1. Make it Halloween night. Turn yourself inside out with loneliness, and plan to go home to an empty bed.
2. Match with a boy on Tinder. The one who calls himself an âoptimistic existentialistâ. One who peels back the rind of your clementine mind and asks you out to a bar when youâre off work. You will accept.
3. Confession: boy is only here for the night. Your heart will wince, but will quickly regain composure. You will not be afraid to bleed fascination tonight.
4. Together you will joke about knocking the thousand-dollar paintings on the wall from their hooks and having to pay for more than just alcohol. He will ask you what some of your favorite places in Virginia are, and you will trip over your own tongue trying to find a way to describe how this bar, in this moment, with him, is the most content youâve ever felt in your home state.
5. Bond over smoking American Spirits outside of the bar. Discover he has two younger siblings. Two of his fingers were cut off and stitched back into place when he was three. In the US, his favorite place heâs visited is California. He rock climbs. Heâs an Aries. His full name sounds like classical song youâd play on repeat. Heâs got a smile that could crumble mountains, and then rebuild them. Eyes like a hurricane youâd be happy to stand in the eye of.
6. Inside at the table again, he will take your hand in his and slip the hair tie from your wrist, saying heâs keeping it. You will grin idiotically and respond with, âgood, remember meâ.
7. At this point, he will kiss you, and it will feel like renewal. It will feel like the world stopping and spinning too fast all at once, and you will love the thrill of it. You will admire the dizzying way he makes your heart drunkenly stumble around inside your chest. You will be hungover in the morning but at this point, nothing will matter more than his lips.
8. Drink two rounds and split the last between one another.
9. He will lean in close, apologize for being so forward, and then invite you back to his hotel for the night. You will say yes, with barely any hesitation.
10. You will follow this boy on the interstate like a predator chasing prey, but in all actuality, you are the one who is going to get hurt. You always are.
11. When you get to the hotel room, the bed becomes an altar. You sacrifice yourself to him, and he, you. You wonder if the closeness will last even after he boards his flight tomorrow. For now, you are pleading to a god you donât believe in to let it stay.
12. Boy went to catholic school but thereâs nothing holy about him. He whispers âgoodnightâ in the hollow of your ear and it sounds like a prayer. You will find yourself mouthing âamenâ when you eventually fall asleep.
13. When you wake up curled around his body before the sun has risen, you are locked in place; a statue, holding tightly to the last bit of time you have left with him. If the hotel room didnât feel cold earlier, it does now.
14. You lie there for a time that seems too short. You start to crack under the weight of knowing you might not see him again.
15. He walks you out to your car shirtless in the chilly November morning and you memorize the curves of his shoulders, his chest, his hips. The few freckles that pepper his skin. The way his forehead felt against your soft kiss when you held him to your chest the night prior. You pull him close, rather forcefully; you kiss him again, and again, and again. And then, you watch him walk away into a void of uncertainty.
THE DOCUMENTATION OF HOW TO FALL FOR A BOY YOU SHOULDNâT IN FIFTEEN STEPS // Haley Hendrick
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