That same day, he asked me out for our first date.
Setting it aside, I pull out a pressed daisy. Yellowed now, delicate as breath. He’d handed it to me later that month, plucked from the grass outside the student union like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
He drags it slowly down my cheek before handing it to me. “For you.”
I lean up and kiss him softly. “Thank you.”
More memories surface as I find a ticket stub. I remember believing, very clearly, I wanted that night to last forever because it was the first time we made love.
At least I thought it was love.
Setting that aside, I slide my hand back in. My chest constricts when I come out with a Ziplock of notes. Written on torn scraps of notebook paper, his handwriting is unmistakable—big, slanted, like he was always in a hurry.
Meet me outside the arena after practice.
Don’t forget your sweater. There's a fierce stretch in the air.
That dress makes you look regal, my queen.
I love the way you argue. Don’t ever stop.
The last one makes tears prick my eyes because the one time I tried to defend myself, he walked away.
Gave up on me. Us.
I press my thumb over the words like I can smudge the memory away before dropping it into the growing pile.
Seeing pictures of Brennan doesn’t hurt quite the same way it would have if I hadn’t run into him. There’s just two. The first is a picture of us after a hockey game. He’s sweating while my cheeks are flushed from the cold. We’re both wearing stupid grins, like we’re untouchable.
Brennan skates past our section, stick clutched in one hand. The other makes a hand motion. It’s such a small motion, likely invisible to everyone else. One of my hands flies to my mouth, the other making the opposing shape.
Two halves of the same heart.
His grin widens, telling me he saw me.
Later, I wait at the end of the tunnel, emotions churning. Then he appears, hair damp, cheeks flushed, eyes scanning until they land on me.
Everything in his face softens.
“Brennan!” I step forward.
He doesn’t slow down. He drops his bag before lifting me straight off the ground—spinning me like I weigh nothing atall. I laugh into his shoulder, dizzy and breathless and absurdly happy.
Up close, he looks less like a campus legend and more like the boy I love — warm, real, mine.
Then he kisses me, quick and sure and full of something that feels permanent. When he does, the whole world disappears.
The second is from the infamous party when my toga was sabotaged at the Delta Phi house.
I murmur down to my twenty-year old self. “What would you have done differently if you knew just weeks later your entire life would blow up?”
Flipping the photos face down, tension builds up inside of me as I reach for the final item in the box. It causes my heart rate to accelerate so much, I wonder if I’m having an anxiety attack.
It’s a folded piece of college-ruled paper.
I let the tears fall even as I just hold onto the paper. I thought keeping the paper I was working on after he kissed me the first time was romantic, not that it would crush my soul to remember it all these years later. I don’t even have to open it to remember what it says. I recall the day we wrote it.
He shouldn’t look that good doing homework.
