Love Story

In 1978 I was 16 years old and a junior in high school I had long dark brown hair, I was only kind of pretty and I was a half-breed mexican navy brat in a navy town at a rough high school. (They didn't let the kids from navy housing go to the really cool kid high school). We had moved to this town in the summer of 8th grade and it was totally different than South Texas where I had come from. The girls didn't like me because of my Texas accent and yes'mam and no sirring. The boys liked the accent, but I didn't know what to do with that. I didn't fit in very well.  Not with the low-riding, gangsta mexicans, or the white surfers, or the asians after they found I wasn't asian even if I looked phillapina, from a distance.  I was fairly smart, smoked cigarettes, but I didn't like pot, didn't know how to smoke it, didn't know how to get it and usually when I drank alcohol, I threw up. So I didn't fit in with the smart kids, mostly asians anyway, the stoners, partiers or any other group. I was in gymnastics and as a result had a  nice figure and a small group of similarly hard to define friends, but I was lonely.

One day, I was with one of my few friends and we walked out to the parking lot to grab a smoke. I saw a girl we'll call Trixie kissing a boy with long, blonde hair. A surfer boy.  I couldn't see his face. I had gym with Trixie and we didn't care for each other. She didn't like me, so I didn't like her.  I thought she wasn't very attractive. Her eyes were set close together and she seemed unrefined somehow. She pointed out several times to several people that I rode the bus. She had a bad ass Ford Mustang.  I asked my friend if that was Trixie's boyfriend and she said  yea.  Just then, the kiss ended and he turned around and started to walk toward us back into school and I was able to see him. I'm not kidding when I say that I heard music or bells or something. Time stopped. It was time to go back to class but I was rooted to that spot, staring. My friend pulled me by the arm and said, c'mon let's go.  I literally shook my head a few times and blinked hard, but he was gone. My friend pulled me along, asked me what's wrong with you? I said THAT is Trixie's boyfriend? Yep. I said that I was going to have to save him.

I did. Save him from her.  I went out my way to be around him, never spoke to him, but was just in his vicinity. Once or twice I saw him glance my way. One day I wore a pair of yellow ditto jeans and a white peasant-type blouse and platform heels and a thin, pale yellow ribbon to pull back just a little bit of the top of my long hair into a braid.  That day he took a longer look that turned into a stare until Trixie grabbed him by the arm and said, c'mon let's go. Ditto jeans had the seam in a horseshoe shape in the back, up the legs and over the behind.  My gymnastic ass looked damn good in those jeans. I made sure he checked it out as I was walking away, with a toss of my braid for good measure.  After a few weeks, he wasn't around.  I didn't know what had happened to him. One day as I was rushing to class from my locker, I saw him. He was on crutches with a leg in a cast up to his thigh. He was struggling to carry his books.  I walked up to him and said, let me carry those for you. We walked to his classroom and I handed him his books. I said, I'll be here when you get out. I was.  We didn't talk much that time; thanks, what's your name, I've seen you around before.

Trixie must have found out about it because she was never far from him. We spoke briefly a time or two more, how's your leg, what happened, a skateboard accident. But the year was coming to a close and the last day of school I watched him ride out of the parking lot in her bad ass mustang.  Girls simply did not call boys then.  I was heartbroken and figured by the end of summer they would be engaged or something. I barely slept or ate for a week. One evening, my sister called me to the phone. When I picked it up, there was no one there. The next night I answered the phone when it rang. It was him. The only way to find someone back then was to look in the phone book.  My last name started with W and my father's name is William. It was a big city. It had taken a week for him to find me. He told me later he was so surprised when he heard my voice the first time on the phone he had hung up.

We talked on the phone a lot the next few days and then I threw convention to the wind and borrowed my sister's car and drove to his house. When he kissed me for the first time, he told me he loved me. I told him not to say that until he meant it. He told me he loved me everytime he kissed me, but I wouldn't say it back. For three months, I didn't say it. After three months, I said it everytime we kissed.

I've said it everytime since then. So has he.

A few months ago, after months of sinus infections that wouldn't clear up, he asked me to feel the knot over his cheek, I touched it and felt a jolt shoot through my fingertips, down my arm and straight into my heart.

He has cancer.