Archive of Our Own

He went to the basketball game because he overheard her talking about it with Ashley, up a row and two seats to the right. And yet he still acted like it was a surprise when he saw her, those yellow pumps resting on the bleacher. She asked him to sit, and he did, and it could have been the greatest game their school had ever played, he was just watching her and drinking his Coke.

During a timeout, she announced she wanted a cigarette and he took it as an invitation, because that’s what he wanted it to be.

She takes him out to the parking lot, between two minivans where it’s unlikely they’ll get caught for smoking on school property, and lights up. She offers him one, angling the pack in his direction, but he shakes his head, and keeps his hands in his pockets, afraid of what he might do with them otherwise.

Three days ago, at the planetarium, she’d loaned him $2 to get french fries in the food court, and didn’t even make him share them with her. He smelled her hair the whole time the ceiling above them became the cosmos and the heavens, and he’d wondered if this is what it was like to be high.

And now she’s here with him, in a parking lot that’s getting dark, on what’s probably going to be one of the last mild nights of the year, and he wants to kiss her. He wants to kiss her and forget about Mandy Rosenberger because he actually likes Elise and Mandy was mostly about the way her Star of David rested on her tits.

So he leans in while she’s stubbing out her cigarette, and rests his forehead against hers.

“What are you doing?” she asks, making eye contact.

“You know what I’m doing.” He feels drunk, being this bold.

Looking down, avoiding him, he’s informed, “I have a boyfriend.”

“Oh yeah? Didn’t see him here with you.”

“He’s in Austin.”

He doesn’t know if she’s lying or not, but he doesn’t move closer and they just stand there, looking at one another too close, letting the tension build. At one point, she puts her hand on his chest, and he inhales like she’s holding something sharp. She closes her eyes for a second, breathes out slow. His heart thuds into her palm.

She goes back inside, eventually, after a car door slams, and he walks home to beat off until he feels somewhat human again, but if you had told him that night that it would take over a decade for the crescendo on what they started in that parking lot, not doing anything at all, he probably would have believed it.

***

He writes the song after a break up and one drink too many and a series of nights alone in hotel rooms that have all started to feel the same. And he’s trying to write it about his most recent ex, and then he’s trying to write it about any ex, but he just keeps thinking about the air smelling like fall and her laugh over the sound of a ball being dribbled. The distance of light years, the yellow of her shoes, the heavy pulse of his blood.

And two hours later there’s a melody and the lyrics and the thought that maybe she’ll call him. She’ll hear it, and know, and call him. Even though maybe there’s still that guy in Austin. Even though she doesn’t have his number.

He rides that high for a while, definitely much longer than he should.

***

It was smoother in his head, giving her the 2 bucks he’s owed her since 2002. He was also more suave in asking about her love life in his own imagination, and the fictional version of himself can much better hide his disappointment that she’s never caught his song, alone in her car, at a moment where she already felt a little nostalgic.

But regardless, the way she hides her mouth behind her hand and just looks at him makes him feel like the slickest mother fucker on the planet.

***

Eleven years later, he kisses her in a different parking lot. Completely worth the wait.