How I Remember Us

Truth or Dare?

Freshman year of high school.

I hadn't seen many people in the past couple of days, it had been weeks since I'd seen Luke and Zach. My hair had gotten longer and lighter from the sun and I was a bit more tan. I went into orientation and walked into the library to get my picture taken for the yearbook.

 On my way over there, I saw Zach. He had grown taller, and tanner from working at the country club as a golf caddy. He smiled when he made his way over to me and gave a polite greeting to my mother.

After getting my picture taken, I caught up with him and we found our new lockers, they turned out to be about five lockers in between us.

We talked about what we had done the past couple of days and he used my shoulder as an arm rest, commenting on how short I am (still an issue to this day). 

We went through orientation together, and were ready to start high school.

I had gotten to know some more guys through Zach and Luke and before I knew it I had five new friends. They were welcoming to me, and even though they have a twisted sense of humor, I love them more for it. 

The three of us continued to go to Luke's house on Fridays, and then we would either go to Zach's or my soccer game on Saturdays.

Luke, Zach, and I attended football games in the fall together. Zach would constantly steal my light blue beanie, so in exchange he gave me his blue warmup jacket he uses for soccer. 

The three of us would walk around, and hide behind the bleachers to talk and goof off. The worst time was when Zach made too much noise so people on the bleachers turned around and asked if a threesome was going on. Thanks Zach.

Football season concluded, and thus came the Homecoming Dance. 

Zach did ask me to go with him.

But immediately after said, "Say no, I'm trying to see how many girls I can get rejected by. I'm at six so far." Way to go pal, way to go.

So instead I went with my group of girls who I was friends with, I picked out a blue lace dress and pulled my hair into a fishtail braid. We had a lot of fun, until the slow dance song began. They pushed me to Zach and he put his hand on my hip as I put my hand on his shoulder. Our other hands were interlocked as he slowly swayed us to the beat.

Our eyes were locked for about 20 seconds before he pulled his hand away and left. He just walked away. I stood there for a few seconds not knowing what to do, but then Willie came to the rescue. Willie is the sweetest guy in our grade, and I had never really talked to him before, but he resumed Zach's place and finished out the song with me, making polite conversation the entire time.

Bless Willie, bless him.

I went to Julie's house straight after the dance ended and told her about what had happened. We were both equally confused as to what had happened. All that I know is that he didn't talk to me the rest of the weekend.

We went through the next couple weeks normally, but I felt like I was hiding a secret. And then he did it. He casually asked me if I liked anyone.

I told him that I did but I wasn't in the mood to tell him. Simply put, he did not accept that as an answer. He would ask me daily for the next three weeks.

Three. Weeks.

The last week of November. We were texting pretty late at night and he suggested a game of truth or dare. I agreed since we were both bored, and we played for a few hours. If we picked a dare, we would have to send picture or video evidence that we did it.

This rule came into play because he knew how lazy I was and how much I enjoyed the comfort of my bed. Our questions started out simple then escalated to the point where I was receiving a video of him twerking - might I add, quite poorly.

Then he questioned who I like again. And I freaked out. I had no excuse to not tell him and he knew it. He even added "I can't picture any other devilishly handsome men you could like, and even so you can trust me" damn him.

So I naturally questioned who he liked. Basically we decided that we would both tell each other, but we fought about who would have to go first for a solid ten minutes. Then he had an idea. (this is also a trend you see later) 

We would both tell Luke who we liked, then Luke would tell us. Unfortunately for dear Luke, he was asleep.

Naturally, we woke him up by bombarding him with texts and calls. (keep in mind this was at about 2 in the morning) So we proceeded with that plan and I laid in bed and was terrified. I was shaking, because what if he didn't like me? What if I was being dumb? This was such a bad idea.

Then Luke texted me back.

"It's you. He likes you."

Relief is an understatement of what I felt. I was so happy and I couldn't stop smiling. Zach texted me back and we texted for another hour, feeling much more comfortable with each other. It was amazing. 

Truth or dare as well as FaceTime occurred daily for hours on end, this happened for weeks straight. Then we decided we would do it, we would try a date.