Episode 1 - First Times

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The first time I saw Dillon, I was 13. I was a loner with my headphones on and the loud songs they were blasting, laying on the grass across the street from where I lived. He interrupted me, telling me he was new in the neighborhood, and that he saw me through his window. He said he could hear the music through my headphones, and that it could harm my ears. He asked me to play it out loud, and he laid down next to me, making us listen together. He told me his name and we realized we were the same age. He asked me about my birthday and compared it to his. He was born in March, I was born in September. He told me he liked my taste in music. I blushed. We hung out everyday for a while, with my playlist playing in the background, until we became friends.

I watched Dillon laugh for the first time ever when we were 13, 2 weeks after we met, because of a joke I made that I can't even remember. I can't remember it because his laughter filled the room and my mind and my memories, and I couldn't remember anything other than the way his white teeth showed when he was laughing, how his eyes shined of glee. I still remember it, even now.

I saw him cry for the first time when we were 15, 2 years after we met, because his mother told him his grandmother had passed away. It pained me to see him sad, and it hurt even more to know I couldn't do anything to fix it. I was there to comfort him and hear him out when he told me about his memories of her. I was there to watch him grieve and get over her death.

I slept over at Dillon's for the first time when we were 15, too. My parents were out of town and he insisted on me joining him for the weekend. We shared his bed, which was bigger and warmer and more comfortable than mine. I saw him have a nightmare for the first time that night. He told me it was about a bad childhood memory he had, so I held him until he fell back asleep. I couldn't sleep at all that night, so I watched him breathe calmly the whole time.

When Dillon and I were 16, 3 years after we met, we biked together for the first time. We started in our street and ended up on the opposite edge of our town. We stopped there, in an isolated spot with a view of the sunset, not saying anything to each other. On our way back home, I fell off my bike and injured my knee. He was there to help me get up and put a stitch on my scar, for the first time. I was breathless to see him take care of me like that. He wouldn't let me go home alone, and he insisted on sleeping over so that he made sure I was fine.

The first time I saw Dillon look different than the younger version of him, we were also 16. We hadn't seen each other all summer long, for 3 months straight, because his family was away for the vacations. He told me he had started exercising regularly during our time apart. He also let his black hair grow, it had started to slightly reach his shoulders. He asked me about my opinion and I wanted to tell him he looked handsome, I wanted to tell him he looked beautiful, but I just said he looked nice.

Also when we were 16, I watched Dillon keep secrets from me for the first time. He hadn't done it before, and I could tell from the way he was being distant that there was something he wasn't telling me.  We had our first argument when I confronted him about it. He made things up with me for the first time shortly after, on a September afternoon, and gave me his favorite book with a note on it that said: Dear Shane, this book is really special to me and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did. I still have that book and keep it with me as a lucky charm. That same afternoon, he told me the thing he was hiding was a person, a girl. He said he didn't tell anyone about it because they had agreed not to make it official. "A secret romance", he said. He told me her name was Lucy, and that they met over the course of the summer during which we were apart. He showed me pictures of her, and she looked cute. She looked pretty. He told me she was kind and smart and funny, and I told him I was happy for him. I wanted to be. But deep down, I wasn't. That was the first time I felt I had to share the Dillon I knew with somebody else.

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