Accidentally in Love

One and Only

First love always begins the same way: by accident. It’s pure coincidence that two people like each other at the same time in their lives. It’s lucky, like a four leaf clover and a pot of gold. Just about as lucky as I was when I came across Myles the year I turned eight.

Yeah, I know. We were young and it’s not really love but somehow, six years later I was still pretty convinced it was. In fact, I wasn’t just convinced I was in love with him; I had somehow convinced myself that he was in love with me and that it was real. Real from the moment I really looked at him in that way.

When you’re eight, boys have cooties and girls are your best friends because they let you braid their hair in class. Simple, right? Wrong. There is a point between eight and nine when you begin to realize how boys and girls eventually feel about each other later in life. You start to notice your mom and dad kissing and hugging, or the people on the street holding hands. You start learning where babies come from and, as much as you are grossed out by it, you have attractions to boys. Plain and…complicated?

I saw him first across the elementary yard. At the time each grade had different schedules for lunch so it was mostly second graders out, easy to see across when you knew everyone…except the one boy your first grade reading buddy points out. Yeah, there he was, red headed and slamming a ball against a wall in a game called Hand Ball. But who cared? He was just a gross boy.

As elementary dragged on, I learned his name and who he was, but I mostly kept my distance because he was a boy and I had my best friend. Haven’t you ever heard two’s company but three’s a crowd, even eight year’s old I knew that one. The next year I turned nine and my best friend left. She didn’t move to another school or just decide she didn’t need me in any more. No she moved across the world, back home to France where she is really from. To this day we are best friends, and I believe always will be, but boys always got there first when she wasn’t around. 

Feeling lost, you lean towards those who feel compelled by you and who you are compelled by. At that time in my life I was going through my basketball faze, so those who compelled me were boys. I leaned until I was completely sideways and let them carry me.

It wasn’t hard. I was a Daddy’s girl and guys’ girl. I spoke easy around them and never felt the need to pretend. I didn’t even have to remember to compliment them or say hello before a ball was thrown my way. Those were simple times because my hair was in a cute pony tail every day and I wore a t-shirt and shorts, something I wouldn’t be caught dead in now. That’s when I became close to Myles and Kyle and Richard and Nicholas and the list goes on.

The first time I heard about Myles was that day when I didn’t care about him, you know, back when I was eight. In those few moments when I was not caring, I learned that Myles supposedly like me. I also learned that every girl who cared liked him. I was dubbed lucky. I wasn’t so sure about it then, I’m not now, but four years ago I was positive it was a good thing.

Four years ago, I was sure we were all the other needed. I still didn’t have my best friend back, I still relied on what wasn’t mine to take but he gave me everything I ever could have needed. He gave it all to me for free. Lending me a hand when a basketball wasn’t available and allowing me to be the girl I was even, if I did hang out with all boys. That was the year we turned eleven.

That summer I turned twelve and he had me smitten. Would he have told me to jump off a cliff, I would have considered it, only for him. We even went to the same summer camp.

One Thursday evening during free time, we lay side by side floating in the open water, a canoe below our bodies; the waves were at a standstill.

“It’s so beautiful,” I murmured, to no one in particular, mostly to myself actually.

“I know something far more beautiful,” he said. The canoe shifted under me and I lay as straight as I could. I felt movement under me and a tug at my life jacket. “Sit up, Mags.”

To this very day, he is the only one to ever call me that. I don’t know why he liked it or why it sounded good when he said it. When others call me that, it sounds like a dog’s name, but from him it was music.

I did as he said. Even sixth months younger than me, a head taller, and three shades paler, we were compatible and rarely apart. Sitting up I saw the sunset, and, boy, was it pretty, especially with his silhouette in the foreground. He smiled.

“So much prettier,” Myles whispered.

“We should head back, we can look at the sunset from the docks,” I reply responsibly.

At twelve his words were not ones I wanted to comprehend. No one had ever told me I was pretty, even more so than the sunset and a summer day on Catalina Island. No one except him and even then I wasn’t sure I believed. Now I know that he meant what he said and those were beautiful words.

“We’ve got time,” he said, never tearing his eyes off of mine.

“Still,” I begin to argue.

A small shift in weight rocked the canoes and before I knew it I was under it but still breathing air; that is a trick I will never learn. My body under water from my arm pits down and my hands tuck into my jacket to stay floating. I can almost stand but not quite, Myles stands. “Why would I leave when I can do this?” He gets closer to me and the water rises to my chin at the movement. His lips touch mine.

I have always worried what a first kiss would be like. How do you know what to do? What do you do? But in those seconds it was natural. I didn’t question what he did and my lips moved with his. Easy and then it was over.

That summer his kisses met my lips again and again but it was never the same as the first. He walked me home once we touched land and we had our last kiss of the summer. The next day school started. I was whisked away to an all girl’s school and we talked for a little while, but soon we became out of touch. I still imagined he lived across the street, the way he did when we were on that Island that summer, he doesn’t. We haven’t spoken in three years.

When I was pulled out of private school to go to public again, I was hoping to rekindle what we had, at least the friendship but no. We will never see each other again. Never talk. Never share another kiss. We had that summer and now it’s all over. But my heart still races when I speak of him, hoping one day I’ll see him again.