Ryan and Leigh: A Story of Trust (freshman/sophmore year)

It was her second year of high school when she met him. Tall, lanky and a bit apprehensive about girls. He seemed to be one of those guys she would be most comfortable with, the ones so innocent you could still count the girls they'd kissed or wanted to kiss on one hand. It was the jungle dance of her sophomore year and she didn't know why but her friends, the closest thus far were from the freshman class. She had done the play all winter and the girls in the chorus with her were family, sisters, so it wasn't out of the question that she would be dancing with them instead of all her childhood friends, a year older. It was another endless slow dance when she stumbled across his face, standing with his other friend an Asian boy a little shorter than he. She made some stupid small talk about how dumb slow dances were and then went back to listening to the two boys talk.  She smiled contently but didn't take much notice of him or how much he could change her life. All year her heart had been locked inside her soul kept safe for her childhood crush. She thought she would be his forever, but that would change in time.1

Over the winter months, nothing  drastically shifted except for the fact that Ryan, the boy from the dance had become more than just a name. She found that they shared a love of friends, poetry,  and talking. Anytime she got a chance to talk to him around the group, it seemed she would gravitate towards him. In the frenzy of drama, he just seemed so down to earth and real. After a few more months of talking about poems and their mutual friends they started hanging out on the weekends. It started off as a Saturday here, a Friday night movie there but then it became a Saturday afternoon ritual. Over time she found herself telling him things she couldn't dream of telling her boyfriend. The boy of her "dreams" who she had meant in early April. Soon enough she found herself thinking about how to make Ryan feel better when he was sad. Each day at lunch when most of their friends were bitching about which boy to take to the next dance, she found herself embracing her one on one conversations with him, away from the chatter and gossip of the group. If anything went wrong with him she made it her job to fix it and never once let him go home sad. But he did the same.2

That summer was filled with days and nights with Joey but any free moment she asked Ryan to come over and watch a movie or just take a walk. She felt safe, real, and happy with him, a feeling she hadn't felt since her first true friend back in middle school. But that was only the beginning. Her junior year brought forth moments with him that would make them much much more than just incredible friends.3