Remember when we met outside your house in December some two years ago? When all the lights where flashing bright in front of your house and around your neighborhood in the traditional festive cheer? It was my first time meeting you outside of class and the rain had started picking up and by the time I got to your door every article of clothing I had on was completely drenched. You laughed when you opened the door, I remember you saying something like “oh shit” and inviting me in to the house, saying how lucky I was that you had just got done drying a load of towels. You handed me a warm one and I stripped right then and there, thinking nothing of it at the time, then wrapped myself in towel as you went up to your room to find something—anything—that I could wear to keep me from freezing to death.
It was one of those winters where Texas actually got hit. I remember that because I had a huge fight with my parents a few days ago about how you couldn’t just say Texas didn’t get a winter when it dropped into cooler temperatures around this time every year. It’s funny how now I’m saying the same thing as I walk to school every day and am faced with the mid-sixties component of Texas winter; which has in all it’s power decided to skip straight over to spring weather. Though I can’t complain, I rather like the spring.
I was freezing you know and we had made plans to go out to eat or go to a movie; go anywhere really. An actual date, don’t you consider that odd? In my sociology class the other day we had this big discussion about how the ways of the world change from generation to generation; how in the fifties they used to actually go out on dates: to restaurants or the movies, sometimes they went to dances or just for a walk in the par; now all we do is just sit at home and watch netflix on the couch and apparently a lot of people are sore about that.
I’m not though. I remember that date more clearly than I remember any of my other dates. I remember us sitting on your couch and watching Princess princess Mononoke, Howl’s Moving Castle, and Spirited Away all in one night. You kept saying it was “just till my clothes were dry” and then we’d go out and get something to eat but one hour turned to two turned to three and we’re both sprawled out on the couch with a box or two of pizza beside us on the floor.
You apologized once it got late and I started heading home. You said, “we’ll have to do this again some other time” and I started to get the feeling like you planned it that way to begin with. Like somehow you knew I’d be stupid enough to not bring an umbrella; that you had been watching the news and the weather and just waiting for the perfect time when I’d be absolutely drenched and thereby forced to stay inside rather than go out on a date. I didn’t accept your apology though—it wasn’t your fault it rained—nor was it your fault that I got soaked. If anything it was mine and I should take the full force of the blame for being dumb enough to think that I could outsmart nature.
You walked me to my door and said goodbye, no kiss, nothing like that. That token-stuff, wasn’t your forte. I shut the door and collapsed down in a pile of mixed emotions on the other side; when I got up and looked out the window there you were walking slowly back to your house while the rain fell and drenched you. I contemplated opening the door and screaming for you to come in from the rain, that you could stay the night and leave in the morning but I decided against it. Why I’m not so sure, I think it’s because I believed that you in all your unique glory would somehow be put off by the romantic-comedy-setting of being invited in from the rain to spend the night. Sometimes though, when I’m truthful with myself, I realize the reason why I didn’t and when I do, it scares me.
