I remember the first time I laid eyes on you. I swear it caused an electric reaction within me. I wish I could pinpoint one specific thing about you that drove me wild, but just your presence felt like being thrown into rapid white water. I tried to ignore you, I tried to behave. Each time you caught my eye I had to physically force myself not to physically force myself onto you. You appeared to be alone. I was not. I was with my mom, but I didn’t care, and it didn’t matter. I’d already told her about the internal war I was waging.
“Okay, that’s it.” I finally muttered after 30 minutes. The tone in my voice made it obvious that I had lost in the battle of trying to ignore you and try to behave. This was her Mother’s Day gift, and for some reason, I was treating it like a fucking bachelorette party. Sorry, Mom.
I jumped down the stairs and couldn’t stop moving until I was immediately in front of you.
“Hey!” I called out, even though we’d been smiling at each other since I was halfway down the stairs.
“Hey!” you repeated back to me, maintaining the same flawless smile I would spend the summer lost in.
“Are you here with someone?” I held my breath for the answer I wanted.
I don’t know why I gave a shit what he responded with; I was already breaking all the rules I had at home.
You leaned in closer to me, and I could feel the warmth of your breath at the top of my ear. Your voice was raised just barely over that of the opening band on stage: “I’m not here with anyone.”
Then you took a step back and gave me another smile. Waiting for me to take my next turn.
I thought about the view my mom had: She was undoubtedly watching all of this unfold from the upstairs bar I had just abruptly abandoned her at.
“Okay,” I pressed further, “are you married?”
You put the back of your left hand between us to display a bare ring finger. “Divorced three months.”
Now what? I taunted myself. What’s your game plan now? What’s your end goal?
“Okay.” I dared myself, “Can I give you my number then?”
You already had your phone out.
I kept it a secret. I kept you a secret. Or so I thought.
“Are you moving in with Tim?” My mom asked me two months later, while we were standing in her driveway as I was picking up moving boxes.
I laughed out loud at the capacity of an alternate universe: “The guy from the concert beer line?”
In reality, I’d intentionally picked a house just down the road from yours.
One of the first times we had sex, I had come by just to borrow some power tools from you. You had your rifle set up in the yard and had clearly been shooting at the targets across the field. I parked my Chevy next to yours and walked into the guest house through the back door, grabbing a beer from the fridge on the way to the front.
“Cute dress.” You greeted me.
“It’s not for you,” I laughed as I took a swig of beer. “It’s laundry day.”
You rolled your eyes, bit your lip, picked me up by my ass, and dropped me onto the bar top: “I don’t care what day it is.”
I wanna love someone the way I was obsessed with you. I wanna go absolutely batshit crazy for somebody the way I chased after you. I wanna lust after someone the way I pined for your attention. I wanna be so incredibly unapologetically honest with someone the way I melted in your arms. I wanna anticipate someone’s behavior the way I calculated my day around yours. I wanna care for someone the way I dropped everything in the middle of the night to be with you.
I have never felt so confident as I did showing up at your house at 10pm on any given night. “Hey,” you’d tell me, without a raise of the eyebrow, as I walked in through the back door of your house. Just your silly neighborhood scamp looking to get her ass spanked against the kitchen counter. “Whatcha havin’? Whiskey or tequila?”
I had never felt as alive as I did that summer with you. Fleeting, but so explicitly drenched in passion.
Wild Little Hare 