Rabbit on the Moon

We had absolutely no idea our story had begun.

There wasn't a sign telling us this was meant to be. For me, everything seemed to say the opposite—that there was no possible way this could become anything. I didn't know her name. I didn't know if I would ever meet her. I certainly couldn't have imagined that the girl I saw that night would one day become my wife.

Our story began before either of us knew there was a story.

I heard her before I ever saw her.

It was her voice first. Her laughter. Something about the way she sounded made me turn around.

And then I saw her.

I wanted to see her better, so I pointed the tiny light on my keychain toward her. She thought someone was taking a picture of her and her friends, so she looked toward the light and waved.

She had no idea she was waving at me.

And I had no idea she thought it was a camera.

All I knew was that this beautiful girl had just looked in my direction and waved, and suddenly I couldn't think about anything else.

But it was more than how beautiful she was.

There was something about her voice, her laughter, the way she looked, her energy—something I couldn't explain. I didn't know this girl. I didn't even know her name. Yet somehow I felt, with an intensity I had never experienced before and have never experienced again, that there was something extraordinarily special about her.

And then came an even stranger feeling.

I wanted to protect her.

Protect a complete stranger.

It made absolutely no sense. I knew nothing about her life. But something in me wanted to protect this girl from the kind of guys who might see what I was seeing and not value it—from guys who might take advantage of someone who, for reasons I couldn't explain, seemed genuinely special to me.

Years later, after actually knowing her, loving her, marrying her and building a life with her, I would discover just how right that feeling had been.

She wasn't merely special.

She was far more special than I could possibly have known that night.

But sitting there at that concert, I didn't know any of that yet.

When she disappeared from sight, I sat back down. The concert was still happening directly in front of me, but for me it had almost disappeared. The music became background noise. I couldn't stop thinking about her—or that wave.

My mind invented a million reasons I could walk over to her. A million things I might say. Somehow, in those imaginary versions, I would say exactly the right thing, we'd get to know each other, and maybe she would actually want to spend time with me.

Then reality would come crashing back.

I felt embarrassed with myself for falling for someone that easily. I didn't even know her. I started thinking about my actual chances and eventually accepted what seemed obvious:

I was probably never going to meet that girl.

And certainly she was never going to be my girl.

I tried to accept that.

But I still couldn't stop thinking about her.

And then an idea hit me—followed by this overwhelming rush of excitement and purpose.

I would go up to her.

But I wouldn't hit on her.

I wouldn't ask for her number. I wouldn't ask for her name. I wouldn't give her my number. I wouldn't ask for a date. I wouldn't try to get anything from her at all.

I would ask for nothing.

I would simply tell her what I somehow felt so strongly that she needed to know: that there was something special about her, and that she deserved to know it.

And then I would leave.

That was important to me, because my intention came from a genuinely pure place in my heart. I wasn't trying to get something from her. In fact, I thought asking for nothing was the only way I could make what I was saying undeniable.

Why would some random guy walk up to her, tell her something like that, ask for absolutely nothing in return, and then walk away?

What would he have to gain by lying?

Nothing.

That was the point.

I wanted her to know that at least one person had looked at her that night and somehow recognized something special in her—and that she shouldn't ever let some loser convince her otherwise.

Then, during an intermission, I saw her again.

There she was with her friends.

And suddenly my brilliant plan required me to actually walk over there.

I was shaking.

Everything in me knew how insane this probably looked.

But that strange, overwhelming feeling was stronger than my fear.

So I walked toward her.

I didn't ask for her number.

I didn't ask for her name.

I didn't ask her for anything.

I just started spilling the beans.

I almost wasn't at that concert at all.

Only a few hours before it started, a friend stopped by my place. Someone else who was supposed to go couldn't make it, which left him with an extra ticket. He thought of me and asked if I wanted to come.

I wasn't someone who went out very much.

I had become a father as a teenager and had been working full-time since I was fifteen. Responsibility had arrived early, and a lot of the experiences people normally have when they're young had simply passed me by.

Going to a concert with just my friends was going to be a first for me.

Even more than that, I had spent years feeling very alone. I knew what it was like to give love and commitment without feeling loved in return. Compliments, kindness, sincerity—those weren't things I was accustomed to receiving.

But somewhere inside me, I had always held onto the hope that one day I might meet someone who would actually love me back.

Because I knew I had an enormous amount of love to give.

And somehow, on a day when I hadn't even planned on leaving the house for a concert, I ended up standing in the same place as her.

Later that evening, I was talking with the friend who had brought me when I suddenly saw her walking nearby.

I cut him off in the middle of his sentence.

“I'll be back.”

I didn't tell him where I was going.

I didn't tell him what I was about to do.

I just started walking.

My nerves went crazy.

My heart was pounding so hard that somehow, even surrounded by all the noise of the concert and the people around us, I could hear it.

I was terrified.

But I kept walking.

The strange thing was that I still didn't know exactly what I was going to say.

And somehow, I wasn't worried about that.

I knew I was going to tell her the truth.

And the truth isn't something you have to memorize.

It's simply there.

Somewhere along the way, I remembered something my mother had once told me: that with my big old smile, I could convince anybody of anything.

So I decided that if I was really going to do this, I was going to walk up to her wearing the biggest smile I had.

What I didn't know was that she already knew I was coming.

Her friends had noticed me approaching and warned her because her back was toward me. She would tell me later that when she turned around, she saw me walking toward her with an ear-to-ear smile—and what looked to her like a soft halo of pinkish, yellow and faint light-blue light around my head.

She told me that something about me immediately made her feel comfortable.

That before I had even really spoken to her, she felt I was a good person.

Which is funny, because from where I was standing, I was absolutely terrified.

Still, I walked right up to her.

“Hello, my name is—”

I didn't even get to finish.

She interrupted me.

Very loudly.

“Oh my God, you smell so good! What cologne are you wearing?”

I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

Of all the things I imagined might happen when I walked over to this girl, that wasn't one of them.

And then I remembered the name of the cologne.

A bottle I had bought only a few months earlier, without the slightest idea that its name would become perfect at exactly this moment.

I looked at her and answered:

“Crush.”

Inside my head, I couldn't believe my luck.

Because that's exactly what I had been doing all evening.

Crushing on her.

Hard.

And now the girl I had already convinced myself I could never have was standing in front of me, telling me how good I smelled.

For a moment, I wondered whether she might actually be flirting with me.

If she was, that changed everything.

But I still had a mission.

So I started telling her what I had come there to tell her.

How incredibly beautiful she was.

How special she seemed.

And then the words just kept coming.

One compliment after another.

I had never heard myself talk to a girl that way before. I didn't even know I could talk to a girl that way.

Apparently, neither did she.

Because she kept looking at me and saying:

“Dang, you got game. You must tell this to all the girls.”

I promised her I didn't.

Because I really didn't.

Girls were as much a mystery to me as they were to almost any other young guy. I hadn't talked to many of them. I certainly didn't have some collection of lines I had practiced.

So I tried to prove it.

I held out my hands.

They were shaking uncontrollably.

I admitted how nervous I was and basically presented the evidence.

Look at my hands.

She still wasn't buying it.

She kept insisting that I had game.

But there was something about the way she said it that made it feel less like an accusation and more like a compliment.

Like maybe she liked what she was hearing.

And somewhere in that completely unrehearsed flood of words, another idea came into my head.

I told her I was going to give her a nickname.

Right there.

Right then.

Of course, I hadn't actually thought of one yet.

So my mind started searching for something that represented enormous value—something so important that a person could become obsessed with it, something they would be terrified to lose.

And for whatever reason, my brain landed on The Lord of the Rings.

Gollum.

The ring.

“My precious.”

That was it.

I told her:

“I'm going to call you Precious.”

Because somehow that was already what she felt like to me.

Something rare.

Something valuable.

Someone worth protecting.

The funny thing is that I had walked over there with a very specific plan.

Tell her the truth.

Ask for nothing.

Expect nothing.

And walk away.

I had already accepted that I would probably never see her again.

Then she surprised me.

She said something I wasn't prepared for.

Something that destroyed my entire plan.

Because for the first time that night, she gave me something I had deliberately refused to give myself.

Hope.

And suddenly, I was allowed to dream.

Then she gave me a nickname too.

I had just told her that I was going to call her Precious.

And she looked at me and told me that if I was giving her a nickname, then she was going to give me one too.

She would call me Papi Chulo.

The nickname itself isn't really what's important.

It was what it meant to me in that moment.

Until then, everything had been coming from me.

I was the one who had noticed her.

I was the one who couldn't stop thinking about her.

I was the one who had walked across that concert terrified just because I needed to tell this stranger how special I thought she was.

And I had deliberately planned to ask for absolutely nothing in return.

But now she was giving something back.

She was playing along.

She was flirting with me—or at least, that's what it felt like.

And suddenly my entire plan went out the window.

She gave me hope.

For the first time that night, I let myself imagine that maybe this wasn't entirely impossible.

Maybe this girl actually liked me.

Maybe she might give me a chance.

I couldn't believe I was even allowing myself to think it.

Nobody had ever made me feel like this before. Certainly nobody I saw the way I saw her. And yet here she was being so friendly, so comfortable with me, saying things that sounded like she might actually be interested.

I started dreaming almost immediately.

And then I became afraid of the dream.

Because another voice in my head was telling me to be careful.

What if she's just being nice?

What if she's joking around?

What if you're seeing something that isn't really there because you want it to be true?

She was so friendly that I genuinely couldn't tell.

But it was already too late.

Now I had to know.

I had to know whether what I thought was happening was actually happening.

Could a girl like her really be interested in a guy like me?

Could she actually want to see me again?

There was only one way I could think of to find out.

So I asked what she and her friends were doing after the concert.

And then I took the risk:

Would they want to hang out with me and my friends afterward?

Her answer surprised me again.

“Yeah, let's hang out.”

She told me they were going to be at her friend's house.

Why didn't we come over?

I couldn't believe it.

This impossible girl I'd spent the evening convincing myself I would never even meet had just invited me to come hang out with her after the concert.

My hope exploded.

But my brain immediately started putting the brakes on again.

She hadn't invited me somewhere alone.

She had invited me and my friends to hang out with her and her friends.

That didn't prove anything.

Maybe she really was just being friendly.

So I still didn't know.

But now there was going to be an after the concert.

And that alone was more than I ever expected.

She gave me hope. Then, for the rest of the night, I kept finding reasons to lose it.

When the intermission ended, everyone returned to their seats.

We had already talked about hanging out afterward, but the actual plan still needed to be figured out once the concert was over.

And then something happened that immediately made me question everything again.

When I came back out, I saw her friends.

But I didn't see her.

My heart dropped.

Where did she go?

For someone else, that probably wouldn't have meant anything.

For me, after spending the entire night wondering whether this beautiful girl was genuinely interested in me or whether I had imagined the whole thing, it meant everything.

I walked up to her friends.

“Hey, where's your friend?”

They didn't know.

And immediately my mind went to the worst possible explanation.

She's hiding from me.

Maybe everything I thought had happened during intermission had been wrong. Maybe she'd been nice to me and afterward thought, Oh no. This guy thinks I actually like him.

What I didn't know was that at almost the same time, she was having doubts about me too.

She would tell me later that when she came out and saw me standing there talking to her friends, she couldn't hear what I was saying.

All she could see was the guy who had just showered her with compliments...

now talking to her girlfriends.

And apparently she had her own little voice saying:

See? I knew it.

He does this with all the girls.

She thought maybe all that “game” she'd accused me of having really was game.

What she couldn't hear was what I was actually asking them:

“Where is she?”

While I was terrified that she was avoiding me, she was beginning to wonder whether I had ever really been interested in her.

Neither of us knew what the other one was thinking.

And somehow, despite all of that, the night continued.

We worked out a plan.

She and her friends were going to Denny's after the concert. My friends and I would meet up with them there, and afterward we'd figure out the rest of the night.

That was when I needed a way for us to communicate.

So I asked for a number.

She told me she didn't have her cell phone with her, but I could have her friend's number.

That answer bothered me more than I wanted it to.

Technically, it made perfect sense for what we needed. I wasn't asking for her number as some romantic accomplishment. We simply needed a way to coordinate.

But I couldn't stop thinking about the way she'd said it.

I don't have my phone with me.

Maybe that was true.

Or maybe it was the kind of excuse someone gives when they don't want you to have their number.

There it was again.

Hope.

Doubt.

Hope.

Doubt.

Still, I took the number.

Because now I had to know.

The concert ended.

My friends and I left the arena and went looking for the Denny's on Katella.

We found one.

There was a McDonald's across the street, so we grabbed some food and parked there where we could watch the Denny's parking lot.

And we waited.

No sign of them.

We kept looking.

Nothing.

Eventually, there was only one thing left to do.

Call the number.

This was it.

The number I'd been wondering about ever since she gave it to me.

Maybe nobody would answer.

Maybe it wasn't even real.

Maybe this was the moment when I'd finally discover that the entire thing had been in my head.

I called.

Someone answered.

They actually answered.

Just hearing a voice on the other end felt incredible.

At least the number was real.

At least they hadn't completely disappeared.

Naturally, I wanted to talk to her.

But her friend told me she was busy.

And there went my heart again.

Busy?

She couldn't even come to the phone?

This was not looking good.

So her friend and I started trying to figure out where everybody was.

I told her we were at Denny's.

She said they were at Denny's too.

I looked across the street.

They weren't there.

She described their car.

I searched the parking lot.

Nothing.

I told her I couldn't see it.

She insisted they were there.

I insisted we were there.

And somewhere in the background of that phone call, I could hear her friends laughing.

They could have been laughing about anything.

But that isn't what my frightened brain heard.

My brain heard:

They're laughing at you.

Now everything seemed to fit the terrible explanation I'd been afraid of.

The friend's number.

Her being “busy.”

A car that didn't exist.

Everybody laughing in the background.

They're messing with me.

Even my friends were beginning to think so.

And I remember reaching that point where I thought:

Oh, hell no.

So I started asking questions.

What's around you?

What do you see?

Where exactly are you?

Because they kept saying they were at the Denny's on Katella.

And so did we.

Then, slowly, something began to make sense.

There couldn't possibly be—

Could there?

Another Denny's.

On the same street.

We started heading farther down Katella.

And then we saw it.

Another Denny's.

But that wasn't the important thing I saw.

I saw their car.

Everything inside me changed instantly.

They hadn't lied.

They hadn't given us a fake location.

They hadn't disappeared.

They were actually there.

And from across the street, I could see their group walking through the restaurant toward the exit, exactly as her friend had told me they were doing.

I thought I could see her among them.

And once again, my hope went through the roof.

She was real.

The invitation was real.

They really had waited for us.

We had simply gone to the wrong Denny's.

Eventually we followed them to her friend's house.

And by then, after everything my imagination had put me through that night, there was really only one person I wanted to see.

We arrived.

I knocked.

Her friends opened the door and let us inside.

Immediately, I started scanning the room.

I didn't care about anything else.

I was looking for her.

But I couldn't find her.

She wasn't there.

Again.

So I asked:

“Where's your friend?”

Someone answered:

“I think she's passed out in the room.”

Then somebody else said something like:

“Yeah, I think she went to sleep.”

And my heart sank farther than it had all night.

After the concert.

After the invitation.

After the phone number.

After calling.

After the wrong Denny's.

After finally finding them.

After following them all the way back to the house...

she had gone to sleep.

And in that moment, I wanted the earth to open underneath me and swallow me whole.

Because I thought I finally understood what had happened.

My heart dropped from the second floor all the way down to the first.

For a moment, it felt like I couldn't hear anything around me.

There were people talking. My friends were there. Her friends were there.

But all I could hear was my own mind trying to understand what this meant.

She went to sleep.

To me, there seemed to be only one reasonable explanation.

She wasn't interested in me.

She had just been friendly.

I had misunderstood her.

I had taken the flirting, the nickname, the invitation—all those little things that had given me so much hope—and turned them into something they weren't.

It was exactly what I had been afraid of from the beginning.

I just hadn't wanted it to be true.

And strangely, underneath all that disappointment, there was almost a sense of relief.

Because at least I finally had my answer.

Not the answer I wanted.

But an answer.

I could finally be released from that ball and chain called hope.

Because hope had been dragging me around emotionally all night.

Maybe she likes me.

Maybe she doesn't.

Maybe I have a chance.

Maybe I never did.

Maybe somehow she could become my girl.

Maybe I'm an idiot for even imagining it.

And now it seemed over.

I was completely bummed out.

But even then, I tried to be fair to her.

At least she hadn't been cruel.

She really had invited me and my friends to hang out with her and her friends.

We were there.

That part had been real.

Maybe she just hadn't been as interested in me as I had hoped.

Or maybe I had ruined whatever little interest she had felt.

Maybe all the calling, going to the wrong Denny's, trying to find the right Denny's, and eventually tracking everybody down had made me look desperate.

And let's be real.

I was desperate.

But who wouldn't be?

Still, there was one problem with the conclusion I had reached.

I had come there for one reason.

I needed an answer.

A real one.

A confirmed one.

And as devastated as I felt, her friends couldn't give me that answer.

Only she could.

So my mind started doing it again.

What if she's only taking a power nap?

What if she's awake now?

What if she didn't realize we'd arrived?

What if she forgot we were coming?

What if somebody telling her I'm here reminds her?

There was still one final way to know.

I asked if somebody could please go tell her that I was there and ask whether she still wanted to hang out.

And it mattered to me that she understood exactly what I was asking.

Not whether she wanted to come hang out with everybody.

Whether she wanted to come out and hang out with me.

Because that was the only reason I was there.

If the answer was no, I wasn't staying.

There was no way in hell I was going to sit around her friend's house pretending I had come there to socialize with everybody else.

I wasn't interested in her friends.

I wasn't interested in the party.

At that moment, I wasn't interested in anything else.

I was there for her.

And if she didn't want me there, then my friends and I were leaving.

My friends had already joined everybody at the dining table. Her friends were there, people were talking, everyone was beginning to mingle.

I didn't join them.

I stayed standing at first, asking about her.

Eventually, someone agreed to go into the bedroom and ask her.

The bedroom door closed.

And I walked away from everyone else.

There was a small loveseat in the living room—just enough room for two people.

I sat down on the left side.

Alone.

And waited.

I can still remember sitting there imagining exactly what I thought was about to happen.

That bedroom door would open.

Her friend would walk out.

Alone.

She would come over and tell me something like:

Sorry. She's not coming out.

I could practically feel the words before anybody had even said them.

My stomach was sick.

I was nervous.

And I had already decided what I was going to do.

I would stand up.

I would interrupt whatever conversation my friends had gotten into.

And I wasn't going to ask whether they wanted to leave.

I was going to tell them:

We're leaving.

Because disappointed or not, desperate or not, there was one thing I wasn't going to do.

I wasn't going to sit there begging for someone's attention.

That's not who I was.

Not even for her.

Not even in this completely ridiculous emotional state she'd somehow put me in after knowing her for only a few hours.

So I waited.

The door finally opened.

I looked up.

And her friend wasn't alone.

She was with her.

There she was.

For a split second, hope came rushing back into me.

I wanted to catch her eyes.

I wanted to see her face.

I wanted to know what it meant that she'd actually gotten out of that room and come to see me.

And then I noticed what she was wearing.

She was in her pajamas.

Pajama shorts.

And to me, those shorts immediately told me two things.

The first was:

She's definitely not interested in me.

I had grown up surrounded by women—sisters, aunts, girl cousins—and I thought I understood this much about girls.

A girl wasn't going to casually let some guy she liked see her when she wasn't made up or dressed the way she wanted him to see her.

Hell, from what I knew, most girls didn't even want anybody outside the household seeing them that way.

And certainly not some guy they were interested in.

So there she was.

In pajamas.

Standing in front of me.

And in my mind, that was evidence.

But those shorts told me something else too.

They told me what I thought was about to happen.

Suddenly I understood why she had come out of the bedroom.

Or at least, I thought I did.

Her friend had gone in there and told her that this guy from the concert was sitting outside asking about her.

And because she was a nice person, she wasn't going to make me sit there waiting.

She wasn't going to hide in the bedroom and have one of her friends reject me for her.

She was going to come out herself.

Not because she wanted to hang out with me.

Because she was going to let me down easy.

I could almost hear the excuse before she even said it.

I'm just really tired.

Sorry, I'm too tired to hang out.

But it was really nice meeting you.

Something like that.

Something kind.

Something polite.

Something that wouldn't embarrass me or hurt my feelings any more than necessary.

And honestly, I couldn't even be mad at her for it.

If anything, it seemed consistent with everything I had already seen in her.

She was nice.

She had been friendly to me.

She had invited us over.

And now, instead of leaving me sitting outside wondering, she had gotten out of bed and come out personally to tell me that the night was over.

At least that's what I believed I was looking at.

So there I was.

Sitting alone on the left side of that little loveseat.

Watching the girl I had spent the entire night hoping might somehow be interested in me walk toward me in her pajamas...

already preparing myself for the rejection I was certain was coming.

She saw me looking at her.

I was still sitting on that loveseat, trying to catch her eyes.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

That was it.

But something immediately changed in my mind.

She didn't start explaining herself.

She didn't apologize.

She didn't tell me she was tired.

She didn't give me any of those polite excuses I had spent the last few minutes preparing myself to hear.

Somehow, almost instantly, I knew:

That's not why she came out.

She wasn't there to send me home.

She had actually come out to hang out.

Now, whether she had come out specifically because of me, I still didn't know.

And suddenly I realized I had another problem.

If she walked over to that dining table and everybody started hanging out together, how was I ever going to get the answer I had come there for?

There would be my friends.

Her friends.

Everybody talking.

Everybody laughing.

Everybody getting to know everybody.

And I didn't want that.

I wanted to talk to her.

I needed enough time alone with her to actually get to know her—and for her to get to know me.

Because how else could I possibly find out whether this girl could ever really be interested in me?

And then another thought entered my head.

One I absolutely hated.

What if she liked one of my friends?

That's the kind of thing that happens.

People go somewhere as a group. Everyone starts talking. Someone connects with somebody they weren't originally there to meet.

And suddenly my imagination was showing me another nightmare.

Her talking to one of my friends.

Him making her laugh.

Her liking him.

All those tiny, completely innocent interactions that normally wouldn't mean anything suddenly felt enormous to me.

Because I already cared.

Way more than I had any reasonable right to care about someone I had just met.

I imagined one of my own friends somehow ending up with her.

Then what?

She'd still be around.

I'd still see her.

Except instead of being the girl I had spent that entire night dreaming might somehow become mine, she'd be part of my life because she was with one of my friends.

I couldn't imagine anything worse.

And the really terrible part was that if that started happening, I couldn't even do what I had planned before.

I couldn't suddenly stand up and announce:

“We're leaving.”

Everybody would know something was wrong.

I'd have to expose how upset I was over a girl I barely knew.

That would have been humiliating.

No.

The group was not where I wanted this night to go.

I wanted one thing.

A chance to talk to her alone.

Just her and me.

But I still didn't know whether she wanted that.

And I didn't want to walk up and ask:

Do you want to sit here alone with me instead of hanging out with everybody else?

That felt like too much.

Too direct.

Too easy to misunderstand.

Then I looked at the empty space beside me.

The right side of that little loveseat.

And an idea came to me.

I wouldn't ask her anything.

I would tap the seat.

That tiny gesture could answer so much.

If she didn't want to sit with me, she had the easiest escape in the world.

She could smile.

She could tell me to come join everybody else.

She could walk over to the table.

Nothing awkward had to happen.

And I would understand.

Maybe she wasn't interested in me that way.

Maybe I'd have to try to get to know her through the group.

It wasn't the answer I wanted.

But once again, it would be an answer.

But there was another possibility.

She could sit down.

She could choose that empty seat beside me instead of the room full of people at the table.

And if she did...

I would have her attention.

I would finally have a chance to talk to her.

Really talk to her.

Just the two of us.

She could hear me.

I could hear her.

She could learn something about me.

I could learn something about her.

And maybe—just maybe—I could finally begin to understand whether everything I had been feeling that night existed entirely inside my own head...

or whether there might actually be something happening between us.

At that point in my life, even knowing that this girl was willing to sit there and give me a chance to talk to her would have meant the world to me.

But there was only one way to find out.

I looked at her.

I looked at the empty seat beside me.

And I decided to take the risk.

I tapped it.

And she sat down beside me.

She sat down beside me.

What I didn't know was that, before she came out of that bedroom, one of her friends had given her a warning about me.

She told her to be careful.

Apparently, I seemed to “like her too much.”

Even now, she still finds that funny.

She thought it was funny then too.

Years later, when she told me about it, she remembered wondering how that was supposed to be a bad thing.

If a guy really, really likes you, isn't that what you want?

Maybe that only makes sense when you already have some interest in the guy yourself.

Whatever it meant, the warning didn't stop her.

Another friend came into the room and told her I was outside asking about her.

And she came out.

I tapped the empty place beside me.

And she sat down.

Then we started talking.

I don't remember the first words we said to each other on that couch.

What I remember is something much more important.

How easy it was.

And when I say easy, I really mean it.

I have never had a conversation with anyone in my entire life that felt as easy as the conversation I had with her that night.

There were no awkward silences.

No searching for something to say.

No fake expressions of interest.

Nothing felt forced.

We just...

talked.

She laughed at my jokes.

And I could tell it wasn't the kind of laugh someone gives you because they're trying to be polite.

Her laughter was sincere.

She was genuinely interested in what I had to say.

And that caught me completely off guard.

Because it wasn't the kind of interest I might have expected from someone being impressed by superficial things.

It wasn't about having a cool car.

It wasn't about being older.

It wasn't about trying to make me feel like I was some incredibly cool guy.

It felt different.

It felt like she was noticing who I was.

Like somewhere inside everything I was telling her, she was recognizing something worthwhile in me.

A respectable guy.

A good guy.

Someone whose thoughts were worth listening to.

Someone worthy of her time.

And I remember exactly what that began doing to me.

For the first time...

I felt like I was worth something.

That feeling was almost foreign to me.

I had spent so much of my life believing something very different about myself.

Yet this girl—the girl I had spent the entire evening believing was impossibly beyond my reach—was sitting beside me, listening to me as though the things I thought, the things I believed, and the person I was actually mattered.

And time disappeared.

But somewhere in the middle of all that talking, something else happened.

Something I can't believe I almost left out when telling this story.

We kissed.

I don't remember exactly what we were talking about immediately before it.

I don't remember some perfect line that led to it.

There wasn't some elaborate romantic setup.

I just remember looking at her...

and going for it.

I leaned toward her.

And she leaned toward me.

And we kissed for the first time.

That was all I needed to know.

All night long, I had been trying to interpret signs.

The wave.

The compliments.

Papi Chulo.

The invitation.

The phone number that wasn't hers.

The wrong Denny's.

Her disappearing into the bedroom.

The pajamas.

Her coming back out.

Her choosing the empty seat beside me.

Every time I thought I had an answer, my mind found another reason to doubt it.

But this?

I leaned toward her.

And she leaned toward me too.

I didn't have to invent an explanation for that.

I didn't have to wonder whether she was simply being polite.

She kissed me back.

And for the first time that night, the question I had been chasing finally seemed to have an answer I couldn't explain away.

There really was something between us.

And there was something else I wouldn't learn until later.

Those pajama shorts I had interpreted as evidence that she couldn't possibly be interested in me?

They had absolutely nothing to do with me.

She would tell me later that on the way to her friend's house, some ash from the bud she and her friends had been smoking in the car had fallen onto her skirt.

That's why she had changed.

That was it.

While I had been sitting there turning those pajama shorts into evidence that she couldn't possibly be interested in me, she had simply changed because she'd gotten ash on her clothes.

Once again, my mind had taken one tiny piece of information and built an entire story around it.

And once again...

I was completely wrong.

We kept talking.

Hours passed without either of us noticing.

Eventually our friends interrupted the little world we had created for ourselves.

It was late.

Everyone was tired.

People began taking whatever space they could find on the living-room floor.

Eventually we had to find a place too.

And somehow, something I never could have imagined when I first heard her voice at that concert happened.

We ended up lying beside each other under the same blanket.

Now our conversation became whispers.

And somewhere during those hours, I realized the answer I had spent the entire night trying to get had created a problem I never anticipated.

I had wanted to know whether a girl like her could possibly be interested in a guy like me.

I wanted to know whether, under different circumstances—without all the baggage and responsibilities already attached to my life—I could actually be enough for someone I saw as extraordinary.

Everything I had told her was true.

Every compliment.

Her hair.

Her perfect face.

Her beautiful vocabulary.

The way she spoke.

The intelligence I heard in her words.

Her sweetness.

Her kindness.

Everything I had told her about how I felt was real.

But she didn't know my entire story.

She didn't know all the responsibilities waiting for me outside that house.

When I had approached her at the concert, none of that had seemed relevant because I never expected to get this far.

I was supposed to tell a beautiful stranger that she was special and walk away.

Instead, I was lying beside her under a blanket...

after kissing her.

And somewhere in those hours of conversation, something happened that was far more dangerous than getting the answer I wanted.

I fell in love with her.

Deeply.

There wasn't one sentence that did it.

It was everything.

Her beauty had gotten my attention.

Her voice had made me turn around.

Her laughter had stayed in my head.

But sitting on that couch and actually talking to her showed me something else.

The girl I had imagined might be special was even more special than I had imagined.

And while we talked, I started daydreaming.

For the first time in my life, I pictured myself on a real date with a girl.

In the daytime.

And for some reason, my imagination took us to Santa Monica Pier.

I saw us walking together.

Holding hands.

Laughing.

Having fun.

I imagined myself carrying one of those stuffed animals you win at the carnival games—a prize I had won for her.

And when I pictured myself beside her, there was something about the person I saw that surprised me.

I was happy.

Really happy.

I had never wanted things like that before.

Now I did.

I even found myself wondering about something far less exciting than Santa Monica Pier.

What would it feel like to simply watch television with her?

A regular day.

A television show.

A movie.

Nothing special happening.

Just her and me together in a living room.

I wondered what kind of guy got to have a life like that with a girl like her.

I had grown up being seen as a bad boy.

But as I became an adult, I had gotten serious about trying to build something better.

I wanted a future.

I wanted to become someone respectable.

Someone who could provide a comfortable life.

Someone who could someday stand beside the right person and feel proud of who I had become.

Someone she could be proud of too.

I had even learned to play guitar with a thought somewhere in the back of my mind that maybe, one day, someone would genuinely love me.

And if I learned to play well enough, maybe I could play that person a love song and express what she meant to me.

I didn't know where any of those thoughts would eventually lead.

All I knew was what was happening that night.

I was lying beside this girl.

Whispering.

Trying not to wake everyone around us.

And reality was beginning to return.

Eventually, I had to go home.

Eventually, this night had to end.

And I believed that when it did...

so did we.

She didn't know that.

Nobody in that house knew it.

Only me.

So while I was experiencing one of the happiest nights of my life, another part of me was already grieving it.

I wished I could tell her.

I wished she could somehow understand.

I wished she could somehow tell me that I was wrong—that there was some way this didn't have to end.

I even found myself wishing for the impossible.

That somehow everything could work itself out.

That somehow this girl and I could actually end up together.

Married, even.

That somehow I could run away with her and leave everything else behind.

But I believed none of that could happen.

And now I was in serious trouble.

Because I knew I wasn't going to forget her.

I wasn't going to stop thinking about her.

I wasn't going to stop missing her.

I wasn't going to stop wondering about her.

I wasn't going to stop wishing for her.

I had finally gotten the positive answer I had wanted all night.

I just hadn't considered the cost of receiving it.

Then I looked at the time.

There were only a couple of hours left before sunrise.

And suddenly time became the enemy.

Sunrise meant morning.

Morning meant leaving.

Leaving meant this was over.

So I started asking her for the only thing I thought I could still have.

More time.

I whispered to her again and again:

Don't go to sleep.

Stay awake with me.

I kept looking at her eyes to make sure they were still open.

And she did.

She stayed awake with me.

That entire night.

Somewhere inside my exhausted mind, I wanted to believe that if we simply refused to go to sleep, morning couldn't take this away from me.

If we stayed awake...

if we kept talking...

if we kept whispering...

maybe I could somehow make that night last forever.

But eventually, morning came.

And we were still awake.

It was time to leave.

Before I did, I finally dared to ask her for something I hadn't asked for when I first approached her at the concert.

Her phone number.

And this time, she gave it to me.

I remember her getting her phone.

And if I remember correctly, I actually took it and entered my own number into it myself, making sure she had it correctly.

I don't know what I thought I was accomplishing.

Maybe I just couldn't leave anything to chance anymore.

But even exchanging numbers didn't make me believe there was really going to be a next time.

She didn't know what was happening inside me.

Nobody did.

I smiled.

I acted normal.

I behaved as though this was what people did.

I'll call you.

You'll call me.

We'll see each other again.

But inside, I didn't believe it.

I thought maybe I'd call and she wouldn't answer.

Maybe she'd lose interest.

Maybe, once she returned to her normal life, she'd realize this had just been one strange night with some guy she met at a concert.

Maybe eventually...

she wouldn't even remember me.

I knew I would remember her.

That wasn't even a question anymore.

Then my friends and I started leaving.

And as we were walking out, knowing—or believing—that I was looking at her for the last time, I couldn't leave without telling her something.

I couldn't tell her everything.

But I desperately needed her to know something about what I wished I could be for her.

So, in front of everybody, I turned to her and said:

“Hey, I just want you to know that for you, I would be the best boyfriend ever that has ever been and will ever be. Please know that.”

My friends started laughing.

I barely registered it.

To them, it probably sounded insane.

I had just met this girl.

But I meant every word.

I didn't mean I'd try to be a pretty good boyfriend.

I didn't mean I'd treat her better than some guy before me.

I meant exactly what I said.

The best boyfriend ever.

Because somehow, after only one night, I felt certain that I would take care of her.

And I knew why.

I had seen it in all those daydreams.

Every time I imagined being with her, I saw myself happy.

I felt joy simply imagining spending time with her.

I couldn't imagine getting tired of her.

I couldn't imagine having enough of her.

I wanted to make her happy.

I wanted to protect her.

I wanted to love her.

And since I couldn't tell her everything that was happening inside me, that ridiculous, enormous declaration was the closest thing I could give her.

What I didn't know was how she received it.

She would tell me years later that at first, my words affected her.

Wow.

It was deep.

It gave her hope too.

Then she saw my friend laughing.

And suddenly she interpreted the whole thing differently.

Maybe this was something I did all the time.

Maybe my friends were laughing because they'd watched me say ridiculous things like this to other girls.

Maybe the sincerity she had heard in my words wasn't really there.

Once again, without either of us realizing it...

we were both misunderstanding the same moment.

Today she knows exactly how much I meant it.

But that morning, she couldn't.

We said goodbye.

The door closed behind us.

My friends and I walked back to the car.

We got in.

And we drove away.

I couldn't stop thinking about her.

I was heartbroken.

I was sad.

And I couldn't show anybody what was happening inside me.

I was already craving her presence.

Missing someone I had only just left.

Wondering whether I would ever hear her voice again.

Wondering whether I would ever see her again.

And wishing harder than I knew how to wish...

that somehow, this wasn't the end.