a night that couldn't have known

you're nearing the end of the street you've been walking down. you're coming to a cobblestone library that you didn't know existed, and you're wondering where you'll go from here.

his phone rings, and the two of you sit down on a rocky ledge while he answers the phone. a friend in need of help on a project tomorrow - they talk, they talk. you are sitting next to him - close enough that you can feel him there - and you have a jumpy feeling that can only come from sitting this close to someone you've never really touched before (and whom you'd like to). once (if) you've touched for the first time, this feeling will no longer be able to exist: you can't realize you should appreciate it because your desire is for it to be quelled, sending you into a bigger frenzy.

he hangs up the phone and you make some small talk about the call. neither one of you knows what you're going to do next. there's a golf course that you passed on the way there -- should you sneak on there? his suggestion, to which you say you of course should not - you'll get in trouble. with who? the police?

you're easy to convince, though you pretend not to be.

now you're sitting on this bench, in the middle of a dimly lit, abandoned golf course. years from now this scene will seem like it must have been a dream, or a fairy tale: it exists in its own time and place.

although you have never found yourself on a bench in an abandoned golf course before, nor would you allow yourself to be in such a situation with someone you weren't quickly falling for, it would be unnatural for you to allow yourself to acknowledge the significance of it. how are you to know that getting lost in dark fairlylands isn't something he does with plenty of platonic relations?

it's cold, you say - stating the obvious is key in situations like these. it is, he says.

without either of you thinking, (though we all know, you both thought a lot) the arm of his red track jacket - which years from now you'll find draped over your couch, hanging in your closet, in your laundry basket - is around your shoulders pulling you close and making you instantly warmer than you imagined you could be on this unseasonably cold april night.

time passes and you stay in this moment. the boots you are wearing are soaked through from an earlier adventure that led you into a mud puddle. you don't once consider the notion that you should go home and change your shoes.

not knowing where to go, but too cold to stay in this abandoned yard, one of you makes up a 'really good reason' for why you should end up sitting in his car. it's there that you relocate your place in his arms, trying to be delightfully conversational while simultaneously trying to keep up with the thoughts racing through your mind: what does this mean? what will happen next?

you have no way of knowing that you will someday fly in airplanes together. you have no way of knowing that you'll share a living space, and more, a life. you have no way of knowing that he'll become a part of your family and you'll become a part of his.

you're not thinking of any of it now (and years from now you'll realize that's how you know this one matters). you're not making plans, or wondering what his mother is like. in this infant state you are simply individuals to one another - your baggage does not yet belong on the back of one another. you are you and he is him and you want desperately to learn each other.

this is how relationships are built, you'll come to see. you aren't born knowing how to talk, nor do you enter a relationship with history. you hardly know each other now. in a sense, that is beautiful.

no matter how many times you can hope and wish for it, it will still take you by surprise - and so you are surprised when he kisses you.

years from now you can sit and write many words about this moment, and tell yourself it was perfect and that it was the moment your future came to you. this isn't true as it happens: perhaps this is why it ended up being significant. it is a moment in and of itself. you do not go beyond this moment as you are in it because it is enrapturing.

when this kiss ends, he, without asking you your true feelings on the situation, references himself as your boyfriend in his conversation. you are not disappointed (elated is more like it) but you will always find this to be in essence what you (you being you and he) are. you do not ask questions of one another or double check your status. you will not realize, when it comes time to get an apartment, that it was a choice you made, living with one another.

it did not feel like a choice, it felt like your life - and you are happy, calmly ecstatic - about this notion.