Finding Forever

Chapter 1

Sometimes I wonder: did I make the right choice? What if I had put in just a little more effort? Not that I could have at the time, even if I wanted to. Allow me to explain.

Let's rewind the clock to 6 years ago. It was the beginning of Junior year. I was 17 and finally ready to ask out the girl I had my eye on. Oh I had wanted other girls, to be sure, but I lacked, shall we say, "conversational skills." Plus, they were so far out of my league I could only get them in my dreams. And/or they turned out to be assholes. Take your pick. Not this girl.

She was stunning. Gorgeous brown hair, storm-grey eyes, great smile. She almost always had her hair in a long ponytail, but on the rare occasion she put her hair down, she became so much more beautiful. I couldn't tell you why. I guess I just preferred that. She was bookish, like me, with a mousey voice that probably annoyed some, but not me. Despite being the same age as me, she had a love fantasy, which many, I suspect, would say should be wiped from your personality at that point. I found it endearing, since I also love fantasy. In many ways, we were a perfect couple, if such a thing exists.

When I finally mustered the courage to ask her out, she seemed shocked. I guess subtlety and flirting weren't my thing. Oops. All the same, she agreed to go out with me. It was, in a word, awkward. Neither of us had ever been on a date before, but it seemed, when we were on the date, that neither of us had talked to humans before. We went to see the movie Due Date, which is a terrible movie, and not at all appropriate for a first date. There's a scene in which, I kid you not, a bulldog masturbates. Thankfully, she went to the bathroom during that scene. I don't think I could have kept the relationship going as long as I did if she saw that.

Our first date was our only memorable one. We always did the same thing: movies and dinner. Maybe that's one of the reasons the relationship failed. We also went to two of our high school's three proms. Yes, our school had three proms: Sophomore, Junior, and Senior. I was lucky enough to go with her to both the Sophomore and Junior proms. I don't know if she considered those dates. If so, they were surely our most successful ones.

We both knew the relationship was coming to an end at the beginning of Senior year. We may have been awkward, but we weren't stupid. After one last date soon after the year started, we both decided the relationship had run its course. I was sad to end things, of course, but I knew it had to be done. We were going to different colleges, and she had no access to social media. It would've been very hard to keep in contact with her. We ended on good terms all the same. It was for the best. For all the dates we went on, which wasn't a lot, I still didn't know a lot about her. Neither of us knew how to date. I didn't know the questions to ask. I didn't know where to take her. All my dating knowledge came from rom-coms.

And so ended my first relationship. But where there is one, there's sure to be others. One other, actually.