I Let Myself Hope

14 ● Jesper ● 20.11.2003

November 20th, 2003

Jesper, New York

"What do you think about Hopkins?" I asked Yohan, curious about his opinion. We were sitting in his room, doing biology homework, but I was interested in something else. It was our senior year of high school and we had to pick a college soon and it was all a little overwhelming.

I knew that Yohan wanted to go to Harvard, because basically everyone in his family went there, and I wasn't opposed to the idea, but still, I wanted to have other options. We agreed that we'd apply to a lot of different colleges out of fun, simply to see how many acceptance letters we'd get. I told Yohan I was opting for ten, and he said he could definitely beat me. I was looking at all the colleges in the US, and so far, I picked Harvard, NYU, Columbia, Hopkins, Duke, UPenn, Stanford, Yale, Cornell, Dartmouth and Brown. Obviously I didn't actually consider all of them, because not all had great programs, but most of them were fine. Of course we were opting for Harvard, and we didn't really want to go to NYU or Columbia, simply because we wanted to get out of the city, but I was considering Hopkins.

"I think that you should start doing your homework, because I'm not going to do it for you," Yohan answered without looking at me. He was sitting by his desk, scratching his head aggressively, probably not knowing an answer to some question.

"What are you having trouble with?" I asked.

"Fourteen steps of blood flow through the heart. The first and last points are written down as body. Then what? I assume it starts in the superior vena cava, then right atrium and somehow it flows through pulmonary arteries to the lungs, but fuck knows how I should write down those fourteen steps," he said with frustration.

Right, we were studying the heart in biology right now, and I was over the moon. I loved studying hearts. "Well, first is body, right? So the second is superior vena cava, then right atrium, tricuspid valve, right ventricle, pulmonary arteries, lungs, then it oxygenates and goes through pulmonary veins, left atrium, mitral valve, left ventricle, aortic valve, aorta and that takes us to point fourteen, the body," I answered in one breath.

He finally looked up at me with wide eyes and started shaking his head. "You're such a nerd, Harris," Yohan said.

"You love that I'm a nerd," I pointed out.

"Yeah, that's actually oddly attractive," he admitted, which made me blush furiously. "Can you repeat all of that again, this time a little slower though?" He asked with an amusing smile.

"I can, only if you promise to also write it down on my answer sheet, since I was the one who did our homework," I said, raising my eyebrows in question at him. "Deal," he only said and I came over to hover over Yohan, to tell him everything slowly. When he finished writing it down, he stood up from the chair and went back to sit on the bed with me, where I was going over college brochures. "So, now that I finished our homework, can we-"

"Make out? Well, that's an excellent idea, Jes," Yohan spoke, and lunged forward to kiss me. It took me by surprise. He always did, when he was this forward. My heart fluttered like crazy and I couldn't control it, but I loved it nonetheless. I loved when he was like that, when it was only the two of us in his empty house, doing our thing. Without worrying about Sam, or his parents walking in.

Just as he kissed me, 'Numb' started playing, and hearing my favorite song I completely forgot about what I wanted to do for a second, and melted into the kiss. I'd never deny a kiss from Yohan, especially because we haven't really been doing that a lot ever since he started dating Sam. I was still a little wary about doing this thing with him while he had a girlfriend, but when I realized that I totally didn't care about her, or her feelings, I got over it. I loved him, and I wanted him, and he wanted me. Why would I give up on that, just because Yohan decided to date her as well? I wasn't giving up, not even if she was in the picture. I was his first, she just barged into our lives without invitation. I was first, I called dibs on Yohan years ago, so she can just go fuck herself, and I really hope that this relationship will finally end soon.