When he spoke to her she heard the tremor in his voice and the sideways flicker of his cerulean eyes. He was nervous, she could tell, and frankly she thought he was adorable for it. She liked the way he slouched when he walked, the funny way he always raised his eyebrows at their Spanish teacher when she asked weird questions that no one understood, the sound of his deep voice. She liked how he always talked to the new kid, just for the sake of helping them out, however weird or annoying they might end up being. She liked the way his muscles flexed when he rowed on the crew team and how he wasn't afraid of jumping in the water and swimming to shore when everyone else thought it was too cold outside.
Their first date was a blur, but she wished it would go on forever. The jokes they shared while they walked down the street, talking about anything and everything, skipping over all the shameless flirting that a first date usually involved. She felt a connection and she thought he felt one too. She discovered that he'd never been out of New England, that he dreamed of visiting Costa Rica someday - when she asked him why, he shrugged, saying it sounded like a really cool place, that it was wild and unknown and he liked that about it. Her heart pounded when he said this and she thought to herself, That's exactly what I like about you. She learned that he'd tried every ice cream flavor at the Summer Ice Palace, where he worked, and he claimed that the chocolate coconut was the best by far. When they stopped at the Ice Palace and he bought her a cone, just to prove his point, she was amazed to find that he was right. It was the best she'd ever tasted. She learned that his favorite type of music was metal and that he listened to nothing else. She laughed at that, but he was serious. I don't listen to the radio, he'd explained. Top 40 stations p*ss me off. No one should be forced to listen to the most popular music rather than whatever it is that they actually like. No one should listen to anything they don't really want to listen to. She thought this through and realized how deep it was, how profound. Wow, she'd said. I've never thought of it that way. He'd looked at her, and she'd looked at him, and at that strangely random moment, there'd been magic. There'd been music, not Top 40 music but their own music, playing in the far distance. And that's when he leaned forward slowly, cautiously, and kissed her. He didn't treat her like the other girls – he asked, he didn’t demand. He'd always said he didn't believe in true love. He'd always called himself a cynic, even laughed at himself for it. But maybe that was changing. Maybe she was changing him.