During their Junior year of high school boy met girl and immediately fell for her charm.
She had been hurt by her very first love a couple years earlier and was not interested in any degree of commitment. She was happy to enjoy his company; his quick laughter and easy going attitude being especially appealing to her carefree, joyous ways. He had kind eyes and a slow sweet smile that was always on his face when she was near. Wispy chestnut brown hair feathered about his angular face making him magazine handsome in his short denim jacket and cowboy hat. He was a former resident of, as he called it, Louavul, Kentucky and his speech was heavy with a southern drawl and an unfamiliar southern gallantry.
For the next three years the romance withstood ups and downs. The downs were what he chose to tolerate, simply because that was his way of staying close to her. Whenever he would become too serious, too demanding or what she determined to be too smothering, she would back off and start dating others. He would always give her enough space to do that, he wasn’t happy about it, but he knew that she would be gone completely if he pressured her. His method of staying in her thoughts, in her heart was to let her have her fun, but to stay close. Sometimes she would arrive home at night to find him lounging in the backyard swing after having been out for a night of dancing. She would snuggle under his arm and listen to him talk about the beauties he had danced with at the disco. She knew he was trying to impress upon her that he could handle playing the field as easily as she could. He was not successful. He would ruin his womanizing fantasy by murmuring to her that her eyes were the same indigo as the summer night sky and her skin as smooth as a filly’s velvety nose. With their inconsistent on again-off again status, it wasn’t evident to anyone, but those who cared to notice, that they had this relationship going on. She grew accustomed to knowing that he was available and ready in a heartbeat to be there for her if she called, and he thought all he needed was time and patience. What neither of them realized is, that no matter how much patience he was willing to use, time was not theirs to control. In the spring of ‘78 she got home from a date and walked to the backyard swing where she plopped down to wait for him to show up. She knew that it was Kentucky Derby week-end coming up and figured he would stop by before leaving the next day to head south. She waited around until about 3 am when she decided he wasn’t going to stop by so she better just go in to bed.
Early the next morning the girl’s mother woke her to take a phone call. The girl sat in her bed under her flowered comforter, with the window next to the bed open to the back yard. The smells and sounds of spring were wafting in through the screen as she listened to her friend’s voice come through the Princess phone receiver, “I just wanted to call you to tell you, before you heard from anyone else, Mike was killed this morning at 2:55 am. The guys decided to leave a day early for the derby, Tim was driving and Scott was in the passenger seat when they hit a concrete abutment. Tim and John are fine, but feel horrible about Scott. He was dead at the scene, they couldn’t do a thing. I didn’t want you to find out from somebody else.”
Spring turned into summer as it always does, everyone’s life moved forward. The girl felt immense guilt and remorse for having not given him enough. For not being what he wanted, for not having the time to see where things would have led.
He was good and kind and decent and she did not give him enough credit for all of his good qualities.
These feelings led her to neglect her normal dating common sense and give guys second chances when their first chance would have sent her former self running from the red flags that were being strewn about. She spent the summer in a controlling, abusive relationship and in the fall entered another relationship with red flags visible from all directions.
