Finding Love on the California Coast
There’s nothing like your first love
In light of Valentine’s day quickly approaching, and the copious amounts of time I’ve spent living in my head this past pandemic year, here goes. This is the story of my first, and so far only, love.
The summer after my junior year of high school, I did one of those three month summer college programs. In short, esteemed universities give high-school hopefuls a taste of what it would be like if they were lucky enough to attend. For me, it was my first taste of adulthood. Three months of summer bliss away from my family, with my own car, new friends and endless possibilities.
I was staying with my Nonie and Pa in Pacifica — just a swift 30 minute drift from campus. My first day, I had my tuna and crackers ready to go and I zipped down 280 in the bright red 1996 two seater Mazda convertible my Nonie let me borrow for the summer, Young the Giant’s title album blasting from the windows.
I took three classes: Literature of the Jazz Age, Piano Performance, and Economics — what a mix, I know. I was determined to take things I cared about, while my father was determined to change my mind about economics being useful.
First day of econ I sat in the third row. Hoping to find fast friends, I sat next to a very young, bubbly looking asian boy who turned out to be named Peter. After several minutes of tension breaking, another group of boys sat down in front of us. One of them seemed to know Peter. Yay, more friends!
I can’t remember our exact first exchange, but sometime in the five minutes before class began, this blonde boy sat in the seat diagonally in front of me. He turned around, smiled and joined our conversation. There was just something about him. He sat so unevenly cross-legged, taking up an absurd amount of space. He wore these funny colored pants, almost pink, but I suppose red, and wavy blonde, occasionally curly hair. I thought he was British but he was from Minnesota. Where the hell was Minnesota?
After class, I was sweating — so unlike me, but I knew I wanted to talk to this kid again. Thankfully, we had class everyday. The next day, I asked him if he wanted to study with me. (Sure, day two and there’s just so much material to study, nice one Abby.)
We went to this little library across from our lecture hall and grabbed something at the café, then sat across from each other, nose deep in our laptops. He had a Mac book with a green case. I had this shitty little Windows OneNote thing which of course I ardently defended. (I am now a Mac girl.) I think we studied for about ten minutes and spent the next three hours talking about god knows what. I wrote my phone number on a gum wrapper and put it in his pocket. Ugh, so 2015…
Within a week we were on our first “date.” I don’t remember exactly what spurred it, but we had to go to the movies. Naturally, we saw “Magic Mike XXL,” the perfect first date. Accompanied by several middle aged women, we were instantly hypnotized by pre-Childish Gambino Donald Glover and the true joy that is a dancing Channing Tatum. From then on, we were attached at the hip.
The next two months became a beautiful time capsule. We frequented the movies several times a week, tried everything at Panda Express, got overly sunburned at Monterey and even took a trip to Tahoe. We carved our initials into a tree, both avoiding and embracing cliches.
I kissed him first — in my little red car which he called Little Red Rice Burner (LRRB.) I borrowed his blue and white striped sweater. He came over to play “Dastardly Dan” with Nonie and Pa. We had chicken scallopini.
The day after my 17th birthday we were at the Palo Alto Mall and I danced around the question every early relationship dreads: are we dating/what are we/what is this? In his true passive, can’t-do-emotions fashion, he says “we can date if you want to” to which I say “alright, we’re dating.” I know, probably not the romantic pinnacle you were looking for.
Well here it is. We dated until the end of the summer. He lived in Minnesota and I lived in Houston. We both had no idea where we were going to college and knew we would have to break it off.
We went to see “Matilda” the musical at the San Francisco Orpheum and on the way home he gave me 5 Ghirardelli dark chocolate bars (the fudge ones) and a card that said “Feliz Navidad” with the word Navidad crossed out, and “break-up” penciled in with his shitty left-handed writing.
He walked me up to the steps of my Nonie and Pa’s two story 1960s house, singing me a song he wrote titled “Climbing Trees.” It referenced a little incident I had several weeks earlier where I fell out of a tree we were climbing and got a cut on my left ankle. It healed into a sort of heart-shaped scar.
No. I decided no. We couldn’t break up.
I didn’t know it then, but I was in love with him.
So, we did in fact stay together and date long distance all through senior year of high school. We visited each other for homecoming, prom, random weekends. It seemed totally absurd at the time, but it never felt like a lot of work. I loved texting him. I loved talking about him. I loved him.
He got into Berkeley and I got waitlisted. I got in off the waitlist. We dated through 3 years of college.
Sadly, our seemingly endless summer did come to an end. Halfway through our last year of college, we broke up. There is so much more to the story, but this is a story of my first love and I want it to be just that. I want it to be us performing “Yesterday” by the Beatles at the Stanford 2015 Summer talent show and nothing else.
Six years later, I am still the alt rock-loving, popcorn enthusiast from the summer of 2015. I will forever be grateful for the years of Oreos, limitless knowledge of 1970s music and acquired appreciation for stand-up comedy (that I never dreamt of liking.)
I learned what it means to love and be loved, and there is no greater gift than that.
Happy Valentines xx
-A
#FirstLoveIW
