In my infinite boredom at work today I started thinking about some fond memories from high school. My mind runs wild, the flood gates open, and before I know it, I am all consumed with thoughts and memories of the first guy I ever had feelings for.
We were in the same graduating class and we had a few mutual friends. It was our sophomore year that we started working together, (we had some classes together too). We talked only a little. Mostly one would stare at the other and look quickly away when the other noticed. Summer came and found us both working early mornings to avoid the heat, bugs, and bad-tempered horses often found on a horse farm June, July and August. He could drive so sometimes he would give me a ride, but more often than not I would just have my mom to pick me up to avoid the awkwardness of having a boy drive me home when my dad is there. When I was finished with my work I would call my mom and he would sit with me while I waited for her to come and get me.
It was one of these days that he tried to steal a kiss. We were sitting on the couch in the lounge looking at tack catalogs when he turns to me and asks if I had ever kissed anybody before. I hadn’t and I told him so. We sat there starring at each other, fiddling with our shoelaces and the corners of the magazines lying open on our laps. He smiled and leaned in and I…sneezed! It was so obviously faked! He gave me a strange sort of look that I still don’t understand and went back to looking at the magazine. I guess the mood had passed.
For the next couple of day neither of us acted as if anything had happened. Finally late one morning I found him and made up a question to ask him. He said that he was ready to take a break and invited me to come along. We went outside and stood up against a wooden fence and watched the horses graze in front of a backdrop of long hay fields and heavily wooded hills and shared a cigarette. While we were standing there he held my hand; I looked up at him and smiled.
Not another word was spoken between us that day, and hardly a sentence muttered, the eyes averted, for the rest of the summer and our junior year of high school to follow.
He quit working at the bard and found a job elsewhere. He came back in the summer to bale hay and brought with him an entourage of muscled-jock-type FFA boys clad in straw cowboy hats and Wranglers, sans shirts. The girl that had replaced him earlier in the year was just as obvious in her ogling of the sweaty, shirtless boys that had invaded our quiet and peaceful mornings. I was only ogling one of them, and occasionally when he was catch me watching him he would smile at me and I would wink back and turn away quickly so he wouldn’t see my face turn red.
Senior year found us spending some real time together. He would come out to the barn sometimes when he knew I wasn’t very busy. He was working at a restaurant in town with a group of rowdy people I hung out with and sometimes he could come out with us too. Mostly though we would just sit outside the barn on an old bale of hay and smoke cigarettes. I would tell him about the horses and borders and the upcoming show season and occasionally he would obnoxiously sing “Give it to me Baby, uh-huh,uh-huh,” but mostly we just sat in silence. We had nothing to talk about. We had plenty of things in common but we were interested in different things and he had no ambitions for his future. Finally we just stopped seeing each other.
One day over Christmas break I ran my little Subaru off the road and into a very deep ditch. It was about ¼ mile from his house and lucky for me he drove by shortly after. He waved down a guy in a big HD truck and helped to pull me out. I had left my coat at the barn so he had let me wear his. He kissed me on the forehead and gave me a hug when I went to hand it back to him. It was the first time since that summer day two years earlier that we had touched more than just brushing past one another.
“Can I call you sometime?”
I told him yes but I never expected him to, I wasn’t even sure if he had my phone number. Imagine my surprise when he called two days later. I was even more surprised when we talked. We saw each other about every night after that. One night when I came home I was on the phone with Jeannie and I can remember her asking me if I thought I would marry him. I can remember telling her that I was pretty sure that I wanted to but I was positive that it would never happen.
We usually stuck around the barn, once in awhile we would run into town to Dairy Queen and share a Blizzard. That ended when I threw up all over his truck one night! Once or twice he went to the Cupbearer with me and there were a few times we went to his house. He only came to my house once after I bought my horse, and my parents were out of town and my grandpa was asleep! He never formally met my parents until graduation day.
He had come back to work at the barn by this time and it was obvious to everyone that something was going on between us. It was hard to hide the fact that we came and went together most days. In August I was headed off to college and he was going to start work for a site-development company. He always said that someday he was going to own his own business and I would always giggle and tell him he didn’t strike me as the business-savvy type. He never responded when I said that, and more importantly, he never made fun of anything that I wanted to do.
On my first day of college I cried. I didn’t want to go and I was scared. He called me early that morning to wish me good luck and we ended up arguing the whole time. He was being so nice and telling me things like, “People as smart as you deserve to go to school and have more opportunities.” I had made a comment to him once that if he could make a living playing in dirt then so could I. I hadn’t meant for it to be so, but it was the meanest thing I had ever said to him, and I could see that in his face from that moment on. He just played if off saying that he was going to be doing hard labor for the rest of his life and I could and should do better.
We didn’t talk for a few days after that. Almost a week later I saw him outside when I drove by on my way to work. I honked. An hour later we were side-by-side cleaning out stalls together. After we were done we drove into town and got a couple of cups of coffee and went back and parked on a little gravel service road right in front of the barn. We sat on the tail gate of his truck and looked at nothing. Finally I turned to him and said, “I think it’s done.” He just shook his head and lit a cigarette and offered me one. I declined and he put his arm around me and stubbed his out.
I knew it was over when I saw the look on his face after telling him I could play in dirt for a living just as well as he could and the times that I laughed at him for wanting to start his own business. I hadn’t meant to, but I had hurt him pretty badly.
I slapped him on the knee and told him I had to get him to study. We got back in his truck and about half way back to the barns parking lot he stopped and leaned over and kissed me. I giggled and pulled away then leaned over and kissed him back. I scooted to the middle of the bench seat and we drove back the rest of the way with my head on his shoulder and his arm around my neck. He kissed me again before I got out of his truck and into my car. Before I got my door shut he called out the open passenger window, “When are you going to get rid of that old car?” I flipped him off, I was very partial to that ugly old white Subaru. He laughed and said, “See you around the barn, right?”
I smiled and winked back at him. We drove away and he flashed his brights at me as he pulled into his driveway. I never saw him at the barn again.
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He is now co-owner of a small local excavating company. Last summer he was married and I hear through the grapevine that they are trying to have a baby. He’s gained quite a bit of weight and I wouldn’t imagine that he looks quite so good in his Wranglers anymore.
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I was talking with a friend via email about this a few weeks ago and laughing so hard at how DUMB I was back then. I am still baffled as I write this at how chicken I was of him. And they way we “broke up”, if you could have ever even called us “together”…it just sounds like such a cheesy romance novel…
…the two lovers knew that the time was no longer right for them to be together. She took his hand and held it to her cheek. She felt him tremble when a tear slip from her eye and landed on his finger with a wet plop. “We will always have Sundance, my love,” she said to the man. He took his hand away from his face and pulled a tissue from his pocket. “Here, take this, Darling,” he said handing it to her, “for when you find you have to sneeze again.”
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