The last time

8: Her

Maybe I'll talk about the summer before my junior year of college. Danny and Rochelle had broken up and I was finally just a girl he knew instead of being a girl on a list. He called me pretty early in the summer. Honestly he called me the day he realized I was home from school. His girlfriend had taken me off of his social media and he didn't know anything about what my life had been like for the past year. He didn't really care. He wanted to see me. When I first saw his name on my phone I answered, of course. Danny was the guy to know if you were looking for a good time. I don't want to talk about the first time we talked though. I want to talk about his birthday. He'd done the big party thing for so many years and wanted a laid back night with close friends at his friend Anne's house. He invited me and Marley over along with a group of maybe ten of his close friends. His ex girlfriend Lori was among the group seated around the metal table outside when Marley and I arrived. This surprised me. I would later find out that he's accidentally sent her a message talking about how he didn't want her to come and invited her after that out of obligation, thinking she'd turn down the offer. She did not. What I didn't know was that the last time he'd seen her, Danny told Lori that he wanted to be with me. We'd seen each other probably once a week throughout the summer and he'd come to have feelings for me that I had no idea we're real. Lori didn't like this. She flashed a fake smile in my direction and pulled me into a hug that made no sense, seeing as we really didn't talk to each other back in high school and if I'm being honest, I never liked her. Either way, she spent the whole night staring him down, obviously hoping to be invited back to his apartment and he spend the whole night whispering silly things into my ear and trying to get me to dance with him. Eventually Lori gave up and went home and we kept on drinking and whispering. Marley pulled Danny aside pretty late in the night and he told her he wanted to kiss me. Marley was never one for good decision making and encouraged him. Maybe because she knew Casey and I were on a break and things were looking good. Maybe because she remembered more from that night freshman year than she ever let on. Maybe she really just wanted me to have a little fun. Danny walked me to the bathroom shortly before Marley and I were supposed to leave. That was his move with me I guess and on the way back he scooped me into a hug and told me I looked cute in my glasses. There it was, that hug that always felt like home. Nothing felt safer than Danny. I laughed and looked down and told him I didn't think I looked very good in them. Danny told me I was beautiful. I was done for. He leaned in and kissed me and I kissed him right back. It had been a year and a half since we first kissed but it felt like we'd never stopped. How did kissing that boy feel so special and also feel so normal. I think I knew even then that we weren't kissing for the last time that night, but we sure acted like we were. Marley was yelling at me to get in the car, Taylor was yelling at Danny to get in his. Everyone was heading out. We couldn't separate. We walked together to a spot in between the two cars and kissed again. I think at one point taylor even walked over and tugged on Danny's arm to get him to let me go. That was just me and Danny though. Magnetic even before the beginning.