First Loves

#2 The First Fall

I fell in love with him at an amusement park, surrounded by metaphors.
  

I had never been on a roller coaster.
    

I’m not sure what was different about that day. We were already friends. We exchanged looks, he got my jokes and weird references, I talked to him in a way I’d only ever talked to my girl friends.
    

And I was terrified of that first time on a roller coaster. But I did it—I stood in line, palms clammy; I buckled myself in, nearly hyperventilating—because I just wanted to be with him. If he was going to be on the roller coaster, so was I.
    

Maybe that’s what was different about that day. I realized exactly how far I’d go to stay by his side.
    

The coaster ticked up and up, and I just knew the car would stall. We’d fall to our deaths.     
    

Instead, my heart rose in my chest as we soared down the first hill. I loved it, the whoosh, the freedom of completely letting go.
    

Later, the lights danced across his face at the top of the Ferris wheel. I saw his every quirk, every kindness, every flash of wit and every grin.
  

 I truly loved him. We broke up eventually. Friends took sides. We were so young.
  

 But somehow, beyond that hurt and all those years, we rediscovered the same two people who had connected in the first place. Us the way we were meant to be: friends.
  

 Once in a while, I hear that old song and remember that he’s that same boy from the roller coaster line. They’re separate in my mind, him then and him now: my first love and my dear friend.
  

 Sometimes, at a bar in our hometown, he laughs with my husband across the table from me. I glance at his wife, who loves his every quirk and kindness. And I wish I could tell my younger self, panicking halfway up the hill: Don’t be scared. That first fall turns out exactly the way it was meant to.