they were at her house and her parents were making dinner, that if they went upstairs and she locked her door, there was no way they could walk in on him and her making out in a rather lewd way. He remembered their first date on Veteran’s Day, 2010, when they played mini golf and walked around the streets holding hands, and wound up on her couch studying for a Biology quiz that was to be given the subsequent day. And he remembered, above all, her saying, “Yes, when I get done with college, I’ll come find you, and we’ll be married. And still, by that time, I’ll have stayed completely loyal to you, waiting days and days for you to finally come and liberate me from my drought of your warm kisses. I’ll still be madly in love with you then, I promise. I will always love you. I’ll still be holding onto my virginity for you, waiting to trade it for yours. I’ll be waiting for that day when my parents can no longer control how long I see you for, or what we do together and when. You’ll finally have me, for once and forever, with no strings attached, all to yourself.” But he thinks, when these thoughts come to him and fog his vision with heavy tears that fall like hail, that that is all a memory, that to her, he is no more than a used-to-be, and that her pureness, that she promised to save for him, has, over her months in college, surrounded by horrible influences, weakened, depreciated, turned to dust, and is probably gone by now.

On the day before Valentine’s Day, which was a Friday, he had forgotten, to the best of his ability, his memories of her, and has hoped he found someone else. This someone else was with him now. They were lying in bed together, and she said, with a calming voice and a delightful accent, “It’s gonna be different this time, honey, this time, I want you to finger me.”
And he began to cry.
It took him a long time to explain to her why he was crying, and when he finally did, she decided he needed to either get over the girl of his past, or she was going to leave him. She walked out the door and headed for her car, parked parallel to his in the driveway.

Her plane landed around ten o’clock at night, and as she walked through the parking garage, searching for her car, she ran a dialogue in her mind:


HE: You’re here! [Begins to cry.] I haven’t heard from you in months! Where have you been? What happened? What’s wrong?
SHE: I’m so so so so so so so sorry for never contacting you. I’m so horrible! I’ve completely neglected you, the one person in my life who ever showed me so much love. [Turns around and begins to walk away.]
HE: No! Don’t leave! Not now; never again! Imma never let you go. You can’t leave me again. Life has been torture ever since you left.
SHE: But…
HE: NO! [Grabs her, kisses her, and drags her inside. Locks the door.]

She drove to him around eleven, and happened to pull into his driveway no more than a minute after the Other One had left. She walked—ran, more likely—to his door and rang the doorbell seven times. It seemed like forever before she heard the lock turn.

And when he answered the door, and saw her smiling, standing there, just like she promised, (to the fragments of her promise she held true too), he became immobilized with happiness, and needed a quick kiss from her to defrost him. When her lips left his after the first time they had met since December, he began to tremble, and fell to his knees in front of her. His sobs, along with the words, “I thought I’d never see you again!” were muffled as he buried his face in her shoulder and began to kiss her neck.