The First Fall

It's funny: People say 'I love you' all the time, when half of the time love has yet to come. I'm one of those people. I was with my gf for almost excatly a year before I really felt it. That heart-pounding, breath-stopping, head-spinning, face-smacking! first fall. My relationship with my gf, Jess, was different than most people's relationships with their lovers. She was 19, tall with black hair, a thin face complete with full lips and big brown eyes that I loved staring into. She was such a typical lesbian, always in the baggy clothes, the boy clothes that hid the figure that my hands knew every curve of. But because she was 19, and I was only 16, we were forbidden to see each other. We found ways though, always found ways. We normally spent the night at my best friends house; the two of us curled up on her twin bed, holding each other and sometimes not doing anything but enjoying the comfort in holding each other. It was always love we felt in between us, but I never knew before that one night, what falling in love, in the moment, felt like.1

It had been a rough week, and I knew that I needed to see Jess that night. I was at Jen's house, my best friend. We asked her mother if Jess could spend the night, and she agreed. I went downstairs and called Jess.2

"Hi hunny..guess what!"3

"What?" She sounded like her day had been long and she just wanted to go home.4

"YOU'RE COMING AND SPENDING THE NIGHT WITH ME!" I got real excited and started bouncing around.5

"Okay, see ya when I get off." 6

We exchanged "I love you"'s and hung up. That's when it first started. My heart started feeling like butterflies, so I went with it and just jumped around. I was happy. I was beyond happy, and I couldn't place why it was such a big deal all of a sudden. But I was happy. I kept jumping and skipping and grinning around Jen's room. My feet started to hurt from all the excitement, so I sat down and tried to read a book. I could't stop smiling. I cried a little; just one tear. Then I tried laying down on the couch; trying to calm my nerves. I couldn't do it. I layed on the bed and closed my eyes. The phone rang. Jen picked it up. 7

"Yeah?"8

"Ok."9

I kept my eyes closed, focused on my breathing. In. Out. In. In. In...Shit. Out. In. Out. In. In. In. Damn it, I'm doing it again. I heard the door open and then shut again. I heard her voice. A voice that I had ached to hear in the bottom of my stomache and I didn't know it until that moment how much I had wanted to hear it. I opened one eye and smiled at her. She kept talking to Jen, but her eyes were focused on me. She said somthing about her and Jen getting her stuff out of the car, and I remember nodding at her. The tears started pouring out of my eyes then. Not sad tears, but tears of relief. Relieved to see her, relieved to hear her. Relieved to smell the AXE spray that she had way too much of on. She made my senses come alive. I heard her coming back in, so I wiped my tears away quickly and continued laying there. She lifted up the cover then and crawled underneath. She kissed my forhead. Then she did something that she never did within the first 20 minutes of seeing me; She held me. The girl that would never be affectionate with me for 20 minutes of seeing me, held me, after a whole 5 minutes. I wanted to cry more. I shimmied my body closer to hers, allowing her to wrap her arm around me more. I feel her kicking off her shoes, and I watch her move around, trying to get comfortable. She takes her usual position, with her leg sandwhiched in between my own, and she rests on her elbow, her head lays on her hand. After laying there for a good couple minutes she rolls on top of me, smothering my face with quick, tiny kisses. All over my face. I giggle and roll her off. We put in a dvd: Dawson's Creek. She sits on the couch and I sit on the floor, my head rests on her knee, my arm drapped along her thigh. She "falls" down on me and we laugh some more and roll around, tickling each other. We get back on the couch now, the both of us, and I lay behind her, my arm around her waist, feeling the heat of her body radiate towards me. I kiss her shoulder blade and she lets out a happy little sigh. Her breath quivers and shakes and I feel the way that she is stuggling to breath. So I kiss her shoulder blade again and again. She struggles more. Jen gets out a camera and takes a few pictures which is much against Jess' protesting. She wants the pictures though; all she does is complain about not having pictures of us.10

The rest of the night is basically the same: we goof around and then fall into this quiet, soft, romantic mood and we just stare at one another. We fool around for an hour, but it's mostly for comforting reasons in having the physical contact that we normally can't have. When we're done we lay there in silence, and she just stares at me. Her eyes shift back and forth a little, but they never move off of me. It's late and I listen to her breathing slow down. "Go to bed.." I urge her. She smiles and lets out a groan. She pulls away from me, just to lay on her side so she can sleep. I wrap my arm around her waist, and reach for her small hand. Tiny, delicate hand. It's slides into my own, just like silk would slide through your fingers. I kiss her shoulder blade again and then I follow her spine halfway down with kisses. I realise that I'm in love with her. "I love you." I whisper, my nose touching her ear. "I love you too sweetie." She half-mumbles. She's mostly asleep, so I let her drift off. I let out a happy sigh myself, and a tear falls down my cheeks, and lands on my smile. I'm so happy it feels like my heart is breaking. But it's not. It's just the last piece of her heart being welded and stiched into my own. And we are one heart now. the pieces of her and the pieces of mine. All the broken pieces of our hearts that people from our lives left for ruins, joined to make something as beautiful as our love.11