Author's Note: This is the first installation in what I intend to be a long series that explores the beginning(s) and end of a relationship. Naturally, as the introduction to the characters and their histories, there is less sex. Other chapters, I promise, will have much more satisfactory material. Comments and suggestions are always welcome. If you have any interest in serving as an editor, please contact me. Thanks for reading.
Everyone depicted is 18 or older and you should be, too.
*****
It wasn't meant to last, right? Do such things really ever last? He placed his classmates into two categories. There were those, like himself, who found a love, or, more accurately, an infatuation early — coinciding neatly with that period in life in which one sheds their innocence of sex. And then there were what he now called the realists, who outwardly showed no signs of romance, but eagerly embraced the pleasures that came with high school. He supposed there was possibly a third group, the unlucky. But given all the heartache their more "lucky" classmates experienced, he didn't know if that was the right term. Late bloomers, might be more precise.
He looked at the perfectly staged Facebook photographs of high school couples that had made it. Who had fallen in love early, and sustained that love through the many temptations and vices of college, to emerge victorious on the other side, with rings on their fingers. He could believe, without much thought other than that they seemed nobler, that the 65+ crowd might have more success with this sacred institution known as marriage. Black and white photos of old weddings, with men fresh from sacrificing their lives for a country, just seemed so much more pure. But, to him, the posturing, the precision, the unblemished portrait that Instagram and Facebook let these wundercouples present came across to him only as fakeness. Under all that, he thought, there was discord, distrust, jealousies, desires, boredom. Marriage was just a way to decide mutually not to let those feelings be known.
Daniel didn't know why exactly he was so bitter. Well, he had a few ideas why, but they were so commonplace that he couldn't imagine it was the real reason. The basic story was he had once fallen so hard for this girl, Alexa. Alexa, or Alex as she preferred, was far less interested in him in turned out. In fact, she didn't know him. They were thirteen, and he was scrawny and covered in pimples and had bad posture. But he persisted, and he eventually learned the disappointments of the "friend zone". And as the pimples receded and the weirdness of puberty passed into actual maleness, the future did take on a brighter hue. He calmed down on his borderline creepy obsession with Alex, and learned to mimic the tricks of his more advanced competitors. He spent his free time learning the rules of this strange game — it was not intuitive at all to him — where those with the most success, that is, teenage success, were the biggest assholes. He found it all rather inane and besides the point: having been an early adherent of masturbation, he couldn't imagine why anyone would want to play games when you could just fuck. Right?
But, as these things go, it worked with Alex. Eventually. He still wasn't sure whether it was his own maturing or the "game" that brought the relationship to fruition.
At any rate, toward the end of high school, as the daily pressure of soccer gave him more physicality and more time away from thinking about girls, he stopped treating Alex as if she were a princess and he was there to cater to her every wish. He stopped paying attention to her every word. He ignored her when he was busy. He openly flirted with others; he dated others. Generally, he just stopped being the perfectly nice best friend that accommodated her every whim, even if he still secretly adored her.
So perhaps it came as no surprise that Alex's eye finally turned to what was right in front of her. It was their last year of high school, the culmination of five years of friendship and secret desire. On a grey and chilly Saturday morning, towards the end of a snowy New England winter, Daniel took a jog around their forested and rustic neighborhood outside of town. Unconsciously, his route led him right by Alex's home. Perhaps it wasn't that unconscious, he thought. He slowed as he saw the dark-brick two-story rise ahead of him. Alex's room light was on. He was cold, having worn only jogging shorts and a Patriots hoodie. His own house was about a half mile away. He decided that he would stop his run at Alex's. The perks of high school life is that all your friends' home become your second homes. Unlike college, that actually means free food and drinks and nice things.
He walked up the path to the house. He shivered as his body cooled down but the sheen of sweat remained on his skin. Alex's light was on, so he figured she had to be awake, despite it being early. He rang. No answer. He was getting very cold and about to continue on to his own house when the door opened. Alex stood there, with a mix of annoyance and laughter.
"Get your ass in here, you freak, it's forty degrees outside."
"Took you long enough," Daniel said as he stepped inside.
He remembered that it took him awhile to formulate words. Alex had opened the door in dress more appropriate for the middle of summer. Her hair was mostly wet, not quite its usual lush and soft brown waves. But it was the tank top and the pajama shorts that caught his attention. A simple dark blue tank top and tiny black shorts was all that covered her body. He'd always found Alex to be perfect. She didn't play sports anymore nor did she cheer or dance, which left her with a young voluptuousness that combined well with her indifference toward how she looked in comparison to fashion models in
Vogue
or the cheerleaders on the sidelines. Months of winter clothing had left Daniel with only teases and hints of Alex's breasts and legs and curves. Now, it was all in front of him. The large and appealing slope of her breasts, with cleavage that took every ounce of will power to draw his eyes from. It left his blood boiling as he took in her smooth legs, as they led to the gentle and promising curve of her hips — and her butt, fuck, he thought, only barely contained in her tight shorts, when she turned to lead him inside the warmth of the home.
"I suppose you'll want some water or Gatorade."
"That'd be great." Thank God she couldn't see what his eyes were doing right now.
They reached the kitchen and she handed him a water bottle from the fridge and turned to face him.
"So what did I do?" Alex asked.
"What?" He said between gulping down the water and wiping sweat from my forehead.
"The one Saturday I have the house to myself, without my mom constantly interrupting me, or my dad asking me to do some chores - I was planning on having some quality time to do my nails and watch my shows instead of football, and now you show up. Thanks," she said, though with less bitterness than amusement.
"Ah, well, I would hope I'm better company. But really, I was just getting cold and decided to stop early, and hey, maybe I wanted to get away from my own parents. Do you mind if I go to the restroom?"
"Do you really need to ask."
He got up from the bar stool and walked passed her, giving her his best and most cloying smile on the way.
"You smell bad, too, by the way."
He closed the door to the bathroom and looked at his reflection in the mirror. His face, still red with the cold and exertion, was attractive, he thought. This narcissism wasn't a daily occurrence, as he felt he always had an off day or two during a week, in which his appearance paled in comparison with some of his teammates. But his face was slender, with good bones and a strong jaw. His brown eyes and messy brown hair gave him a normalness that he had long ago embraced. He took the hand towel and wiped off his sweat. He tried smelling himself and he decided Alex was just fucking with him: he'd only run about two miles.
He took a moment to breath. He had that weird sensation in his stomach. It wasn't from a lack of food, but rather anticipation. Expectation — a tension that could possibly be released — that his body sensed, or just his body reacting to the sight of Alex and desiring. Something in the way she spoke and looked at him, the glint in her eye, the tightening of a smile repressed. It suggested rather than offered, in the way he had learned long ago that women had mastered and that he had yet to ever read correctly. It was this inability to discern the intentions of women, when a look meant romantic interest rather than niceness, that left him the recipient of only an awkward — but weirdly nice if incomplete — hand job. Most of his teammates and friends had long ago moved onto bigger and better things than hand jobs and sexually unfulfilling relationships. He told himself that he just liked Alex a lot more than getting in the pants of someone else.
