Ten years ago … first kiss … kind of

Friday was another day for Ordinary Differential Equations but, as it does most weeks, it also signaled the start of the weekend. I don’t know how it started, or who put it together, but that evening found me and a large group of other cliché enjoying college students in front of a fire pit in the parking lot of Clarissa’s apartment building, complete with marshmallows and someone with a guitar. After the previous night’s developments I was felt a little bolder and so I found my way to Clarissa and we spent most of our time in front of the fire talking together. We had a good time and eventually a bunch of us, including Clarissa, went back to my apartment and looked at the pictures from karaoke the night before and we spent most of that evening flirting back and forth. Now, if you’re not with BYU, then you should know that BYU has strict rules about men being in women’s apartments and vise-versa, one of those rules is that men are not allowed in women’s apartments past midnight (1:30 on Friday night) and women aren’t allowed in men’s apartments during those same hours. So when the witching hour came I offered to walk Clarissa back to her apartment. On the way back I think neither of us really wanted to stop spending time with the other, and I especially didn’t want to give up any time with Clarissa so we both talked about how we weren’t tired (this is something I can’t even imagine to be true ten years later). So I asked Clarissa if she wanted to go get a slushie at the local 7-11. If you think this seems like a rather lame idea, you should keep in mind that the late night options in Provo UT are severely limited. The funny thing was Clarissa said no, and I was crushed. All my hopes that she was interested in me came crashing down in one short minute and I thought I must have been reading the signals wrong all along. Fortunately, Clarissa only let me suffer for a few moments before she said she didn’t want to go get a slushie, but she would be up for a walk. So we walked over to a park, swung on the swings, sat on the slides and talked late into the night. It was during that conversation that Clarissa brought up that she was reluctant to pursue things with me because her roommate was interested in me, but Clarissa also told me that she was interested in me as well. It was because of her roommate’s interest that she turned me down for the slushie because it sounded too close to an actual date. We talked about it for a while and Clarissa decided to talk to her roommate and try to smooth things over. After that we talked longer about everything and anything just enjoying each other’s company until sometime around 4am we found ourselves back on Clarissa’s doorstep. I really didn’t want that night to end, but if it had to end I wanted to kiss Clarissa. Unfortunately, I was worried that if I kissed her she would feel like she was betraying her roommate and pull away. So, as we were saying goodbye I wrapped her up in my arms and gently kissed her on her forehead. It was quick and I risked it being awkward, too forward, or not forward enough, but I looked into her eyes after that and she was smiling at me and I knew it was just right. I went home that night probably the happiest man I had ever been up to that point.