1999.

    I'm sitting here in this room full of tea pots, feet on the pink carpet that I helped choose the year we first met, when I was still filling my play sets with juice and living by the words of Patrick Star: "When in doubt, pinky out." My college algebra and astronomy textbooks are laid out in front of me, my humanities paper half written as you strum your guitar on my laptop screen. You're only a 90 minute drive away, but it feels like a lightyear on this crisp September night; all I want is to hear that guitar, and you, in person. These speakers are just not doing it for me, and this hard dining room chair is just not doing it for me, and not being able to talk privately is just not doing it for me.

    "It's getting kind of late, don't you think?" She asks me as she comes into the room behind me, her grey hair swaying and wrinkled face showing a teasing smile. She takes her tea out of the microwave. "Don't stay up too long, you've got that test tomorrow after work." Grandma & her mumu swish back out of the room on their way to the bedroom as you finish up the song you're playing. I close my astronomy book & look up to find you looking at me.

    "Do you really have a test tomorrow? Should I be quizzing you instead of playing this thing?" You place the guitar out of frame, taking the pen out of the corner of your mouth and jotting something down on the notepad in front of you. You gently scratch a bit at the scruff that you've so carefully trimmed along your jawline, and I get distracted at the thought of how fucking delicious it would feel against my neck again. The pen clacks against your desk as you set it down, and it breaks the trance. We meet eyes again, and the cool green of yours both calms & electrifies me all at once; I laugh awkwardly, as always.

    "No, no, absolutely not. It's nice having a break for once. I have this humanities paper due, too; everything at once, per the ushe," I joke. "What're you working on, anything exciting yet?" I knew I likely wouldn't understand a single thing you'd tell me from any of your classes, but it doesn't matter; I would listen to you explain quantum mechanics if it meant watching your brain work and hearing your voice.

    "Not in the least. Still just a buncha numbers and shit you'd hate. But I did find this video..." you go on to show me some ridiculous claymation video that inexplicably reminds me of the thumbs from Spy Kids, only now there are pancake bombs. You're laughing your fool head off & I suddenly have forgotten all about my test, my paper, and work the next day. In that moment, looking at you, I realize that I could listen to that laugh for the rest of time and never tire of it; I've heard it since 1999, and now here I am, thirteen years later, and all I want to do is hear that laugh as long as we live. All I want is to be the reason that you play that guitar, the person you send ridiculous videos to, the person that you come back home to, and the one who looks up to find you already looking for her in a crowd. 

    But my god, is that embarrassing. So instead, I just tell you, "that is so stupid, ______, where in the world do you find these things?" as I laugh like an idiot. We make plans to go to the apple orchard when you're in town next weekend, and I pretend to not be melting inside like the ice cream we'll get on our slices of apple pie. When we get breakfast for your birthday later this month, I won't tell you that I've officially found myself falling in love with you because that's insane, and we'll have a sneaky little moment in the car that maybe neither of us will forget, but I know for sure that I won't (no matter how hard I try), and the month after that, you'll break my heart. 

    I should've known when I saw that note from the redhead in your drop-ceiling basement bedroom that this was doomed from the start, but here we are, and I am pretending that we have a future. You "won't do the distance thing," as if this even counts; I've driven farther to pick up a cassette tape for christsakes, but you're going to ruin everything. You'll ask me to wait around for you, to be your "at home girlfriend," so you can still date girls on campus, but you won't really even mean that; if I really allow myself to lower my standards that far, to slump that low for you, all I'd end up doing is delaying the inevitable and losing some self respect in the long run. It's just the thinnest veiled code for, "you're not enough," that I've ever heard, and I'll hate that I ever let myself feel this way. 

    But tonight? Tonight I'm going to go to bed entirely too late, with sides that hurt from laughing too much. You'll have played some impromptu songs about god knows what, your roommates will have played practical jokes on each other as always, and eventually you'll take your laptop to your bedroom. We'll say goodnight, I'll wish you were here (or moreso, that I was there), and everything will be alright for another night. I'll be the happiest I've been for months, and I'll go to sleep dreaming of something enjoyable for once: your goofy ass grin as you showed me pancake bombs, your hands strumming that guitar, and your voice telling me "Goodnight."