Crush-ed

Part 1

"How long does it take for condoms to expire?" My fingers pursued each key with the same hopefulness that prompted me to keep the box for so long. Cleaning my room had left me with a series of questions concerning expiration dates that should have been asked a lot earlier. The milk turned yogurt in the fridge, the bread turned penicillin in the pantry, and the girlfriend turned ex-girlfriend on the mantle. The smell had become a problem. Febreeze advertises itself as a stench eliminator, but it would soon be rolling up on the beaches of odor Normandy, about to engage in its own version of D-Day. 
"It smells like shit in here," Austin poked his head through the door. "You got big plans tonight?" he pointed to the condom box.
"No, no," I quickly put the box on my dresser in between my Econ textbooks and my recently purchased Japanese Fighting Fish, Jaws 2. I got Jaws 1 when I was eleven, but put him in front of a mirror the first day. I woke up the next morning to a dead Jaws after he presumably tried to attack his own reflection. It was traumatizing, but after ten years I figured I was ready to move on.
"I was just doing some cleaning," I responded.
"Remember freshman year when we bought the 24-pack of condoms?" he laughed.
"That was ambitious," I chuckled, remembering how we discovered the very same box on move-out day with the wrapping untouched.
"So who'd you end up asking to the date party tonight?" he inquired.
"Allie."
"Ah, is tonight the night you finally profess your undying love for her or are we still putting it off for the right moment?"
"You know were just friends, Austin." That's when he gave me the look. His eyes were squinted and skeptical. They had seen us walking to class together, giggling in the corners of countless parties, and leaving bars early to go back and watch a movie. His ears perked in anticipation of an apology for lying to him. They had heard many drunken ramblings about me "maybe liking Allie" followed by me "kinda liking Allie" followed by me proposing to take a speaker and go to her window to profess my love for Allie. I didn't have a speaker, though, so I was going to use my phone and a solo cup, but Austin thankfully cut me off and put me to bed despite his ever-present desire to see me embarrass myself. His mouth was pursed. They kindly held back aggressive words like 'I know you're not gonna seriously pull this shit with me right now Alex' because he knows I don't like to be yelled at.
"I know you're not seriously gonna pull this shit with me right now Alex?" Austin was never the passive aggressive type. "We graduate in 4 months, the clock is ticking bud." He was right. I looked around at my empty white walls. They weren't exactly white; more of an off-white like a pair of white shoes you'd been wearing for six weeks. I'd cycled through posters to fill the emptiness, some for weeks others for just one night, but could never really settle on one that worked. It'd been a while since this wall held a poster, though. It's really easy to commit when you can remove the tacks and take it down the next day. The wall's just empty -- clean with no sign that a poster was ever really there. Telling a friend you like them is like pulling off a poster that's taped up. If it doesn't work out just right the poster rips and crumples and leaves a mess on the wall. You try to use your fingernails to scrape off the excess, but you can't get it all and you're left with the remnants and scraps of this poster that'll never come off your shitty off-white now mostly empty wall.
"You ever wish you had a five second time machine?"
"What are you talking about, Alex?"
"I feel like it only takes about five seconds to tell if a decision is going to turn out good or bad. It'd be nice to know how something is going to go before doing it."
"You don't need a five second time machine. You need three seconds. Here's what you do. Count down from three, 3...2...1... and then you just do it, tell her how you feel."
"But what if she doesn't feel the same way, what if --"
"See there's your problem you overthink everything. Take all that shit and put it under your bed, like I can see you've done with all your dirty clothes. Three seconds that's all you need. God I'd hate to be in your head." Sorry reader. "Also our dates are probably downstairs at this point, I can hear music playing. Let's get going."
As walked downstairs to greet a half-filled party I thought about the notion of falling in love with your friends. I hear people say that their significant other is their best friend so doesn't it make sense to just start with the friendship part and work on all the other stuff? Even tolerating some people for extended periods of time is hard so to find someone that you want to spend all your time with may be worth exploring. I very much wanted to spend all my time with Allie. She was talking to one of my roommates and smiled when she saw me. Dimples manifested on each of her cheeks. The tips of her ears stuck out every so slightly, like dolphin fins through waves of brown hair. Her eyes were brown, just the normal brown. She was the girl that every guy had a crush on so much so that her friends were sick of fielding questions about her relationship status.
"Hey, Alex," she gestured toward me with her beer then returned to her conversation.
"Hey Allie," I smiled and approached. Most people say their heart beats faster and their palms get all sweaty when they talk to someone they like. For me it was the opposite. My palms are sweaty all the time, but with her all of that anxiety dissipated. There are two types of people I talk to: those that I have to think about the next thing I'm going to say and those where the conversation isn't work and words come naturally. Though I may make some regrettable statements when conversing with the latter type of person, I much prefer those interactions. 
"I honestly think that would be great," I could overhear Christian as I walked toward the pair.
"What're you guys talking about?" I asked.
"I was just pitching a promotional idea to Christian. Goldman Sachs should hide a gold piece of paper somewhere on campus and whoever finds it gets a job there. We can call it the hunt for the 'Goldman Ticket' like in Willy Wonka."
"Where would you hide it?" I laughed.
"Probably the last place an Investment Banking student would ever look -- a women's and gender studies textbook in the library basement."
"At this point I would search every corner of this campus for a job. I can't seem to find one in the real world," Christian chuckled, "I'm going to go find my date now, see you guys later." With that he left into what had become a crowded party.
"Shots?" Allie turned to me.
"Shots." She grabbed my hand and pulled me through the party to a table with vodka handles scattered like crappy garage sale items on a front lawn. Tonight we were drinking Bankers which ranks third in the list of "worst things in the world" behind wet socks and chocolate milk that's only kind of chocolatey.
Alcohol does different things for different people. Some people get angry, some get happy, some get quiet -- everyone gets horny. When I'm drunk I like to watch the finales of TV shows. I'm not the most sentimental person sober, but drunk I seem to appreciate the temporality of things and there's nothing more finite than a series finale. At the end of things it's a lot easier to only remember the good stuff. By the end of my stint at the table I was almost at a senior-signing-high-school-yearbooks-at-graduation level of drunk.
​"Want to go back to my place? I think Michaela and them are all drinking there?"
​"Sounds good. Let me grab my coat and boots. The weather's gotten pretty bad."
​While we'd been in the party a snowstorm had been raging outside. Seven inches had accumulated and even though it was only Saturday school had been cancelled for the following Monday. I love heavy snowfall. The flakes were wet and thick, so big that one of the gourmet ice cream-gelato places could scoop two or three and charge ten bucks for it. The sound of a heavy snowstorm is one of the most calming things you'll ever hear. You can look up rain or wind or a thunderstorm on Spotify, but you won't find falling snow because it sounds like nothing. Not the nothing of putting earphones in and neglecting to play music, rather a sound that muffles all other sounds and reduces them to silence -- like one big fluffy pillow smothering the noise of the world. As we trekked through the snow the pillow lifted ever so slightly to let her words slip through.
​"It's been almost a year since we've been in a snowstorm like this," she said. I knew the day she was referring to. It was the day I discovered she was the strongest person I had ever met -- the second worst day of her life.