Count to Ten

I

Summer. It was evening and you were in a black sweatshirt, ripped in all the right places and patched with safety pins because you wanted to look edgy. There was a girl you hoped to see. You were in the same homeroom, Algebra 1, and you sat behind her and stared at the back of her head, at the way her hair parted down the middle perfectly. She’s here, or she was here—memory plays tricks on the tenses. She’s wearing…what was she wearing? It’s too long ago to remember. What you do remember is that you had braces then and she didn’t; you were inelegant, all elbows and knees and overbite, and she wasn’t. It was a friend’s party but which friend? You were outside, on a couch, on the deck. It was cold; she was beautiful. You still have that sweatshirt with the safety pins.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, you two are—were—alone. You remember shaking but trying not to show it, and not because of the cold. Maybe you were talking. That’s not what’s important. What came next was: You took her hand in yours and very, very gently, she squeezed back. From this everything follows.