Love.  Skip all those silly steps in between.  I don’t want to waste time giving chances.  Pure love or pure lust.  All those other little feelings are irrelevant.  I want full speed ahead, I want it to be so exciting it’s scary.  I want it to feel too good to be real.  I won’t have to talk myself into it because it will hit me square in the face.  I can’t start dating maybes even before I’ve started dating.  I can’t start by settling.      

It’s not because I saw him as skinny and small next to the towering frat boy who was trying to get his arm around me.  It’s not because I hate the clothes he wears and how he never has money on him.  It’s not because the first thing I thought of when I saw him was that I know how his breath tastes.  It might be because I hate most of the things he says.  It might be because of how he couldn’t figure out how to put his hand on my back.  It might be because he wasn’t breaking his back to see me.  It could very well be because he doesn’t care what I have to say, that whatever he’s trying to get out is always more important.  It could very well be because he doesn’t know how to play.  It could very well be because I hate the way he looks at me in between kisses.  It could be how repulsive I find his face when he hasn’t shaved.  But I know that it is because I’ve never done this.  It is because he’s the first boy I’ve ever kissed more than once.  He’s the first boy I’ve ever kissed sober.  It is because I’m terrified and unsure.  And am surrounded by people whose first boyfriend became their last.  That’s why I left him standing there at the security line, drooping under the weight of his bags, alone and confused, with a five hour plane ride to ponder why I hadn’t kissed him.  Why I had pulled out of that hug and turned to leave without even giving him another look.  But what he doesn’t know is how drove for an hour all over San Diego just to clear my head.       

My room is empty and I’m sitting here with this taste in my mouth and I don’t know what to make of it.  I’ve hardly slept in a week. My entire body carries some slight dull ache.  I’ve been eating one meal a day: breakfast at noon.  I’ve been sneaking around, saying I’m tired just because I want to get back to my room.  I have this feeling that I’m doing something terribly wrong, but at the same time everything feels so right.  When I woke up this morning and he whispered in my ear, “Don’t go back to California” I realized that this is something that I have been missing, and really something that I’ve needed.  I walked three blocks to the bus stop, so I kiss him goodbye outside of campus territory.  But soon everyone will know.  And I don’t even care because soon I will be safe at home, 3000 miles away.  Everything happened right.         

This week has been a dream, and in two days I’ll have to wake up.  My head is pounding because a twin extra long is too small for two.  My room reeks of Old Spice.  I haven’t started packing because for once I don’t want to leave.  I don’t know if I’m doing anything right.  My voice still shakes when I’m trying to be sly.  I pick up on his hints but still don’t know how to act on them.  But I do know that he wants to write his paper at the foot of my bed while I nap.  I do know that he would live in my bed if he could.  And I know he thinks I’m worth so much more than I had ever expected.