*High School Sweethearts

High school.

It was raining of an evening. We were all in a car because where else would we be? I don't know who the 'we' was, exactly; I'd need her to answer that. You get old enough and the we's just kinda blur together. People can be switched in and out;  the players can pass hats and scarves back and forth, like dress-up or a cookout at Barbie's mansion. I know that I was in the back, squished against the door panel (we probably had more bodies than seat belts in there). I opened my door, turned to her and asked if she wanted anything from the gas station. I asked only her, specifically. I didn't ask her questions for the answers, but instead for her responses.

"Surprise me," she offered, doing her best this time to surprise me. 

"You got it," as I exited the car. I came back with lock de-icer. 

By the time we were old enough to drive our parents' cars and formulate our own saucy world views, we were inseparable. Nobody else seemed to enjoy our rampant cynicism as much as ourselves, and so we stuck to one another first, letting others in through cautious osmosis.

Everyone said that we were together and we were, but not as they meant it. They meant tangled sheets and her in my Homer Simpson t-shirt and nothing else while brushing her teeth. They meant making out, grabbing budding breasts and unsure members. They meant Paul and Sarah, up in a tree.

That was never the case. Never-ever. Try telling the high school mob not to believe what they want to believe, though. People assumed we were boyfriend-girlfriend since we were together so often, and we got tired of specifying otherwise. Instead, we'd exaggerate the assumption and make jokes about it. We did take one another to the prom, but that was mostly because we didn't want to go with anyone else. We were also not conventionally "attractive", with her being too tall and me being frail and underweight. 

For the most part, we went to different post-secondaries. I chose to go to Nova Scotia so that I could be far enough away from Newfoundland to miss it, but close enough that I could be easily flown home by my parents if I got too sooky or frightened. The day before I left, she pitched a tent in my yard, adjacent the family motorhome, which was full of all of my clothing by then. All of my books. She camped out with her sisters. She wanted to make sure she was there when we shoved off, even though she could throw a rock from her yard and hit my own. 

Well, she could have if she was coordinated.