Grey

It was raining on the night of the gig. Grey didn’t seem to mind. When I opened the door to my dorm room and saw her standing there, I remember the huge smile that spread across my face as I invited her inside. She bounced on in and stood in the centre of the room, her hands behind her back. It was so odd, her just standing there. I wondered why she didn’t take a seat somewhere.

“I’ll just find my wallet and then we can go,” I mumbled, picking up Rory’s stuff in search of my wallet. He left his shit everywhere. The only part of our shared room that was actually clean was my bed. The rest was covered in Rory’s clothes, empty soda bottles and pizza boxes. As I rummaged through it all, I suddenly became embarrassed. The prettiest girl in the world was standing in the middle of the dump I lived in.

I remember going off at Rory about it a few days later, when he finally crawled home from an all-week-long party in one of the other dorms. He wasn’t impressed. He complained that my yelling was killing his brain. That only made me yell louder.

The most excited I’ve ever seen Grey was just before the gig. I called them concerts, but she insisted on calling them gigs. Rory called them shows.

I held her hand as we waited in line outside the venue. I noticed some of the other guys in line staring at her and tightened my grip, overcome with the feeling of needing to protect her. I heard one of them mutter to their friends: “I can’t believe she is with him.” I felt inadequate immediately. I knew I was lucky, but no one had ever explicitly pointed it out like that before. It hurt.

Grey noticed the change in my mood immediately. She looked up at me with those shining green eyes of hers and asked if I was okay. I shrugged it off and said I was fine. I pulled her into a hug and she happily rested her head on my chest and wrapped her arms around my back. I can’t describe how touching her, just being with her made me feel. It was like my heart was about to explode.

Inside, I kept a good hold on her, not wanting to lose her in the crowd. When the band came on stage, she let out a scream that I can only describe as the sound of pure happiness. The gig is a blur in my memory now, but one point of the night always comes back to me so clearly, like it happened just a day ago.

Our first kiss.

It was during a song, and she had her eyes closed, her arms in the air. A small smile played on her lips as she swayed to the music and let it move through her, enjoying every moment of it. I didn’t look at the band. I just looked at her. And the way she danced, and the way she smiled. And I remember moving closer to her, and smiling, and placing one hand on her hip, and the other on the side of her face, just holding it there gently.

Her eyes opened, her smile widened. Then she closed them again, like she knew. My stomach erupted into butterflies and then I was leaning down to kiss her. My lips met hers and then it was like all the noise faded away and we were the only two people in the whole world. I was lost in her, and the way it felt to move my lips against hers, and the way my stomach wouldn’t settle down, and the way the warmth radiated throughout my whole body. And I remember thinking that this was what heaven must feel like.

I wish I could remember the name of the band that played that night. I just want to go back, hear that song again, relive the whole moment, my eyes closed, on my own. Kissing another girl won’t feel the same. Nothing can ever compare to that moment. No matter what I do, I won’t ever forget that night.