Finally (short story)

First Contact

"Remember when you first met me?" Chloe asked. She was sitting next to me on my bed and we had just watched "Fault In Our Stars," one of our favorites. Saturday movie nights were one of our weekly rituals in this last summer before heading off to college.

Of course I remembered ...

Chloe and I had been best friends forever. When her family moved to our little suburb outside of Milwaukee, she was the only Hispanic kid in my private middle school. On our first day, I stepped in when I saw Chloe crying because some of the other kids were teasing her.

Children can be cruel and, back then, Chloe was an easy target. Her skin was a few shades darker than that of the other kids and she had a slight accent back then because she had grown up speaking only Spanish before her parents moved to the US with her. Chloe's family came to Wisconsin from Houston, where she had fit in much better than in my lily white neighborhood.

I don't know exactly why I protected her on that first day. I was no angel as a kid and I can't say that I never teased anybody about being chubby or bad at sports or something. But seeing her standing in the hallway, completely defenseless with tears slowly trickling from dark brown eyes down her cheeks, triggered something in me.

"Knock it off," I said, putting myself between Chloe and the three kids who had been calling her names. I'm not sure what would have happened if they had challenged me but I'm quite certain I wouldn't have backed down. Maybe they had realized that, too, and were just as happy as I was when the bell rang and they hurried to their classrooms.

I turned to Chloe.

"Hi, I'm Sam. Are you ok?"

She just nodded, wiping the tears from her face with the sleeve of her shirt.

"Are you new here? Do you know where you are going?" I asked, not ready to end our brief encounter.

"I think so," she said in a small voice and held out a piece of paper that she had been clutching in her hand. I took it and looked at her schedule.

"History," I said. "You can walk with me, I'm in the same class."

Chloe looked at me and the apprehension in her eyes was replaced with genuine gratitude.

"Thank you," she said. "I'm Chloe."

"Hey Chloe," I responded with a smile. "We better get going. Old Man McDaniels won't like it if we're late on the first day."

That's how we met.

Chloe and I ended up having a few classes together and it turned out that her family had moved into a house only a couple of blocks away from mine. On that first day, I walked her home and this became a daily routine. We kept spending more and more time together and were inseparable by the end of the fall. Being around her just made me happy and she was the best friend any guy could want.

I helped Chloe through her first Wisconsin winter. Ironically, she hated the cold but loved snow. She got a lot of that in the first year and I spent our first Christmas break together teaching her how to ski. One day she made it down the hill without falling down. For some reason, I can remember every detail of that moment. Chloe was wearing a white ski suit with a hood and goggles, her cheeks were flushed and she had a big smile on her face.

"I made it," she shrieked and gave me a hug. Then she gave me a kiss on the cheek. Her lips were so warm against my skin, probably because of the excitement of her first successful run. "Thank you!"

"I knew you could do it!" I said, somewhat embarrassed and wiggled out of her embrace. "Want to go again?"

The triumphant look and the glow had left her face. She looked almost sad but that didn't make any sense because she had just done her first clean run.

"No, let's just head home," Chloe said