Marissa and I have not spoken since that afternoon sophomore year…those warm days before it all went wrong. We pass each other in the halls, hear our names spoken across rooms, but we pretend it never happened in the first place. It’s faded into our history, and it’s gone.
Our class president is speaking. He’s just handed me the valedictorian medal and congratulated me on getting into Columbia, and I sit on stage next to him. The room breaks into polite applause, and we sit to listen to his speech.
It was pretty awful…the same trite garbage about reaching for your dreams that can be heard at every graduation ceremony across the country. But then he goes into the whole “memories that will last a lifetime” bit and the room collectively groans. Without thinking, my mind plays back the entirety of high school on a loop, the studying, the late nights out with friends, more studying, but my mind keeps skipping like a broken record, pausing on the same place again and again…
The lab table in fifth period biology.
I’m still mad at her. I might always be mad at her. But no matter how much rage I had over what happened, it couldn’t stop me from smiling when I heard her name. I could never really hate her.
As valedictorian, I have to shake the hand of every graduate as they make their way across the stage, where they then go on to shake hands with our class president and the principal. We’re only on the G’s, and I’m already exhausted and would probably sell my soul for some Purell. And then I remember she’s coming.
“Marissa Hayes!” the announcer says, and the room breaks out into applause. She is beautiful. She walks across stage in a tall pair of beige heels decorated with bows, and her dark brown hair is falling in curls over her red graduation gown. She moves her tassel with a wink at the crowd, and they explode into cheers.
Marissa walks towards me and we shake hands, meet eyes in a moment that makes the rest of the room fade away. We’re frozen in that moment—the last moment, possibly, and a thousand unspoken words travel between our eyes.
I’m still mad at her, and she knows it. But it doesn’t matter.
What matters is…and this is something neither of us would ever talk about, or would ever admit to…is that we knew we were different. We both knew, always had, always will, and looking into her green eyes for possibly the last time, I knew she knew it too. We knew that whatever had happened between us had a kind of unexplainable magic to it that was out of the ordinary, and that we wouldn’t find it again…
I let go of Marissa’s hand and watch her walk off the stage.
And if that feeling was real, maybe one day, somehow or somewhere, I’d find myself sitting next to her again.
“Ughhhhh…” Marissa says, waking me up. “I think someone’s drained all of the fluid out of my brain. Or put too much in. I’m not really sure.”
“Or,” I say, wrapping her up in my arms. “Someone,” I poke her nose. “May have put too much alcohol in.”
“Oh yes,” Marissa says, and giggles. She’s wearing the new lingerie I bought her, a light blue silk babydoll with navy lace, and she looks sexy as all hell—despite being a bit of a hungover mess.
“Remember last night you said you wanted to climb Mount Rainier today?” I said laughing. “I should hold you to that.”
Marissa slaps me playfully on my chest. “I’ll pass, thank you.”
“I’m good with that,” I say, pulling her against me. “We can stay in bed all day.”
“I like this plan,” Marissa says, and starts to drift back to sleep.
I look down at her and smile. She’s beautiful, this girl I met so many years ago, when I was young and didn’t quite understand what love was yet. And for many years I never really did. I lived through a series of failed dates and relationships, periods of giving up and being alone, times of anger and frustration…to end up here, right back where I had started.
What was love? What did it feel like? I had spent time looking for the answer, and it was there all along.
Love is sitting next to someone in silence, and hearing the poetry of it anyway.
Marissa woke up for a minute and smiled at me, crinkling her nose the way she used to when she examined test tubes in Biology, all those years ago, and my heart nearly burst at the sight of her.
With her, I hear everything.
And I don’t even need a single word to tell her.